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It has been suggested that this article be merged into Quest for the historical Jesus. (Discuss) Proposed since May 2013.

Oral gospel traditions (German: mündliche Überlieferung) is that stage of Christian tradition which preceded the written Gospels.

Modern scholarship has determined that the Gospels as we know them went through four stages during their formation. The first stage was oral, and included various stories about Jesus such as healing the sick, or debating with opponents, as well as parables and teachings. For the most part these were passed on as self-contained units, not connected in any chronological order. In the second stage the oral traditions began to be written down in collections (collections of miracles, collections of sayings, etc), while the oral traditions continued to circulate. In the third stage, early Christians began combining the written collections and oral traditions into what might be called "proto-Gospels" - hence Luke's reference to the existence of "many" earlier narratives about Jesus. In the fourth stage, the authors of our four Gospels drew on these proto-Gospels, collections, and still-circulating oral traditions to produce the canonical Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

Form criticism and biblical genres

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Form criticism is the methodologies by which biblical scholars seek to discover the types ("forms") of literature contained in the bible. It begins by establishing the Sitz im Leben, "situation in life", which gave rise to a particular passage. When form critics discuss oral traditions about Jesus, they theorise about particular social situations in which different kinds of stories about Jesus were thought to be told. The Sitz im Leben for Jesus and his followers was Aramaic-speaking Palestine. This is important because the gospels show clearly both that they were based on oral traditions (as the Gospel of Luke indicates) and that these traditions had been around since Christianity first emerged in Palestine. .

Notes

1. Wansbrough 2004, p. 9.
2. ^ Burkett 2002, p. 124.
3. Ehrman 2012, p. 84.
4. ^ Aune 2010, p. 144.
5. Ehrman 2012, p. 86-87.
6. Ehrman 2012, p. 84-87.

Sources

• Aune, David E. (2010). "Form Criticism". In Aune, David E. (ed.). The Blackwell Companion to The New Testament. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-4443-1894-4. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burkett, Delbert, ed. (2011). The Blackwell Companion to Jesus. Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 978-1-4051-9362-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Burkett, Delbert (2002). An introduction to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-00720-7. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2012). Did Jesus Exist?: The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-220460-8. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Hammann, Konrad (2012). Rudolf Bultmann - Eine Biographie. ISBN 978-3-16-152013-6. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Kelber, Werner H. (1983). The oral and the written Gospel: the hermeneutics of speaking and writing in the synoptic tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-21097-5. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Wansbrough, Henry (2004). Wansbrough, Henry (ed.). Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-567-04090-9. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Bockmuehl, Markus (2004) . This Jesus: Martyr, Lord, Messiah. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-567-08296-1.
• Casey, Maurice (2010). Jesus of Nazareth: An Independent Historian's Account of His Life and Teaching. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-567-64517-3.
• Dunn, James D. G. (2003). Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, Volume 1. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. ISBN 978-0-8028-3931-2.
• Ehrman, Bart (2005) . Lost Christianities: The Battles For Scripture And The Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-518249-1.
• Van Voorst, Robert E. (2000). Jesus outside the New Testament: an introduction to the ancient evidence Studying the Historical Jesus. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing,. ISBN 978-0-8028-4368-5. {{cite book}}: line feed character in |title= at position 73 (help)CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)

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