Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

FROM THE GOSPELS TO JESUS §8.3
and 'compositional variability' go hand in hand — 'this mid-state between
fixed and free'. 142 Oral transmission 'exhibits "an insistent, conservative urge
for preservation" of essential information, while it borders on carelessness in
its predisposition to abandon features that are not met with social approval'. 143
'Variability and stability, conservatism and creativity, evanescence and unpredictability
all mark the pattern of oral transmission' — the 'oral principle of
"variation within the same'". 144
The chief thrust of Kelber's book, however, is to build on the distinction between
oral and written, between oral performance and literary transmission, which
he draws from Walter Ong in particular. 145 The distinction is important, not least
since it requires modern literary scholars to make a conscious effort to extricate
their historical envisaging of the oral transmission of tradition from the mind-set
and assumptions of long-term literacy. 146 Equally important is the immediacy of an
oral communication in contrast to written, the direct and personal engagement of
speaker and auditor not possible in writing, what Kelber calls the 'oral synthesis'.
147 This is partly what I have in mind when I talk of the 'impact' made by Jesus
on his disciples (§§6.5d-f). The contrast can be overplayed: for example, the recognition
that in the ancient world documents were written to be heard, that is, read out
and listened to rather than read, is commonplace in all these disciplines; 148 the fact
142. Kelber, Oral 27-28, the last phrase quoted from B. Peabody, The Winged Word:
A Study in the Technique of Ancient Greek Oral Composition as Seen Principally through
Hesiod's Works and Days (Albany: State University of New York, 1975) 96.
143. Kelber, Oral 29-30, quoting Lord, Singer of Tales 120. Lord also characterises the
change from oral to literary composition as 'the change... from stability of essential story, which
is the goal of oral tradition, to stability of text, of the exact words of the story' (Singer 138).
144. Kelber, Oral 33, 54; quoting E. A. Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge: Harvard
University, 1963) 92, 147, 184, passim.
145. See also W. H. Kelber, 'Jesus and Tradition: Words in Time, Words in Space', in
Dewey, ed., Orality and Textuality 139-67. T. M. Derico, Orality and the Synoptic Gospels: An
Evaluation of the Oral-Formulaic Theory as Method for Synoptic Tradition Criticism
(Cincinnati Bible Seminary MA, 2000) offers an extensive critique of Kelber (ch. 4).
146. Ong begins by noting: 'We — readers of books such as this — are so literate that it
is very difficult for us to conceive of an oral universe of communication or thought except as a
variation of a literate universe' (Orality 2, my emphasis). As noted above, the mistake has been
common in source and form criticism of the Gospels.
147. Kelber, Oral 19, referring to W. J. Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena
for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven: Yale University, 1967; paperback Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota, 1981) 111-38.
148. See further P. J. Achtemeier, 'Omne verbum sonat: The New Testament and the
Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity', JBL 109 (1990) 3-27; Downing, 'Wordprocessing
in the Ancient World' 75-89 (with more bibliography); Horsley and Draper, Whoever
132-34, 144-45, in dependence on R. Thomas, Literacy and Orality in Ancient Greece
(Cambridge: Cambridge University, 1992); Byrskog, Story as History 139-44.
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