Toto

Teeple's essay (available on JSTOR) is "The Oral Tradition that Never Existed." The only reference google has to "The Oral Tradition that Never Was" is a book by Eddy and Boyd (evangelical scholar-wanna be's, like some other persons mentioned in this thread.)

Teeple's essay was criticized in Holy Writ as Oral Lit: The Bible as Folklore (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Alan Dundes (also on google books).

But the question isn't whether there was some sort of oral tradition. The question is whether you can assume that this oral tradition embodies actual historical events that can be reliably extracted from it.

Roger Pearse

Oral tradition can preserve some odd things. There were folk memories of Catiline's conspiracy still remembered in the region of Italy where he lived, almost 15 centuries later.

Or so I am told.

stephan huller

I read in the Encyclopedia Britannica some years back that in Kenya they preserved a ki-Swahili poem memorializing the greatness of the Emperor Heraclius

Roger Pearse

That doesn't sound possible to me. What contact did that part of Africa ever have with anywhere that would know his name?

outhouse

If they can recite the OT by oral tradition, its not stretch to imagine how well a illiterate culture who lived oral tradition, could retain scripture they found important or entertaining.

andrewcriddle

See wiki/Utendi_wa_Tambuka IIUC the work is based on Arabic traditions (oral and written.)

Andrew Criddle

Roger Pearse

Ah I see. Fair enough. And interesting - thanks!

Steven Carr

In Joel Watts post at http://unsettledchristianity.com/2013/06/run-dmca/ there is a screen shot of the email Watts allegedly sent Neil Godfrey.

In his screen shot, he is not connected to Gmail.

Remarkably, there is a message in the sent folder from June 27, although the system says , 'Last Synced' on June 26.

His screen shot shows June 26, 12:56 pm as the local time, exactly the same time as the email Watts allegedly sent.

Remarkably, Watts knew he would have to take a screenshot as proof he had sent the email and did so on June 26, at the time he posted this email, and two days before he knew he would have to do a screenshot.

The alternative is that on June 28, Watts reset the time on his computer to June 26, and then created an email as of June 26, and produced a screenshot with the system time at June 26....

But he forgot that the system date and time would also appear on his screenshot. (Oooh, that's a bad mistake...)

He should have photoshopped the system time to be June 28, the date he allegedly prepared this screenshot.

stephan huller

Just to keep things real I see 3/26/13 not 6/26/13 as the 'last synced' date. I am not sure if you've proven anything.

Tom Verenna

Steven, still with the conspiracy theories?

http://www.valiant-ny.com/2012/10/ou...e-sync-issues/