skepticdude

Apologists insist that the oral tradition behind the gospels was reliable and didn't significantly garble the original words of Jesus.

Ok...then why did Christians eventually commit these things to written form?

How could this question be answered, without necessarily imparting some degree of insufficiency to the oral tradition?

Maybe the writings were a response to Marcion. What then? Oral tradition wasn't sufficient to combat heresy?

Thus the choice to convert oral tradition to writing, whatever the immediate cause (Marcion?), necessarily implies that the preservers of oral tradition came to discover that the written form of the faith was more stable than the oral form. Unfortunately for apologists, this can only mean that oral tradition is LESS accurate than written accounts, flying in the face of apologists who declare the exact opposite.

Toto

Which apologists claim this?

I'm not sure I follow the argument. The "oral tradition" is an entirely hypothetical source, but we know that oral traditions are maleable, always changing with the story teller. Once you decide that orthodoxy is important, you need a fixed source, which turns out to be a written text.

The idea of these "oral traditions" was invented by historicists who wanted to connect a figure who was supposed to have lived around 30 CE with texts that were clearly written some years after 70 CE. But I don't think any real scholars are still trying to claim that the oral traditions faithfully preserved the words of Jesus. They have moved on to claiming that there is some sort of "refracted memory" that can be gleaned from the texts.

Christian believers think that their god inspired authors of the texts, as well as those who translated them, but they base their faith on their own experience of the holy spirit, even when they try to justify their faith to outsiders with historical claims.

James Brown

I use this same argument when an apologist explains that the reason Paul and the apostles don't write very much about the earthly life of Jesus is because Christ ordered them to focus on his message, not his ministry.

Of course, that would mean that when they did sit down to write their gospels they were directly disobeying a command of the Lord.

mountainman

The universal use of coded "nomina sacra imply an "oral tradition"

While I accept what you say above is the opinion of the scholars, I would question their conclusion on the basis that it is manifestly evident in the earliest Greek manuscripts and all the papyri fragments (even when these are accepted as "early" [ie: Pre-Nicaean]) that a codified series of abbreviations was employed for key terms.

Common sense mandates that the "Legend", the "concordance", the "meaning behind the use of these codes" must have been held in an oral tradition by the "readers of the scriptures in 'church'". Nowhere is this legend explicated, and hence in order for the meanings to have been preserved, the meanings behind the codes must have been maintained by an "oral tradition":

List of Greek Nomina Sacra

English Meaning Greek Word Nominative (Subject) Genitive (Possessive)

• God Θεός ΘΣ ΘΥ
  Lord Κύριος ΚΣ ΚΥ
  Jesus Ἰησοῦς ΙΣ ΙΥ
  Christ/Messiah Χριστὸς ΧΣ ΧΥ
  Son Υἱός ΥΣ ΥΥ
  Spirit/Ghost Πνεῦμα ΠΝΑ ΠΝΣ
  David Δαυὶδ ΔΑΔ
  Cross/Stake Σταυρός ΣΤΣ ΣΤΥ
  Mother Μήτηρ ΜΗΡ ΜΗΣ
  Father Πατήρ ΠΗΡ ΠΡΣ
  Israel Ἰσραὴλ ΙΗΛ
  Savior/Saviour Σωτὴρ ΣΗΡ ΣΡΣ
  Man Ἄνθρωπος ΑΝΟΣ ΑΝΟΥ
  Jerusalem Ἱερουσαλήμ ΙΛΗΜ
  Heaven/Heavens Οὐρανὸς ΟΥΝΟΣ ΟΥΝΟΥ

Besides the authors and the translators we must also recognise that there was someone or some group involved (which of course might have been either the authors or translators) who implemented the abbreviations (nomina sacra) listed above in a universal pattern throughout all the books which would later be accepted as the NT canon. Lets call this group the "Codifiers".

If the authors were also the Codifiers then this implies Matt, Marcus, Lukus, Johnno, Paulinus and Pseudo-Paulinus must have come to an agreement during their prosperous moments on this planet, and standardised their separate and unique output. I find this scenario quite unlikely.

If the translators were the Codifiers then this would imply that the translators at one stage had before them all the scattered output of the foregoing (ie: Matt, Marcus, Lukus, Johnno, Paulinus and Pseudo-Paulinus) and not only had the ability to standardise the abbreviations on all the books, but also had the authority to enforced adherance to such a specific convention. Eusebius does not appear to mention "translators", or an orthodox powerful group acting as "Chief Publishers" of the books which were to become the NT canon. Moreover, Eusebius suggests that Matt, Marcus, Lukus, Johnno, Paulinus and Pseudo-Paulinus all were the authors who wrote the greek we have.

Do you see the problem?

Doug Shaver

They usually qualify that claim, at least by implication. What they usually say is that although oral traditions can get garbled, there was insufficient time for such garbling during the period between Jesus' lifetime and the writing of the first gospel, which they generally suppose to be Mark's, around 70 CE.

The usual apologetic line is something to the effect that they began to realize that the traditions would get garbled if they weren't written down while there were still eyewitnesses available to confirm the relevant details.

Most apologists will insist that all the canonical writings were completed before Marcion came on the scene.

Solo

As John McEnroe would say, "You can't be serious !" The oral traditions have been postulated since the patristics, and the novel idea in modern apologetical works is only the academic crossing-one's-heart-hoping-to-die that the oral traditions are reliably transimitted based on methodology. The early church fathers of course had no doubts about the memory the apostles whence they believed the gospels were resourced.

There is nothing all that extraordinary per se about holding that there were oral traditions, and nearly every exeget accepts that. One can add G.A.Wells to the long list after his "conversion" cca 2000. He now believes there was a historical figure behind the gospel accounts, which spawned the oral traditions of Q. Naturally, the sceptics will be sceptical about how much of the lore goes back to Jesus. But if you are intimating that no "real scholar" believes in the reliability of oral traditions as the source of the text, you are poorly informed. Indeed, there has been something of a backlash against the form-critical views (pioneered by Bultmann) that most of the lore is "community property" and generated in the period of expansion of the Christian missions. This backlash makes use of modern sociological studies of oral traditions (, here in Canada btw also used as a basis for aboriginal land claims). Some contemporary scholarly heavyweights have made use of it. See, e.g. Terence Mournet.

Jiri

Doug Shaver

Yes, but the hypothesis is pretty well forced by the prevailing assumption that the gospels (a) were written during the late first century and (2) are about a real person.

There are people with relevant credentials who claim exactly that. I'm inclined to agree with you, but we could be open to charges of committing the "No true Scotsman" fallacy.

Yes, course they do. But most of them know that when they're doing apologetics, they can't get away with "God said it, I believe it, that settles it."

Sajara

Anyone ever play the Telephone game??? Anything passed down by word of mouth will inevitably be altered slightly...it is just how things go.

aa5874

Are you implying that the "Telephone game" was employed ONLY for JESUS?

The "Telephone game" was not USED for Achilles and the hundreds of myths that have long been rejected.

Why didn't the "Telephone game" affect the historicity of Tiberius, Pilate, Philo, Josephus, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, all contemporaries of the supposed Jesus, his twelve disciples and Paul?

Because Jesus, his 12 disciples and Paul were just a "Telephone game."

skepticdude

Luke "writes" for Theophilus in Luke 1:1-3. But if oral tradition was as reliable as apologists insist, why put it down in writing? Luke answers: so that Theophilus may know the "certainty" of the things concerning Jesus.

Which seems to indicate that what Theophilus learned by oral tradition, did not impart the kind of certitude that a written text would impart.