In his book How Jesus Became God Dr. Ehrman writes the following: 

“Some people today claim that cultures rooted in oral tradition are far more careful to make certain that traditions that are told and retold are not changed significantly.  This turns out to be a modern myth, however.  Anthropologists who have studied oral cultures show that just the opposite is the case.”

The wording Dr. Ehrman uses, “changed significantly” and his challenge to this, suggests that Dr. Ehrman is claiming oral traditions, like the ones that eventually made it into the gospels, have changed SIGNIFICANTLY.

Dr. Ehrman then provides a footnote to the assertion.  If one turns the pages to the cited sources, one finds three. Dr. Ehrman notes that “among the classic studies are” Alfred B. Lord, The Singer of Tales; and Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The technologizing of the Word; then “for a recent survey of all the important studies” Stephen E. Young, Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers.

I have read each of these works, and not a single one, as far as I can tell, is on how stories change during oral transmission.

The first two “classic studies” are not on orally transmitted history but on “Homer’s” epics, which was intended as poetry, not history, and provides no parallel to the gospel traditions.  What’s more, the studies refer to societies that are completely illiterate–that is, the written word has not even been invented.  As far as I can discern, these studies have zero relevance to the gospel traditions, which were written within a few decades of the events they describe (and therefore not parallel to our written copies of Homer’s epics) and the context described was not completely illiterate, since writing was clearly invented and, to some extent, known.

The last citation is only a little better.  It compares phrases from the gospels with a couple very early Christian writings, like 1 Clement.  The proposed analysis of the work is to see whether the author of 1 Clement was reliant upon any written documents when giving, “words of the Lord”.  That is, when he gave “quotes from the Lord”, was he quoting from a gospel, or from another source (another written document lost to us?  Oral tradition?).  Young’s conclusion is, I believe, no.  His conclusion is based on the fact that the author of 1 Clement presents teachings parallel to those we find in the gospels but worded slightly different: a passive of “show mercy” in one might be an “active” in another.   

However, nowhere in his work could one reach Dr. Ehrman’s conclusion that in oral cultures there is “significant change”.

I ask two things from would be responders:

1) Please note, this OP is not about whether orally transmitted history can, in general (i.e., from other professionals), be described as significantly malleable.  I am asking whether Dr. Ehrman has given his readers (and, given the work was one of his “popular” publications, the majority of them would never even look at the sources cited, let alone read them!) sources that corroborate his assertion that in oral communities we find stories changing “significantly”.

and this leads to my second request:

2) Please make yourself familiarized with the three citations.  If I have missed a critical paragraph or sentence that substantiates Dr. Ehrman’s assertion, please provide it.  If you have an itch to respond without having read any of them, well, it’s a free forum….but, maybe, just maybe, ask yourself, “Why am I responding when I haven’t read?”