No Robots

Heidegger the Fox
by Hannah Arendt

Heidegger says, with great pride: "People say that Heidegger is a fox." This is the true story of Heidegger the fox: Once upon a time there was a fox who was so lacking in slyness that he not only kept getting caught in traps but couldn't even tell the difference between a trap and a non-trap. This fox suffered from another failing as well. There was something wrong with his fur, so that he was completely without natural protection against the hardships of a fox's life. After he had spent his entire youth prowling around the traps of people, and now that not one intact piece of fur, so to speak, was left on him, this fox decided to withdraw from the fox world altogether and to set about making himself a burrow. In his shocking ignorance of the difference between traps, he hit on an idea completely new and unheard of among foxes: He built a trap as his burrow. He set himself inside it, passed it off as a normal burrow—not out of cunning, but because he had always thought others' traps were their burrows—and then decided to become sly in his own way and outfit for others the trap he had built himself and that suited only him. This again demonstrated great ignorance about traps: No one would go into his trap, because he was sitting inside it himself. This annoyed him. After all, everyone knows that, despite their slyness, all foxes occasionally get caught in traps. Why should a fox trap—especially one built by a fox with more experience of traps than any other—not be a match for the traps of human beings and hunters? Obviously because this trap did not reveal itself clearly enough as the trap it was! And so it occurred to our fox to decorate his trap beautifully and to hang up unequivocal signs everywhere on it that quite clearly said: "Come here, everyone; this is a trap, the most beautiful trap in the world." From this point on it was clear that no fox could stray into this trap by mistake. Nevertheless, many came. For this trap was our fox's burrow, and if you wanted to visit him where he was at home, you had to step into his trap. Everyone except our fox could, of course, step out of it again. It was cut, literally, to his own measurement. But the fox who lived in the trap said proudly: "So many are visiting me in my trap that I have become the best of all foxes." And there is some truth in that, too: Nobody knows the nature of traps better than one who sits in a trap his whole life long.

spin

And epistemologically, that it's the earliest written literature is a brick wall. There is no way of knowing beyond that fact. And while it may be true that "Paul's works are the earliest written literature of Christianity that we have available", epistemology slams down that which is theorized and consequently unavailable. It's functionally as good as saying nothing.

No Robots

Some scholars, mainly outside the field of oral tradition, represent (either dismissively or with approval) this body of theoretical work as reducing the great epics to children’s party games like “telephone” or “Chinese whispers”. While games provide amusement by showing how messages distort content via uncontextualized transmission, Parry’s supporters argue that the theory of oral tradition reveals how oral methods optimized the signal-to-noise ratio and thus improved the quality, stability and integrity of content transmission.--"Oral Tradition." In Wikipedia.

spin

Another handy-dandy quotation that doesn't make it to relevance.

Of course, there is oral tradition before literary tradition, otherwise there wouldn't be anything much to write. That doesn't change the fact that the written tradition is a brick wall when it comes to getting at the oral tradition. Remember, I was talking about epistemology.

No Robots

I would refer you to Birger Gerhardsson's The Reliability of the Gospel tradition (or via: amazon.co.uk):

The central issue at stake concerns the touchstone of the historical Jesus research, namely, the nature and reliability of the oral tradition that preceded the manuscripts of the New Testament. Since the publication of his seminal doctoral dissertation, Memory and Manuscript: Oral tradition and written transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity (1961), Gerhardsson has proposed a thesis that challenged the dominant paradigm of the Form Critical School, and in recent years a basic tenet of the Jesus Seminar.
As explained in the Foreword, by Donald A. Hagner of Fuller Seminary, both the latter movements employ a negative assessment of the reliability of the oral tradition. Drawing on present-day experiences of memory, they conclude that the oral traditions underlying the gospels were basically unreliable. This led to the conclusion that there was a fundamental contrast between oral culture and print culture. In the former, they conclude, it was impossible accurately to hand on material.

“Gerhardsson’s contribution consists in a painstaking textual analysis of the dynamic of oral transmission in Rabbinic Judaism, which he later extended to the early Christian tradition. He developed a sophisticated typology of different categories of tradition and the complex interface between manuscript writing and orality within each type of tradition. This is then also the main contribution of the three essays included in the volume under review. He concedes that in his first works he perhaps too readily assumed that the rabbinic sources after the second century reflected practices of the previous two. He also points out that the private written notation of the Hellenistic world still need further investigation. However, his cardinal view that material could and was transmitted with great care and accuracy remains unchanged. As Hagner puts it, though we do not have the ipissima verba of Jesus, Gerhardsson’s work shows that we do have the ipissima vox.

spin

Epistemology.

DCHindley

Gesundheit!

DCH

aa5874

What a most horrible NON-SEQUITUR!!!

angelo

It's arguable which was first. Paul's writings are the earliest written christian writings. The gospels and possibly the sayings of a Q community were still in oral form until Mark's gospel.

avi

What about War and Peace?

Is it French literature?
I consider it Russian literature with a French theme, Tolstoy even throws in a few French words, and some proper names in French, for good measure....

I regard the gospels as Greek literature, with an Hebreic theme, and a sprinkling of Aramaic words/names thrown in for good measure....

avi