Robert F. Smith Posted January 4, 2018 Posted January 4, 2018 11 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: What is the consensus on oral traditions? Mainstream scholars (like Craig Evans, Bart Ehrman, et al.) have long accepted oral tradition as a primary means of transmission of the Gospel materials, until they took final, edited form. This included some written materials as well, such as Q (for Quelle) and lists of sayings (such as the Gospel of Thomas logia), which also first circulated in oral form. The same applies to oral traditions worldwide -- within Buddhism and Hinduism for example. This was also true of the oral sunnah and hadith within Islam. In each case, those oral traditions do become codified at some point, as for the Jewish Talmud in about 200 AD. Those engaging in such oral transmission are not at all like children playing "telephone," because they follow strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials so that they will be memorized systematically (with rhyme, meter, and parallelisms -- such as chiasmus). Then too, those assigned to such deliberate memorization were those with wonderful memories, including those with total recall. The rabbis always cultivated such efforts with honor and assistance. This was never the childish, off the wall enterprise, as you seem to imagine it, Sam.
Exiled Posted January 4, 2018 Posted January 4, 2018 23 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: Mainstream scholars (like Craig Evans, Bart Ehrman, et al.) have long accepted oral tradition as a primary means of transmission of the Gospel materials, until they took final, edited form. This included some written materials as well, such as Q (for Quelle) and lists of sayings (such as the Gospel of Thomas logia), which also first circulated in oral form. The same applies to oral traditions worldwide -- within Buddhism and Hinduism for example. This was also true of the oral sunnah and hadith within Islam. In each case, those oral traditions do become codified at some point, as for the Jewish Talmud in about 200 AD. Those engaging in such oral transmission are not at all like children playing "telephone," because they follow strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials so that they will be memorized systematically (with rhyme, meter, and parallelisms -- such as chiasmus). Then too, those assigned to such deliberate memorization were those with wonderful memories, including those with total recall. The rabbis always cultivated such efforts with honor and assistance. This was never the childish, off the wall enterprise, as you seem to imagine it, Sam. Have you read Ehrman's book "Jesus Before The Gospels ..."? If so, what are your thoughts? I am about to purchase it and want to know your take if you've read it.
clarkgoble Posted January 4, 2018 Posted January 4, 2018 27 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: Those engaging in such oral transmission are not at all like children playing "telephone," because they follow strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials so that they will be memorized systematically (with rhyme, meter, and parallelisms -- such as chiasmus). Then too, those assigned to such deliberate memorization were those with wonderful memories, including those with total recall. The rabbis always cultivated such efforts with honor and assistance. To be clear my appeal to "telephone" was about oral traditions in general. I fully agree there are strategies for minimizing errors. However those tend to apply to more formalized quasi-texts. Not all oral traditions are of that sort.
Robert F. Smith Posted January 4, 2018 Posted January 4, 2018 3 minutes ago, Exiled said: Have you read Ehrman's book "Jesus Before The Gospels ..."? If so, what are your thoughts? I am about to purchase it and want to know your take if you've read it. I have not read it, but anything written by Ehrman is usually pretty good and thought provoking. I see Ehrman as an ally in that he pricks so many traditional dogmatic Christian beliefs about Scripture -- notably the silly notion of an infallible and inerrant text.
Gray Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 19 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: It was a good debate, it was clear atheist socialist Price didn't know what he was talking about. Mythicists are too driven by anti-theological bias to see the issue clearly.
