[1] Hermann Gunkel (1862–1932), Martin Noth, Gerhard von Rad, and other scholars originally developed form criticism for Old Testament studies; they used it to supplement the documentary hypothesis with reference to its oral foundations.
Studies based on form criticism state that the Evangelists drew upon oral traditions when composing the canonical gospels.
[7] Following the publication of Abraham in History and Tradition by John van Seters, Der sogenannte Jahwist ("The So-Called Yahwist") by Hans Heinrich Schmid, and Das überlieferungsgeschichtliche Problem des Pentateuch ("The Tradition-Historical Problem of the Pentateuch") by Rolf Rendtorff, form criticism's emphasis on oral tradition has waned in Old Testament studies.
This is largely because scholars are increasingly skeptical about the ability to distinguish the "original" oral traditions from the literary sources that preserve them.
Starting from the final decade of the 20th century, Bultmann's theories about the New Testament have been the subject of increasing criticism in the academic community: scholars such as Martin Hengel, James D. G. Dunn, Richard Bauckham and Brant J. Pitre have directly attacked form criticism as an erroneous theory, and have instead argued that the Gospels were written either by eyewitnesses or by authors who had reliable written and oral sources..[8][9][10][11] A different approach was that or Austin Farrer who argued that, while it is not possible to know where St. Mark, the writer of the first gospel, got his information, it is a more economical argument to see in his gospel, the mind of a writer rather than an editor of other people's material of which there is no evidence in the text.