Oral Tradition

Question 1

What is the oral tradition?

Answer 1

• Story about patriarchs that were passed on by word by word of mouth, from one generation to another, until the point where the living tradition developed into a written tradition.
• Christianity did not begin with books but with oral preaching.
• Process probably began due to eyewitnesses spreading + retelling stories - messages they had heard from Jesus who was a preacher, not a writer.
• Mark wrote gospel in AD 60, and Jesus preaching occurred around AD 30. Leaving a time period between material, open to debate about what happened to Jesus teachings and the reliability of the stories.

Question 2

JG von Herder

Answer 2

He drew biblical scholars attention to the origins of Christianity, and suggested that doing these times Christianity was speed by word of moth, passed down through generations to keep faith alive.

Question 3

Reliability of the oral tradition?

How could memory be trusted? If stores were being retold again & again, surely people would vary or exaggerate certain points.
Also: Jesus spoke in Aramaic, yet in early christianity few eyewitnesses spoke the language so the stories were lost certainly told in Greek? - Word lost in translation?

Answer 3

Dr Darrel Bock:

• He argues that the nature of the time meant folklore stories were prominent into the community.
• Rote memorisation was important skill as many were illiterate.
• This would mean anonymous public skills of memorisation would be much stronger due to the fact they were immersed in an oral world.
• Therefore material we had today can be reliable.

Question 4

Form Criticism:

Answer 4

• As the 19th century approached, scholars tried to understand the idea that the Gospel periscopes originated from oral traditions, but they idea held no penetrative power as there was no way of proving that an oral phase had existed.
• 20th century idea of oral tradition made a breakthrough called form criticism.
  They used the Gospels to find ou more about the oral period, & concluded that there was no original text but an unlimited number of varying forms or narrative, each influenced by the oral period.
• They believed the test were not created by individual writes but grew among the anonymous people during oral period.

Question 5

Why the oral tradition was written down:

Answer 5

1) Eyewitnesses dying - key part of OT. e.g. Peter during the reign of Nero.
2) Many Christians being persecuted whilst living under Roman occupation - gave hope & something to cling onto.
3) As the Church grew & Christianity expanded. People converted to different religions. This brought different practices & way of thinking. Christianity faced THREAT OF HERESY - urged need for a written gospel to show that false beliefs created were in fact wrong.

Question 6

Stories written down from oral sources hold a particular character:

Answer 6

All of the Synoptic Gospels are formed within contexts where they are needed & used, which is known as Sitz I’m Leben.

• It is this reason why synoptic gospels all vary slightly and why the evangelists are known as editors.
• Mark = written in view that parovsia was imminent
• Matthew - places less emphasis on the immediate second coming, but ensures his readers would be prepared for Jesus return. Discipleship.
• Like - written as an apologia at the time of Roman rule to show they had nothing to fear.

Question 7

Gospels also have a lot of things in common:

Answer 7

• Ultimately main source of information came from the anonymous public word of mouth.
• In the case of Matthew and Luke, Mark was the basic source which is another reason they contain similar information, and Mark’s main source came from the oral tradition during early Christianity, linking the information from the three Synoptic gospels together closely.