Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Back in Crosstalk2 (XTalk) days, I summarized scholars and their works relevant to NT research on oral tradition, drawing on “Annotated Bibliography, Lee Edgar Tyler, Juris Dilevko & John Miles Foley, Oral Tradition, 1:767-808. 1986. (Takes Foley’s original bibliography to 1985, with annotations), and from Crosstalk2 posts and Amazon reviews:

Olrik 1909 (CP)
Axel Olrik. "Epische Gesetze der Volksdichtung." Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum, 51:1-12. Trans. Jeanne P. Steager in The Study of Folklore. Ed. Alan Dundes. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1965. pp. 129-41.
A basic study setting out many of Olrik's famous laws of structure in oral folk-narrative in many different traditions. Repetition is tied to laws of three, four, two to a scene, contrast, initial and final position, and concentration on a leading character. Stresses the consistency of occurrence of these patterns.

M. Parry 1928a (AG)
Milman Parry L'Epithète traditionnelle dans Homère: Essai sur un problème de style homérique. Paris: Société Editrice "Les Belles Lettres." Trans. by Adam Parry as "The Traditional Epithet in Homer." In The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 1-190.
One of the two requisite theses for the doctorate degree at the University of Paris. Casting aside the contemporary Analyst-Unitarian debate over one or many Homers, and proceeding with the aid of then current linguistic studies (e.g., Duntzer 1864, 1872 and Ellendt 1861), he broaches and painstakingly illustrates his theory of a traditional diction that evolved over hundreds of years of verse-making. First defines the formula as "an expression regularly used, under the same metrical conditions, to express an essential idea" (MHV, p. 13) and posits the substitutable phrase he names the formulaic system. Also discusses generic and ornamental epithets, the process of analogy in the creation of formulas, thrift in formulaic style, the problem of originality and predetermination, and the use of epithets in poems composed in nontraditional style. His rigorous methodology involves a great many examples. This essay marks the foundation of oral-formulaic theory, although at this point (in 1928) Parry does not make the connection between traditional structure and orality.

M. Parry 1928b (AG)
Milman Parry. Les Formules et la métrique d'Homère. Paris: Société Editrice "Les Belles Lettres," 1928. Trans. by Adam Parry as "Homeric Formulas and Homeric Metre." In The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Ed. Adam Parry. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. pp. 191-239.
The second of the doctoral theses traces certain metrical irregularities in Homeric verse to the juxtaposition of and morphological change within formulas. Argues that the traditional style, consisting as it did of epitomized phrases with limits on their variability, could present the poet with a choice between imperfect expression of his ideas or a metrical flaw effected by the compositional technique itself. In this way the tradition sanctioned occasional cases of hiatus and overlengthening and preserved the minor infelicities as part of the formulaic technique.

Bultmann 1957 (BI, CP)
Rudolf Bultmann. Die Geschichte der synoptischen Tradition. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des Alten und Neuen Testaments. Neue Folge, 12. Heft. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht, 1957. Trans. by John Marsh as The History of the Synoptic Tradition. Oxford and New York: Basil Blackwell and Harper.
*A methodologically pre-Parry study of oral tradition in Gospel materials. Interested in recovering the synoptic tradition that preceded and gave shape to the gospels, he describes a number of laws or tendencies of oral composition and transmission (espec. pp. 307-43, trans.) reminiscent of some of Olrik's laws of folk narrative. Conceives of tradition as the inevitable complication and growth of smaller to larger units. Sees no incongruity between oral and written media, and so postulates a smooth transition from oral tradition to written text.

