The Traditions of Jesus in their Greco-Roman Context 　

This chapter finally confronts the Central Issue of Academic New Testament Studies, the Authenticity of the Canonical Gospels and the validity of the information about Jesus that they contain. At first glance, this new perspective on early Christianity appears to be negative. But as our study progresses, it will become evident that this unique and fresh approach, as radical as it may seem at first, will reveal insights into the nature of the early Jesus movement, and into Jesus himself, that may provide more satisfactory answers to essential questions of the faith than conscientious Christians have been accustomed to.

Read Carefully and Consider the Implications for our study:

What to Expect, p. 56

Excursus: Some Additional Reflections on the Authors of the Gospels, pp. 66-67

Major Theme: the Oral Traditions behind the Gospels, pp. 57-66

Focus on:

Ehrman's re-creation of possible scenarios in which information about Jesus was passed on from person to person within the Roman empire across cultural, ethnic, geographical, and chronological boundaries

Box 4.1 on Orality and Literacy in the ancient world:

only 10-15% of the population of the relatively highly literate Roman world were actually literate, and in Judea (considered to be a backwoods province of the empire) that number would have been much less

this fact significantly impacts the method by which the "Gospel" would have been spread, especially considering that the early Christians came from the lower, and therefore uneducated, strata of society

consider how these characteristics of early Christian preaching would affect the accuracy of the information being transmitted

The Nature of the Gospel Traditions, p. 62:

Pastor Weems and George Washington's cherry tree; is it appropriate to tell a false story that you made up--a lie--in order to teach people to tell the truth? Does the end justify the means?

An Example, pp. 62-64, Box 4.2: the Problem of the Day and Time of Jesus' Death; note especially the biblical reckoning of the day as running from sunset to sunset instead of midnight to midnight as in modern times

The example above is only one of numerous serious problems present in the NT Gospels. From this point on, our study will focus on each of the Gospels individually in order to further illuminate the depth and breadth of the issues involved and will provide methodologies for separating potentially authentic information about Jesus from less authentic elements within the gospel tradition that appear to have been added later in the long process by which the oral traditions were transmitted from their original Jewish context in the backwater province of Judea to the more sophisticated larger cities of the Roman Empire.

Learn the Key Terms on p. 67 with special reference to their original context in the chapter