The Word of the Buddha or the Disputations of his Disciples?

Interesting looking paper from the president of the Pali Text Society:

Los Angeles, CA (USA) -- The Pali Nikayas contain a number of different schemes of the Buddhist path. These schemes are characteristically set out in the Nikayas by way of variations on stock formulas presented in a variety of narrative frames.

It has been argued by scholars that these different schemes represent competing voices within early Buddhist texts, and some scholars even argue that it is possible to identify the authentic voice of the Buddha among these voices.

Such an approach assumes that the Nikayas are best considered as the end result of a somewhat haphazard and unsystematic process of compilation and redaction that reveals instances of incoherence and inconsistency which can then be used as a basis for distinguishing between early and late in the different path schemes.

Rupert Gethin argues that such an approach has overlooked the extent to which the Nikayas are a systematically redacted whole: the product of a particular process of compilation and editing which the compilers and editors deliberately employed in order to present a particular vision of the Buddhist path.

Analysing the schemes and formulas both numerically and contextually, Gethin attempts to articulate what the vision was by establishing what the compilers of the Nikayas wished to highlight and emphasize in their presentation of the Buddhist path.

Rupert Gethin will be presenting this paper at the University of Bristol on Friday, March 14, 2008, 3:00 PM - 4:30 PM at 243 Royce Hall.

I'm going to try to obtain his book, The Foundations of Buddhism.