The Origins of the Gospel Traditions

Book Review - The Origins of the Gospel Traditions From the dust jacket (Fortress Press): "The Swedish scholar Birger Gerhardsson departs from the form-critical approaches and directs biblical investigation to the pre-history of the written gospels. He carefully examines the origins and history of the gospel traditions from the lifetime of Jesus to the appearance of the written gospels. Gerhardsson's viewpoint is that the primary setting for the early Christian transmission of the Jesus tradition is the tradition itself. This tradition must be understood as a conscious, technical art of instruction. Acknowledging the creative character of early Christian interpretations, Gerhardsson upholds that "it is one thing to take these changes in the transmitted material in all seriousness, and quite another thing to presume that the early church freely constructed the Jesus traditions, placed the words of early Christian prophets and teachers in Jesus' mouth, and so on." The Origins of the Gospel Traditions presents a Scandinavian alternative to classical continental form-criticism in biblical studies. It provides students of the Bible with a summary of a significant perspective not previously available in English. Birger Gerhardsson is Professor of the New Testament at the University of Lund, Sweden and the author of 'Memory and Manuscript' and 'Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity'." My review: 1. This review based on Hardback edition, English translation, 1979. 2. The author states his difference with form-critical scholars "whom I agree with in part, but in part differ from - is their work is not sufficiently historical." Pg.8. Throughout this presentation he makes an argument that, in particular, Dibelius and especially Bultmann take the form-critical approach past reasonable limits, and thereby accuses them of denying the basic truth of the Gospel message. He claims they do this because "their work is not sufficiently historical" and that the lack of their historical anchoring is due to an inadequate understanding of the process of "how holy, authoritative tradition was transmitted in the Jewish milieu of Palestine and elsewhere at the time of the New Testament." Pgs. 8-9. 3. This is a small book: only 85 pages of text. There are no endnotes, and only some 26 footnotes, and these containing only reference and not content. 4. Gerhardsson is a true believer in: Jesus was divine, did work miracles, and was physically resurrected. 5. Gerhardsson is a true scholar: "It thus seems historically very probable that the Jesus traditions in the Gospels have been preserved for us by men both reliable and well informed. But even one who has come to this point of view sees directly in our Gospels that the Jesus traditions must have undergone certain changes on the way from Jesus to the different evangelists. If one places the three Synoptic versions side by side - that is, by looking in a synopsis - one can see immediately how they differ from one