Ethnographic studies of oral story-tellers have shown how much their stories
can change and vary over time, lengthening and embellishing as the occasion
takes them. It's an active medium of transmission and not a static,
perserving medium. Aboriginal oral traditions varied considerably over time
because they were dynamic maps of life and custom NOT inherited
to-be-preserved-at-all-cost cultural items. I don't believe that oral
traditions had much of a role in the OT or NT since the main sources came
from literate backgrounds - Moses, prophets/priests, David, Solomon, etc.
The real issue is the amount of scribal reworking the various texts have
undergone. For example I've read that the vastly inflated ages of the
patriarchs are due to changes in numbering systems in the life-time of the
original texts and the confusion they caused scribes. Another example is the
strong parallels between the Synoptics - unlikely to be the result of oral
transmission since almost exact wording is involved with idiosyncratic
glosses - that suggest two main sources, Mark and Q.
Our Bible itself has an obscured history.
Adam
>From: mortongr@flash.net
>To: "Vandergraaf, Chuck" <vandergraaft@aecl.ca>
>CC: asa@calvin.edu
>Subject: RE: oral tradition
>Date: Thu, 22 Jul 1999 19:40:17 +0000
>
>At 09:54 AM 7/22/99 -0400, Vandergraaf, Chuck wrote:
>
> > I don't think that this is a convincing argument. In the case you
> >cite, a visual component may have had just as great or even greater
>effect,
> >by having aboriginal mortuary apprentices observing the tradition and
>then
> >passing it on to their apprentices. In that way, the transmission of
> >information would be different from the oral Genesis account. Visual
>images
> >are very powerful; that's probably why most instructions come with
>graphic
> >components. In fact, a lot of instructions (e.g., replacing the toner
> >cartridge in a laser printer) now often come without text.
>
>You make oral tradition sound like a bad memory assignment from 3rd grade.
>Have you ever seen a story teller from the South? They tell oral tales.
>But they don't just sit there like lumps on a log verbalizing the tale.
>They move, they gesture, they act out, they change their voice. Oral
>tradition always involves the visual.
>glenn
>
>Foundation, Fall and Flood
>Adam, Apes and Anthropology
>http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
>
>Lots of information on creation/evolution
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