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Loading...I have been discussing some of the many problems with assuming that oral traditions are passed along intact, without significant change, in oral cultures. In graduate school we all learned that they are and did, so that, for example, the fact that we might have a saying of Jesus or story about him in a source 50 years removed from his life isn’t really a problem. It would have been kept intact from the beginning without being changed. That’s how oral cultures work and always have worked.
Nope. Not true. At least based on the hard-core research that actually examines the question. My previous two posts have marshaled some of the evidence. Here I continue on the theme, again in an excerpt from my 2017 book, Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne).
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Given these realities (that oral traditions are constantly changed when told and retold in oral cultures), as attested by numerous anthropological studies, why is it that people in literate cultures so often claim that people in past oral cultures had phenomenal memories and worked hard to recount the details of their past with great accuracy and consistency? As one expert in orality, the renowned cultural historian Walter Ong answers: “Literates were happy simply to assume that the prodigious oral memory functioned somehow according to their own verbatim textual model.”[1] [That is, since we can compare two sayings/stories in writing verbatim – word for word – we have a sense of what “the same” means that people in oral cultures do and did not]
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Would you say that John 14:26 is tantamount to an admission that the christians at the time the gospel was written were aware of different versions of Jesus stories and sayings, and that this verse was an attempt to make that problem go away: “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything and remind you of all that I have said to you.”
May well be! Or at least htey were wondering how anyone in their day could possibly be getting jesus’ words right…
I’ve read your book about whether Jesus really existed as an historical figure. I have no trouble accepting that he did.
In my mind that means (in large part) that the evidence for Jesus’s existence is at least as strong as the evidence of other historical figures that we have no trouble accepting as fact.
One can always question whether the evidence is strong enough. To me it’s extremely important that our beliefs be as consistent as possible, that a given belief fits better – than its contrary – with things that we have evidence and reasons to uphold that are as strong or stronger than those for the given belief. And also that the belief implies other “facts” that can be a test (though not one of the same rigor as the “hard” sciences) of whether the given belief “works.”
An example of a test -while not conclusive – might be that the Christian religion eventually flourished.
Would you consider this overall approach to be a valid and important way of deciding whether Jesus existed?
I don’t think the flourishing of a religion can tell us anything about the alleged founder. It can tell us how s/he was remembered later, but false memories are a very big deal in flourishing religions. Religions can be founded on complete falsehoods and still do well.
Just to dilate a bit on Bart’s reply, I think you can make a decent case that the keys to Christianity’s flourishing didn’t have a whole lot to do with the existence of the historical person. Everyone agrees Paul was a key figure in making Christianity a global phenomenon, rather than an obscure sub-sect of Judaism that might well have died out in relatively short order. But by his own account, Paul didn’t know much about the actual living person, and based his teaching about Jesus on his own visions and revelations. Many of what we now think of as core Christian doctrines are probably not things the historical Jesus really taught. So arguably the flourishing of Christianity has more to do with the fictional character created by the later community, even if that character was, as Hollywood says, “based on a true story.”
Hi Bart, your last three series of posts are winners.
Just made time to read them. Been busy writing and re-writing my most recent series of 6 posts at historyhijackers.com. Especially appreciate your revisiting your literary hits (& misses).
Of the three series, I find the first closest to my themes. To imagine Jesus as non-apocalyptic is to miss his messianically redemptive Jewish point. That point was a key attractant when St. Paul opened the doors of diaspora synagogues to the uncircumcised. By universalizing the formerly exclusive Jewish franchise, Paul also opened the door to the emergence of the Christian God of Love. As I argue in my posts, that God (and denial of His existence) eventually led to the ideals of liberal democracy for a global, multicultural, science-friendly, middle class. How precarious those ideals now seem.
I also appreciate your point in the third series. Another key to Judaism’s persistent power was its priesthood’s precocious mastery of an abjadic alphabet. Scribes used it to write stories in prose. The historical complement is in India. Their oral traditions gave rise to the Ramayana and Mahabharata (and the Caste system). One consequence: Hindutva just now challenges Islam as a politically dominant tradition.
OK, now for my question(s):
The links to Biblia by Logos are great. I hadn’t noticed them until your series on apocalyptic vs. non-apocalyptic Jesus. So, how do you do that? Do you pay them to link to their website?
Thanks and Best Regards, Walt
Hmm.. I didn’t know there *were* links! So I guess I’mnot paying them1
Or as the old saying goes, “That joke gets better every time I tell it.”
I recently found a set of interviews/lectures of Israel Finkelstein about early Hebrew history. He argues that the early stories in the Tora: of the Patriarchs, the Exodus, and the unified monarchy of David and Solomon, were likely created/edited/compiled in Judah, after the fall of Israel to the Assyrians. He postulates that many scribes and priests from the north fled to Judah and brought with them northern traditions. Finkelstein says that there is no physical evidence of a unified kingdom. In fact, the northern kingdom appears to have been much larger and more prosperous. Finkelstein concludes that the stories of Solomon’s grandeur are more aspirational than historical. They represent what the Judeans hoped would be, not what had been.
In the case of the Tora, there were several centuries between the events in the stories and the actual written accounts. It seems to me something similar is happening in the 50 years between the life of Jesus and the written accounts in the gospels. And that this same “aspirational” form of remembering is unavoidable.
Does the literature on memory support this idea that our remembering is often skewed toward a future we desire, or aspire to?
Yes, it does. The views Finelstein lays out are controversial, of course; but just about all views of the formation of hte Pentateuch and the historical books of Scripture are controversial (meaning simply that there’s no concensus).
Sometimes memory can be confusing, even when the events are very recent. As I read this post, something else came to mind—a recent piece of information that feels tangentially related. Please forgive this deviation, but it resonates in my mind. This year 2024 marks the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s death. Allow me to briefly digress.
Puccini’s final opera was left unfinished. In 1926, Arturo Toscanini directed its premiere at La Scala in Milan. During the first performance, Toscanini chose to conclude the opera at a particular moment, purportedly the last bar written by Puccini himself. Turning to the audience in the packed theater, with perhaps two thousand people present alongside the press, Toscanini uttered “we don’t know exactly what”. We’re still unsure of his exact words. Something like “Here the opera ends because, at this point, the maestro died.” In the different accounts, sometimes there’s a reference to Puccini health, to Puccini sudden and unfortunate death, sometimes not, etc.
It’s intriguing to note that despite the event being well-documented, there remains uncertainty about Toscanini’s precise statement. This highlights the complexity of memory and historical interpretation.
Si parva licet… of course…
Hello, Bart,
What are your thoughts on the following? That one must depend on Jesus and his salvation and you must remember it daily, to give your life into his hands, to surrender yourself completely, that without him you are lost, that you are nothing. The words he uttered makes people feel worthless without him.
How did these ideas get born out of the text of the NT?
Careful manipulation. 🙂