quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
original by Kosh: ever play that game where you sit in a cirlcle and whisper?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Metacrock: I've documented on this board before that in ancient near eastern clutures oral traditions were systematic and they practiced memorization. They did not just tell tails and spread rumors. They actually knew how to memorize long passages and they had an ethic of keeping stairght what their techers said.They also told the traditions in the the gorup in front of everyone over and over again to keep it stairght. They were good at it and oral tradition is in no way equated with just telling rumors

Metacrock, you didn't answer the question.

rodahi

I've documented on this board before that in ancient near eastern clutures oral traditions were systematic and they practiced memorization. They did not just tell tails and spread rumors. They actually knew how to memorize long passages and they had an ethic of keeping stairght what their techers said.They also told the traditions in the the gorup in front of everyone over and over again to keep it stairght. They were good at it and oral tradition is in no way equated with just telling rumors.

Nobody said they were just passing rumors, but no oral tradition remains as it was, until it is set down. Each telling, even by the same teller, causes the story to change slightly. Crossan documents this very well in his chapter on oral tradition in The Birth of Christianity. The fact is that oral tradition is a reliable source only in a very general way. In any case, because we do not have the oral tradition, we do not know what changes were made by the evangelists when they set pen to paper.

Michael

What question?

MEta =>Ok now just get a deep breath and try to focuss.

Now the issue is not are all the things mentionedd in the text literally true? Because I've never said that the mere metion of miracles means that they happened. Will you please get that through your head becasue I'm tired of having to repeat it. Scholarly things sound real stupid when ignortant people keep messing them up and making you start having to repeat them in ever more basic ways.

Now just get that focussed right now. I am not arguing that the mere metion in the text of a miracle proves that miracle happened. OK? This is totally about the nature of the text. Does it reflect the earliest level of Christian teaching, including the words of Christ? OK? Now that's the issue, not if the miracles happened. I've already said that is a matter of fatih. OK?

Now Homer was part of a Bardic tradition. His poems were memorized by wandering bards, and in remote parts of Turky there are still people who are bards and who memorize and recite totally from memory poems as long as the Illiad and they get them totally right to the very word.

The near east was an oral tradition society. They knew how to memorize, they used neimonic devices and they could memorize and keep stairght long passages and they beleived in keeping them stairght.

Yea I'm sure that there was "slipage." But obviously the whole community knew and kept the basic facts of Jesus' life since there are no alternate versions.

And the teachings themselves were written not even 18 years after the events. WE have the Passion narrative which was from AD 50, but that's not the saying source. The Sayings source is much older and was probably written down only a few years after the events. But even the Passion narrative may have had presursors so there probably were attempts at writting narratives of the events even in the early 40s.


And it can be demonstrated though inerpersonal studies that you can keep facts and even saying accurate if the whole group focusses on doing so at once.

IN my undergrad days I took an interpersonal communication course (no comments please). We played an even more interesting game where were the proff had everyone memorize an article and sent one person out of the room. Than the whole class discussed what was in the article without being able to refur back to it, and made a list of what we thought the major points were.

When that one person came back his assessement of the article was toally off but everyone else in the class could recite what was in the article with great accuracy.

So this proves that if the whole group memorized the passage together and constantly heard over and over what was said by the witnesses, and worked on memorizing it together they could keep it very accurate.

I was simply asking why Metacrock does not believe oral tradition when it comes to

* The deities of Mt. Olympus

* The Cyclopes

* Circe and what she did to Odysseus's men

* The conception and upbringing of Romulus and Remus

O but I do. I beleive that they had oral traditons about those things. Now where those historical events? Did they have a culture that memorized vast passages from their teachers for the sake of keeping the law? did they have the same kind of approach to oral tradition that the Jews did? No to all of that. So that is irrelivant.

See my thread on "what is mythology" where I demonstrate the distinction and show that the Gospels were not mythological.