Let’s examine this issue for the books of the New Testament. The first Gospel is considered to be the one written by Mark. Many New Testament experts agree that the text of Mark’s Gospel was written around 55AD. There are others who claim the work had been compiled before that time, maybe even as early as 40 AD. Following that Matthew and Luke write their Gospels after Mark. There is a theory that Matthew and Luke borrowed material from another written source, the document of which has been lost. This source is called Q (after the German Quelle) meaning “Source”. This theory has been put forward to account for the word for word similarity between the text of Matthew and Luke in many places. There is similarity between the text of all three synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke) on occasions as well, only it is not a close as it is between Matthew and Luke. The last Gospel to be written was the Gospel of John. Many conservative experts think the Gospel of John was finished late in the first century, probably as late as AD 95. Others however believe John’s Gospel was completed around AD 75 and the whole Bible came together by the end of the century.
How indeed was the New Testament compiled and what explains the correspondence between Gospels in particular? Did the authors copy from one another? Did they copy from another written document as suggested in the theory of Q? Imagine with me for the moment the process involved at that time. Did Matthew take a dictaphone to the sermon on the Mount in order to record what Jesus said? At a particular point, did he need to ask Jesus to stop talking so that he could change the batteries in order not to miss anything? Obviously not. There was no such technology available. Did John ask Jesus to speak some sentences again so he had time to write them down in shorthand? No that didn’t happen either.
The Gospels came to us through the process of oral tradition compiled after the events. But the underlying question must be, can oral tradition be trusted? To us in the 21st Century it seems totally unreliable and fraught with problems. We are totally reliant on writing things down in order to remember them. Now that we have computers and other gadgets we don’t even remember our own details let alone the others around us. When we lose our cell phone we can’t remember phone numbers and important contact details let alone the details of stories we have heard or read. We think what hope is there that those who recorded the details relating to Jesus got it right?
The basic querstion related to the veracity of oral tradition is how were the words Jesus spoke recorded accurately? Isn’t the whole process filled with holes and unreliable? It is true that the words Jesus spoke had to be remembered and then recorded. Our problem is that most of us have no idea how oral tradition works. I have been privileged to witness an oral society in action when recording and the transcribing their traditional stories. I can bear witness to the fact there is absolutely no shadow of doubt in my mind that oral tradition can be passed on accurately without fear of losing a single word.
Allow me to make it clear to you how oral societies work from what I observed working among them. When we worked in Sulawesi, Indonesia among the Rongkong we had to collect and collate language material in order to learn the language. How do you begin to work with a group of people who do not have written material related to their language? Do you go around asking people to tell you a sentence in their language while using the National language? Not that is not very reliable. The best way is to get them to tell you one of their traditional stories and record it. Once you have recorded it you can work on the transcription of the text and analyse how the language goes together and what the grammatical and phonological rules are which govern the way the language works. The best way is to ask them to tell you their traditional ancestral stories.
I asked the village chief if I could record their traditional stories and publish them in a book. I asked if he could call the village story tellers together and I would record the first of their stories. The night was set for the recording of the first of their ancestral stories – Batu Karodi. I can still remember the night vividly as a result of what happened. The village headman’s house was filled with people squeezed in tightly together, as many who could fit in. That way everyone who wanted could hear and see the story of Batu Karodi being recorded and later it would be put into a book . The house was overflowing with people. Those who couldn’t fit in the house gather outside pressed up against the outside, looking through the gaps in the bush-sawn wall boards on all four sides of the house. Then there were the ones who filled the space under the house and peered up through the floorboards to get a look at the action and hear the very familiar story told and the later they would be able to read it in their language. The atmosphere was electric.
Three story tellers took prime place at the front but the microphone was clipped to the t-shirt of the recognized prime story teller. As he told the story, I was captivated by the fact that as I looked around the room all mouths were moving in sync with the words of the story teller was telling. Everyone knew the story word for word. But at one point in the story one of the other story tellers yelled, “No! You are wrong. Stop the recording. That’s wrong!” Everyone insisted I wind the tape back and record this portion again. They couldn’t have this mistake included in the book of their stories. They insisted he start back at a particular point which I found on the recorder and we were ready to begin the re-record. Without them knowing I turned down the volume and pushed the fast forward button for a few seconds to ensure I had the mistake recorded as well. At the end of the night everyone was happy. The story of Batu Karodi had been told as it should be.
On checking the recording later I found the mistake the story teller had made. He had substituted a key verb with another word which had the same meaning, but he had not used the accepted verb that everyone had memorized. So it was unacceptable. That is how oral tradition works. We citizens of the 21st Century lack understanding of how the oral transmission process works but we are quick to jump to conclusions that it could not be possibly be reliable. How wrong we are.
I have no problem believing that oral tradition is sound and can preserve an ancient story accurately and completely down through the ages. I have seen and heard oral tradition in action with my own eyes and ears. It is possible that you too have seen the process in action in a different way. Have you read familiar bedtime stories to your children and then on a particular occasion tried to speed the story up when they were late to bed by subtlely missing superfluous sections or skipping over redundant sentences? I have. But each time i tried i would be corrected with the cry, “You missed out the bit about Barney.” “You missed out the chorus.” Do your children accept the cut-down version of the story? No! It is unacceptable to miss something out. We want to hear it all. Well that is the way it works with the oral tradition involved in the stories of Jesus and his teaching too.
Oh I am aware you will have many other questions. I will try to address those if you share them with me.