Finding the Shards #19
The first new strategy was called form criticism. If the larger narrative framework of the gospels was the work of later authors, what about the smaller narrative units from which the gospels were com- posed? Why not analyze the forms in which the Jesus traditions were available to the evangelists and ask about their veracity? Perhaps the forms in which these stories were transmitted could tell us how and why they were told. Perhaps some of them would best be explained as memories of things that Jesus had actually said and done. Form criticism took the field of New Testament studies by storm. Major works by Bultmann (1921), Martin Dibelius (1919), and Vincent Taylor (1933) quickly became standards. An entire generation of New Testament scholars turned to the fragments of the pre-gospel Jesus traditions and tried to place them in the earliest stages of Christian memory, if not in the time of Jesus. Parables, miracle stories, pronouncement stories, and small units of sayings were scrutinized to see if any might be imagined as utterances or occurrences in the life of Jesus.