The Purpose and Preservation of the Jesus Tradition: Moderate Evidence for a Conserving Force in Its Transmission

Abstract

An important preface to historical Jesus research involves formulating a theory of the transmission of the traditions underlying the Gospels. Scholarship frequently exhibits either an inherent skepticism toward trying to uncover how this tradition was handled or else is saturated with multiple proposals concerning the means of its formation. In any event, important questions to be asked include what purpose the Jesus tradition had in early Christian circles and what factors or controls may have enabled that tradition to be preserved effectively. In this study I address questions of this sort and, with careful qualification, contend that the Jesus tradition probably had a variety of functions in the early church, and there were several reasons why the words and deeds of Jesus may have been consciously preserved.