N. Walker even suggests that Matthew kept an Aramaic ‘diary’ (“The Alleged Matthean Errata”, New Testament Studies, 1963, 9: 391-4), an interesting suggestion in light of Justin Martyr’s (2nd century) repeated references to the Gospels as ‘memoirs’. The point is that the oral transmission process continued even after the definitive compilation of that oral tradition! Oral transmission, in and of itself, is not a completely unreliable method, particularly for simpler messages. Oral tradition is a source of historical material. Because oral transmission was a normal thing, it was generally a reliable method of conveying information because accuracy was considered to be extremely important. However, modern-day scientists and geologists have time and time again proven the accuracy of oral tradition in recalling environmental changes (such as the presence of bison, great floods, rivers changing course), 36 catastrophes (earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, and lava flows), 37 and For example, the archaeologists at Jamestown believe that they have found the outline of the church where Pocahontas and John Rolfe were married because it matches descriptions of the church based on maps and written descriptions. Mark and Matthew, and later Luke and John filled this need. But is it? Kloppenborg [Klopp.FQ, 44] dismisses this argument by claiming that there is “no evidence that Jesus himself taught by memorization” – which is patently false, as we have seen above that Jesus routinely used teaching forms that encouraged memorization and the very nature of the society within which Jesus taught would still preserve through memorization. He concludes: “Since Christianity began as a sect WITHIN Judaism, and began experiencing serious exclusion from ‘mainstream’ Judaism in the early-30’s (with the stoning of Stephen and persecution of Saul–Acts 7,8), it is entirely likely that the new community of faith had to do what others before them did; namely, WRITE down the material for use by new converts and by new churches (a la Qumran). > How reliable is oral tradition when it comes to Christianity? Perhaps counterintuitively, oral traditions also embody an expressive power that derives from their ability to vary within these limitations as they respond to different performance settings and circumstances. The memorizing and accurate transmission of oral material is accentuated by: 1. In fact the Gospels describe him as a teacher forty-five times and the term ‘rabbi’ is used of him fourteen times. Oral traditions form the foundation of Aboriginal societies, connecting speaker and listener in communal experience a… 4. To begin: 1) Short sayings of Jesus were the only ones accurately recorded. Making 'history from below' for oral historians has a number of significant meanings. Throughout history, Aboriginal societies in North America have relied on the oral transmission of stories, histories, lessons and other knowledge to maintain a historical record and sustain their cultures and identities. At the time of Herod, according to Josephus, there were about 6,000 Pharisees. In fact it was the staple of all ancient education, including Greco-Roman education….those who handed on the tradition would not have seen themselves primarily as creators but as preservers and editors.”, In this regard, many have cited the work of Scandanavian scholar Birger Gerhardsson, who argued some years ago that, “based on clear parallels of oral transmission processes between early Christianity and Rabbinic Judaism, one could conclude that the oral Jesus tradition was passed along with a high degree of care and continuity.” [Boyd.CSSG, 121]. 1976): This was the way Jewish educational processes worked. Like the rabbis, he proclaimed the divine law, gathered disciples, debated with the religious authorities, was asked to settle legal disputes, and supported his teaching with Scripture. Despite claims made to the contrary, oral historians are every bit as much concerned with historical accuracy as writing historians. If ancient writings based on oral traditions can be shown to contain reasonably accurate information about the geography, religion, and culture of the time that they describe, doesn’t that show that they can be accepted as generally relatively accurate? You are asking specifically about songs and poetry. An example of this type of oral tradition is the oral accounts provided by Lakota, Cheyenne, and Crow warriors after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Scholars suggest that by 200 BC there was QUITE a body of ‘authoritative’ tradition in Israel, which would have represented the ‘mainstream’ system (including within it, of course, all the minor sub-traditions). … The question arises: If, as evidence implies, the story of Jesus was carried by oral tradition for as much as twenty years, how can we trust as completely accurate the gospels which were written after twenty or … He observed the faith and commitment of Levi the tax-collector and recognized him as one who was capable of making a record of his teaching. Seneca boasted of being able in his youth to repeat 2000 names read to him “and recite in reverse order over two hundred verses his fellow students told him…”. : From what has been said it will be clear enough that the poems are preserved by oral tradition. He deliberately took steps for the preservation of his teaching among his disciples. Because of this, historians have to access the lives of enslaved people through the written work of whites who owned or interacted with enslaved people and oral histories. The Jesus Seminar, in line with this statement, does not accept as genuine any words of Jesus that are not recorded as aphorisms or parables. But this is a thoroughly speculative notion that runs against the grain of the evidence. Enjoy this article? Regardless, that only accounts for 2 out of hundreds of Jesus’ original group of disciples who could act as scribes (like Matthew). The motivation of the hearers. History, whether written or oral, can only be considered accurate if their is supporting evidence. They watched his every action and listened to his every word. Transmitting oral tradition is critical to a society’s ability to keep order and maintain itself, and is therefore not taken lightly. BDEhrman 2020-04-03T00:55:25-04:00. Objection: Acts 4:13 tells us that John and Peter were illiterate. (EBI: 52-53). There are good grounds, then, for supposing not only that the traditioning of Jesus’ acts and teachings began already during this earthly ministry, as H. Schurmann has argued, but also that some of them were given written formulations at that time. Ellis, et. Among the Jews, rabbis were encouraged to memorize entire books of the OT, indeed the whole OT, and all of Jewish education consisted of rote memory. However, written history, often has a similar problem. The European ballad was a traditional form of performance. Plato says that the Sophist Hippias of Elis “was able to repeat fifty names after hearing them only once.”, Pliny the Elder reports that Cyrus was able to name every man in his army, and that Lucius Scipio remembered the names of every person in the Roman Empire, and that one named Charmadas “recited by heart any book in the libraries.”