12
Problem, many scholars working in the field have neglected an important aspect in pre-gospel
tradition. He believes that “the literary paradigm (including a clearly delineated Q document) is
too restrictive in the range of possible explanations it offers for the diverse/divergent character
of Synoptic parallels.”38 Dunn, therefore, calls for changing the “default setting” of only
considering literary solutions to variations in the Synoptic gospels.39
This default setting, Dunn states, is caused by the fact that most modern cultures are
literary in nature.40 It is because scholars “naturally, habitually and instinctively work within a
literary paradigm,” that they are, “in no fit state to appreciate how a non-literary culture, an
oral culture, functions.”41 As a result of this way of thinking, when New Testament scholars
approach the Synoptic Problem and the question of gospel origins, the only options that are
ever considered or explored are literary in nature.42 Many cannot even fathom that the gospels
came by any means other than literary. Some of the fruits of this way of thinking have led to
theories such as an Aramaic proto-gospel or the “Fragment Hypothesis,” which holds to several
pre-gospel literary works dealing with the Jesus tradition.43
38
James Dunn, “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,” New
Testament Studies 49, no. 2 (April 2003), 139.
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid, 142.
41
Ibid.
42
Ibid, 143.
43
Ibid, 142-43.