Lord 1960 (AG, SC, OE, OF, BG, CP, TH)
Albert B. Lord. The Singer of Tales. Harvard Studies in Comparative Literature, 24. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Rpt. New York: Atheneum, 1968 et seq. Rpt. Harvard University Press, 1981.
The major work in the field of oral-formulaic theory and oral literature research, from which approximately 80% of the works cited in this bibliography directly derive. Its influence has been felt in dozens of literatures (see the area index to this volume). The general method is to illustrate by analogy the presence of oral traditional structures in ancient and medieval poetry from traditions that no longer survive: working from the firsthand experience of SC oral epic, he demonstrates analogous patterns in Homeric epic, Old English verse, Old French chanson de geste, and the Byzantine Greek Digenis Akritas. After a brief introduction, he describes the learning process through which a SC guslar passes in the appropriation of his craft_first the stage of listening, then the boy's initial attempts at singing, and finally the more mature singer's skilled performance of a repertoire of songs with a degree of individual control over ornamentation and development to suit the circumstances of the given situation. In Chapter 3 ("The Formula," pp. 30-67), he uses Parry's original concept of the tectonics of phraseology to illustrate the morphology of diction in SC epic, adding such factors as syntactic balance and sound patterns, in an effort to show how "the poetic grammar of oral epic is and must be based on the formula" (p. 65). The fourth chapter is devoted to a study of theme and its multiformity, the building block of traditional song at the level of narrative. Explains how this unit "exists at one and the same time in and for itself and for the whole song" (p. 94), discussing such issues as narrative pattern, verbal correspondence, variation, and inconsistencies. Chapter 5, "Songs and the Song," treats the notion of multiformity on the level of the whole poetic work; he confronts the problem of "variant" versus "source" by explicating the traditional dynamic behind the composition of each performance-text: "Each performance is the specific song, and at the same time it is the generic song. The song we are listening to is `the song'; for each performance is more than a performance; it is a re-creation." (p. 101). In the sixth chapter he examines the different sorts of encounters possible between writing and oral tradition, emphasizing the mutual exclusivity of the fixed text and oral composition. In the last four chapters the principles developed to this point are applied to study of the AG, OE, OF, and BG traditions, illustrating the inherent explanatory power of oral-formulaic theory in reading some of our most important ancient and medieval texts. From the last part of the book emerges the relative significance of the traditional nature of oral epic: "Oral tells us `how,' but traditional tells us `what,' and even more, `of what kind' and `of what force.' When we know how a song is built, we know that its building blocks must be of great age. For it is of the necessary nature of tradition that it seek and maintain stability, that it preserve itself. And this tenacity springs neither from perverseness, nor from an abstract principle of absolute art, but from a desperately compelling conviction that what the tradition is preserving is the very means of attaining life and happiness. The traditional oral epic singer is not an artist; he is a seer." (p. 220).

Gerhardsson 1961 (HB, BI)
Birger Gerhardsson. Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis, 22. Lund: C.K. Gleerup, 1961.
*Proposes the memorization of a fixed and consequent oral rote transmission by disciples in connection with the rabbinic schools and the New Testament. Describes memorization followed by interpretation as a major pedagogical principle throughout history. The process involved elements arranged associatively to facilitate remembering, an ancient method of ordering oral traditional materials. Written notes were sometimes used to aid in learning texts, as was the practice of recitation with a rhythmical melody. Jacob Neusner's forward to the 1998 reprint of this book apologizes for his scathingly negative review of the initial edition.

Kenneth Bailey. _Poet and Peasant: A Literary Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke_ Eerdmans, 1976.
*"Gives … an in-depth look at how Bailey formulates his views on scripture. He goes into how scripture passages are analyzed where the first verse or verses are essentially repeated in concept if not in the exact words in a later section of scripture in a structured manner. This assists the Bible student to better understand concepts and the thought process of the author. It is really "dry" at times and you will visualize yourself back in a literature course studying the poetic rhyme schemes of ancient Greek literature. To have an idea what Bailey is talking about in this and other books you need this information as a basis. At the same time, he really gives the reader a glimpse of the 1st Century AD culture and how it affects the interpretation of the parables. He also addresses how other academics analyze sections of the Bible. Bailey often refers back to this book in his analysis of scripture in his other writings." Review of 1983 combined edition by "Jim" http://www.amazon.com/Poet-Peasant-Thro ... 3RD3KCD4JR (see below)

Lord 1978a (BI, SC, AG, BY, CP)
Albert B. Lord. "The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature." In The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Ed. William O. Walker, Jr. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. pp. 33-91.
Applies oral methodology to the gospels, locating generic life-patterns of a mythic nature common to oral texts. Also discusses each gospel as a traditional multiform and undertakes a comparative analysis of traditional motifs and verbal correspondence among the Matthew, Mark, and Luke texts.

Gerhardsson 1979 (BI)
Birger Gerhardsson. [Evangeliernas förhistoria] The Origins of the Gospel Tradition. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
*Considers the problem of the origins and history of the tradition from the time of Jesus to the appearance of the written texts, with a discussion of the oral aspects of the Torah tradition.

Kelber 1980 (BI)
Werner H. Kelber. "Mark and Oral Tradition," Semeia, 16:7-55.
*Although fully acknowledging a pre-Markan synoptic oral tradition, he takes as his central thesis that "the gospel is to be perceived not as the natural outcome of oral developments, but as a critical alternative to the powers of orality" (46). Thus he disagrees with Bultmann's (1957) hypothesis of a smooth, organic transition from orality to writing and posits instead a shift from collectivity to individual authorship and a "crisis" of oral transmission brought on by the retreat of Jesus' oral presence into a necessarily textual history. Notes the oral traditional features of Mark's gospel (formulaic and thematic patterning, variants with other gospels, modulation in the order of events with relation to other sources) and the fact that Mark's chirographic enterprise went on in a milieu that included a contemporary synoptic oral tradition. An imaginative and stimulating article that takes account of current research on oral literature.

