DNAinaGoodway

I'm no scholar, so please bear with me, I'm just curious.

I'm wondering how biblical authors came to concensus on how to incorporate varying oral traditions, like the two creation stories in Genesis.

Also, I haven't found a reference in the text to indicate when the tribes switched from oral to scripture, are there any?

Chili

The two creation stories have nothing to do with oral tradition. In Gen.1 the essence of existence was created and in Gen 2 that same essence was formed to find existence. Notice that Gen 1 was "God said" and Gen.2 is "Lord God formed" . . . and in Gen.3 "like god" became co-creator.

You should consider the idea that the authors were mythmakers instead of historians.

Toto

I'm not sure about your question.

The two creation stories in Genesis are both in writing. The idea that they incorporate different oral traditions is part of the explanation of why the scriptures contain various incongruities, but it is a hypothesis. We don't have any record from the people who decided to create those scriptures, and we are unlikely to - the authors and later religious figures claimed that the writings were inspired by God / YHWH, and for many centuries it was heresy to speculate about a human source.

Or have I misunderstood something?

hagiograph

Not necessarily a direct answer to your question, but a book I just finished reading:

"Who Wrote the Bible?" By Richard Elliot Friedman is a good intro to the topic.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/boo...41596790&itm=1

While Friedman goes a bit further toward "naming some names", at least for the introduction to what some scholars believe it is a very good book. As for Friedman's hypotheses I can't make any sort of guesses, but it was pretty compelling.

-h

Rick Sumner

Paging Celsus.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Chris Weimer

EJD - acronym to live by :*)

El, Jahweh, und Deuteronomisch

DNAinaGoodway

Thanks for the feedback.

I don't understand what EJD means though.

I guess I was assuming that the bible had it's origins in oral traditions that got written down pretty much as soon as the first tribe members learned how to write.

But I'm totally ignorant on this, that's why I'm asking for info.

I imagine that before writing was invented, these people had some sort of oral "scripture". Ok, horrible phrase. Does that make sense though, that they had a version of "the word of God" in oral form. Passed on from one story teller to the next, possibly taught and remembered verbatim, like in Farenheit 451.

Or do I have it wrong. Were the biblical authors just myth makers, perhaps incorporating elements from existing stories in the process?

I'll check out Friedman for starters.

Thanks again.

Toto

There are Hindu sacred tales that have been preserved in an oral form - passed down from one generation to the next, which is required to memorize each sacred syllable in the sacred language.

People who want to speculate that the Bible has earlier roots than the manuscripts show like to speculate that a similar process happened with the Hebrew scriptures. But AFAIK this is just speculation.

rlogan

Who among us would doubt an oral tradition? It isn't speculation. Examples of oral traditions abound with the native North Americans, the nordic epics. Etc.

I think there are some residual clues from previous oral mental aids in the HB written record. I've forgotten everything I taught spin about this though.

Oh, you can doodle on google with the Sumerian Gilgamesh epic as an example of incorporating an existing tradition.



Remember that you are contending with redacted text and a politically determined "final" canon.

Amaleq13

Speaking of which, I've been taking a course on cross-cultural communication (required for my "permanent" certificate) from Father Michael Oleksa. He has studied the Alaskan Natives and the development/destruction of their languages for quite some time and is quite well known and respected for his work. One very interesting semi-tangent he mentioned at the last lecture was that he consistently found that the written versions of oral traditions were significantly discrepant from the actual oral tradition repeated by the elders. He found this to be true across tribes and even in other cultures where the oral tradition continues to exist alongside the alleged written version. He repeatedly found that, according to those who claimed to be preserving the oral traditions, the written versions were generally wrong.

I know of no formal study of this but these informal findings certainly don't bode well for those who are fond of making appeals to reliable oral traditions supporting early written texts.