In the development of the New Testament, which stage follows Stage 1: The Life of Jesus and precedes Stage 3: The Written Tradition?

• A. The Canonical Stage.
• B. The Oral Tradition.
• C. The Written Tradition.
• D. The Prophetic Tradition.

Answer: (B)

The main idea is the historical sequence of how the New Testament came together: after Jesus’ life, his message was carried forward mainly by preaching and teaching within the early church, before anything was written down. This period is the oral tradition. It moves the story forward from the life of Jesus to the written texts, because the earliest believers preserved and transmitted what they had heard through sermons, catechesis, liturgical practice, and community memory. Only later did these oral memories and teachings get captured in written form as the Gospels and epistles, which is the written tradition. The other options don’t fit this order: the Canonical Stage comes after writings when the church recognized which books belonged in the New Testament, and the Prophetic Tradition isn’t the described stage in this sequence.