From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Fri, 17 Jan 1997 15:38:33 +0000
Subject:       Oral Tradition

Bob Schacht wrote: 

> The question then becomes whether 
> 
> 1. there existed an oral (or unknown written) tradition about the sayings of
> Jesus prior to GosThom & Paul. 

> 2. Paul, Thomas, et al. made up the whole thing, sayings and all.
> Are there any other alternatives that deserve consideration?

> Now, I have seen on this list some sympathy for the second position, and
> some hostility to the first.

> The complaint is usually made (I think you are
> among the complainers) that good ol' Oral Trad is a black hat out of which
> any number of rabbits can be pulled (or words to that effect.)
> 
> But we can't really dispense with that black hat. We've got to learn how to
> do a better job of finding out what is really in it, rather than conjuring
> new rabbits to pull out of it, or attacking the hat as merely a conjurer's
> device.

> What can we know, and how can we know it?

1. I think we can know that a substantial set of sayings were 
attributed to Jesus before they got written down in the texts they 
are in. Despite all the complaints (many valid) it probably is the 
case that one way or another the JSem has identified a good likely 
set of those sayings by use of their criteria. Sure they have got 
hidden agendas all over the place and annoyingly just add in sayings 
that they personally like (Prodigal Son, Good Samaritan) but overall
even the most vehement attackers generally do not disagree with their 
results. This enrages various JSem supporters for good reason. "You 
despise our methods, attack our motives, hate our criteria, and agree 
with our conclusions??!"

What I'd like to see crosstalk do is formulate a list of those 
sayings and debate what they mean, assuming folks will generally 
agree on the list. Then we could actually move back from discussions 
of early texts to discussions of HJ.

2. I can't say there wasn't any oral tradition. I suppose there was.
Maybe the analogy I'm looking for is the Heisenburg principle:  
as soon as you write down what an oral tradition saying is, it no longer 
is an oral tradition. What I object to is the idea that the 
evangelists were using oral tradition as a source. And even here I'd 
have to admit that this is sometimes possible. But when you look at 
what Mt and Lk do, they take written traditions (Q, Mk, Sp Lk) and
re-sort them into mechanisms to convey their own perspectives. And I 
think Mark did this a lot too (hence Mark-Thomas). So, what I find 
troublesome is the use of oral tradition as a source-critical 
explanation and it's here that it seems to be a black hat (much 
better than black hole)  useful for explaining anything at all. 
Probably Koester thinks the same way, 
hence his desire to hypothesize written sayings mini-sources for virtually 
everything including Thomas.

3. Now that you mention it, though, isn't my theory that Thomas was a 
list written from memory and consultation precisely a writing-down
of oral-tradition theory?

Steve