Hmmm. So what Bauckham is arguing is that we shouldn't allow the medium - i.e. the late grammarians who transmit the information about chreiai - to influence how we understand Papias's statement about Peter's use of chreiai. The fact that they were teachers using chreiai to educate students does not mean that Peter should be conceived as an ancient grammarian.Education would simply heighten self-conscious reflection on the forms of anecdote in common use and teach people effective use of anecdotes in persuasion and argumentation.50 Greek education taught people how to use such anecdotes in argumentative rhetoric intended to persuade.Theon prescribed eight exercises for students to do with chreiai, including memorizing chreiai, grammatical exercises, commenting on, confirming and refuting, all with a view to the use of chreiai in speeches aimed at persuading people.51 In order to relate the deeds and sayings of Jesus in the form of short anecdotes Peter certainly did not need to have had such rhetorical training. We simply do not know how Peter would have used such anecdotes in his preaching,if Papias is correct in implying that he did. In spite of the assumption of the form critics that Gospel traditions functioned in a homiletic context in which their message was applied, Peter may in fact, for all we know, simply have rehearsed the traditions. Certainly, within the Gospel of Mark the context of the traditions is a narrative, not a speech. The Gospel doubtless aims to persuade, but only in the way that a narrative can do, quite differently from the way a speech can. In my view it is therefore a mistake to apply the exercises with chreiai prescribed by the grammarians to analysis of chreiai in the Gospels.52 There is no reason why Peter could not have given many of the chreiai in Mark their basic forms in his oral rehearsing of the words and deeds of Jesus.
Fair enough. But even if we go along with Bauckham and imagine that Peter sat on a street corner teaching anecdotes about a miraculous figure who recently appeared in Judea there are problems. The first is that Papias's model doesn't make a lot of sense. Anecdotes are told by storytellers. Papias is claiming that Peter was the storyteller and Mark was simply his editor. Mark assembled the anecdotes into a particular form. I am not sure that a man standing on a corner telling anecdotes is a very convincing way of spreading a new religion. Similarly the Preaching of Peter, the Pseudo-Clementines - in fact all of our known source material - does not portray Peter in this way. He is not a man standing on a street corner telling anecdotes.
Now of course it may be argued that these other documents were inaccurate and Papias was accurate. But surely these sources would have known or been familiar with Papias's claims. Look at Clement. Clement knows Papias's claims but does not agree with them either. Whether or not you accept to Theodore as authentic or not there seems to be a wide disagreement over how Peter taught. If we accept Watson's reading of Papias, Papias acknowledges Markan priority. Papias is chiefly concerned with the sayings (logion) of the Lord. Jesus is the Logos who utters logion. Matthew is the best witness to the logion of the Lord but nevertheless Papias has to deal with Mark which in some way is acknowledged to have been an earlier witness. In fact if Papias is taken at face value:
1. Peter teaches with anecdotes
2. Mark arranges the anecdotes incorrectly
3. Matthew corrected Mark's arrangement
Assuming Mark and Matthew are meant to be our canonical texts the passing on of anecdotes from Peter to Mark still shape Matthew as we currently understand. The sayings (logion) are only understood to be a separate matter by Papias. The logion are roughly the equivalent of stoicheia. The anecdotes are bigger building blocks. Papias does his battle with Mark on the level of logion because he can't get around the the fact that Mark had a seminal role in the establishment of the gospel narrative form.
