outhouse

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_tradition

Oral tradition and oral lore is cultural material and traditions transmitted orally from one generation to another.[1][2] The messages or testimony are verbally transmitted in speech or song and may take the form, for example, of folktales, sayings, ballads, songs, or chants. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledges across generations without a writing system.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_law

Although the Hebrew term "Torah" is often translated as "Law", its actual meaning is "Instruction" or "Teaching". Rabbinic Judaism holds that the books of the Tanakh were transmitted in parallel with an oral tradition, as relayed by God to Moses and from him handed on to the scholarly and other religious leaders of each generation. Thus, in Judaism, the "Written Instruction" (Torah she-bi-khtav תורה שבכתב) comprises the Torah and the rest of the Tanakh; the "Oral Instruction" (Torah she-be'al peh תורה שבעל פה) was ultimately recorded in the Talmud (lit. "Learning") and Midrashim (lit. "Interpretations"). The interpretation of the Oral Torah is thus considered as the authoritative reading of the Written Torah. Further, Halakha (lit. "The Path", frequently translated as "Jewish Law") is based on a "Written Instruction" together with an "Oral Instruction". Jewish law and tradition is thus not based on a literal reading of the Tanakh, but on the combined oral and written tradition.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oral_Torah



Rabbis of the Talmudic era conceived of the Oral Law in two distinct ways. First, Rabbinic tradition conceived of the Oral law as an unbroken chain of transmission. The distinctive feature of this view was that Oral Law was "conveyed by word of mouth and memorized."

Adam

Oh, but they do look like eyewitness accounts. That's not at issue. What's debated is whether they are not eyewitness accounts even though they look like it. The differences don't have to be ascribed to late changes but to contrasting subjective vantage points of different eyewitnesses. Ses my 628-post thread "Gospel Eyewitnesses":
http://www.freeratio.org/showthread....306983&page=26
Your final paragraphs I can agree with, but your overboard first paragraph forces me into this thread.
ETA:
Of course you are sure because of supernatural trappings that the gospels are mere legendary tales. In my thread I adapt my presentation to show that there is an early core that is straight reporting. I call this the "Gospel According to the Atheists". See #526, 534, and 555.

Steven Carr

You mean all this Oral Law came down from Moses to the time of Jesus unchanged?

Amazing!




So would Jesus remember what he had said and repeat it accurately when saying it again?

So why are there two versions of the Lord's Prayer? Was Jesus not paying much attention to himself when he preached?

Steven Carr

More strawman rubbish from Adam, who is incapable of realising that there is nothing supernatural about being born in Bethlehem, yet even mainstream scholars reject that as a legendary tale.

Adam

And there's some point to that?
And if there were, "Bethlehem" is not a word in Proto-Luke nor the Passion Narrative.

Steven Carr

It was a straightforward injection of reality into your fantasy world where Proto-Lukes exist and people reject things as legendary tales based on nothing other than them containing supernatural elements.

Can't you just go away?

Adam

I have to admit that your means of refutation is much more polite than Shesh's. Yet your "world" is as legendary as his is, a world in which scholars have labored scrupulously to prove that the sources in the gospels are not eyewitness accounts and have universally triumphed in their endeavour. (Gee, you're even making me spell
British.)
(The above is sarcastic. I am not aware that any scholar has attempted to prove the sources are not eyewitnesses. At "best" they assume that since they can prove that gMatthew was not written by Matthew that nothing in any of the gospels was written by eyewitnesses. I simply show that the "emperor has no clothes".)

Huon

Adam, "an eyewitness" can be as mistaken in his account as a later writer. Every judge knows that. And I do not speak only of liars who know quite well that they are lying. I speak also of witnesses who believe sincerely that they are saying the truth. Witnesses of miracles, for instance.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Adam,

The "Clark Kent" approach to showing an eyewitness or historical basis for the Jesus text does not work. Clark Kent is a reporter working for the Daily Planet newspaper in numerous comic books, television shows and movies. If we eliminate all the "Superman" material, we still do not get a history of a real man or eyewitness accounts of him. One may suppose that there was an original Clark Kent and the "Superman" stories developed afterward, but that would simply be a categorical misunderstanding of the material.

There is only one passage in the gospels that can be reasonably interpreted as claiming that any of the four New Testament gospels reflect eyewitness testimony.

The statement "we know that his testimony is true" indicates that an editor is writing about the putative writer of the text.

My interpretation is that the actual writer wants to claim his text is coming from a disciple of Jesus and wants to attach the beloved disciple's name to the text, but the text is being written many decades or even a century or more after the events described. Saying this outright might suggest that Jesus has made the writer immortal. The actual writer does not want people to think that the beloved disciple is immortal, so he points out that the writer will also be a part of the coming apocalypse and resurrection when Jesus returns.

When people lie, it is typical for them to divert attention from the lie to another subject. Here the writer is trying to divert attention from the lie that this text is written by the the beloved disciple to the issue of whether there will be an apocalypse and resurrection.

The writer still feels uneasy about his lying about the authorship of the text, so he adds, "But there are also many other things which Jesus did; were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written."

This seems to be a little joke, insinuating that lots of people lie about the things Jesus did. There are so many of them that he does not have time to read all of them. His world or mind cannot contain all of them.

The statement does not demonstrate that the writer is an eyewitness to events, only that the writer knows that he is making up some of the material and his audience thinks so too.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Adam

Jay, you're writing about verses that are later redaction, missing my point about sources.
I'm saying that seven (or more) written sources are from eyewitnesses. They may have written "I" or "we" in the originals that were changed to third person in the editing, or they may have been written in the third person in the beginning.

I am of course aware that eyewitness testimony can be inaccurate. (And I specifically argue that Nicodemus in writing the Johannine Discourses started out to be intentionally inaccurate.) Yet on forums such as this any contradictions are presented as "proof" that the writings are not from eyewitnesses? That's hypocritical or just dumb.

I make no claim that the gospels are inerrant, just that they contain records written by eyewitnesses.