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Pendle Hill Publications
Behind the Gospels
Behind the Gospels
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This pamphlet is an attempt to appraise certain aspects of the current study of the Gospels. That study digests the effects of insights on gospel origin which emerged from the trend called in English “form criticism.”
Formgeschichte, as it was originally called, developed in Germany more than forty years ago where students of the gospels came to realize that between the original events of the career of Jesus and the individual authors of the four familiar books, there had been an interim process, possibly more in oral than in written form. In this intervening time the material had been developed, changed, pruned, and shaped quite anonymously, perhaps unconsciously. This intermediate chapter of history can be inferred from the end products with a limited degree of certainty but with considerable probability. For example, the short units in the gospels were once uncollected and separate. They were rehearsed among believers because they were useful for the purposes of early Christian teaching. Those purposes were both private and public. They served as defense against unbelievers, for edification and reproof among believers, and in fact on a great many simple and natural but different occasions in the life of the communities. Worship and formal preaching were not perhaps the major occasions, though these have been sometimes assigned special prominence.
Formgeschichte, as it was originally called, developed in Germany more than forty years ago where students of the gospels came to realize that between the original events of the career of Jesus and the individual authors of the four familiar books, there had been an interim process, possibly more in oral than in written form. In this intervening time the material had been developed, changed, pruned, and shaped quite anonymously, perhaps unconsciously. This intermediate chapter of history can be inferred from the end products with a limited degree of certainty but with considerable probability. For example, the short units in the gospels were once uncollected and separate. They were rehearsed among believers because they were useful for the purposes of early Christian teaching. Those purposes were both private and public. They served as defense against unbelievers, for edification and reproof among believers, and in fact on a great many simple and natural but different occasions in the life of the communities. Worship and formal preaching were not perhaps the major occasions, though these have been sometimes assigned special prominence.
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