Kenneth Bailey. _Through peasant eyes: More Lucan parables, their culture and style_ Eerdmans, 1980
*"[A]nalyzes in detail parables in Luke (The Two Debtors 7:36-50, The Fox, the Funeral, and the Furrow 9:57-62, The Good Samaritan 10:25-37, The Rich Fool 12:13-21, Pilate, the Tower, and the Fig Tree 13:1-9, The Great Banquet 14:15-24, The Obedient Servant 17:7-10, The Judge and the Widow 18:1-8, The Pharisee and the Tax Collector 18:9-14, and The Camel and the Needle 18:18-30)." Review by "Jim" (see above).

Kelber 1983 (BI)
Werner H. Kelber. The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.
*Continuing along paths blazed by Ong outside the field of Biblical studies, he aims to illustrate the importance of the oral roots of Biblical texts and to liberate those texts from the cultural bias toward the authority of print: "We treat words primarily as records in need of interpretation, neglecting all too often a rather different hermeneutic, deeply rooted in biblical language that proclaims words as an act inviting participation" (p. xvi). Chapter 1 ("The Pre-Canonical Synoptic Transmission," pp. 1-43) reviews the theories of Bultmann and Gerhardsson and seeks to integrate the contemporary oral literature research of Parry and Lord, Ong, and others; it is concerned with establishing the phenomenology of speaking. Further chapters treat the oral legacy and textuality of Mark and Paul. Argues that "the decisive break in the synoptic tradition did thus not come, as Bultmann thought, with Easter, but when the written medium took full control, transforming Jesus the speaker of kingdom parables into the parable of the kingdom of God" (p. 220). Contains a sizable bibliography of oral literature studies and apposite Biblical research (pp. 227-47).

Kenneth Bailey. _Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke_ Combined edition of above 2 books. Eerdmans, 1983
*Combined edition of Poet and Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes.

Jacob Neusner. _The Memorized Torah: The Mnemonic System of the Mishna_ (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1985).
*Clearly describes what he takes to be the mnemonic techniques used to transmit the oral sources for the Mishna prior to it being written down.

Jacob Neusner. _Oral tradition in Judaism: the case of the Mishna_ (Albert Bates Lord studies in oral tradition; vol 1, New York: Garland Pub., 1987.)
*This was not listed in the annotated bibliography

Kenneth E. Bailey. "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels." _Asia Journal of Theology_ 5(1)34-54.
* Bailey writes, "To remember the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth was to affirm their unique identity. The stories had to be told and controlled or everything that made them who they were was lost." Ted Weeden summarizes the theory thus: " Bailey contends, on the basis of the biography of John Hogg, written by his daughter, Rena Hogg, in 1914, that the stories Bailey heard recited in the *hafalat samar* in the 50's and 60's were the same Hogg stories that Rena Hogg recounted about her father when she visited the Hogg-founded communities in 1910 seeking material to write her father's biography. From Bailey's comparison of the stories and the dynamics of control on the way the oral tradition was recited in the *hafalat samar* Bailey attended, he concluded that these oral societies had from their beginning employed a methodology which Bailey labeled as "informal controlled oral tradition," as the means by which those oral societies sought to assure the historical accuracy of the recitation of their oral tradition and its authentic and faithful transmission from generation to generation. Bailey then extrapolated from that conclusion the premise that this oral methodology historically was employed by all oral societies of the Middles East from generation to generation to preserve the historical authenticity of their oral traditions. Bailey then extends this premise to the earliest Palestinian Christian communities and posits that they must have employed that same methodology in the attempt to preserve accurately the authentic historical tradition about Jesus. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/18406 )

I got most of the information above from a file posted by Ed Tyler on Crosstalk2, although I may have added some books since then (with some annotations). I've this

For a summary of oral tradition research after 1985 but ending 1990, see "Annotated Bibliography 1986-1990" (Quick, Catherine S et al, Oral Trad 12-2, 1997, 366-484). Yes, I have the article.

Lots to chew on, for sure.

DCH

Some of these dealt directly with oral transmission of traditions that underlay the NT gospels as we have them.

An example of a scholar who claim to have researched oral tradition in support of his theories is J D Crossan (Birth of Christianity and others). When I researched the secondary sources he cited in Birth of Christianity I went away disappointed. He cherry picked from the authors he summarized to support his own portrayal, but he ignored statements that contradicted his statement of what the cited critic had described, some contradictions were in the immediate paragraphs around the citation or quote.

