Early Christian Literature.

Primitive Christianity Not Literary.

Christianity began as a proclamation and a response. Its founder wrote nothing. He called upon men to follow him, to take part in the inauguration of the reign of God. His earliest followers continued this course. They were further committed to it by their expectation of his return in triumph to judge the world. They had no thought of producing a literature; indeed, during the first fifteen years or so after his death there are no traces of their having produced any written documents.

This delay in creating literary materials is hard to explain in the light of the literature produced by other Jewish groups, notably the community at Qumran by the Dead Sea but also by those other groups out of which various apocalyptic predictions emerged. It was doubtless due not only to the expectation of Jesus' imminent return but also to the early Christian belief that the Old Testament, if properly understood, clearly pointed toward Christianity and did not need to be supplemented. Furthermore, in early times the teaching of Jesus, committed to memory, was being transmitted by word of mouth with such a degree of exactness that no written record seemed necessary; and this teaching was primarily regarded as providing the true interpretation of the Old Testament books.

Among the rabbis and their disciples, traditions were handed down orally, and in some instances these were not committed to writing until the late second century. The most important example of this process of transmission is to be found in the treatise that now forms part of the Mishnah, the Pirke Aboth or “Chapters of the Fathers.”