Did unjustified Jesus-biography in AD 30-70 struggle to form, circulate, stick?
question
In the first few decades after Jesus was crucified (AD 30-70), did significantly false biographical information about him struggle to form and get a foothold among Christians, and then to obtain any kind of broader acceptance? Was introducing unwarranted (unwitnessed) news, stories, and sayings of the historical Jesus into the stream of Christian oral traditions—intentionally or unintentionally—a difficult feat that would be met with little success?
Gospel data got compressed with time
- • E. P. Sanders: “Some tendencies which have been thought to have been generally operative among transmitters of the early Christian tradition have been shown not to have been so common. Thus we have seen that the material did not necessarily grow in overall length.” Even the tendency to use direct discourse for indirect, which was uniform in the post-canonical material which we studied, was not uniform in the Synoptics themselves. For this reason, dogmatic statements that a certain characteristic proves a certain passage to be earlier than another are never justified.” [The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (SNTSMS, 9; Cambridge, 1969), 272-4.]
• Craig Blomberg: “E. P. Sanders, in one of the earliest studies to use computer technology to gather data relevant to biblical studies, analysed in detail the Gospel traditions that have been preserved in textual variants, the early church Fathers and New Testament apocrypha, and demonstrated that no consistent trends exist concerning the lengthening or shortening, preservation or distortion of the tradition. If anything, other shorter studies have demonstrated a slight tendency for detailed material to become abbreviated, condensed, more stereotyped and less vivid as the stories of Jesus were continually retold in the Gentile world, all precisely the opposite of what the first form critics alleged! Certainly, this is the trend that is observable if one compares parallel passages in Mark and Luke, and to a lesser extent in Mark and Matthew. These phenomena led a group of Scandinavian scholars to propose a very different approach to the history of the oral tradition behind the Gospels.” [The Historical Reliability of the Gospels 2nd ed. (IVP, 2014), 54.]
• Henry Cadbury: “[t]he place, the person, the time, in so far as they are not bound up with the point of the incident, tend to disappear,” [The Making of Luke-Acts (Macmillan, 1927). 34.]
For example, regarding the Gospel of Matthew:
• Martin Hengel: “Dibelius distinguished between the short anecdotal Paradigmata and the Novelle, a developed narrative tale. The first he considered to be more historically reliable than the latter. As a rule, however, Matthew changes Mark’s ‘tales’ through abrupt abridgement into Paradigma.” [“Eye-witness memory and the writing of the Gospels” in The Written Gospel, ed Bockmuehl & Hagner (Cambridge, 2005), 85.] - • Stanley Porter: “In other words, the kinds and degrees of change are far more convoluted, rather than being linear and always progressing from simple to complex structures, as the form critics posited. This has been shown especially clearly through extensive recent research on epic poetry, both ancient and modern.” [Criteria for Authenticity in Historical Jesus Research (Bloomsbury, 2004), 78.]
• Albert Lord: “Given the nature of oral traditional composition and transmission … [it] does not in any way necessarily follow that the shortest is the oldest and the longest the latest or that the crudest is the oldest and the most polished the latest. It may be, but it is not necessarily so.” [“The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature,” in The Relationships among the Gospels ed. W. O. Walker (Trinity University Press, 1978), 43.]
• Ernst Abel: “Contrary to the conclusions derived from Form Criticism, studies of rumor transmission indicate that as information is transmitted, the general form or outline of a story remains intact, but fewer and fewer original details are preserved” (italics original).” [“The Psychology of Memory and Rumor Transmission and Their Bearing on Theories of Oral Transmission in Early Christianity,” JR 51 (1971): 275-76]
Early Christians tend to compress the Gospel traditions rather than expand them.1
• Oral traditions didn’t grow in detail.2
• E.g. Mt doesn’t expand Mk’s stories.
• E.g. Lk doesn’t expand Mk’s stories.
• Mk’s accounts tend to be longer than Mt & Lk.
• In general, bad Jesus-bio just founders and dies.
Christians all agreed on Jesus-bio
- • Michael Bird: “Overall, I remain remarkably impressed about the consistency of the tradition across its various forms, in different locations, even when separated by some decades.” [The Gospel of the Lord (Eerdmans, 2014), 48.]
• Günther Bornkamm: “The Easter faith of the first disciples ... was not the peculiar experience of a few enthusiasts or a peculiar theological opinion of a few apostles, who in the course of time had the luck to prevail. No, they were all one in the belief and the confession to the Risen One.” [Jesus von Nazareth, 8th ed. (Stuttgart, 1968), 159.]
Early Christians were largely unified on Jesus-biography.1
• E.g. Luke and Paul Jesus-bio overlap.
• ECs were highly organized (enforced conformity).
• Gospels have diff. puzzle pieces explaining each other.
• The Gospels mutually agree on details.
• Christians widely knew true Jesus-bio.
• Gospels and 1st church agree on Jesus-bio.
• Christians got their Jesus-bio from 1st church.
• In general, Christian beliefs mutually fit/agree.
Deviant Jesus-bio usually gets killed by witnesses
- • Paul Eddy & Gregory Boyd: “This conclusion [my insert: re tradents] would suggest that mechanisms were in place in the early church that would naturally limit the amount of legendary material that was introduced into the Jesus tradition.” [The Jesus Legend (Baker, 2007), 287.]
• F.F Bruce: “[t]he availability of eyewitness recollection imposes a certain check on the free development of tradition.” [Tradition: Old and New (Wipf and Stock, 1970), 41.]
• William Lane Craig: “The controlling presence of living eyewitnesses would prevent significant accrual of legend. When the gospel accounts were formed, eyewitnesses to what did and did not happen were still alive. Their presence would act as a check on any legends that might begin to rise.” [The Son Rises (Wipf & Stock, 2001), 106.]
Jesus’s living ministry-witnesses discredited flagrantly false Christian pop-rumors (directly or indirectly).
• Christians strove to match Jesus-bio witnesses (or their trainees).
• E.g. The 1st church killed all deviant Jesus-bio.
• Handy witnesses abounded.
• The Jesus-bio teachers matched witnesses.
• Legends flourished only after witnesses died.
• Pre-70 novel Jesus-bio invited serious questioning.
Christians didn’t lie-invent Jesus-bio
Rather than inventing Jesus-biography, Christians in AD 30-80 were usually or always honest in their core reporting of it.
• Christian Jesus-bio fit witness testimony.
• Christians circulated the 1st church’s Jesus-bio.
• Christians would avoid lie-inventing Jesus-bio.
• In general, they didn’t invent/lie.
•
Jesus-bio was not faithfully passed down
Christianity’s Jesus-stories faithfully passed down (in AD 30-90).
• AD 125 traditions were faithfully passed down.
• Christians relayed Jesus-bio w/ great quality- control.
• ECs largely agreed on Jesus-bio, in all its complexity.
• Gospel traditions aren’t lies/legends.
• False Jesus-bio struggled to circulate.
But no,...
• Christians didn’t even pass down Jesus-bio.
• Gospels spew minor differences.
• Christians oft invented core Jesus-bio.
• Christians wouldn’t succeed (even if trying).