I think that his assertions about the accuracy of certain modern bards were also questions on Crosstalk2. It also served as the motivation for my compiling the above summaries on oral tradition. There is even a 158,000 character table of critics and their works cited in the articles I drew from. Unfortunately, phpBB has a 60,000 character limit. I'd have to break it into 3 parts. hmmmm

Here is a table of the status of the study of oral transmission up to 1985. I only post it to serve as a warning that anything wild and crazy has already been proposed. It goes back to 1909, and some of us recognize that these annotations (mostly from the books but I add a couple for Gerhardssen and Kevin Bailey) may cure many of our misunderstandings:

Scholar	Date			Titles & Descriptions
Ong	1965	1	1	Ong 1965 (BR, TH)
Ong	1965	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 80:145-54, 1965. Reprinted in his Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971. pp. 23-47.
Ong	1965	3	3	Treats habits of thought and expression which derive from preliterate situations or practice and which survive well into the time when literacy prescribes non-oral media as the dominant forms of thought and expression. Cites the formulaic and episodic structure of Tudor prose narrative as evidence.
Ong
Ong	1967	1	1	Ong 1967a (TH)
Ong	1967	2	2	Walter J. Ong. The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967. Reprint, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970 and Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1981.
Ong	1967	3	3	An expansion of the Terry lectures given at Yale (April 27-29, 1964) that deals with the shift of noetics involved in the transformation from primary oral culture to writing or to print. Concerned particularly with the phenomenology of the word as sound in a culture that depends on oral/aural communication and with the potential for information storage and retrieval presented by oral tradition (cp. Havelock 1963). Also correlates cultural development with Freudian psychosexual stages and speaks of the "new orality" of the electronic age (cp. McLuhan 1962). A brilliant and far-reaching study.
Ong
Ong	1967	1	1	Ong 1967b (TH)
Ong	1967	2	2	Walter J. Ong. In the Human Grain: Further Explorations of Contemporary Culture. New York and London: Macmillan, 1967.
Ong	1967	3	3	Discusses the development from "oral-aural culture" to modernity (pp. 14-16) and in particular the contemporary world's insights into the past, e.g. into oral tradition (pp. 24-26, 54-56).
Ong
Ong	1970	1	1	Ong 1970 (TH)
Ong	1970	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "`I See What You Say': Sense Analogues for Intellect." Human Inquiries: Review of Existential Psychology and Psychiatry, 1-3:22-42, 1970. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 121-44.
Ong	1970	3	3	Examines the visual metaphor for intellect and the aural ability as the "process sense" (rpt., p. 136).
Ong
Ong	1971	1	1	Ong 1971 (TH)
Ong	1971	2	2	Walter J. Ong. Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ong	1971	3	3	Concerned throughout with questions bearing on orality. Especially important are Chapters 2 (a rpt. of Ong 1965) and 12 ("The Literate Orality of Popular Culture Today," pp. 284-303.) In the latter he treats the "secondary orality" engendered by electronic media in comparison with the "primary orality" of preliterate cultures.
Ong
Ong	1972	1	1	Ong 1972 (TH)
Ong	1972	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Media Transformation: The Talked Book." College English, 34:405-10. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 82-91.
Ong	1972	3	3	Description of a book based on transcribed and edited interviews offers the opportunity to discuss the impact of new upon older media, especially the fixity of the word in writing and then print and the complications which result from the transition from orality to print to secondary orality.
Ong
Ong	1974	1	1	Ong 1974a (TH)
Ong	1974	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Agonistic Structures in Academia: Past to Present." Interchange, 5:1-12. Abridged version in Daedalus, 103:229-38.
Ong	1974	3	3	Sees the origins of the agonistic noetic still residual in academia in the thought patterns of primary oral cultures, with learned Latin as the intermediary. These contest rituals are attenuated in the present-day academic environment.
Ong
Ong	1974	1	1	Ong 1974b (BR, TH)
Ong	1974	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Logic and the Epic Muse: Reflections on Noetic Structures in Milton's Milieu." In Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton. Ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 239-68.
Ong	1974	3	3	*Views the Miltonic epic, characterized as it is by the survival of epic form from the oral culture of an earlier age and by the innovation of Ramist logic, as the interface between the old noetic economy of epic as an encyclopedic reference and the new "paradigmatic knowledge-storage device of the post-philosophical rationalist world" (p. 265). Includes a brief account of the function of epic in an oral culture.
Ong
Ong	1975	1	1	Ong 1975 (TH)
Ong	1975	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "The Writer's Audience Is Always a Fiction." Publications of the Modern Language Association, 90:9-22. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 53-81.
