I hadn’t expected that one DVD review to turn into 3 posts on form criticism and oral tradition but that’s where I’m ending up. I was reading a post on the NT Gateway Weblog the other day and it just happened to talk about the way that the stories about Jesus were handed down.  In this post, Mark Goodacre replies to James Dunn’s article “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition.”  The gist of Dunn’s article is that we are so surrounded by literature in today’s culture that it’s hard for us to understand a culture full of illiterate people – a culture like the one in the first century.  Therefore, according to Dunn, “it becomes necessary to alter the default settings given by the literary shaped software of our mental computers.”  Does Dunn’s argument indeed set aside the way we’ve read the Gospels for years and demonstrate the need for a new way of understanding where we got those books and how to read their contents?  No.  Goodacre does a good job pointing out that Dunn’s concern is a valid caution, but a bit overstated.  First, our culture is not so steeped in literature as Dunn would claim – oral communication still plays a role in how we teach/learn.  Second, while much of the first-century world may have been illiterate (some statistics claim less than 10% literacy rate), the NT authors were literate – Paul (educated to the hilt in the Pharisees’ schools), Luke (a physician) – and other key NT leaders (Apollos, Priscilla & Aquila, et al) were educated as well.  Again, I would add that in the case of the Gospels & Acts specifically, eyewitness-authors also stand in contrast to broad brush strokes about oral tradition.

It is inaccurate to caricature the NT as a collection of stories passed on by word-of-mouth until their eventual inscripturation.  We have an accurate and reliable record of Christ’s life and ministry and profitable expositions of the ramifications of the gospel.