Behind the Gospels: Understanding the Oral Tradition

In Behind the Gospels, Eric Eve provides a critical introduction to a major storm center of debate in New Testament studies: oral tradition and memory theory. Eve gives both a helpful survey of the scholarly literature and original proposals for clarifying and advancing our understanding of these key issues. He explores the media contrast model, the rabbinic model, informal controlled oral tradition, and much more, offering judicious assessments of recent influential studies by Richard Bauckham, James D. G. Dunn, Richard Horsley, and Kenneth E. Bailey among others. Scholarly, engaging, and clearly written, Eve’s study is a useful gem among many texts on the subject—a great place to begin or deepen your study of the oral tradition and the New Testament.