Loading...Do people in oral cultures “remember” things better, and work hard to memorize what they learn?
The other night I was hanging out with a friend and she started talking (in a context unrelated to the New Testament) about how oral (non-literate) cultures always worked so hard to preserve their communal memories of the past, by passing along traditions that would not change since, of course, they had no way to preserve them in writing. I simply nodded my head and let her get on with it.
I was tempted to tell her that I had written a book about memory, how it works and sometimes doesn’t, how oral cultures preserve traditions, and sometimes not so well, etc.. I decided not to mention it to her; didn’t matter in the context.
My book Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2013) is, in my personal opinion,
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I know the apostles were illiterate but wonder if the Roman Room Method of memory retention could have been of common usage.
Also, as an actor I have typed scripts to memorize and have found it difficult to do so, however, when I record the script and play it back, I’m able to retain the lines much better. So, I can imagine people from antiquity reciting words to each other.
Disciple 1: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.
Disciple 2: Say that again please.
Disciple 1: Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers.”
Disciple 2: Okay what I heard you say was Abraham was the father of Isaac, Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Jason.
Disciple 1: Almost. You said Jason instead of Judah and you forgot to add and his brothers. Let’s say it again. If you get it right this time, you get a smoked fish and I’ll take that thorn out of your foot.
Disciple 2: Oh boy!
I”m afraid it wasn’t widely used outside the realm of the intelligensia. I Deal with these issues in my book (memorization in oral cultures)
Bart, for what it’s worth, I thought Jesus Before the Gospels was a fine book, and an important one for its challenge to the conventional wisdom about the supposed perfection of memory and transmission in pre-literate cultures.
Perhaps a better title would have been “Remembering Jesus.”
Yup. With a subtitle indicating it was about Memory!
Given the number of years between Jesus’s life and death and when stories were written down I think it’s probable that writers were writing about people living in their parents’ or grandparents’ generation. Add that their parents were passing stories from another country and in a different language and I’m surprised if anything could be remotely accurate. When I try to imagine writing about events that happened in my parents’ generation I can clearly see how inaccurate my writings would be.
I could definitely get on board with the idea that things were much simpler during that time, and the stories being very incredible. Unlike today where there’s so much information coming at us from all different directions and things like ESPN. I can imagine people arguing about details of how they heard the story or what went on first, and I think, possibly these details show in our gospels today as far as Luke, not telling the story of Jesus, going to Egypt, or Jesus rebuking Peter, before the transfiguration on the mountain in one gospel, and then another gospel rebuking him after The Transfiguration on the mountain.
I sincerely appreciated and enjoyed Jesus Before The Gospels. When I used to think apologists were honest and did their homework, I thought oral cultures must have been better at memorizing, much like your experience with undergrads. I was apparently slow to look into the research until I listened to a Great Courses lecture series by Indre Visknotas explaining the considerable body of peer reviewed evidence supporting the fallibility of human memory.
Yup, it’s an impressive body of evidence.
I’m sorry, it’s kind of an irrelevant point to the main subject, but I can’t help but wonder why the f&$k a publisher wouldn’t be interested in promoting a book of yours!??? Your books are really amazing. By the way, in Greek I can only find “Misquoting Jesus” (“Παραφράζοντας τα λόγια του Ιησού”) and your book on Dan Brown’s corruption of history. It’s such a tragedy that Dan Brown is more popular in Greece than you! Unfortunately, Enlightenment has yet to hit my country!
It’s true in AMerica too! Though, well, these days he’s pretty much passed from the scene.
I don’t want to rehash the argument we’ve had before, because it’s better to engage with my sources than with me, but here’s a quick run-down. As long as what you mean by an “oral culture” is a culture _such as_ a group of non-literate first century Judean fishermen, we are not going to disagree. We will also not disagree about the fact that no culture ever preserves absolutely everything in memory perfectly and forever (although we may well disagree about whether any suggestion that they _do_ is a mere strawman or not). However, I hope you would concede that none of the knowledge you gained researching _Jesus Before the Gospels_ qualifies you as an expert on, say, oral tradition in hunter-gatherer societies, and that on such a topic people should place more weight on the words of people who have studied that specifically, rather than yours.
I”m only knowledgable insofar as I have read extensively the works of those who are experts in precisely those fields. In my book I deal with anthropologists such as Jack Goody and Jan Vansina, who have extensive field experience and very persuasive evidence. Whom are you thinking of that shows these cultures maintained oral tradition accurately, and what is their evidence?
Well, first we need to establish what we mean by “accurate”. If you insist that “accurate” means preserving absolutely everything in memory, as though doing so were effortless, then you are holding oral cultures to an impossible standard. Oral cultures do not preserve everything, they preserve what’s important to them, and they are able to do so far more accurately than most literate people would expect. Many researchers who admire Goody and Vansina and cite them extensively will agree with me on that.
The reference I have given you before is Lynne Kelly, _Knowledge & Power in Prehistoric Societies_ (Cambridge University Press, 2015). In addition to this academic publication, Kelly’s popular audience work is highly informative and not to be dismissed. See also the work of Patrick Nunn (with whom Kelly has collaborated), among others.
Please note that these researchers do not see themselves as overturning the work of Goody, Vansina, etc, but as building on their foundation. Last time this topic came up on the blog I wrote to Kelly, and she said of Vansina, “I am a huge admirer and a thorough reading of his work cannot lead to the conclusion Ehrmann seems to have reached”.
Did Lynne Kelly read my treatment of Vansina or was this a response to your summary of it? I very much don’t think I misreported Vansina’s views; most of my treatment involves quoting what he says and summarizing. I’m not sure if you read my chapter on it, but if you did I’d love to know what I misrepresented. Also, if you did read it, you will know what I mean about “accurate” and see that I have a full discussion of the issue. If in fact you did mis-explain what I say about Vansina to Kelly, I would very much appreciate you following up with her and set the record straight.
