The Passion as Liturgy

If the core of the gospels was transmitted by a community of faith, how did they preserve memory until it could be written as history?

Etienne Trockme performs a close reading of the four gospels detecting a passion liturgy as a common source between them.

Trockme considers and discards alternative explanations of the commonalities - a record of facts, a midrash, expanded kerygma - in favour of arguing that the Passion story in the Gospels began as early Christian commemorations held at the time of the annual Passover celebrations in Jerusalem.

Rowan Williams: "... the kernel of this narrative began as a kind of liturgy in Jerusalem - something a little like the Stations of the Cross in the later Church ... Mark, along with Matthew and Luke, and John too for that matter, is here depending not just on the narratives passed down from the earliest community, but on a practice of prayer and devotion as well, involving readings and stories constructed for those particular stages of a pilgrimage in Jerusalem." (Meeting God in Mark).