PhilosopherJay

Hi LegionOnomaMoi,

It was about 15 years old that I studied the material of Parry-Lord and their followers. It does seem from the few articles I had a chance to read from the website that they are pursuing more specific and diverse approaches. I will try to read as many articles as I can in the next few days. hopefully their research has gotten more scientific and objective.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Grog

No, I am not doing that. I am pointing out that you are conflating those two things when you cite oral tradition. You have done it continuously.

This was your example:

"The Jews placed a high value on memorizing whatever wri ting reflected inspired Scripture and the wisdom of God."

That was your contribution to this discussion about the oral communication of Jesus sayings. You applied the apples to the oranges, I didn't do that.

LegionOnomaMoi

Perhaps not always, but we also have to look at the time period and culture in question. I think the relevant questions are
1) what methods were used in teaching (whether we're talking about Pythagoreans, the Jesus sect, the forerunners of the rabbi's, etc.)

2) How did historians gather data and did they prefer texts or firsthand accounts?

3) Can we see in that particular time/culture a distrust in written accounts versus oral accounts?

So, for example, we might look at greek and roman historians with respect to the second and third questions. Michael Grant, in his book Greek and Roman Historians (Routledge, 1995) notes not just that "ancient society was much more oral/aural than our own" nor that this was just a matter of limitation, but that for the members in these societies "there was a continuing, touching faith in the oral tradition...." As for historians: "Many were the historians who were proud to have heard something 'from the horses mouth'..." There were exceptions, of course, and historians did tend to at least distinguish written versus oral tradition, but even rumors were sometimes accepted uncritically by historians. Grant notes that "the practice of Tacitus in this respect is persistent and lamentable."

Aune, in his paper "Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World" from Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition (Sheffield Academic Press, 1991) uses Polybius as an example in his discussion of hellenistic historiography: "In discussing the best ways to gather data, Polybius emphasizes the function of the eyes and the ears..." Of the two (hearing another's account versus seeing it yourself) the latter was certainly preferred, but both were generally favored over written testimony. Aune also quotes the famous modern historian of ancient historiography A. Momigliano, who wrote that for ancient historians "an oral tradition is definitely preferred." The classicist L. Alexander wrote an entire paper which joins classical historiographical methods and early christian tradition in "The Living Voice: Skepticism Towards the Written Word in Early Christian and Graeco-Roman Texts."

However, when it comes to the methods used to teach, we don't have much in the way of 1st century information. We can only apply earlier or later methods (and both involved teachers/rabbis/etc. requiring their followers to memorize material and repeating the same material over and over in a form which could be readily memorized). Whether or not that would apply to someone like Jesus is questionable. Additionally, even if true, that would only apply to his teachings. The events of his "ministry," if they ever became part of an oral tradition which was to some extent controlled, would have already seperated quite a bit from what happened.

Grog

Legion-

I don't have any particular problem with your response...but aren't you talking about eye-witness accounts? I think that's different than transmission beyond a couple of degrees of separation.

My point is that current scholarship on oral tradition tends to blur the distinction between oral and written traditions. They existed side by side. The idea that there was a line of oral transmission of the saying or teachings of an historical Jesus from the 20's to the 60's is, IMO, untenable. That's not to say there was no oral tradition and, actually, the historicity of Jesus is mostly not relevant to this. Anything that such a person might have said is completely lost.

Kapyong

Gday,

Such as the Lord's Prayer which Jesus allegedly taught directly to his followers?
Which turns out to be the most variant parts of the entire NT.

Or Jesus' sermons which he taught to large crowds?
Which are totally different from one Gospel to the next.

The evidence is clear - there was no oral tradition which preserved Jesus' teachings at all.

No amount of claims and assertions about how good this alleged oral tradition was can erase the clear fact that Jesus' teachings have come down to us in many varying versions, which shows clearly that his teachings were NOT accurately preserved at all. The Gospel writers were quite happy to change Jesus' words whenever it suited their purposes.


K.

