Birth and Death of the PreMarkan Passion Narrative

Brandon Massey presents the first intellectual history of the preMarkan passion narrative hypothesis, once considered the "most assured result" of form criticism. He traces the origin and development of the hypothesis from the History of Religions school's conception of Jesus tradition to its origin in form-critical investigations of the Synoptic tradition and subsequent attempts to reconstruct the source of the Markan passion narrative. This history of the hypothesis reveals that the preMarkan passion narrative, and all attempts to reconstruct the source, are based upon a form-critical conception of Jesus tradition. Advancements in scholarship over the past decades challenge the form-critical consensus that prevailed throughout much of the twentieth century and lead to the abandonment of this conception of the Jesus tradition, and, with it, the preMarkan passion narrative.