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From Spoken and Heard to Written Word: On the Relationship Between Oral Tradition
and the Written Gospels
There is an aspect to the gospel prehistory that is now starting to deservedly garner
more attention. This mode of transmission is oral tradition. The oral telling and receiving of the
teachings and miracles of Jesus played an integral role in the development and organization of
the gospel message. The goal of this paper will be to identify what oral tradition is and how it
has contributed to the formation of the Synoptic gospels. The various theories of exactly how
oral tradition influenced the gospels will also be compared and the most viable theory will be
presented. Oral tradition should also be considered when discussing the Synoptic Problem in
addition to literary solutions. Finally, the benefits and impact of oral tradition research for
scholars and Christians wanting to understand the gospels more fully will be addressed.
What is Oral Tradition?
At this point it is important to identify exactly what oral tradition refers to in the
framework of this paper. Oral tradition, in this context, does not mean the ritual and practices
that have been passed down from the early Christian Church to the present day, which may or
may not appear explicitly in the bible. Rather, it specifically refers to the oral transmission of
the details of the life, teachings, miracle stories, and ultimately the death and Resurrection of
Jesus Christ by his disciples in the early Church.
The Catholic Church in her document Dei Verbum (DV, 19), and also in the Catechism of
the Catholic Church (CCC #126),1 discusses the process of the development of the gospels. They
state that following the events in the life of Christ, his apostles began to pass on the tradition of
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Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd Ed. (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 126.