Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§8.3 The Tradition
that letters can be a fairly effective substitute for personal absence has become important
in recent study of Paul's letters; 149 and the encounter with its written version
can be as creative as a hearing of the original speech — indeed, in readerresponse
criticism each reading of a text is like a fresh performance of it. 150 Even
so, for anyone who has experienced a (for them) first performance of a great musical
work, like Beethoven's Ninth or Verdi's Requiem, the difference between hearing
in the electric atmosphere of the live performance and hearing the recorded version
played later at home (let alone simply reading the score) is unmistakable. 151
There are other important observations made by Kelber. He takes up the
key observation of Albert Lord 152 in warning against the ideal of 'original form';
'each oral performance is an irreducibly unique creation'; if Jesus said something
more than once there is no 'original'. 153 This is true, although the impact
made by each retelling by Jesus on those who heard and retained the teaching
should be distinguished from the effect of their own reteaching on others. Kelber
also rightly notes that oral retelling of Jesus' words will already have begun during
Jesus' lifetime; the Bultmannian thesis of a tradition which began to be transmitted
only after Easter is highly questionable. 154 Moreover, in Kelber's work,
very noticeably, narratives, the retold stories about Jesus, reemerge into promi-
149. Influential here has been R. W. Funk, 'The Apostolic Parousia: Form and Significance',
in W. R. Farmer, et al., eds., Christian History and Interpretation, J. Knox FS (Cambridge:
Cambridge University, 1967) 249-68.
150. The idea has been much taken up, e.g., by N. Lash, 'Performing the Scriptures' in
his Theology on the Way to Emmaus (London: SCM, 1986), 37-46, and Frances Young, The Art
of Performance: Towards a Theology of Holy Scripture (London: Darton, Longman and Todd,
1990).
151. 'The reader is absent from the writing of the book, the writer is absent from its
reading' (Kelber, Oral 92, quoting P. Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus
of Meaning [Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1976] 35).
152. Lord, Singer: 'In a sense each performance is "an" original, if not "the" original.
The truth of the matter is that our concept of "the original", of "the song", simply makes no
sense in oral tradition' (100-101).
153. Kelber, Oral 29; also 59, 62; also 'Jesus and Tradition' 148-51, though his argument
is too dependent on generalisations from 'oral aesthetics', not closely enough related to
the particularities of first-century Palestine (cf. J. M. Foley, 'Words in Tradition, Words in Text:
A Response', in Dewey ed., Orality and Textuality 169-80 [here 170-72]). Finnegan also
glosses Lord: 'There is no correct text, no idea that one version is more "authentic" than another:
each performance is a unique and original creation with its own validity' (Oral Poetry
65). She credits Lord with bringing this point home most convincingly (79), though by way of
critique she points out that memorization also plays a part (79, 86).
154. Kelber, Oral 20-21, citing appositely the demonstration by Schürmann of sayings
on kingdom, repentance, judgment, love of enemy, eschatological preparedness, etc., which
show no trace of post-Easter influence ('Die vorösterlichen Anfänge der Logientradition'); see
again above chapter 6 n. 108.
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