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Oral Tradition

Oral Tradition. A Senior Seminar Presentation By Charity Stratford. The Oral Tradition. It was all spoken when it started. Common understanding was that words held great power Sound cannot be stopped without disappearing--resists stabilization Sound and language were an action

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Oral Tradition

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  1. Oral Tradition A Senior Seminar Presentation By Charity Stratford

  2. The Oral Tradition • It was all spoken when it started. • Common understanding was that words held great power • Sound cannot be stopped without disappearing--resists stabilization • Sound and language were an action • The Hebrew word dabar means both ‘word’ and ‘event’ • The hunter and the buffalo (Ong)

  3. The Israelites • Deuteronomy 6:6-9 These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

  4. The narrative: the overriding verbal art form above all others • An account must be given of what the human race learns and understands so it is not forgotten; the best way that humans have dealt with this handing down of knowledge and history has been through the development of a narrative that is told repeatedly.

  5. The Odyssey and the Iliad • Homer: an aoidos, or ‘singer’ • The passing on of the narratives was moral, educational, and entertaining • One MUST understand this oral background in order to appreciate the narrative and the role it has played.

  6. Followed formulas and mneumonics • Fixed epithets • Goodly Odysseus, black ship, windy Troy, king of men Agamemnon • Aided memorization, added life • Verbalizing of knowledge with close reference to the human world • Names of leaders, political divisions in conjunction with activity • Catalogued ships to represent line of kings • Connective Devices

  7. The Impact on the Gospels • “Few academic fields are, or will be, as deeply affected by orality studies as biblical, and especially New Testament, studies.” --Werner Kelber

  8. Mark • Sequential • connective devices, reiteration of clauses, themes and words, and doublets and triplets • ευθυς • Connective device meaning “immediately” • Sometimes coupled with καὶ • Used as an adverb or, more commonly, a conjunction

  9. Concerns real people and events • consistent plots, resolved conflicts, fulfilled prophecies • human condition, faith, God’s rule, ethics, and possibilities for change • Story elements • narrator, setting, character, plot, rhetoric

  10. What has changed? • Study • We study now, but they did not study then; study is reliant upon written text • Experience • Relationship and communication between storyteller and hearer • How we view Jesus • Seen through text instead of the telling of his actions and words • High importance of historical accuracy

  11. WHY does this matter? • The way we often deal with the Scriptures gives no credit to the telling of the story and it must; we are the hearers.

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