Mind the gap: the role of eyewitness testimony, orality, and memory in the development of the Gospel tradition

This study field tested a 20-minute, TED Talk style (Technology, Entertainment, Design), introductory presentation of some new Gospel scholarship, focusing on the role of eyewitness testimony, orality, and memory in the development of the Gospel tradition, to see if this scholarship would offer help in appreciating the New Testament Gospels as historically reliable sources for the life of Jesus. For a century, critical scholars have argued the New Testament Gospels vary too much in their details to present a historically reliable portrait of the real historical Jesus, and, until the turn of the 21st century, no major effort was attempted to displace this hypothesis. Today this view appears to have a captive audience. Since 2005, Bart Ehrman, a distinguished critical scholar, has authored four New York Times bestsellers inculcating the form-critical view for a popular audience. That is a significant readership. It is also significant that a 2016 report by the American Bible Society reveals the percentage of American Bible skeptics has risen over the past six years from 12 percent to 22 percent. Whether a correlation exists between Ehrman's popularity and the increase in Bible skepticism, this sudden rise in skepticism in the Gospels is the basis for this thesis project. Skeptics need to know there is another view, but this view also needs to be presented for a popular audience. The presentation field tested in this research was designed to achieve that purpose. The results of a pretest-posttest study conducted with a sample population administering participants a questionnaire before and after the presentation reveal statistically significant results from this treatment.