Ong	1975	3	3	Explains how writing and reading demand role-playing of certain kinds on the part of both writer and reader. The audience is created and creates itself under these rules. Compares the "two-way street" of oral traditional storytelling, in which the audience is directly engaged and persona-making is not as involved an exercise: "No matter what pitch of frankness, directness, or authenticity he may strive for, the writer's mask and the reader's are less removable than those of the oral communicator and his hearer. For writing is itself an indirection." (rpt., p. 80).
Ong
Ong	1976	1	1	Ong 1976a (TH)
Ong	1976	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Commonplace Rhapsody: Ravisius Textor, Zwinger, and Shakespeare." In Classical Influences on European Culture A.D. 1500-1700. Ed. R.R. Bolgar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 91-126. Rpt. as "Typographic Rhapsody..." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 147-88.
Ong	1976	3	3	Tracks the development of systems for knowledge storage and retrieval from the oral noetics of preliterate culture through the rhetorical remembrances of primary orality to the Renaissance commonplace collections of Ravisius Textor (Officina and Epitheta) and Theodor Zwinger (Theatrum humanae vitae). Emphasizes the visual encyclopedia of sayings as a Renaissance method of ordering the world and illustrates Shakespeare's position relative to this transitional noetic situation.
Ong
Ong	1976	1	1	Ong 1976b (BR, TH)
Ong	1976	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Milton's Logical Epic and Evolving Consciousness." Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 120:295-305. Rpt. as "From Epithet to Logic: Miltonic Epic and the Closure of Existence." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 189-212.
Ong	1976	3	3	Distinguishes the conventions of Spenser's Faerie Queene, which he identifies as owing a good deal to "oral residue" in its oral-formulaic management of epithets, from those underlying Paradise Lost, which belongs to a logical and bookish noetic economy and therefore reveals an author much more in individual control of his epithets.
Ong
Ong	1976	1	1	Ong 1976c (TH)
Ong	1976	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "From Rhetorical Culture to New Criticism: The Poem as a Closed Field." In The Possibilities of Order: Cleanth Brooks and His Work. Ed. Lewis P. Simpson. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. pp. 150-67. Rpt. as "The Poem as a Closed Field: The Once New Criticism and the Nature of Criticism." In his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 213-29.
Ong	1976	3	3	Describes the passage from an oral and agonistic noetics, perceivable after the demise of primary orality in the rhetorical arts and scholarly disputation, to the New Criticism, which focuses entirely on the printed page and replaces context with investigation of the text.
Ong
Ong	1976	1	1	Ong 1976d (TH)
Ong	1976	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "From Mimesis to Irony: Writing and Print as Integuments of Voice." Bulletin of the Midwest Modern Language Association, 9:1-24. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977. Rpt. 1982. pp. 272-302.
Ong	1976	3	3	Starting with the visual model for literature favored by our literate and typographic age, he describes oral noetics and the evolution from oral mimesis and a participatory poetics to literate irony and increasing distance between voice and work. Understands rhetoric as the residue of the oral world in its keeping the participatory noetics alive in the arts of persuasion.
Ong
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977a (TH, CP)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982.
Ong	1977	3	3	Contains, in addition to reprints (1970, 1972, 1975, 1976a, 1976b, 1976c, 1976d, 1977b), three new essays (1977c,d,e). See further individual entries.
Ong
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977b (AF, TH, MU)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "African Talking Drums and Oral Noetics." New Literary History, 8:411-29. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 92-120.
Ong	1977	3	3	*Sees the talking drum as "a kind of paradigm of primary orality" (rpt., p. 97). Explains that drum communication consists of tone sequences set in larger stereotyped expressions, that is, of formulas bearing essential ideas. Discusses oral noetics in drum talk and tale-telling in terms of (1) formulaic language, (2) standard themes, (3) epithetic identification, (4) generation of ceremonial, heroic figures, (5) formulaic appropriation of history, (6) the praise-blame dichotomy (agonistic ethos), and (7) copiousness and repetition. Emphasizes the sharing of traditional information in an oral culture versus the communication of "new" information in print and typographic cultures.
Ong
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977c (TH)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Transformations of the Word and Alienation." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 17-49.
Ong	1977	3	3	Argues that the transition from orality to writing, print, and electronic verbalization has restructured human consciousness and brought about a kind of alienation. The new media enter the mind, producing new kinds of awareness and making possible new modes of thought. Cites the evolution of learned languages, especially Latin, as indicative of the post-oral development of consciousness.
