Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition by Henry WansbroughReview by: J. K. ElliottNovum Testamentum, Vol. 35, Fasc. 3 (Jul., 1993), pp. 306-307Published by: BRILLStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1561551 .

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BOOK REVIEWS BOOK REVIEWS

4-5, enormously aids the understanding of this passage, but Davids merely drops some structural comments into the middle of the exegesis (p. 89) without ever giving a clear overview of the structure of the passage as a whole. Commentaries which offer nothing other than verse-by-verse exegesis reinforce the untrained reader's impoverishing assumption that New Testament letters are merely one sentence after another.

The commentary has two special features. One is an 'Excursus on Suffering in 1 Peter and the New Testament,' which I found disappointing, as well as misnamed (it has as much about the Old Testament as the New, quite a bit on Church History, and little on 1 Peter). It is a very general treatment of the under- standing of suffering in the canonical literature of both Testaments, which the author seems to have included because he had already written it for another pur- pose. It is not well integrated into the commentary, for which a discussion of inter- pretations of suffering in the non-canonical literature of early Judaism would have been valuable background. (Davids is well qualified to have provided this.) Its attempt to address contemporary hermeneutical concerns, while making some useful points, is badly hampered by a complete failure to take the concerns of liberation theology on board.

The other special feature is the very full bibliography. Since this is a commen- tary that gives the reader the results of scholarly discussion rather than taking the reader into the scholarly discussion, one has to ask whether it was really appropriate to devote 34 pages to a bibliography of literature on 1 Peter. It is a very useful bibliography, but the user should be warned that it includes works published only up to 1988, and that important articles published in 1987 and 1988 have been missed.

University of St Andrews RICHARD BAUCKHAM

HENRY WANSBROUGH (editor), Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991), 469 pp. (= Journal for the Study of the New Testa- ment Supplement Series 64), ?40.

The 1984 Jerusalem conference on the interrelations of the Gospels, the pro- ceedings of which were published in the BETL series in 1990 (and reviewed in NovT in October 1991), concerned itself with the written Gospels. It was however recognised that a thorough investigation into the oral stage of the Gospel material was needed. The present book arose from two further conferences, one in 1989 in the Republic of Ireland, the other in 1990 in Italy, which were convened to look at the whole question of oral tradition prior to, within, and outside the New Testa- ment Gospels. The title shows that the main motive for so doing was to relate the question to Jesus. Most of the essays edited here are the papers prepared for discussion at one or other of these conferences.

There are fourteen essays by thirteen contributors: 0. Anderson, D.E. Aune (2 x ), H.-P. Riiger, S. Talmon, P.S. Alexander, R. Riesner, B. Gerhardsson, E.E. Ellis, M.L. Soards,J.D.G. Dunn, T. Holtz, W. Rordorf, B.F. Meyer. They cover oral tradition in the Hellenistic world, the Old Testament, Judaism in the Second Temple period, and in Pharisaic Judaism at the turn of the eras, before examining Jesus as a teacher. Then come three different genres of narratives in the Synoptic Gospels: aphoristic meshalim, narrative meshalim and episodal nar- ratives. Other papers cover the passion narrative, John, Paul and the oral Gospel tradition, before moving on to the Didache. A concluding paper comments on Gerhardsson's account of the origins of the Gospel tradition. This final paper is

Novum Testamentum XXXV, 3 (1993)

4-5, enormously aids the understanding of this passage, but Davids merely drops some structural comments into the middle of the exegesis (p. 89) without ever giving a clear overview of the structure of the passage as a whole. Commentaries which offer nothing other than verse-by-verse exegesis reinforce the untrained reader's impoverishing assumption that New Testament letters are merely one sentence after another.

The commentary has two special features. One is an 'Excursus on Suffering in 1 Peter and the New Testament,' which I found disappointing, as well as misnamed (it has as much about the Old Testament as the New, quite a bit on Church History, and little on 1 Peter). It is a very general treatment of the under- standing of suffering in the canonical literature of both Testaments, which the author seems to have included because he had already written it for another pur- pose. It is not well integrated into the commentary, for which a discussion of inter- pretations of suffering in the non-canonical literature of early Judaism would have been valuable background. (Davids is well qualified to have provided this.) Its attempt to address contemporary hermeneutical concerns, while making some useful points, is badly hampered by a complete failure to take the concerns of liberation theology on board.

The other special feature is the very full bibliography. Since this is a commen- tary that gives the reader the results of scholarly discussion rather than taking the reader into the scholarly discussion, one has to ask whether it was really appropriate to devote 34 pages to a bibliography of literature on 1 Peter. It is a very useful bibliography, but the user should be warned that it includes works published only up to 1988, and that important articles published in 1987 and 1988 have been missed.

