Recent historical Jesus scholarship has once again raised the demand that the application of negative criteria for historicity should be supplemented with a credible explanation of the origin of unhistorical material (see Chapter 1 above). To meet this rightful expectation, I will here sketch a tentative history of the development of the tradition behind Mark 2.1–12 from the earliest eyewitness account of a historical event, via oral transmission, up to its final integration into the Gospel of Mark.

To appreciate the present chapter correctly, it is necessary to note that its function is radically different from that of Chapters 2–5, all of which have assessed, by the use of conventional criteria, the historicity of the forgiveness episodes. The present chapter presupposes that this assessment is valid, and does not in and of itself provide an argument either for or against the historicity of the various elements of the episodes. Its purpose is to provide the ‘missing links’ that, granted the validity of my argument above, are needed to explain how and why the secondary material in Mark 2.6–10 was added to the episode.