Ong
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977d (BI, TH)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Maranatha: Death and Life in the Text of the Book." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 230-71.
Ong	1977	3	3	Working within a framework of noetic history and explaining the various oral, chirographic, and typological stages in that history, he associates the written text with death, in that it preserves only the remnants of a speech act whose author may have died long ago. Discussing the concepts of retrospectivity in literature, the nature of narrative, the function of plot, and the latent fecundity of texts, he then describes the Bible, a text with oral roots, as in need of interpretation to fulfill its purpose. Compares the process of revivifying the Word of God to Christ's Resurrection.
Ong
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977e (TH)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Voice and the Opening of Closed Systems." In Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 305-41.
Ong	1977	3	3	Treats orality/literacy and structuralism as modes of thinking appropriate to the present noetic climate, and the medium of television as an example of the open/closed model of thought process.
Ong
Ong	1978	1	1	Ong 1978 (CP, TH)
Ong	1978	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Literacy and Orality in Our Times." Bulletin of the Association of Departments of English, 58:1-7.
Ong	1978	3	3	In an attempt to "review the orality in our long cultural past in order to bring an understanding of it to bear on the present literary and para-literary situation" (1), he traces the roots of contemporary "secondary" orality in the "primary" orality of preliterate cultures and explains the very different, interiorized world of writing and literacy. Suggests that sensitizing students and faculty to these differences would improve the teaching of writing.
Ong
Ong	1981	1	1	Ong 1981 (CP, TH)
Ong	1981	2	2	Walter J. Ong. Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Ong	1981	3	3	Combining sociobiology, the hermeneutics of consciousness, social anthropology, and oral theory, he probes the historical and present-day role of ritual contest as a means of identification, sexual and otherwise. Of special interest is the connection made between orality and the "agonistic noetic," a link that he explains as diachronic but also illustrates in contemporary culture. Notes that "oral modes of storing and retrieving knowledge have much in common in all cultures," that "they are formulaic in design and... tend to be agonistic in operation" (p. 123). On the continuing role of orality, see espec. pp. 123-29.
Ong		1	1
Ong	1982	2	2	Ong 1982a (CP, TH)
Ong	1982	3	3	Walter J. Ong. "Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures." In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1981 (Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk). Ed. Deborah Tannen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. pp. 12-24.
Ong	1982			*Considers the methods and psychodynamics of the storage of knowledge in oral versus written (and, later, typographic and computer-oriented) cultures. Treats the formulaic and thematic structure of ancient Greek and other oral traditions. Central focus is on the inevitable changes wrought on perception and reflection by the interiorization of writing and its sequels. Notes that in cultures such as our own "writing and print, and now electronic processes, have been interiorized so deeply that without great learning, skill, and labor we cannot identify what in our thought processes depends on our appropriation of writing and the other techniques into our psyche, and what does not" (p. 13).
Ong
Ong	1982	1	1	Ong 1982b (TH, CP)
Ong	1982	2	2	Walter J. Ong. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. New Accents series. London and New York: Methuen.
Ong	1982	3	3	This remarkable volume constitutes an expert introduction to the field of oral literature studies, a summary of Ong's own thinking to date, and a comparative evaluation of oral theories. Traces the origins of oral studies in the Homeric Question and Parry's early writings, brilliantly analyzes the psychodynamics of orality, illustrates how writing and print restructure human consciousness, describes the contributions of writing and print to the storage and retrieval of knowledge, and considers the oral story line and its relation to memory. Appends a large, eclectic, and intermittently annotated bibliography.
Ong
Ong	1984	1	1	Ong 1984 (LT, TH, PT)
Ong	1984	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Orality, Literacy, and Medieval Textualization." New Literary History, 16:1-12.
Ong	1984	3	3	Describes the interactions between orality and literacy in the European Middle Ages and discusses primary and academic orality in terms of the cultural diglossia fostered by the compartmentalization of literate and oral facets of the culture. Traces this situation to the use of Latin, which "programmatically fostered orality but at the same time was so textualized that it appeared never to have been a grammatically malleable, unwritten tongue" (11).

