Lately, I've read a few books that deal, at least in part, with the origins of the biblical New Testament. My favorites include Bart Ehrmann's Jesus, Interrupted and George Lamsa's New Testament Origin. Ehrmann's work tries to review basic, consensus scholarship on the gospels and New Testament evolution, while Lamsa's work from the mid-20th century argues that the original New Testament was written in Aramaic and that we can still read it in the Peshitta. What I most love about the relationship between these two books is that they address a common statement made by certain Christians of today: Christians have always agreed/thought the same way and now liberals are changing everything. First of all, Ehrmann's book, while not dismissing the sentiment, clearly shows that on what Christians may have agreed is vastly different than modern "traditional" Christians like to think. Secondly, Ehrmann does thoroughly make the case that Christians have not always agreed. Prior to "orthodoxy," Christianity was all over the place; and since the establishment of orthodoxy, still plenty of Christians have lived outside consensus theology and scholarship. Including, perhaps, George Lamsa. Lamsa's argument about the origins of the New Testament falls outside the consensus scholarship Ehrmann describes, not just in the main argument but in smaller streams of thought as well, making a comparison fascinating.
For me, the most fascinating element of comparing the two works is how they treat oral history. Ehrmann follows the course that most moderns would: oral history is unreliable. Therefore, he says, a generation or two between Jesus's life and the writing of the first gospel is like a game of telephone. We can't rely upon accurate details. It is generally understood that the gospel writers weren't writing down absolute fact. Lamsa doesn't contradict the conclusion but, as a necessary part of his argument, suggests that oral history and traditions are reliable.
I remember back to my seminary days, too, reading a bunch of introductory books and textbooks on the Bible, each with their own take on oral tradition's reliability. Most of them assume that we all agree that keeping history orally is like playing telephone. At the end of the telephone line, you get something close, usually, but nonetheless humorously different.
There's a funny scene in Curb Your Enthusiasm (you can assume it's inappropriate, then) where Larry David is at a party and his friend Susie is playing telephone with some kids. The first game ends with, "My dog has fleas," but started, "The garden has trees." Then Larry joins the game and it ends, "I love tits," but started, "I love pigs." Interestingly, it apparently remained "I love pigs" all the way to Larry, four people down the line, and it was only Larry's perverse mind, while staring at a woman's bosom, that changed it. In my experience that scene captures how the game often plays out. Rarely are the words all changed, as in the first game seen, and sometimes none are changed. If any words are changed, it's probably only one. If more words than that are changed I usually questioned whether someone did it on purpose to spice up what is normally a lame game, even for kids.
Even supposing oral history is like telephone, then, it doesn't necessarily mean oral history and tradition are unreliable. The difference by the end, supposing no one has purposely changed the story, will be minimal or non-existent. Now, Ehrmann does suggest that some scribes, let alone those passing on the story orally, purposely altered the story for it to make more sense to them. That makes sense to me. But Ehrmann goes on to say that scholars can generally piece together what the original or consensus version was because of the number of manuscripts we have. By reading them all together, a good scholar can see what was changed and why. My question, which is why I've never bought the argument against oral history, is that the same process would surely apply to oral scribes. Would not one teller of the story, in hearing an altered version, then seek to correct the altered version?
Indeed, the conception of an oral tradition as a game of telephone is wrong. It is not. Rather, it would be like a group of players sitting in a circle and one saying aloud to the second a phrase, asking for the second person to repeat it back, and then only if the first person hears what they said can the second person then say aloud the phrase to the third person, repeating the same process. Cultures whose stories and traditions have been passed on orally would agree. Every family or tribe assigns a person to be their storyteller apprentice, whose job it then is to learn the stories from the current storyteller. The current storyteller ensures that the apprentice learns the stories word for word.
Before I continue, let me disassociate any of what I'm saying from an analysis of Ehrmann's review or Lamsa's argument. I don't intend to pick one over the other or prove or disprove anything. Ehrmann is still right that the gospel writers had purposes other than fixing fact. He's right for all the other reasons he lists other than the "obvious" case of oral tradition's unreliability. All I want to say is that oral history is, can be, and should be extremely reliable--at least, equally as reliable as written history.
Whether you know it or not, you have personal experience with oral history's reliability and accuracy. If you don't, I'll share a story that you can claim as your own. I'm sure, though, that my kid can't be so unique as to be the only one who remembered or remembers stories.
