Form Criticism is the careful study of the formal characteristics and oral transmission of the individual units found in the gospels (such as sayings of Jesus, parables, miracle stories, meal scenes, etc.).

Rudolf Bultmann and Martin Dibelius were both influential form critics. Recognizing that the individual units now contained in the gospels circulated in oral from for several decades before the gospels were written, they and other form critics studied these units in the hopes of understanding the way they had been preserved and transmitted before they came to take written form.

The form critics showed significant evidence that these individual units were preserved for reasons of faith, not pure interest in history. The way they are preserved reflects the theological intent of the individual gospel writers as well as the theological intent of the community or communities which preserved the stories in oral form.

This recognition calls into question the assumption of earlier thinkers such as John Locke who saw Paul as an interpreter of Jesus while treating the canonical Gospels as objective history. Both Paul and the gospel writers express their theological understanding of Jesus. The earliest christian views concerning Jesus cannot be accurately understood by rejecting one in favor of the other.