. So Kugel (EBI:71): “…that certain broad assumptions of biblical interpretation were shaped by events and circumstances of a still earlier period and that, by 200 bce, it is probable that a large body of actual interpretations of individual biblical verses was in wide circulation among the Jews, either in oral or written form.”. The story is not likely to have been preserved to Hauk's time by oral tradition only. Why has this aspect been neglected? The oral tradition can take many forms, including epic poems, chants, rhymes, songs, and more. Fieldwork studies in anthropology have debunked this notion, as a wide variety of cultures have been found to be able to preserve extended epics orally, some of these epics as long as 25 hours performed over several days. This presumption ignores any possibility that sayings, stories and sermons were put in some kind of written form early on and it also ignores the considerable importance given to rote memorization in Jewish society of the time, which would have permitted reliable oral transmission even for longer material. The assumptions of form criticism were that it was impossible to preserve more than just short vignettes in memory. : It may arise from reliable oral tradition, and in this case be as worthy of credence as the Markan source. The rest of this post is for blog members only . Wilk.JUF Wilkins, Michael J. and J. P. Moreland, eds. But even without that, as Boyd points out [Boyd.CSSG, 125]: “It was (and yet is) often assumed in post-Bultmannian circles that an apocalyptic movement, such as early Christianity, would not have been interested in writing down and codifying their ideas and their histories…(but) in Qumran we find a thoroughly apocalyptic group doing just this! A few useful mnemonic devices include alliteration, repetition, assonance, and proverbial sayings. By 1976 Harold Perkin was claiming that, 'Oral history ... has become one of the growth areas of social history ... [with] at least seventy research projects currently being pursued'(8) And most of these were 'history from below' projects. Obviously this makes the argument refuted by Boyd irrelevant. While oral tradition is often considered less accurate than the written word and a likely candidate to fall victim to the inaccuracy of the telephone game, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Students were expected to remember the major events of narratives – although incidentals could be varied, if the main point was not affected [Wilk.JUF, 32]. (See William Bottrell on this.) While my knowledge is limited I believe you can find a breadth of examples through Homer as the Odyssey and the Iliad are both poems and come from oral tradition. (JPB: 181–Sanders points out on p.179f that the ancient world required vast numbers of scribes, and that most priests would have had to supplement their income with such occupations as ‘common’ scribal work.). He also used mnemonic devices, such as parables, exaggerations, puns, metaphors and similes, proverbs, riddles, and parabolic actions, to aid his disciples and audience in retaining his teachings. Oral tradition, the age and quantity of ancient manuscripts, and extra-biblical evidence all point to the accuracy of the Gospels. Above all he used poetry, “parallelismus membrorum”, for this purpose. Oral sources are no more or less inherently reliable than written ones, they simply need to be understood and used differently than someone might be used to. We shall not be able to arrive at definite numbers, but we may assume that there were some thousands of scribes in Jewish Palestine in our period: legal advisors in each locality, people who could draft documents, and legal experts and copyists in the employ of the temple. It is known that in Egypt at this date there were 111 kinds of tax, and many of the tax-collectors knew shorthand. [Klopp.FQ, 44] However, such Rabbinic practices certainly had their precedents, and these may be found in the general Jewish system of education in the first century [Boyd.CSSG, 121-2]: “Here, it is important to recognize the place that ancient Jewish educational practice gave to the memorization of both oral and written tradition…, …Reisner has done a thorough study both of educational practices within the first-century Judaism, as well as the evidence within the Gospels’ tradition related to Jesus and his teaching methods. October 24th, 2018 | … James Patrick Holding holds a Masters in Library Science from Florida State University. 3. Here’s some more relevant data from Eddy and Boyd’s The Jesus Legend: Oral tradition, then, in the social context of first-century Palestine, was more than up to the task of preserving the words of Jesus. Christians often say that the gospels may have been written decades after Jesus’ death, but they were memorized in the minds of people up until that point. Stein says (SPI: 200): It is now clearer than ever before that Jesus was a teacher. Illiteracy is a social problem but it is not an incurable disease. Thus, even if we dismiss the mnemonic nature of Jesus’ teaching, even if we ignore (as the Seminar has, in their own Western-mindset fashion) the tremendous capacity of the oriental memory, we still have to consider that whatever Jesus taught, He would, like any teacher, have taught it many, many times – enough times so that His disciples would have the entire set of lessons committed to memory! Eventually it was written down into the Mishnah, but “even after its definitive compilation, the Mishnah (as well as a great deal more interpretive material of the Rabbis) continued to be passed on primarily by rote for centuries to come.” (Kugel, EBI:68). Influence of oral material is accentuated how accurate is oral tradition: 1 ) short sayings circulated by word of for... Ask a piece of paper questions to be sure that it is known that Egypt. Active and upon his death or retirement the school died with him Australian Aboriginal people have passed... 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