Is there an evidence-based argument for oral tradition behind the gospels?

[Kunigunde Kreuzerin]

This is question begging or confirmation bias. We need external data, independent of the gospels, to test the interpretations. The arguments are fine if we begin with the belief in oral (other) traditions as the sources of the gospels.

My OP is about historical method. It's an attempt to point to the (sharp) difference between the way valid historical inquiry handles documents and the general assumptions and methods that I think have generally characterized gospel studies.

I agree that there is no "evidence", objectified or measured by historical methods. But what does that do for you? I completely agree with what Ulan, Roger and others wrote in the "It's all yours"-thread in response.

[Ben C. Smith]

This is question begging or confirmation bias. We need external data, independent of the gospels, to test the interpretations. The arguments are fine if we begin with the belief in oral (other) traditions as the sources of the gospels.

My OP is about historical method. It's an attempt to point to the (sharp) difference between the way valid historical inquiry handles documents and the general assumptions and methods that I think have generally characterized gospel studies.

I agree that there is no "evidence", objectified or measured by historical methods. But what does that do for you? I completely agree with what Ulan, Roger and others wrote in the "It's all yours"-thread in response.

(Who is Roger?)

[DCHindley]

Selected books relevant to NT research on Oral tradition, from Lee Edgar Tyler, Juris Dilevko, and John Miles Foley, “Annotated Bibliography.” Oral Tradition, 1:767-808. 1986. It takes Foley’s original bibliography to 1985, with annotations, and there may be something in there from Crosstalk2 discussions in the decade before and after 2000 CE:
DCH

I have read quite a few of the above and it is their model and methodology that I question. You are content to simply point to them as authorities rather than address the logic of an argument?

I could quote a small bibliography of scholars who have also challenged their methodology, and a longer bibliography of historians (and a few OT scholars) who criticize and reject the methods and assumptions of the authors above. In fact I'm reading Van Seters now whose criticism of Bultmann's assumptions and method are exactly on point.

But then we'd just be arguing authorities with each other. I was wondering if anyone would be open to questioning the conventional wisdom, or at least trying to defend it and in so doing make the arguments and rationales clear.

I sometimes like popcorn when I watch the show.

So, I notice that there are a lot of statements that this or that characteristic indicates oral or written sources, etc., and it made me think of the annotated bibliography that had been published in segments, over time, by bona-fide academic scholars in peer-reviewed journal(s). The annotations, which largely or entirely represent the views of the scholars who compiled the bibliography, indicate that 1) there has been a progression of consensus opinions about the value of the various researchers' contributions, and 2) that different rules seem to apply to the preservation of oral versus written traditions.

A complete list, which includes the contributions of scholars who deal with folklore and oral traditions that are not specifically addressing NT Gospel traditions, was supplied to you a while back, at your request, and I think that I also uploaded a copy to this list as well.

We all seem to be stuck on the level of Bultmann, or become fixated on the shortcomings of his POV, which has been surpassed by later scholars or studies who start from the ground breaking studies of M. Parry on characteristics of Homer and A. Lord on Serbo-Croatian guslars (singers of traditional songs, much like bards did with Homer in Antiquity).

All this was discussed in-length, in Crosstalk2, in the 1990's, due to J D Crossan's use of it in his Birth of Christianity.

IMHO, to reject that there was any oral tradition simply because it is unverifiable is silly. In a largely illiterate culture just about everything people knew came about by means of oral retelling. Even the literate elite listened to the written literature in public and private recitations. This is where we might learn something from scholars who study living oral traditions and how they are preserved, and modified in the retelling. Then there has to be a point when oral traditions get written down, and so we can learn something from scholars who study the preservation, transmission and modification of written sources by succeeding authors or scholars. There are, apparently, differences in the processes of preservation involved.

If we are really curious about how early Christians *likely* preserved their lore and traditions orally, or how early Christian written sources were *likely* transmitted, we should be looking at research done by people who do not normally deal with Jewish or Christian literature, as they are *less likely* to succumb to the kinds of intense confirmation biases that we encounter in the field we are interested in here. The scholars who study these things (Homer, Serbo-Croatian song preservation) may also have them, but they are of a different nature, and not so intensely held as "we" love to do.

DCH (skipping coffee this morning ...)

