Skeptics often charge that the Gospels were written too late to contain any valuable information about the life of Jesus. Anti-supernaturalist Rudolf Bultmann influenced New Testament scholarship, claiming that early oral traditions were reshaped to the point that we can know little to nothing about the life of Jesus. Bultmann's concepts influenced movements like the Jesus Seminar and others who claim that the Gospels are unreliable when conveying the teachings and deeds of Jesus. But what if oral traditions are more reliable than first thought? Drawing heavily from Kenneth Bailey, Birger Gardsson and the latest research on oral tradition transmission, Semitic Residue provides a novel approach to oral tradition studies of New Testament Gospels. Using seven tests, Chilton researches nine portions of Matthew's Gospel to see whether the Gospel could hold residual evidence of early oral traditions. The results are nothing short of shocking. The research leads Chilton to espouse a new model for oral tradition transmission, one he calls the semiformal controlled model, deducing that the oral traditions undergirding the Gospel of Matthew are extremely early and reliable, as they have residue from their Semitic origins found in the earliest memories of Jesus of Nazareth.