My oldest son, Sebastian, was in such a hurry to learn how to read that he learned how to fake it. At the age of three, he had us read one of two stories every night. Kids have favorites, that's for sure. Parents have to deal with it. My coping mechanism was to do voices for characters and to read the story the way I wanted to read it. What I mean by that is that, in a few places, I reworded the story because obviously I know better than the author. Week after week, we'd read one of these two stories, oftentimes both. Eventually, after a couple of months, Sebastian corrected me. It was a Cars related story and I had read, "Doc was not happy." Those were and are the actual words on the page. Funnily enough, those were words I thought should have been changed to, "Doc was furious," so Sebastian had heard me read it that way for a couple of months. His correcting me, then, was actually incorrect. He wanted me to say, "Doc was furious." I must have been tired that night because I then accidentally skipped a page and Sebastian noticed that I had missed something. When I turned back to the right page, Sebastian then placed his index finger at the beginning of text and said, word for word, the words typed there.
I went to bed that night praising our son to my wife because he could read. I didn't even need to teach him! My wife wondered aloud whether he had just memorized the story. So the next night I asked Sebastian to read the story to me. He agreed, opened up, and began to read the way he had read the missed page the night before. His index finger moved along the page with the words. A prodigy! Unfortunately, six or seven pages along, I realized my wife was right. Sebastian would pause after he turned a page, look at the picture, and then "read." He was using the pictures as cues. And the act of moving his finger, I realized, was learned from me. I was in the habit of reading that way to him to show him that the words coming out of my mouth were printed on the page. It became evident that he was simply reciting how he learned the story and the act of reading from me because there were parts he got wrong. In one case he skipped a whole sentence and was a little surprised when he thought he ended the page's text but there were still words left to read. Occasional words and phrases were changed, even from my version, that could only have been the result of a faulty memory.
Despite my initial disappointment, I was still and remain amazed. At three years old his memory was incredible. Sebastian could "read" the other favorite book in the same way. In terms of length of text, I would guess that each book comprised about one fifth of the gospel according to Mark, if not more. If a three year old can do that simply because he likes some stories, what about someone whose been tasked with remembering and telling stories about the one who saves us from sin and death?
There's no evidence that I know of that anyone in early Christianity was chosen or tasked to be the community's storyteller. I don't think that changes anything because oral tradition was ubiquitous. Besides, we have no problem accepting Homer's epic poems or, closer to modernity, actors' renditions. From what I remember, Homer lived and composed his poems a good five hundred years prior to either of them being written down. Perhaps scholars don't care whether the Homer we have was the original Homer--I don't care, either--but literature scholars also know that poetry uses cues to aid oral recitation. Indeed, poetry may have evolved the way it has because of, first, the need for memorization for oral recitations and, second, the development of the printed word. Shakespeare wrote in iambic pentameter for a reason. Not only was it a style but it also helped actors remember their lines. If you get stuck with a word or two, you just need to know where you are: if you've ended on an unstressed syllable, your next word must begin with a stressed. Pictures, like the ones Sebastian used, or like the stained glass adorning most older churches, are the best cues, but poets and storytellers always used cues within the text itself. While still impressive, Sebastian's memorization is in no way unique. If he didn't have pictures, he would have found other ways to memorize his favorite stories.
Sebastian needed the story repeated many times over for him to remember. No doubt the same would have been and is true for oral storytellers. That doesn't at all limit the breadth of what oral tradition could encompass. Again, we can look to actors performing in a troupe. In the days of Shakespeare, especially, and even now for those traveling troupes still operating, actors have a bunch of plays stored away in their memory. How many depends on the troupe. What's incredible, though, is that each actor would need multiple parts memorized for each play, in case of illness and also to give the director leeway for creativity. It's not as if the amount of repetition to memorize all four gospels, for instance, would then be superhuman.
My experience with my son does also prove, one could say, the unreliability of oral tradition and history. My changing "not happy" to "furious" does affect the meaning. To not be happy simply means the absence of happiness whereas "furious" states an active emotion. It's slight but no less important. Sebastian's skipping and changing words also matters. With that said, he was three; if I wanted to correct him, I could have; and he had plenty of years ahead of him to get it right, if we cared.
Aside from the fact that I learned we should read more of the Bible to our kids at night if they have such propensity to memorize, what really matters here is that, if you're reading or listening to someone making arguments about biblical history, biblical formation, or other historical developments, don't let them base their conclusions off an unreliability of oral history and tradition. To do so is to make a conclusion off a poorly thought out bias.
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