Author: James D.G. Dunn Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 0802867820 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 401
Book Description
The traditions about Jesus and his teaching circulated in oral form for many years, continuing to do so for decades following the writing of the New Testament Gospels. James Dunn is one of the major voices urging that more consideration needs to be given to the oral use and transmission of the Jesus tradition as a major factor in giving the Synoptic tradition its enduring character.
Author: Eric Eve Publisher: Augsburg Fortress Publishers ISBN: 1451469403 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 226
Book Description
New Testament scholars often talk about oral tradition as a means by which material about Jesus reached the Gospels writers. Despite the recent interest in oral tradition, scholarly advances have not penetrated the mainstream of academic Gospels scholarship, let alone the wider public. Behind the Gospels fills this gap, offering a general theoretical discussion of oral tradition and the formation of ancient texts and providing a critical survey of the field.
Author: Henry Wansborough Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing ISBN: 0567514137 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 470
Book Description
A collection of papers from two international symposia by such important scholars as Aune, Dunn, Gerhardsson, Meyer, Rordorf and Talmon. The articles share the conviction that the only way to break the deadlock in the Synoptic problem is to examine the oral tradition about Jesus which lay behind the Gospels, and to continue even beyond them. The book addresses such central issues as the characteristics of oral tradition: oral tradition in Judaism, in the teaching of Jesus (his aphorisms and the narrative meshalim) and in the Gospel narratives; and the relationships of John, Paul and the Didache to oral tradition. This volume should bring onto a new plane the discussion of the all-important oral stage of Gospel tradition.
Author: Werner H. Kelber Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 9780253210975 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 292
Book Description
Spoken words process knowledge differently from writing. What happens when speech turns into text? In reappraising literary scholars' propensity to trace Jesus' sayings back to the assumed original version, the author argues that in the oral medium each rendition of a saying is the original. Orality works with multiple originals, rather than with single originality. In what may be the most extraordinary thesis of the book, Kelber argues that the written gospel is related less by evolutionary progression than by contradiction to what preceded it.
Author: Birger Gerhardsson Publisher: ISBN: Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 180
Book Description
The historical reliability of the Gospels has been discussed from the Enlightenment onwards. At present, many scholars assume that the canonical Gospels as we have them are essentially fictions constructed near the end of the first century to meet the needs of the Christian movement of that time and that they give us very little reliable information regarding the life and teachings of Jesus. But have these scholars really understood the nature of the written Gospels? Birger Gerhardsson has devoted almost the whole of his academic career to the study of the oral tradition that is the basis of our canonical Gospels. His groundbreaking doctoral dissertation, "Memory and Manuscript," drew a parallel between the way in which the rabbis taught their disciples and the way Jesus taught his disciples: both required memorization of the master s teaching. Rabbinic disciples handed on their masters tradition with great care, and we can be sure that the disciples of Jesus would have been no less careful with what he taught them! "The Reliability of the Gospel Tradition" presents three studies that illuminate how the early Christians passed on tradition. The Origins of the Gospel Tradition gives an accessible review of the debate regarding the extent to which the New Testament evangelists enable us to hear the voice of Jesus. The Path of the Gospel Tradition contains a critical discussion of the approach of the form-critical school to the problem of the early Christian tradition, ending with an alternative sketch of the path of the tradition. The Gospel Tradition offers a rather detailed picture of various aspects of the content and method of early Christian tradition and assesses thereliability of the four oldest of the extant written records. In the current climate of skepticism I know of nothing more helpful than Birger Gerhardsson s writings, and that is why I am particularly delighted that the pieces that compose the present volume are again available in print. New generations of students deserve to have them, not merely because they ultimately vindicate the church s estimate of Jesus, but because they are true to the nature of the Gospels themselves and to the purpose of those who wrote them." Donald A. Hagner (from the Foreword)
Author: Samuel Byrskog Publisher: BRILL ISBN: 900450205X Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 411
Book Description
Please note that this title is only available to customers in the USA, Canada, and Mexico. NO salesrights for Rest of World. Samuel Byrskog employs models from the interdisciplinary field of oral history as presented by Paul Thompson, coupled with insights from cultural anthropology, in order to examine the interaction between the present and the past as the gospel tradition evolved. The ancient Greek and Roman historians, with their use of eyewitness testimony as sources to the past and as central elements in interpretive and narrativizing processes of the present, serve as the basis for unraveling culture-specific patterns of oral history, and thus for conceptualizing similar aspects during the development of the gospel tradition. Eyewitness testimonies played a central but varying role in early Christianity. They were transmitted in the matrix of discipleship, where verbal and behavioral traditions were passed on through acts of mimesis. The folkloristic notion of re-oralization explains how oral accounts regularly interacted with written texts, indicating a vivid and engaged relationship to the past as well as the semantic significance of oral communication and performance. Factual truth was essential but inseparable from interpreted truth during the course of investigation, transmission, and composition. The gospel tradition developed through a subtle interaction between the unique historic events of the past and the various circumstances of the present. The narrative and historical dimensions of a text cannot be separated, because the semantic codes of a text are often located in the culture and not in the text itself. The gospels are therefore the synthesis of history and story, intertwining the horizons of the past and of the present in their own right.
