I hope my explanations, qualifications and justifications of that comment have gone some way to further understanding our positions.Ben C. Smith wrote:Well, especially with regard to oral transmission, you wrote:neilgodfrey wrote:I have tried to explain my concerns but obviously not clearly because the same inferences about my reasons keep recurring. I have no ideological or presumptive opposition to lost sources or oral transmission and I am at some loss to understand why you keep implying that I do.
Perhaps you were distinguishing between oral transmission and oral tradition somehow.neilgodfrey wrote:By studying the gospels as literary wholes one gains a clearer perspective of exactly what those individual sayings were intended to convey. Forget form criticism and memory theory. I would also say forget oral tradition theory. Read them as literary texts. Acknowledge their evident literary sources and relationships.
For me, "tradition" means something a little more formal than a vague "something" or transmitting mere "information". You are welcome to read my comments about oral culture and oral sources.Ben C. Smith wrote:For me, tradition is simply the act of transmitting something on from one person to another and from the older generation to the younger (or, alternatively, from those more experienced to those less experienced). Oral tradition is that process undertaken by the spoken word rather than by the written word. By itself, the term does not imply special schools or methods beyond the usual human ways of remembering information.
Those quotations are explaining how literary units are isolated and that is a necessary step to establishing the parameters of a passage that is then, in the following step, to be form critically evaluated. But the very same process is used to isolate the units for other purposes, too -- including literary criticism.Ben C. Smith wrote:That blows my mind. The catchword thing is classic form criticism. Here, virtually at random, is a snippet from the Form Criticism entry at Encyclopedia.com:neilgodfrey wrote:Ah, perhaps we have different ideas about what we each mean by form criticism. Joining passages by catch words is not something I would consider part of the form of a unit (forms such as healing stories, ...). They are units that are used to unite a narrative -- as you yourself say, they are ways of organizing the sayings.
Method. In order to attain this objective, the method requires that these three steps must be taken: (1) the literary units must be isolated; (2) they must be classified according to types; (3) their place of origin and transmission must be determined.
Isolation of Units. For the purpose of isolating the literary units, the Gospels offer data sufficiently firm for laying the foundations of a working hypothesis. The Gospels give clear evidence of being collections; they are compositions in the sense of being composite, made up of preexisting parts. This can be seen in the grouping of units around a common theme, in the repetition of certain catchwords, and in certain numerical arrangements (groups of three each, seven each, etc.); the transitions, the literary sutures, the framework around the units, etc., can easily be apprehended.
But we can't just assume that because there are a series of small units joined together that those units derived from any particular source, let alone "a tradition". I happen to think we have evidence for arguing those units were derived from literary sources on the whole (not all of them).
Form criticism is the criticism of forms, I believe. It assumes the existence of "pure forms" as the original form of various types of literary units. To the extent that those pure forms have been apparently corrupted or modified the critic can trace the history of the saying through respective community interests over time and place.
What it would take to blow my mind would be equating form criticism with the techniques of isolating literary units especially when the same techniques are used for isolating units for other types of criticism as well.
I can only repeat that I don't see any form criticism in any of your examples so far, but only redaction or source criticism. I have explained why I think they are at odds. Literary critics who argue against form criticism on methodological grounds do indeed engage in redaction and source criticism as absolutely fundamental. Your own examples, "specific arguments" that I have attempted to address, are examples of redaction criticism and are classic examples of what a literary critic might do.Ben C. Smith wrote:Ignore the specific arguments for a moment, though. You were asking about the principle of form criticism being accommodated with literary criticism. Can you see at least the potential for form criticism intermingling with literary criticism in this context? Suppose we have decent evidence that some of the sayings were transmitted orally before being collected, while others were collected from more literary sources. And suppose we have evidence of Marcan redaction here and there throughout the section. I would say that in such a situation we could easily and profitably do form criticism, literary criticism, and redaction criticism all pretty much at the same time, attempting to unravel what it all looked like before the sayings were collected and/or before they were incorporated into Mark. Do you at least agree with the potential here?
Well I cannot jump to do it "now" given all your conditions that you might on reflection note are all grounded in implicit assumptions of a certain model of gospel origins. But catchwords are indeed found in a variety of literatures, including our own today (and probably even your own writing), and in the types of ancient literature that liked to string otherwise unrelated units together into a single episodic narrative. But the conditions you impose, some might notice, are in fact derived from one of your quotations that in fact is itself arguing from the perspective of a tendentious interpretation that cannot otherwise conceive of alternative non-oral tradition or oral-source explanations. Another of your quotations was also circular, if I recall. But to get into this detail is a discussion that I must postpone for another day. I would need to put other tasks on hold to refresh myself of the details and take the time to prepare the arguments.Ben C. Smith wrote:I would be interested in an example or two from you now. Mainly for clarity, since we have obviously misunderstood each other a number of times here. What is a text or passage which is organized by catchwords and (key point for me here) not by logical connection, and which you would say evinces evidence of purely literary origins?neilgodfrey wrote:Catchwords are also a feature of the literary works of the day. So catchwords alone don't necessarily point us in either direction.
Certainly more "formulaic" as is implicit in form criticism.Ben C. Smith wrote:And I think your view of oral tradition was/is far more robust and official than mine is.