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Mainstream scholars (like Craig Evans, Bart Ehrman, et al.) have long accepted oral tradition Just for clarification Ehrman argues in his Jesus Before the Gospels that oral traditions are not accurate because memory is too fallible. 9 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Those engaging in such oral transmission are not at all like children playing "telephone," because they follow strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials so that they will be memorized systematically (with rhyme, meter, and parallelisms -- such as chiasmus). Then too, those assigned to such deliberate memorization were those with wonderful memories, including those with total recall. The rabbis always cultivated such efforts with honor and assistance. This was never the childish, off the wall enterprise, as you seem to imagine it, Sam. What is the evidence that first century Christians followed strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials? For Ehrman it was not the case. Please give a reference. 8 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: I have not read it, but anything written by Ehrman is usually pretty good and thought provoking. Well you haven't read it
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 10 hours ago, Exiled said: I've been meaning to watch/listen to evans v. carrier, too. I've heard it was better than ehrman v. price from many people. Yes, and Evans did a wonderful job in the debate. 2 hours ago, Gray said: Mythicists are too driven by anti-theological bias to see the issue clearly. There is no doubt. You should watch the debate Carrier Evans debate
Robert F. Smith Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 (edited) 17 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: Quote Mainstream scholars (like Craig Evans, Bart Ehrman, et al.) have long accepted oral tradition Just for clarification Ehrman argues in his Jesus Before the Gospels that oral traditions are not accurate because memory is too fallible. Ehrman repeatedly argues that the Gospel materials first circulated orally, which is what nearly all NT scholars say. You take the opposite position, claiming that that is impossible. I did not say that he claimed oral traditions are accurate. I said that oral traditions could be accurate. Because you are wholly ignorant of the reasons why they can be accurate, I explained why and how they can be accurate. You learned nothing from what I said. That is why I recommend that you go back to square one and learn the basics. You are not prepared for real discussions of anything. You can't even read accurately. Quote What is the evidence that first century Christians followed strict rules and carefully structure their oral materials? For Ehrman it was not the case. Please give a reference............................... You need to quote the verbatim statements which Ehrman makes in context. You cannot be trusted to accurately reflect anything you have read. Many years ago I wrote a basic survey of mnemonic devices (memorization devices) which might be applied to the possible literary, form, redaction, and Kompositionsgeschichte of the Book of Abraham text, i.e., its origin and transmittal.[1] We live in an era when information storage and retrieval is mostly a matter of books, micro-film, and librarianship, or of computers, and the internet. Thus, were the modern student encouraged to use concrete information creatively, he would yet be crippled by the very lack of a trained and efficient information recovery system, i.e., his own brain. For, as Socrates pointed out, memory-function when unused tends to atrophy: Quote For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory.[2] What is that invention? Writing. Those who absorb information in printed form have often had occasion to sit down to read only to discover several lines or paragraphs later that, although their eyes had been passing rhythmically and dutifully over each word, phrase, and line, yet somehow virtually nothing was retained. Even a mindless video camera would be more dependable. Again, most such readers try to ignore their momentary frustration and proceed to reread the unremembered portion. This ploy, like many others applied to daily affairs, is grossly inefficient. The average person reads and retains information under test conditions at perhaps 70% full efficiency, and, as Professor J. Brown points out, two well-intentioned rereadings add only about 8% comprehension to the total![3] Similarly, in a study made by G. H. Bower and M. C. Clark at Stanford University, students asked to memorize a list of words simply by reading it through several times in typical "cramming" fashion managed to retain only about 13% of the words. Mnemosyne, goddess of memory and mother of the Muses, would hardly approve. Yet, Quote when students were told to make up a story that included all the words on a list, instead of just studying the list over and over, their retention increased dramatically -- from 13% correct to 93% correct![4] 93% is an empirical fact, but past experience with educators should teach us that this and similar facts will have little impact on the sorry state of modern education. Johnny still cannot read, and those who do not want to hear of it suddenly become deaf to empirical facts . . . Hugh Nibley examined a particular Book of Breathings "as a memory-triggering device" used "to call to mind much more complex formulas for the ordinances found in the Book of the Dead."[5] Such possibilities must be taken into consideration before any conclusions can be drawn about the possible existence of a cue-word list within Papyrus Joseph Smith X, i, or any other of the Joseph Smith Papyri. Whether such a cue-word list might stand behind the text of the Book of Abraham remains for investigation. Albright & Mann put it very authoritatively in their Anchor Bible edition of Matthew: Quote We now know, thanks to the work of such scholars as Louis Finkelstein, J. Weingreen, Manfred Lehmann, and many others (much of whose work has not yet been published) that oral tradition in pre-Talmudic Jewish sources, are often extraordinarily accurate even as far back as the Exilic period or earlier. The data contained in our rabbinic sources of the second century A.D. and later are proving to be reliable for earlier times than generally believed. The sayings of the leading Jewish teachers of the intertestamental and NT periods were preserved with remarkable tenacity for centuries after their original date. It has been shown again and again that the methods of teaching employed by Jesus are extremely close in their character to those of the early rabbis. It has also been shown that mnemotechnic devices -- for instance, the arrangement of sayings of Jesus according to key wordsBwere well known in rabbinic times and go back to high antiquity. The structure underlying many of the NT logia can be paralleled most closely in Pirqê Abôth (Sayings of the Fathers).