Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§8.3 The Tradition
f. Werner Kelber
To Werner Kelber is due the credit for being the first NT scholar to take seriously
the distinctive character of oral tradition as illuminated by a sequence of
studies from classicists, folklorists, and social anthropologists. 139 Characteristics
include 'mnemonic patterns, shaped for ready oral recurrence', 'heavily
rhythmic, balanced patterns, in repetitions or antitheses, in alliterations and assonances,
in epithetic and other formulary expressions, in thematic settings,
... in proverbs'. Typical of oral performances were variations on what nevertheless
were recognizable versions of the same story, with some more or less
word-for-word repetition in places, both fixed and flexible formulaic elements,
and so on. 140 Kelber drew attention to similar features which had already been
observed in the Jesus tradition: 'the extraordinary degree to which sayings of
Jesus have kept faith with heavily patterned speech forms, abounding in alliteration,
paronomasia, appositional equivalence, proverbial and aphoristic diction,
contrasts and antitheses, synonymous, antithetical, synthetic, and
tautologic parallelism and the like', miracle stories 'typecast in a fashion that
lends itself to habitual, not verbatim, memorization'. 141 And in his description
of oral transmission he fully acknowledges his indebtedness to earlier studies.
'Oral thinking consists in formal patterns from the start'; 'formulaic stability'
particularly 46). But the model assumes later historians (like Luke) seeking out and inquiring
of those, like Peter, the women at the cross and tomb, and the family of Jesus (65-91), who
could remember the original events and exchanges (cf. Luke 1.1-4). Byrskog, in fact, has no
real conception of or indeed role for oral transmission as itself the bridging process.
139. The earlier contribution by the Seminar on 'Oral Traditional Literature and the
Gospels' passed largely unnoticed, mainly, I suppose, because it functioned in service of the
theme for the overall Colloquy on The Relationships among the Gospels (ed. W. O. Walker;
San Antonio: Trinity University, 1978) 31-122. L. E. Keck reviews earlier work and summarizes
the Seminar's discussion ('Oral Traditional Literature and the Gospels: The Seminar', Relationships
103-22). In contrast, Kelber's book provoked a lively discussion in L. H. Silberman,
ed., Orality, Aurality and Biblical Narrative, Semeia 39 (Atlanta: Scholars, 1987), and
J. Dewey, ed., Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature, Semeia 65 (Atlanta:
Scholars, 1995).
140. W. J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982; London:
Routledge, 1988) 33-36, 57-68. The work of A. B. Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1978) has been seminal (here especially ch. 5). Note also R. Finnegan, Oral
Poetry: Its Nature, Significance and Social Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1977)
ch. 3, especially 73-87; also 90-109. See also A. B. Lord, 'The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature',
in Walker, Relationships 33-91 (here 37-38, 63-64, 87-89); and the overview by D. E.
Aune, 'Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World', in Wansbrough,
ed., Jesus 59-106 (with bibliography).
141. Kelber, Oral 27; see also 50-51. Of course, Gerhardsson notes similar characteristics
in rabbinic oral transmission (Memory 148-56, 163-68).
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