Toto

There is a new book out: Eric Eve, Behind the Gospels:Understanding Oral Tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk).

The Jesus Blog quotes the last chapter:

“It should by now be clear that thinking about the oral tradition behind the Gospels has moved on a long way since the days of classical form criticism. It also seems clear that any account of the pre-Gospel tradition has to reckon with the interplay between stability and flexibility, recollection and interpretation, novelty and conformity to cultural expectations, and the needs to understand the past in light of the present and the present in light of the past, and that this interplay is extremely unlikely to have resulted in either photographic recall or total invention. Finally, oral tradition has increasingly come to be understood within the context of social memory, and it may be that in future research memory will turn out to be a more useful category than oral tradition.”

For a different perspective, Vridar has a post reviewing Thomas Brodie:

Oral Tradition Behind Gospels and OT: Unfounded, Unworkable and Unnecessary

mountainman

Why do these scholars put away the testimony of Eusebius when they develop their hypotheses of an oral tradition behind the gospels? Do any of these so-called scholars address the only existent received history of the gospels which explicitly states the apostles themselves wrote the gospels and hence the entire hypothesis of an oral tradition is explicitly refuted by the so-called "Early Christian Church" historian?

Do any of these scholars address Eusebius's assertion of apostolic authorship without an oral tradition? If so, what do they say? If not, are they earnestly engaged in reconstructing ancient history? Or are they just writing as theologians?

Finally, the greatest evidence being exhibited inside their circus tent for an oral tradition is the Coptic Gospel of Thomas found in the Nag Hammadi Codices and dated to the mid 4th century. The world's foremost scholars on the subject appear to have convinced themselves that the Gospel of Thomas may have circulated in Greek in the 1st century, and is evidence of such a document reflective of a "sayings tradition". I am not so convinced.




εὐδαιμονία | eudaimonia

spin

:hobbyhorse:

Sheshbazzar

Apparently they choose to ignore/disregard Eusebius's version of Christian 'history'.
But wish to continue to keep him in their box, so they can pull him out and use him whenever it is in their favor to do so.
...I mean, if no one notices, or calls them out on this duplicity, this way they can continue to both have their cake and eat it too.

steve_bnk

It would be interesting, and probably dangerous, to travel the Muslim world and see how the story of Bin Laden is being orally related and passed down to younger generations.

maryhelena

And we have a myth in the making here in South Africa. Nelson Mandela is revered while alive - goodness knows the extent of the oral traditions that will come into play once he has faded from view.....my goodness, when the time comes, maybe his funeral will put that of Victor Hugo in the shade....

Human nature, it seems, likes to honor it's heroes.....If a man has had a wide relevance while alive, then, after death, memorials, both physical and in anniversaries of that death, will become part of the local social/political environment.

steve_bnk

One of our modern myths is Ronald Reagan. He bares little resemblance to the conservative depiction. He was one of worse presidents for spending growth and size of govt.

maryhelena

Yep, the original man gets lionized after death. That is why the most simple interpretation of the gospel JC story is that a historical figure was so lionized and mythologized after death. That premise is valid. It happens. Whether that was the case with gospel JC is, however, open to debate...It seems, to me, that the gospel writers had more up their sleeve than such simplicity suggests.

spin

Could all the extraneous posts in this thread be removed, ie from mountainman's first effort at waylaying the thread until this post?? Not one response has been on the topic contextualized by the o.p.

Toto

The idea that the gospels were written by anyone who could have been a contemporary of Jesus has long been abandoned by secular scholars. Eusebius had no personal knowledge of the conditions under which the gospels were written, so there is no reason to take him seriously on this issue.

You seem to have some ulterior motive in writing this, but I'm not sure what it is.