[Bernard Muller]

to Neil,

Bernard, you relate a very graphic narrative of so much by so many that was going on behind the scenes, and I am sure you insist that every detail is verifiable from the holy writ itself, but as for me -- I don't know how anyone would go about verifying any of it. It is all hypothetical. The data is interpreted in a way to make it work -- confirmation bias, or something like that.

When you adopt a very high level of criticism, then nothing can be accepted as true. Everything is doubted for a variety of reasons.
Yes, most details I proposed are backed up by evidence. Confirmation bias? faulty interpretation? Can you be more specific? Did you at least read the four webpages I gave links to?
Even if you don't know how anyone would go about verifying any of it, that does not mean it cannot be done, if someone takes the time to check what I wrote on my website and decide if my reconstruction, with all supporting arguments, has a good probability to be correct, according to the available evidence, even limited and greatly biased for most of it.

PS: gMark is addressed mostly to Gentiles. So it would be expected if "Mark" invented that Galilean preacher, he would have him emphatically preach to Gentiles, telling them the Kingdom is also for Gentiles. Nope, only to Jews. And why have Jesus crucified as king of the Jews for Gentiles Christians?
Paul, who definitively dealt with Gentiles, do not have Jesus as servant/minister to Gentiles, only to Jews.

Cordially, Bernard

[FransJVermeiren]

A brief reaction to the OP.

The historical core of the first gospel (Mark) are events of the Great Rebellion, and Jesus’ rebellious activity during that war. Because Mark couldn’t safely describe the real course of events after the catastrophic defeat and in an extremely hostile Roman empire, he wrote an encrypted narrative of this major conflict of his time. One of his encryption techniques is the antedating of the events by 40 years, his ‘under Pilate’ camouflage. This chronological intervention created the ’30 to 70’ gap, which numerous scholars have tried to fill with oral tradition theories. As the author of GMark deemed the events he described so important, it is obvious that he wrote his account shortly after the events.

How can you prove that hypothesis? I don't know how it could be done without question begging and confirmation bias.

Your remark on question begging and confirmation bias sounds utterly defeatist. You discredit my (and probably any other) theory beforehand, suggesting that any progress, let alone a breakthrough, in the research on the origins of Christianity is impossible.

Vestiges of the war in the gospels is one of the pillars of my theory. I have worked this out extensively elsewhere, I only give a few examples here.

• If groups of 100 and 50 are subdivisions of the army (War Scroll), can the 5000 (of the miraculous feeding) who are subdivided in groups of 50 and 100 be soldiers? And if Josephus speaks about 5000 revolutionary soldiers ‘bringing their own provisions’, could these be the same soldiers who have plenty to eat?
• If Jesus ‘prophesies’ in Mark 13:2 that the magnificent buildings on the Temple Mount will be destroyed, is this warning more plausible in 29 CE or in 69 CE?
• If in Luke 19:42 Jesus sighs that at that moment the Jews didn’t see road to peace, doesn’t he say simply then that they had chosen the road to war?
• Isn’t Luke explicit about the war in his version of the Synoptic Apocalypse?
• Isn’t the Gadara story – a raid into a region with a different ethnic majority – more plausible during the civil war (with a major ethnic component - see Josephus) than in the peaceful 30’s?
• Why do Jesus and his followers depart from Galilee in shock?
• Isn’t there the threat of Roman destruction in the Lazarus story in John 11:48? More plausible in 29 or 69 CE?
• Isn’t there an interesting Jesus/Lazarus combination during the war in Josephus?
• Isn’t there in a chronological continuity in Luke 11:51 from the beginning (Abel) until Zechariah, who was murdered in the Temple during the war?
• If an ethnic opponent of Jesus is afraid to be killed by the latter, isn’t this story more plausibly placed during the civil war? (see my recent thread ‘A murderous civil war event in the synagogue of Tiberias?’)

There is more, much more than this, not only in the New Testament, but also as the result of combined reading of the NT, Josephus, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the OT Pseudepigrapha and the Apostolic Fasters.

The literary device the gospel writers have used to safely pack their story is narrative encryption. I have only recently started to follow this line of inquiry, but IMO it is revealing. The gospel writers (and to a certain extent also Paul) have camouflaged the real course of events and their real intentions using different encryption techniques. Up to now I see the following:
1. The use of the apocalyptic writing style (Revelation, Synoptic Apocalypse, Didache XVI, …)
2. The use of code words (thlipsis, seismoi, kosmos, Babylon, ...)
3. The use of anti-Roman cryptograms (see Norman A. Beck, Anti-Roman Cryptograms in the New Testament)
4. Duplication and multiplication (in Revelation)
5. Antedating (Mark’s ingenious ‘under Pilate’ construction)
6. Dehistoricizing, in the sense of removing to a great extent (but not totally!) the war circumstances of the events
7. Singling out or spotlighting Jesus.

