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Re: Have any scholars who claim that the Gospels' narratives originated as oral traditions studied oral traditions?
Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 9:41 pm
by MrMacSon
neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Mon May 15, 2023 8:22 pm
from page 8 of the article:
Dunn's argument is to some extent circular: he assumes that the gospels are historical, based in
part on the reliability of oral tradition; and he assumes the reliability of oral tradition based in part
on the historicity of the gospels.
Just before that statement, Dykstra quotes Thomas L Brodie:
[Dunn] makes an impassioned plea for attention to oral tradition, but his case is based on a presumption: 'We simply cannot escape from a presumption of orality for the first stage of the Jesus tradition' (2003a: 157). Dunn does not discuss how ancient writers composed their texts. His leading example of a text allegedly shaped by oral tradition (Lk. 7.1-10; cf. Mt. 8.1-13; Jn 4.46-54) is in fact heavily dependent on the text of the Elijah-Elisha narrative [Birthing of the New Testament, p.57].
Re: Have any scholars who claim that the Gospels' narratives originated as oral traditions studied oral traditions?
Posted: Mon May 15, 2023 9:51 pm
by MrMacSon
Brodie also points out that, even in the unlikely event that in 1 Corinthians Paul admits to being secondary to community-based oral tradition, the statement might not actually be literally true. The epistles are carefully crafted literary creations just as the gospels are, and their historical veracity is just as subject to questioning and verification:
If the gospels are so suspect historically, then on what basis is one so sure of the historical reliability of a particular reading of an epistle? It is not only the gospels which are artistic, rhetorical. Evidence grows that, to some degree, something similar is true of the epistles [Birthing, p.58]
Ultimately, Brodie accomplishes his purpose in this section of the chapter. He effectively shows that proponents of oral tradition have amassed arguments that are only sufficiently forceful to convince those who are inclined to be convinced. But an unfounded theory may still be at least plausible. And so he goes on from there to make the case that this theory is also "unworkable."
Unworkable
By "unworkable" Brodie means that however the oral tradition theory has been formulated, it does not fit the evidence. Either it is couched in such vague terms that there is no way to test it against the evidence, or it can be tested against the evidence and fails the test. Many conceptions of how oral tradition works are as vague as Rudolf Bultmann's blithe statement that in oral cultures "The literature ... springs out [
entspringt] of definite conditions and wants of life." As Brodie observes, "Bultmann never explained how this springing process works." As presented by Bultmann and many others, oral tradition is little more than a way to assert a phenomenon exists without actually having evidence for it, and to explain it without actually explaining it.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/ ... ykstra.pdf,
p.9