In a volume
from 1968 reproducing papers form a symposium, Holy Book and Holy Tradition, edited by F.F. Bruce and E.G. Rupp,
there are admissions that the oral traditions New Testament authors speak positively about are authoritative, showing that the naïve “all tradition is
the ‘tradition of men’” and cries of “Sola Scriptura is part of New Testament
Christianity” are simply false. Note the following from F.F. Bruce:
Of the various kinds of tradition mentioned
in the New Testament, some are approved and some disapproved. Among the latter
are the ‘tradition of the elders’—the growing accumulation of oral law—by which
Jesus said the scribes had nullified the plain sense of the Word of God (Mark
7:1 ff. and Matthew 15:1 ff.), and the ‘tradition of men’ (Colossians 2:8)
attacked in the Epistle to the Colossians, an incipient Gnosticism which
threatened to transform apostolic Christianity into something of a different
order. To this ‘tradition of men’ is opposed the true tradition of Christ: ‘as
therefore you received (παρελαβετε) Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him,
rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were
taught’ (Colossians 2:6 f.; cf. Philippians 4:9). The verb παραλαμβανειν, ‘to receive by tradition’, is
the correlative of παραδιδοναι, ‘to deliver, transmit’ (the two correlative verbs corresponding
to Heb. qibbēl and māsar).
When Paul uses the verb παραδιδοναι or its cognate noun παραδοσις, he sometimes makes it plain that
what he is transmitting to others was similarly delivered to himself. Thus in 1
Corinthians 11:23 ff. and 1 Corinthians 15:3 ff. the account of the kerygma
which he delivered (παρεδωκα) to the Corinthians are things which he claims in the first
instance to have ‘received’ (παρελαβον) himself’ (cf. 1 Thessalonians 2:13). But on
other occasions, as when he charges the church of Thessalonica to hold fast the
traditions (παραδοσεις) which, he
says, ‘you were taught by us, either by word of mouth or by letter’ (2
Thessalonians 2:15), it is not necessary to confine them to things which he
himself first learned from those who were in Christ before him. (F.F. Bruce, “Scripture
and Tradition in the New Testament” in F.F. Bruce and E.G. Rupp, eds. Holy Book and Holy Tradition [Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1968], 68-69)
On 2 Thess
2:15, Bruce writes in an endnote:
Here παραδοσις covers both spoken and written instruction.
Compare the evidence of Papias (apud Euseb.
Hist. Eccl., iii. 39. 3. f. )for the
availability of both oral and written tradition in his day; he himself regarded
the former as the more valuable, ‘for I did not suppose that what I could get
from books would help me so much as what came from a living and abiding voice.’
(Ibid., 87 n. 15)
In his study
of the ancient Church and Rabbinic Tradition, M. Simon wrote:
[I]f one compares the classical formulation
of rabbinic doctrine about tradition given in the treatise Pirke Aboth with the earliest formulations of the Christian idea of
tradition, as they appear in 1 Corinthians. I quote the two texts in
succession:
Aboth 1:1: ‘Moses received (kibbel) Torah from Mountain Sinai and
delivered it (umesarah) to Joshua,
and Joshua to the Elders, and the Elders to the Prophets, and the Prophets to
the Men of the Great Synagogue.’
1 Corinthians 11:23: ‘I have received of the
Lord, that which I also delivered unto you’ (εγω γαρ παρελαβον απο
του κυριου ο και παρεδωκα υμιν).
Παρελαβον corresponds very precisely to kibbel and παρεδωκα to mesarah and it is, I think, quite safe to assume that απο του
κυριου is he
equivalent, in Paul’s perspective, of miSinai.
Here can be little doubt that Paul, Pharisee of the Pharisees, took over and
adapted the scheme which must have been familiar to any pupil of rabbinic
schools . . . Paul takes over the word paradosis
to describe Christian realities. For the term in itself does not imply a disparaging
nuance or a judgment of value. There can be and indeed there is a true divinely
inspired tradition, rooted in Holy Scripture and centred on Christ, who gives
it its unique value, is the authentic tradition, whereas Jewish tradition is a
human extension or rather distortion of divine revelation. It could however be
somewhat confusing to use one and the same word to describe these two
traditions. Once paradosis had been
adopted by the early Church for its own teaching, it became increasingly
difficult still to use the term for Rabbinic teaching. This certainly accounts
for the fact that subsequent ancient Christian writers do not, as a rule, apply
paradosis to the Jewish tradition and
replace it, for this purpose, by another term, namely deuterosis; ‘The tradition of the elders (παραδοσις ων πρεσβυτερων)’ writes Epiphanius, ‘are called
δευτερωσεις
among the Jews’ (Haer. 33;9). (M.
Simon, “The Ancient Church and Rabbinic Tradition” in Ibid., 94-112, here, pp.
95, 102)
