Wednesday, July 06, 2005

Bailey, Informal Controlled Oral Tradition article

On Primal Subversion, Sean du Toit notes the addition of a nicely produced on-line reproduction of an influential article:

Kenneth E. Bailey, "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels"
Themelios 20.2 (January 1995): 4-11

It is hosted on Robert Bradshaw's BiblicalStudies.org.uk. I say "influential" because Jimmy Dunn makes a great deal of it in his recent Jesus Remembered and Tom Wright, likewise, though to a lesser extent, in his Jesus and the Victory of God. Xtalk subscribers and some others will be familiar with the devastating critique of Bailey's thesis by Theodore J. Weeden, not yet published but accessible from the Xtalk archives (though I have not the precise link for the latter); likewise Ken Olson has persuasively criticized the Bailey case, also in Xtalk and not in print. Anyway, the presence of the article on-line is a very helpful contribution to the continued debate. I also look forward to Ted Weeden's paper on this topic at the forthcoming SBL Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

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