It is generally agreed that a period of some 40 years lies between the Gospels and the events they record.

How, then, were the stories of those events passed on.

New Testament scholar Bart Ehrman thinks about transmission in terms of the ‘telephone game’:

‘You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game “telephone.” A group of kids sits in a circle, the first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it.