Jesus in Early Christian Memory: Essays in Honour of James D.G. Dunn

Description

This volume is a collection of essays by scholars who have been in dialogue with J. D. G. Dunn over the years, several of whom have contributed to the ongoing dialogue concerning orality and memory. In his most recent monograph on the historical Jesus ("Jesus Remembered"; Eerdmans, 2003), Dunn argues that the early Jesus tradition is understood best as the primary witness to how the early Christian communities remembered Jesus. Dunn suggests that highly literary approaches to the Gospel tradition, which remain at the center of historical Jesus research, neglect to come to grips with both the stability and variability inherent within the Synoptic Gospels tradition. To this end, Dunn suggests that orality studies, and specifically, oral performance theory, lend valuable insight into the process of tradition formation and transmission. The gospels preserve and present the Jesus tradition, and in so doing, provide us with reliable testimony to how Jesus was remembered by the tradition's earliest tradents. The intended purpose of the volume is to explore the variegated ways in which the early Jesus communities remembered Jesus, and to make a significant contribution to the ongoing study of the historical Jesus.

Scot McKnight (Ph.D. University of Nottingham) is Karl A. Olsson Professor in Religious Studies, North Park University, Chicago, Illinois. He is the author of numerous books on the New Testament, including the bestselling The Jesus Creed. Terence C. Mournet is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Director of Educational Technology, North American Baptist Seminary, Sioux Falls, SD