Author: Birger Gerhardsson Publisher: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing ISBN: 9780802843661 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 476
Book Description
Here in one volume are two of Birger Gerhardsson's much-debated works on the transmission of tradition in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In Memory and Manuscript (1961), Gerhardsson explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition developed in Rabbinic Judaism. In Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1964), Gerhardsson further clarifies the discussion and answers criticism of his earlier book. This Biblical Resource Series combined edition corrects and expands Gerhardsson's original works and includes a new preface by the author and a lengthy new foreword by Jacob Neusner that summarizes the works' importance and subsequent influence.
Author: Sang-Il Lee Publisher: Walter de Gruyter ISBN: 3110267144 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 541
Book Description
Most historical Jesus and Gospel scholars have supposed three hypotheses of unidirectionality: geographically, the more Judaeo-Palestinian, the earlier; modally, the more oral, the earlier; and linguistically, the more Aramaized, the earlier. These are based on the chronological assumption of'the earlier, the more original'. These four long-held hypotheses have been applied as authenticity criteria. However, this book proposes that linguistic milieus of 1st-century Palestine and the Roman Near East were bilingual in Greek and vernacular languages and that the earliest church in Jerusalem was a bilingual Christian community. The study of bilingualism blurs the lines between each of the temporal dichotomies. The bilingual approach undermines unidirectional assumptions prevalent among Gospels and Acts scholarship with regard to the major issues of source criticism, textual criticism, form criticism, redaction criticism, literary criticism, the Synoptic Problem, the Historical Jesus, provenances of the Gospels and Acts, the development of Christological titles and the development of early Christianity. There is a need for New Testament studies to rethink the major issues from the perspective of the interdirectionality theory based on bilingualism.
Author: T. Hoogsteen Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers ISBN: 1630874736 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 164
Book Description
The Tradition of the Elders, based on Matt 15:1-20 and Mark 7:1-23, explores how the oral law upheld and promoted the anti-Christian forces of Pharisaism and Sadduceism. As such, they appear repeatedly in the New Testament documents, often as "the law" and "the works of the law." For example, consider: - "When Gentiles who have not the law do by nature what the law requires, they are a law to themselves, even though they do not have the law" (Rom 2:14). - "We ourselves, who are Jews by birth and not Gentile sinners, yet who know that a man is not justified by works of the law but through faith in Christ Jesus, even we have believed in Christ Jesus, in order to be justified by faith in Christ, and not by works of the law, because by works of the law shall no one be justified" (Gal 2:15-16). - "Tell me, you who desire to be under law, do you not hear the law?" (Gal 4:21). But which law do these legal references concern--the Torah, the oral law, or the Decalogue? This important distinction between the oral law and the Ten Commandments is what The Tradition of the Elders sets out to make clear. All New Testament exegetes, including teachers and students, can benefit from an increased understanding of the enmity of the oral law against the Gospel.
Author: Paula Fredriksen Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300164106 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 286
Book Description
"Magisterial. . . . A learned, brilliant and enjoyable study."—Géza Vermès, Times Literary Supplement In this exciting book, Paula Fredriksen explains the variety of New Testament images of Jesus by exploring the ways that the new Christian communities interpreted his mission and message in light of the delay of the Kingdom he had preached. This edition includes an introduction reviews the most recent scholarship on Jesus and its implications for both history and theology. "Brilliant and lucidly written, full of original and fascinating insights."—Reginald H. Fuller, Journal of the American Academy of Religion "This is a first-rate work of a first-rate historian."—James D. Tabor, Journal of Religion "Fredriksen confronts her documents—principally the writings of the New Testament—as an archaeologist would an especially rich complex site. With great care she distinguishes the literary images from historical fact. As she does so, she explains the images of Jesus in terms of the strategies and purposes of the writers Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John."—Thomas D’Evelyn, Christian Science Monitor
Author: James D.G. Dunn
Author: Eric Eve
Author: Henry Wansborough
Author: Werner H. Kelber
Author: Birger Gerhardsson
Author: Samuel Byrskog
Author: Birger Gerhardsson
Author: Sang-Il Lee
Author: T. Hoogsteen
Author: Paula Fredriksen