It was my paraphase of something you wrote in a May 2022 blog comment. I shared it in the context of asking for advice on how to respond.
I am sure you are much more guarded in your published work. But at least when writing informally, you’ve sometimes made assertions about oral cultures that are contrary to fact. Just as people sometimes overcompensate for fundamentalism by embracing mythicism, there is a danger of overcompensating for one wrong view of oral cultures by embracing a view that is just as wrong in the opposite direction.
After I explained that your main interest was in how much stories about Jesus might have changed before being recorded, Kelly was much more open to the likelihood of finding common ground with you, writing “I would support his caution about my work being [misused] to justify accurate retention of Jesus stories. My knowledge of Biblical evaluation is very limited. I suspect I would agree with him on almost everything.”
It is not possible to convey the full context in a 200 word comment, but does that put your mind at rest?
OK, thanks. It sounds like you’re interested, so I’d suggest you read what I say n my analysis. I’d be very suprised if you find I’m taking an extreme view that isn’t supported by the scholarship, but if you do, let me know. (It’s also possible that my summary sounded like it meant or was saying something more or other than it actually did: I find that happens a lot) (I’ll give you an example in a completely different field: I often say that the story of the woman taken in adultery is not found in any Greek commentary on John until the 12th century. That’s absolutely true. But then a reader will say I’m completely wrong because this or that church father actually mentions the passage in, say, 6th century. That may be absolutely true too — but I’m not talking about mentions of the passage in other writings but Greek commentaries on it. Most readers probably don’t realize the difference, but it’s a huge one and significant; if one isn’t reading carefully, it appears to be a mistake.)
I think that’s precisely right … then add the fact that misunderstandings in a dialogue can come from either party. So if the topic is whether oral cultures make an effort to accurately transmit knowledge, I might say yes and you might say no, but in truth we are working with different definitions. _To you_, “accurate” means “verbatim” and “knowledge” means “historical records”, whereas _to me_, those words mean something more nuanced. _To you_ my claim may appear to be refuted by Vansina, Goody, et al, but _to me_, your citation of them to refute my claim is a misrepresentation, because you’ve projected your definitions onto me.
In a book you can devote a section to explaining what you mean by “accurate”, and declare everything else outside its scope, but in a dialogue you don’t have that luxury, and neither party’s definition can be asserted by fiat. If we are wise we will acknowledge that we are talking about different things.
I think that you sometimes fail to be as mindful of this as you should be, and I hope that’s a criticism you are willing to take on board.
I”m only knowledgable insofar as I have read extensively the works of those who are experts in precisely those fields. In my book I deal with anthropologists such as Jack Goody and Jan Vansina, who have extensive field experience and very persuasive evidence. Whom are you thinking of that shows these cultures maintained oral tradition accurately, and what is their evidence?
I read Jesus Before the Gospels, and after reading today’s blog, checked out our library’s eBook copy again – my recall, retention faded. It will interweave with Chernow’s Washington; it took me four years to read Ron’s Alexander Hamilton: I do remember Chapter 26 was about my 4th great grandfather, William Findley. Otherwise, Hamilton details remain sketchy which corroborates the point of your book. I have to read eBooks as my eyes aren’t what they once were either. Great book – JBTG !
In my experience, the oral history fallacy you speak of is especially prevalent among the Christian apologetics community. It’s always good to have a paper copy of “Jesus before the Gospels “ around to lend out to your apologist friend when they make this argument and want proof of your refutation.
When I think of the accuracy of oral tradition, I see parallels in folk song. One might think that words that are sung might be more faithfully passed down as the rhythm and rhyme would tend to “lock in” the original words. Not so. “Bonnie Barbara Allen,” arguably the most performed folk song in the English language, exists in nearly two hundred variations. Some changes centered on translations from Scottish dialect to English; some involved modernizing archaic words. But some changes just seem random, including storyline modifications. Even the accompanying music has morphed into three distinct tune families. We might expect that because the song dates back to only the 16th century, writing it down might have stopped the changes. Nope. Very little of our memory – cultural or individual – is photographic.
I read ‘Jesus Before the Gospels’ (https://www.bartehrman.com/jesus-before-the-gospels/) and found the title intriguing; which is why I read it. So, maybe the title is not all bad but a subtitle could be good with your second printing. I was very pleased to learn about your research into the memory credibility of illiterate societies. I appreciated your presentation of your results of the academic findings so I did not have to do it myself–that could never have been as well done. In my view, you stressed again the need to consider separately each book of the anthology we call the Bible as each one is a product of a separate memory trajectory with its own message/theology. In a way, that makes me less of a critic of the NT as it is really the New TestamentS; i.e. plural. I hope you have a follow-up to that theme.
Thanks. Given the sales of the first printing, I don’t believer there will be a second. 🙂
I have just read through chpt 8 of your “Jesus Before the Gospels”. Your defense of the value (literary, inspirational, ethical, etc.) of the memories represented in the gospel texts brought to mind a phrasing I had read in Borg and Crossan’s “The Last Week”. “[Mark} is a weaving of early traditions, history remembered and “prophecy historicized.”” (From the study guide for the book.) Certainly, if the ‘prophecy historicized’ characterization has any validity, there could certainly be a mix of memories and the application of OT prophecies in the formation of the stories that come down to us. Jesus as the new Moses, and the descriptions of ‘the suffering servant’ of Isa 53, to bring to mind only two elements, seem to allow for less reliance on the ‘history (of Jesus’ words and deeds) remembered, and the conscious fabrication of stories designed to defend the claims about Jesus as ‘Messiah’ to those Jews who weren’t buying those claims.