[Kapyong]

Gday all

GThomas gives an impression of such a source

Yup, sounds like an oral source.

I don't understand this reasoning. We have a heavenly being saying lots of stuff to his disciples, and they ask him some questions.
How is any of that evidence for an oral tradition of sayings?

Well, because :

• The Intro says "These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus has spoken, and Didymos Judas Thomas inscribed them."
• And most verses start with "Jesus says:"

Or did I miss your point ?

Yes, someone wrote that Jesus said a list of things. And that someone said Judas Thomas wrote them down. But that's not an oral tradition, is it? That's an author writing out a set of sayings and pretending to be Judas Thomas.

The sayings are delivered by a heavenly spirit being, not from an oral tradition.

A text can say anything, but we need something independent from the text to verify anything it says. We don't have evidence that a spirit being gave those sayings, nor that they were sourced from oral tradition, nor that they were written down by Judas Thomas.

All fair comment Neil. Of course we must be sceptical and seek verification.

I just agreed that a set of sayings of Jesus that was later written down "sounds like" an oral tradition - oral sayings that got written into a Gospel. Isn't that what the OP asked for ? As distinct from say, G.Luke clearly having written sources.

I'm not claiming certainty at all, because of course it's not necessarily true, and you have pointed to characteristics which make it doubtful.

Which leaves Papias as probably the best evidence for a "living voice".

Kapyong

[Kapyong]

Gday Bernard,

Bernard, you relate a very graphic narrative of so much by so many that was going on behind the scenes, and I am sure you insist that every detail is verifiable from the holy writ itself, but as for me -- I don't know how anyone would go about verifying any of it. It is all hypothetical. The data is interpreted in a way to make it work -- confirmation bias, or something like that.

to Neil,
When you adopt a very high level of criticism, then nothing can be accepted as true. Everything is doubted for a variety of reasons.
Yes, most details I proposed are backed up by evidence. Confirmation bias? faulty interpretation? Can you be more specific? Did you at least read the four webpages I gave links to?
Even if you don't know how anyone would go about verifying any of it, that does not mean it cannot be done, if someone takes the time to check what I wrote on my website and decide if my reconstruction, with all supporting arguments, has a good probability to be correct, according to the available evidence, even limited and greatly biased for most of it.

I agree with Neil.
I would put it like this :
your reconstruction may be reasonably consistent with the evidence, and may be self-consistent;
but,
it is one reconstruction, your reconstruction - it is not the reconstruction of history.

Also Bernard, you've been promoting your web-site for a decade or more (and have done some good work there) - Neil knows what you have to say, I know what you have to say, almost everyone here knows your arguments and has read from your site, although perhaps not every word. No-one here is going to read a page of yours now and react with "oh, now I get it - you were right all along Bernard". Just sayin'

Kapyong

[MrMacSon]

.
Bernard's argumentation is merely based on narratives that are not supported by evidence external to or separate from them.

[Kapyong]

Gday Neil,

I think my wishy-washy phrase 'sounds like' did more to confuse than explain.

I meant more like 'has the form of', or 'has the surface appearance of';
rather than 'seems to be good evidence for'.

Kapyong

[Bernard Muller]

to Kapyong,

your reconstruction may be reasonably consistent with the evidence, and may be self-consistent;
but, it is not the reconstruction of history

How do you know my reconstruction cannot reflect history?

No-one here is going to read a page of yours now and react with "oh, now I get it - you were right all along Bernard".

That's because almost everybody interested by the topic have preconceived ideas. And if what I show on any particular page (even if I made great effort to provide evidence to support my conclusion) does not match their ideas, they won't say I am right, or at least, a good chance to be just that. But, regardless, some just accepted my reconstruction or part of it as having validity:
http://historical-jesus.info/50.html (Extracts of comment from readers of my website
Just to show that, along the years, my work has been (enthusiastically) appreciated.)
See also http://historical-jesus.info/49.html

Cordially, Bernard