Were Christianity’s Jesus-stories faithfully passed down (in AD 30-90)?

  • Our question

    There is a regressing line of speech bubbles with Jesus's head in each. All the bubbles have a check mark above them.

    Throughout the AD 30-70 Mediterranean, did Christians relay news about Jesus that was handed to them? So rather than being lost/corrupted over time, were the storiesChristians circulated about Jesus (his life, ministry, death, resurrection) faithfully passed down? Was the transmission of information about Jesus carried through the first several decades in a confidence-inspiring way, where the stories remained quite stable and true to their original form?

  • What historians are saying

    • I. Howard Marshall: “[Bauckham] takes his place with the other authors who have begun to achieve a new consensus on how the Gospels are to be understood. Bauckham makes full use of their work, building on it, evaluating it and taking it further, particularly on the question of the modes of oral tradition.” [“A New Consensus on Oral Tradition? A Review of Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses” in Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 6 (2008): 183.]
    • Donald Carson & Douglas Moo: “[w]e have every reason to think that the early Christians were both able and willing to hand down accurately the deeds and words of Jesus.” [Introduction to the New Testament 2nd ed. (Zondervan, 2005), 85.]

    Pure fiction?

    • W. D. Davies: “The first alternative is to believe that for some time after his death and resurrection what Jesus did and said was neglected and so forgotten, and as Christians needed sermon material they created their own sayings or borrowed material from Jewish and Hellenistic sources and ascribed them to Jesus…. The other alternative is to recognize that what Jesus actually taught was remembered by his followers and adapted by the churches as the need arose. On grounds of historical probability, the second alternative is the more likely by far.” [Invitation to the New Testament: A Guide to Its Main Witnesses (Doubleday, 1966), 115.]
“Yes, after all…

  • AD 125 traditions were faithfully passed down

    At least in the beginning of the second century, the stories in circulation were relatively stable.

    • Donald Hagner: “…although the sayings of Jesus are reproduced freely and adapted to special purposes, the amount of significant variation between the same saying in our sources is relatively small.[i]f the tenacity and relative stability of oral tradition in the first half of the second century was as impressive as we have seen it to be, the trustworthiness of that oral tradition in the middle decades of the first century was, if anything, even more substantial.” [“The Sayings of Jesus in the Apostolic Fathers and Justin Martyr” in Gospel Perspectives, vol 5 (Wipf and Stock, 2004), 256, 259.]

    This is relevant because it constitutes an a fortorioi argument, since there was even less control in AD 125. (Conclusion: “all the more” it would be faithfully passed down during the AD 30-80 witness era.)

    But so what? Plausibly...

    • Alternatives were killed-off by early Christians (without a trace). [Forthcoming]
    • False Jesus-bio was never offered up to begin with (so it’s not like it struggled once in play). [Forthcoming]

  • Christians relayed Jesus-bio w/ good quality-control

    A man with a had stands in the foreground looking on as two men on motorcycles are leaving with packages that have Jesus face on it

    AD 30-70 churches orally teach and passed down Jesus-biography in an adeptly preservation-oriented way.

    This page analyzes 10 arguments

    • Churches relayed Jesus-bio w/ informal-control.
    • Churches relayed Jesus-bio formal-control.
    • Parallel Gospel stories are same but different.
    • Christians memorized and rehearsed Jesus-bio.
    • Christians strove to faithfully pass down Jesus-bio.
    • Jews passed down w/ control.
    • Mid-Eastern oral folk group-relay info w/ control.
    • Churches would strive to faithfully pass down Jesus-bio.
    • Jesus-bio lies struggled to circulate.
    • Churches passed down Jesus-bio faithfully.

    This is relevant if adeptly passing down these Jesus stories with great quality control could lead us to expect that the Gospel material was ultimately handed down faithfully (e.g. up to AD 60-90), and as one surveys the quality-controlling mechanisms in question, and considers the relevant precedents, it seems one can indeed expect this.

    But no...

    • Mid-Eastern Oral cultures can’t/didn’t pass down w/ control.
    • Christians didn’t pass down oral traditions at all.
    • E.g. The Gospels traditions weren’t relayed faithfully.
    • Control was stronger in 2nd century.
    • Charismatic communities lacked such structure.

  • Christians widely agreed on Jesus-bio, in all its complexity

    Early Christians (e.g. prior to AD 100) largely unified on Jesus-biography.

    A full page on this will analyze 11+ arguments, like:

    • E.g. Luke and Paul Jesus-bio overlap.
    • Christians 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.

    This is relevant because such complex unification across such different settings (geographically, socially, temporally) does not happen by accident.1 Ultimately the Gospel traditions must have had a singular origin point (presumably in witness testimony), and undeniably some conserving force that prevented the traditions from seriously diversifying as they spread.

    1. • Martin Hengel: “[i]t made some difference whether a Gospel was written in southern Syria on the border of Palestine as with Matthew or in Rome as with Mark, and whether the community in which the author taught and wrote was primarily Jewish Christian or Gentile Christian. Similarly, it mattered whether (like Mark) it was composed under the immediate impact of either the Jewish war or the Roman civil war, or whether (like Luke) it looked back to the still recent destruction of Jerusalem and its terrible consequences as with Luke or whether it stood in bitter conflict with the reinvigorated Judaism under Pharisaic leadership in the mother country as with Matthew. Mark may reflect the terrors of the Neronic persecution and Matthew the dichotomy between love for one’s own people and disappointment over rejection by one’s kinsmen. All the more striking is the agreement of the three Gospels, which originated in very different places over a period of twenty to thirty years.” [“Eye-witness memory and the writing of the Gospels” in The Written Gospel, ed Bockmuehl & Hagner (Cambridge, 2005), 90.]