LegionOnomaMoi

I'm not sure what you mean by "current scholarship on oral tradition." It's a pretty vast field. However, it's certainly not "untenable" that Jesus' teachings were via a controlled communal process. That's what teachers did in and around his time. It's not evident that this is the case either. As for "anything that such a person might have said is completely lost" that's very, very, unlikely. It's hard to know to what extent the oral tradition surrounding Jesus was of the type described by Bultmann and later subscribers to formgeschichte or a much more carefully monitored transmission of the type detailed in Bailey, Bauckham, Gerhardsson, etc. But that it's all "completely lost" is just unrealistic. Jesus' teaching on divorce, for example, is attested in Paul, Q, and Mark.

Vorkosigan

It's pretty clear that Mark knows Paul, and Paul didn't obtain that from Jesus, but from his own imagination.

Steven Carr

I see.

Paul 'To the married I give this command (not I, but the Lord): A wife must not separate from her husband'

So Jesus taught that a woman could not divorce her husband?

How did Jews remember a teaching that a woman could not divorce her husband?


That would be like Americans remembering that there were 50 states in the US. An astonishing feat of memory, and every American would certainly know who it was who first taught them that. Because people who teach that there are 50 states in the United States of America stand out in your memory.

Kapyong

Gday,

So you keep saying over and over.
But you conspicuously never explain why it failed so dismally in the case of Jesus' alleged teachings.

Why did Jesus' teaching of the Lord's Prayer fail to be accurately recorded by this alleged 'controlled communal process' ?

Why did Jesus' speeches fail to be accurately recorded by this alleged 'controlled communal process' ?

Why do you keep ignoring the evidence that the oral tradition FAILED to accurately record Jesus' teaching, while repeatedly asserting how teachers of the time recorded sayings using a 'controlled communal process' ?

Approximately how many times do you think you'll have to repeat your un-evidenced assertion before it erases the fact that your much-vaunted 'controlled communal process' FAILED in Jesus' case?

A dozen ? A Hundred?
Can you give us a ball-park figure at least ?

Or will you simply put me on ignore and never answer at all, ever?


K.

Grog

There's no evidence of how this "controlled communal process" operated or even that it did. Who controlled it? Jesus? Did he have the disciples memorizing lines as they marched from village to village? And did it include the narrative? "Do not forget that I first wrote in the dirt before delivering my words of wisdom." To me, the problem with this line of thought is that I don't see how it applies to newly emerging material within a brand spanking new community dealing not only with teachings, but narrative story that has just occurred. In an established cultural setting, with teachers and storytellers and a shared cultural and historical background, say a village setting, I can see where stories could be passed on through generations with surprisingly few alterations. But those are composed stories, not eyewitness remembrances of events that had occurred.

I see the argument that this occurred "via a controlled communal process" to be an easy fix to a problem. I do not think that "oral tradition" can adequately fill the gap between the 20's and the 60's with any degree of accuracy, not in the way that bible scholars have asked of it for decades now.


You keep taking "the oral tradition surrounding Jesus" for granted. You haven't established that it existed. You haven't established that Q existed either for that matter. Goodacre has made a decent case that it did not. Appealing to Q ought to be put in brackets or something.

I leave Bultmann aside, I do believe that of your two (false dichotomy) options, the Bultmann option is the only one that makes sense contextually. The latter option though requires a proposed mechanism for how that would have occurred. The disciples witness Jesus performing an exorcism. Did they then all get together and collaborate on what really happened? "No, it was right here that the pigs squealed and ran into the sea." Or did they all just bow to Peter's view? How accurate was Peter's view? After establishing that, how did they control the view of all the other people around? Little Boy 1, "Well, I threw a rock and hit a pig and they all ran away. Everybody was making some big fuss about it."

Controlled transmission has problems right out of the gate. Controlled transmission occurs with institutions, social structures of some standing, stability in the community. All the sources you will cite for controlled transmission had all the trappings of a social community that Jesus's purported band of wanderers did not have.