University of St Andrews RICHARD BAUCKHAM

HENRY WANSBROUGH (editor), Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (Sheffield: Academic Press, 1991), 469 pp. (= Journal for the Study of the New Testa- ment Supplement Series 64), ?40.

The 1984 Jerusalem conference on the interrelations of the Gospels, the pro- ceedings of which were published in the BETL series in 1990 (and reviewed in NovT in October 1991), concerned itself with the written Gospels. It was however recognised that a thorough investigation into the oral stage of the Gospel material was needed. The present book arose from two further conferences, one in 1989 in the Republic of Ireland, the other in 1990 in Italy, which were convened to look at the whole question of oral tradition prior to, within, and outside the New Testa- ment Gospels. The title shows that the main motive for so doing was to relate the question to Jesus. Most of the essays edited here are the papers prepared for discussion at one or other of these conferences.

There are fourteen essays by thirteen contributors: 0. Anderson, D.E. Aune (2 x ), H.-P. Riiger, S. Talmon, P.S. Alexander, R. Riesner, B. Gerhardsson, E.E. Ellis, M.L. Soards,J.D.G. Dunn, T. Holtz, W. Rordorf, B.F. Meyer. They cover oral tradition in the Hellenistic world, the Old Testament, Judaism in the Second Temple period, and in Pharisaic Judaism at the turn of the eras, before examining Jesus as a teacher. Then come three different genres of narratives in the Synoptic Gospels: aphoristic meshalim, narrative meshalim and episodal nar- ratives. Other papers cover the passion narrative, John, Paul and the oral Gospel tradition, before moving on to the Didache. A concluding paper comments on Gerhardsson's account of the origins of the Gospel tradition. This final paper is

Novum Testamentum XXXV, 3 (1993)

306 306

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BOOK REVIEWS 307

entirely appropriate because it was the pioneering work of Gerhardsson which underlies much of the work included here. It is very noticeable that it is his name that receives the longest entry in the index of authors. It must be a source of quiet satisfaction to him that his ideas, originally put forward in his Memory and Manuscript and later in The Origins of the Gospel Tradition, now have powerful advocates elsewhere.

These essays are thorough, well-researched and full of helpful examples and bibliographical detail. In so far as one can summarize so many pages by so many authors on so many themes it is probably true to conclude that a common denominator in the book as a whole is that oral traditions in the ancient world were as respected as much as, if not more than, written words. Oral and written were merely different media of communication. The latter does not supplant the former, it supplements it. Oral tradition was widespread even when literacy was common. The boundaries between the two were fluid, and we cannot judge which is the earlier. In the Biblical world audible delivery of the message and its aural reception were of paramount importance. The synagogal teaching system was of significance as a background for the formation and transmission of the Gospel tradition. The notion that oral tradition is flexible and that written tradition is fixed is not supported by the evidence. The writing down of Jesus' narrative did not kill off the oral transmission of those sayings and stories at first: they continued to function with a relatively free form. These conclusions are to be found through- out. My (arbitrary) selection is based on paraphrases of pp. 44, 97, 119, 156, 182, 191, 240, 308.

If these conclusions are as sound as they look here then it behoves investigators into the question of the synoptic problem to avoid too rigorous adherence to merely literary solutions. Bo Reicke in The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels advocated that the synoptics had only an oral prehistory. One need not go so far as that but it is interesting to observe that J.W. Wenham's recent Redating Matthew, Mark and Luke (reviewed in NovT 34 (1992) pp. 200-201) advocates an important role for oral transmission. We should perhaps take the message from these and other publications that when the second and third Gospel writers put pen to papyrus they had at their disposal four types of material: a) stories and sayings ignored by or unknown to the first evangelist-some or most of these coming to them from the oral tradition; b) stories and sayings that happened to have been used by the first evangelist but which the later writers received from the oral tradition independently of the written account; c) stories and sayings that reached the later evangelists from the oral tradition that had developed from the first evangelist's written account, as well as d) stories and sayings that were indeed taken directly from their predecessors' written versions. Such a pragmatic approach seems to do justice to the evidence presented in our printed synoptic texts, and seems to be an approach encouraged by the conclusions in this book.

But whatever use the evidence in this book is put to, it cannot be denied that what we have here is authoritative and welcome. Obviously much more needs to be done in the post-New Testament period, with special reference to the agrapha, the apocryphal texts and the patristic citations. A start has been made in other places by Koester, Crossan and their allies. In the present collection Rordorf is alert to these further needs. Wansbrough's introductory chapter ends with a list that refers to this and eleven other pointers to further investigation. It seems as if the conferences behind the present book have spawned enough ideas to fuel numerous other colloquia and debate. If so, they have amply fulfilled the par- ticipants' hopes.

J.K. ELLIOTT

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