18
change shape and adapt to the needs of its hearers.71 Karl Ludwig Schmidt, an early form
criticism scholar, held that there were various oral traditions about Jesus that were circulating
in the form of pericopes.72 These pericopes, in this paradigm, were less concerned with
accuracy and are more reflective of the Sitz im Leben of the Christian communities in which
they thrived.73 Bultmann did believe in a pure Jesus tradition but held that it had been so
utterly shaped and transformed in the period of oral tradition prior to the writing of the gospels
that it was virtually impossible to retrieve it.74 In the form critical view, when the evangelist
composed the first gospel, he simply took the various pericopes and collated them into the
work that is known today as the gospel of Mark.75
Kenneth Bailey characterizes Bultmann’s view of the oral tradition prior to the written
gospels as “informal, uncontrolled, oral tradition.”76 For Bultmann, the early Christians were
not as concerned with accurately handing on the teachings of Jesus as they were in adapting
the message for the needs of the community.77 Thus, Bailey concludes that in this model, oral
tradition was not regulated by rigid controls and did not have any particular hierarchical
71
Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels As Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids, MI:
William B. Eerdmans Pub. Co., 2006), location 3899-3901, Kindle edition.
72
Ibid, location 3934-3937, Kindle edition.
73
Ibid, location 3969-3970, Kindle edition.
74
Kenneth Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels” Themelios 20, no. 2 (January
1995): 5, http://s3.amazonaws.com/tgc-documents/journal-issues/20.2_Bailey.pdf.
75
Bauckham, location 3936-3937, Kindle edition.
76
Bailey, 5.
77
Ibid.