How were the words and acts of Christ preserved?

By tradition, we received the Holy Gospels which contain some, but not all, of the acts and words of Christ, as St. John concludes in his gospel, “And there are also many other things that Jesus did, which if they were written one by one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that would be written” (John 21:25).

The disciples and apostles heard many sayings which they treasured and lived; but they did not record them all in the gospels. For example, consider some of the things that Paul the Apostle wrote: “Even so the Lord has commanded that those who preach the gospel should live from the gospel” (1 Cor. 9:14). “Now to the married I command, yet not I but the Lord: A wife is not to depart from her husband” (1 Cor. 7:10). The apostle Paul received these commandments and sayings of the Lord from the disciples and apostles who heard the Lord firsthand, lived them by the Spirit, and preached them to others.

Concerning the acts of Christ , the apostle Paul also says, “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord ( Kyrios ) Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread” (1 Cor. 11:23). The apostle Paul did not witness this event firsthand on the night of His suffering, but as Oscar Cullmann²⁰⁹ explains, the word “ Kyrios ” here refers to the “ oral tradition ” concerning the Lord Jesus. Of course, the apostle did receive many visions and revelations firsthand; but this particular act he received from the Lord through the Church. What is wonderful is that the earliest liturgies — such as that found — in the Apostolic Tradition of St. Hippolytus contain the apostle Paul’s expressions in the signings, in the Institution Narrative. Perhaps this is because the Apostolic Tradition of Hippolytus reflects a general tradition in the Church on which both the apostle Paul and all the apostolic liturgies relied.