Collective Memory and the Reliability of the Gospel Traditions

This chapter addresses the question of how the collective memories of Jesus and his teachings were formed, and then preserved for the 30 to 60 years between the events and their writing down in the Gospels. It considers the reliability of eyewitness memories, and how these would have been formed into the collective memories of the first followers of Jesus. Life tables are used as evidence that a significant number of eyewitness to the earthly life of Jesus would still be alive when the Gospel were written. It further provides evidence that eyewitnesses can reliably remember details of events over periods of 30 to 60 years