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written down) that had been assiduously taught and committed to memory. Looking across the New Testament, particularly the Book of Acts, Wenham finds support for the idea that these activities went on. Some perennial critical questions now find answers: the so-called minor agreements of Matthew and Luke against Mark (a bane of Q-hypothesis devotees) could be down to both later writers making use of an account from established oral tradition alongside their Markan source (Streeter made this an edge refinement of the Q hypothesis). In a clever and interesting chapter, Wenham draws attention to numerous passages from Paul’s letters that resonate with Gospel teachings, suggesting that they emanate from the same coherent wellspring. Was this book written to console conservative Christians who need the security of a reliable, raw inheritance going back to Jesus himself? Today’s doubts about the very existence of an early Q document mean that Wenham’s firm body of oral tradition could fill a gap. Or is the book addressed to New Testament scholars whose processes and conclusions are generally predicated on the firmer ground of written texts? This is a detailed book, with quite technical arguments and extensive references to supporting passages and literature. Wenham gives us the sense that his views and methodologies are met with scepticism in some quarters. Indeed, there will be advanced readers who are unhappy about the author’s high-value stake on the general historical reliability of the Book of Acts, describing it as a ‘primary source’ (p. 26) of evidence for early Christians’ transmission of teaching about Jesus – some scholars would argue that the writer of Luke–Acts has demonstrable theological and apologetic reasons for beefing up a sense of the continuity of tradition. Others may find the sheer slipperiness of Wenham’s hypothetical oral source problematic: its size, character and content can quickly change in order to deflect or confound arguments levelled against it (the Q document behaves in the same way). Conservative Christian preachers and teachers would love to claim that ‘it has been proved by scholars’ that the New Testament writers drew faithfully from an early, relatively defined and well-memorized body of oral tradition. It has not been proved, but Wenham, making many points that cannot easily be dismissed, shows that genuine scholarly progress can be made within this challenging but important territory.