The Framework of the Story of Jesus: Literary-Critical Investigations of the Earliest Jesus Tradition

Now available for the first time in English, Karl Ludwig Schmidt’s The Framework of the Story of Jesus (Der Rahmen der Geschichte Jesu) has been a foundation of New Testament studies. Through meticulous analysis, Schmidt demonstrates that the Synoptic Gospels are collections of individual stories that circulated orally and independently in the earliest Christian communities. In their oral forms, most of these traditions existed apart from any sequence or specific temporal or geographic location. The chronology and locations now evident in the Gospels, Schmidt argues, are frameworks that the evangelists applied to the stories while collecting and recording the oral traditions. Across much of the twentieth century and even into the present day, this argument has undergirded Gospel interpretation. But given that The Framework of the Story of Jesus remained untranslated, Schmidt’s ideas have been sometimes ignored and often misunderstood. Synoptic Gospels discussion and study will surely be enriched by engagement with the evidence and argument of this classic.