Here in one volume are two of Birger Gerhardsson's much-debated works on the transmission of tradition in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In Memory and Manuscript (1961), Gerhardsson explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition developed in Rabbinic Judaism. In Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1964), Gerhardsson further clarifies the discussion and answers criticism of his earlier book. This Biblical Resource Series combined edition corrects and expands Gerhardsson's original works and includes a new preface by the author and a lengthy new foreword by Jacob Neusner that summarizes these works' importance and subsequent influence.

Mark Powelson from San Francisco, CA USA
Academia is ruled by fads. This handsomely presented republication (with new material) of one of the most important and least known books relating to the history of early Judaism and of very early Christianity was savagely attacked by one of the leading Biblical scholars of the 1950's and 1960's and a group of his associates and students. One of those students--the prolific Jewish scholar Jacob Neusner--now repents from his unfair attack and adds his own lengthy preface to a book he, in effect, helped to suppress three decades ago. The Scandinavian author, Birger Gerharddson, offered a detailed and very scholarly argument in favor of the "stability" of the process by which trained scribes and religious teachers in the first century C.E. were concerned with the accurate preservation and transmission of important religious traditions in both early rabbinic Judaism and, by analogy, in early Christianity. Since it is a foundational belief of much of contemporary "New Testament scholarship" that the canonical gospels are NOT the product of a conscious process of careful preservation and transmission, this book and its author have been largely ignored for a third of a century. Ignored, but not refuted. This is a densely argued book, drawing heavily on early Mishnaic sources (quoted in the Hebrew), and is not for casual students. For serious students of the origins of the gospels and for those exploring the historical background to the development of early Christianity, this is one of the most important studies to have been written in the past half century.