ABuddhist wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 6:00 amBut we have no proof that Papias was talking about our texts, only claims by later Christians, and his claims that Jesus talked about talking grapes, found in no other Christian text as far as I am aware, suggests that he was not.

But it shows that oral tradition was important and stories were collected early, including some that didn't make it. Jesus talking about grapes shows there was a bunch of 'em, maybe as many as 10,000.

We also have Luke: "[1] Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, [2] Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word"

GakuseiDon wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 2:07 pm

ABuddhist wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 6:00 amBut we have no proof that Papias was talking about our texts, only claims by later Christians, and his claims that Jesus talked about talking grapes, found in no other Christian text as far as I am aware, suggests that he was not.

But it shows that oral tradition was important and stories were collected early, including some that didn't make it. Jesus talking about grapes shows there was a bunch of 'em, maybe as many as 10,000.

We also have Luke: "[1] Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, [2] Even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses, and ministers of the word"

Fair enough about Papias. But I already implied that I knew that that GLuke claims to be based upon oral tradition - as indeed I knew.

ABuddhist wrote: ↑Sat Apr 29, 2023 4:36 am All Buddhist Suttas and sutras open with the phrase in Pali "Evaṃ me sutaṃ" or in Sanskrit "Evaṃ mayā śrūtaṃ", which in English means "Thus have I heard"; traditionally, this is supposed to indicate that the narrative's events were being recited from memory by Shakyamuni Buddha's close disciple Ananda, and certainly the Pali Suttas often seem to be oral in terms of their structure and length.

No such claim to be derived from what is heard is found in GMark or Gmatthew.

