More skeptical scholars often overestimate the degree of early Christian creativity in the gospel tradition. Clearly early Christians resisted the temptation to read some major issues of their day into gospel materials (e.g., food laws and circumcision).185 Some of Paul’s occasional letters also inadvertently attest at an early date the accuracy of elements of the Jesus tradition (1 Cor 7:10-12; 11:23; 15:3; 1 Thess 4:15), whereas the Jesus tradition in the Gospels exhibits little influence from Paul.186 Indeed, many sayings in the tradition imply a setting relevant only to Palestine and/or the specific time of Jesus.187
Even more significantly, written Gospels were appearing within three decades of Jesus’ ministry, while eyewitnesses maintained positions of prominence in the Church;188 as we noted in chs. 6 and 9, Luke attests his reader’s awareness of many existing written sources (Lk 1:1-4). Had early traditioners and writers indulged in free invention in various geographical communities, we could have expected Gospels much more diverse than our Synoptics are189 — more like the later Gnostic materials formed under such conditions.190 That is, had Gospel writers composed freely without regard for their sources, we would have much more radically different works instead of the substantial overlap in content we find in our Synoptic Gospels. For this reason as well as those given above, it should be more when a scholar disputes a particular saying, rather than when one contends for its authenticity, that one should assume the burden of proof.191
Discerning “tradition” on the basis of spontaneous revelation192 also appears to be a later practice. Although all concur that the early Christians prophesied, it is highly unlikely, against some scholars,193 that many “sayings of the risen Jesus” were retroactively attributed to the historical Jesus.194 The few clear examples of prophecies we have in the New Testament are always explicitly identified as such,195 and again, issues of the later church rarely appear in collections of Jesus’ teachings.196 As we shall note later in the book, Jesus was a prophet who launched a prophetic movement; but he was also a sage who taught disciples to preserve and expound his teachings. The disciples probably were communicating the substance of Jesus’ teaching even during his lifetime, if even so much as a historical kernel lies behind Jesus sending the Twelve in his lifetime.197 On the antiquity of some end-times material and the extreme improbability that it originated in prophecy, see appendix 4.
Robert Price has suggested other objections to a reliable tradition. He rejects the analogy of rabbinic transmission, comparing instead the seventeenth-century messianic claimant Sabbatai Sevi or the twentieth-century African healer Simon Kimbangu, whose disciples within a generation made him out to be the Messiah.198 Yet these comparisons are anachronistic and misplaced. Kimbangu did not train disciples by passing on easily memorizable sayings;199 nor did all of his followers make such assertions about him;200 nor do we have first-century Jewish examples of such rapid deification. Moreover, the labels given to Kimbangu and Sabbatai Sevi derived from analogies with Jesus — a claim more difficult to make for Jesus given the lack of contemporary parallels in his day. His early Palestinian Jewish followers lacked close models for rapid deification; his later Gentile followers in the Diaspora would hardly have invoked the category of “Messiah.” Ancient sages could be deified, but not so quickly, and certainly not in Jewish monotheism, even in the Diaspora.
Price also suggests that the apostles would not have been concerned with others spreading invented tales, nor could they have stopped this practice if they were.201 But where would the Gospel writers have sought their information? Who would have been considered the most reliable sources? To whom did ancient biographers of sages turn in other cases? Was it not more often to disciples and schools that passed on a founder’s teaching, rather than to popular opinion? And to whom would the early Jesus movement have looked for leadership, but to Jesus’ circle of closest followers, and to James his brother? In fact, Paul’s undisputed letter to the Galatians confirms that precisely these persons were the leaders in the Jerusalem Jesus movement, and that they were also known to be such in the Diaspora. Price’s skepticism thus seems excessive and unwarranted.