Scholar	Date			Titles & Descriptions
Gerhardsson	1961	1	1	Gerhardsson 1961 (HB, BI)
Gerhardsson	1961	2	2	Birger Gerhardsson. Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity. Acta Seminarii Neotestamentici Upsaliensis, 22. Lund: C.K. Gleerup, 1961.
Gerhardsson	1961	3	3	Proposes the memorization of a fixed and consequent oral rote transmission by disciples in connection with the rabbinic schools and the New Testament. Describes memorization followed by interpretation as a major pedagogical principle throughout history. The process involved elements arranged associatively to facilitate remembering, an ancient method of ordering oral traditional materials. Written notes were sometimes used to aid in learning texts, as was the practice of recitation with a rhythmical melody.
Lord, A	1970	1	1	Lord 1970 (SC, AG, CP)
Lord, A	1970	2	2	Albert B. Lord. "Tradition and the Oral Poet: Homer, Huso, and Avdo Medjedovic." In Atti del Convegno Internazionale sul Tema: La Poesia epica e la sua formazione. Problemi Attuali di Scienza e di Cultura, no. 139. Ed. Enrico Cerulli et al. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1970. pp. 13-28. "Discussione," pp. 29-30.
Lord, A	1970	3	3	Includes a study of the relationship between history and epic, textual multiformity, and comparative story-patterns. Argues convincingly that the search for an archetypal text in an oral tradition will always prove vain and that, at first, history is changed by epic story forms rather than vice versa. A brilliant and cogent look at the origins of epic and history.
Lord, A
Lord, A	1972	1	1	Lord 1972b (SC)
Lord, A	1972	2	2	Albert B. Lord. "History and Tradition in Balkan Oral Epic and Ballad." Western Folklore, 31:53-60.
Lord, A	1972	3	3	Suggests, as in Lord 1970, the primacy of myth in epic: "history enters into or is in its general characteristics reflected in oral epic and ballad tradition, rather than originating it" (60).
Ong	1974	1	1	Ong 1974b (BR, TH)
Ong	1974	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Logic and the Epic Muse: Reflections on Noetic Structures in Milton's Milieu." In Achievements of the Left Hand: Essays on the Prose of John Milton. Ed. Michael Lieb and John T. Shawcross. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. pp. 239-68.
Ong	1974	3	3	Views the Miltonic epic, characterized as it is by the survival of epic form from the oral culture of an earlier age and by the innovation of Ramist logic, as the interface between the old noetic economy of epic as an encyclopedic reference and the new "paradigmatic knowledge-storage device of the post-philosophical rationalist world" (p. 265). Includes a brief account of the function of epic in an oral culture.
Ong	1977	1	1	Ong 1977b (AF, TH, MU)
Ong	1977	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "African Talking Drums and Oral Noetics." New Literary History, 8:411-29. Rpt. in his Interfaces of the Word: Studies in the Evolution of Consciousness and Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Rpt. 1982. pp. 92-120.
Ong	1977	3	3	Sees the talking drum as "a kind of paradigm of primary orality" (rpt., p. 97). Explains that drum communication consists of tone sequences set in larger stereotyped expressions, that is, of formulas bearing essential ideas. Discusses oral noetics in drum talk and tale-telling in terms of (1) formulaic language, (2) standard themes, (3) epithetic identification, (4) generation of ceremonial, heroic figures, (5) formulaic appropriation of history, (6) the praise-blame dichotomy (agonistic ethos), and (7) copiousness and repetition. Emphasizes the sharing of traditional information in an oral culture versus the communication of "new" information in print and typographic cultures.
Lord, A	1978	1	1	Lord 1978a (BI, SC, AG, BY, CP)
Lord, A	1978	2	2	Albert B. Lord. "The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature." In The Relationships among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue. Ed. William O. Walker, Jr. San Antonio: Trinity University Press. pp. 33-91.
Lord, A	1978	3	3	Applies oral methodology to the gospels, locating generic life-patterns of a mythic nature common to oral texts. Also discusses each gospel as a traditional multiform and undertakes a comparative analysis of traditional motifs and verbal correspondence among the Matthew, Mark, and Luke texts.
Gerhardsson	1979	1	1	Gerhardsson 1979 (BI)
Gerhardsson	1979	2	2	Birger Gerhardsson. [Evangeliernas förhistoria] The Origins of the Gospel Tradition. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979.
Gerhardsson	1979	3	3	Considers the problem of the origins and history of the tradition from the time of Jesus to the appearance of the written texts, with a discussion of the oral aspects of the Torah tradition.
Lord, A	1980	1	1	Lord 1980a (SC, CP)
Lord, A	1980	2	2	Albert B. Lord. "Memory, Fixity, and Genre in Oral Traditional Poetries." In Oral Traditional Literature: A Festschrift for Albert Bates Lord. Ed. John Miles Foley. Columbus: Slavica Publishers. Rpt. 1983. pp. 451-61.
Lord, A	1980	3	3	Examines the role of memory in SC oral epic composition, showing the fossilization achieved through memorization to be inimical to traditional composition. Illustrates the interplay between essential idea and formulaic phraseology, probes the relative fixity of texts, and suggests that some shorter oral genres may well exhibit a stability at the level of diction because they can be memorized.
Kelber	1980	1	1	Kelber 1980 (BI)
Kelber	1980	2	2	Werner H. Kelber. "Mark and Oral Tradition," Semeia, 16:7-55.
Kelber	1980	3	3	Although fully acknowledging a pre-Markan synoptic oral tradition, he takes as his central thesis that "the gospel is to be perceived not as the natural outcome of oral developments, but as a critical alternative to the powers of orality" (46). Thus he disagrees with Bultmann's (1957) hypothesis of a smooth, organic transition from orality to writing and posits instead a shift from collectivity to individual authorship and a "crisis" of oral transmission brought on by the retreat of Jesus' oral presence into a necessarily textual history. Notes the oral traditional features of Mark's gospel (formulaic and thematic patterning, variants with other gospels, modulation in the order of events with relation to other sources) and the fact that Mark's chirographic enterprise went on in a milieu that included a contemporary synoptic oral tradition. An imaginative and stimulating article that takes account of current research on oral literature.
Ong	1982	1	1	Ong 1982a (CP, TH)
Ong	1982	2	2	Walter J. Ong. "Oral Remembering and Narrative Structures." In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics 1981 (Analyzing Discourse: Text and Talk). Ed. Deborah Tannen. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press. pp. 12-24.
Ong	1982	3	3	Considers the methods and psychodynamics of the storage of knowledge in oral versus written (and, later, typographic and computer-oriented) cultures. Treats the formulaic and thematic structure of ancient Greek and other oral traditions. Central focus is on the inevitable changes wrought on perception and reflection by the interiorization of writing and its sequels. Notes that in cultures such as our own "writing and print, and now electronic processes, have been interiorized so deeply that without great learning, skill, and labor we cannot identify what in our thought processes depends on our appropriation of writing and the other techniques into our psyche, and what does not" (p. 13).
Kelber	1983	1	1	Kelber 1983 (BI)
Kelber	1983	2	2	Werner H. Kelber. The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.
Kelber	1983	3	3	Continuing along paths blazed by Ong outside the field of Biblical studies, he aims to illustrate the importance of the oral roots of Biblical texts and to liberate those texts from the cultural bias toward the authority of print: "We treat words primarily as records in need of interpretation, neglecting all too often a rather different hermeneutic, deeply rooted in biblical language that proclaims words as an act inviting participation" (p. xvi). Chapter 1 ("The Pre-Canonical Synoptic Transmission," pp. 1-43) reviews the theories of Bultmann and Gerhardsson and seeks to integrate the contemporary oral literature research of Parry and Lord, Ong, and others; it is concerned with establishing the phenomenology of speaking. Further chapters treat the oral legacy and textuality of Mark and Paul. Argues that "the decisive break in the synoptic tradition did thus not come, as Bultmann thought, with Easter, but when the written medium took full control, transforming Jesus the speaker of kingdom parables into the parable of the kingdom of God" (p. 220). Contains a sizable bibliography of oral literature studies and apposite Biblical research (pp. 227-47).

Yes, there is a bit of repetition there, probably due to using a couple of sources. This does not include the works summarized by Dr Catherine Quick.