[6] In his March 17, 1972, lecture (which I attended) at the Claremont Graduate School's Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (IAC), James M. Robinson noted the existence of Coptic opening lines (incipits) to Psalms 51 through 93 on the wall of one of the 6th Dynasty Egyptian tomb-caves (T8) of Gebel eṭ-Ṭarif near Qaṣr eṣ-Ṣayad (Chenobóskion).[7] In his unpublished opinion, Robinson concluded that monks used the listing as a mnemotechnique (cf. Psalm 22:1 ‑‑ Matthew 27:46, etc.). [1] See especially Jan Assmann, "Hieroglyphen als mnemotechnisches System Roses de vents et roses depersonnages al'époque Romane," Gazette des Beaux-Arts, 20 (1938):265-276; cf. John A. Tvedtnes' survey of mnemonics in his October 18, 1969, presentation at the 19th Annual Symposium on the Archaeology of the Scriptures at BYU, "The Use of Mnemonic Devices in Oral Tradition, As Exemplified by the Book of Abraham and the Hor Sensen Papyrus"; cf. SEHA Newsletters, 109.0, and 114.1; see http://www.shields‑research.org/General/SEHA/SEHA_Newsletter_109‑2.PDF . [2] Phaedrus, '59, H. N. Fowler, trans., Loeb Classical Library Edition. [3] J. Brown, "Read Faster & Understand," Look, Feb 10, 1970, p. 62; A. J. Harris, "Research on Aspects of Comprehension," Education Digest, Mar 1969, p. 49 = article condensed and reprinted from Journal of Reading, 12 (Dec 1968):205-210,258-260. [4] Bowers & Clark, "Narrative Stories as Mediators for Serial Learning," Psychonomic Science, 14 (1969)𐐛181-182, summarized by Pierce, Analog, April 1971, p. 46 and n. 21. [5] Nibley in Monday Magazine, Dec 3, 1973, p. 6; BYU Studies, 11:163; cf. "Rats in Maze Prove Rewards Reinforce 'Operant Behavior'," BYU Today, 28 (Aug 1974):9, demonstrating the great value of reversal of direction in memorization, i.e., chiasmus thus has tremendous value as a mnemonic device; cf. also BYU Studies, 11:181; Kyra van der Moezel, "Deliberate use of metaphor as mnemonic device for identification in a non‑linguistic modality. The case of Deir el‑Medina (Egypt)," paper presented July 7-8, 2016, at the Workshop/Conference on "The Premeditated Path: Deliberate Metaphor in Ancient and Modern Texts," in Berlin. [6] W. F. Albright & C. S. Mann, Matthew, AB 26 (Doubleday, 1971), CLXVI they cite Solomon Gandz, The Dawn of Literature, Osiris, IV (Bruges, 1939), and Albright, From the Stone Age to Christianity, 2nd ed., 64ff. They specifically reject (in n. 4) H. M. Teeple, "The Oral Tradition that Never Existed," Journal of Biblical Literature, 89 (1970):56-68, as an example of failure to mention the powerful rabbinic oral tradition. [7] Robinson, New Testament Studies, 12:366, citing Doresse, Secret Books, 132, and Kemi, 4:157-160. Edited January 5, 2018 by Robert F. Smith 1
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 (edited) 39 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: Ehrman repeatedly argues that the Gospel materials first circulated orally, which is what nearly all NT scholars say. You take the opposite position, claiming that that is impossible. You need to quote the verbatim statements which Ehrman makes in context. You cannot be trusted to accurately reflect anything you have read. I am not disputing Ehrman believes gospel material first circulated orally. Ehrman argues that oral traditions are not accurate. Read the subtitle of his book "How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior", watch the video I gave you, or simply google it. 39 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: Ehrman repeatedly argues that the Gospel materials first circulated orally, which is what nearly all NT scholars say. You take the opposite position, claiming that that is impossible. I did not say that he claimed oral traditions are accurate. I said that oral traditions could be accurate. Because you are wholly ignorant of the reasons why they can be accurate, I explained why and how they can be accurate. You learned nothing from what I said. I did understand what you told me, I was simply asking for a reference. 39 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: In his March 17, 1972, lecture (which I attended) at the Claremont Graduate School's Institute for Antiquity and Christianity (IAC), James M. Robinson noted the existence of Coptic opening lines (incipits) to Psalms 51 through 93 on the wall of one of the 6th Dynasty Egyptian tomb-caves (T8) of Gebel eṭ-Ṭarif near Qaṣr eṣ-Ṣayad (Chenobóskion).[7] In his unpublished opinion, Robinson concluded that monks used the listing as a mnemotechnique (cf. Psalm 22:1 ‑‑ Matthew 27:46, etc.). There are so many question I don't even know where to begin. For you, do the stories of Jesus come from well-trained monks? Edited January 5, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
MDalby Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 Robert, Sincere question... why do you waste your time? Patience is a virtue but you go the extra mile. Congrats on your effort. 2
Calm Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 3 minutes ago, MDalby said: Robert, Sincere question... why do you waste your time? Patience is a virtue but you go the extra mile. Congrats on your effort. he is educating those who are willing to pay attention
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 31 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: I said that oral traditions could be accurate. "Could be" can be used for everything, but let's not speculate please.
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 (edited) 8 minutes ago, Calm said: he is educating those who are willing to pay attention Hopefully you don't mean I am not willing to pay attention Edited January 5, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 5, 2018 Author Posted January 5, 2018 (edited) 55 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: You need to quote the verbatim statements which Ehrman makes in context. You cannot be trusted to accurately reflect anything you have read. Robert, wasn't I right about the life expectancy of a 20 year old man in the first century? You have yet to respond to Frier's research. But anyways, here is Ehrman "Many scholars have somewhat unreflectively maintained that the Gospels ultimately go back to eyewitness testimonies to Jesus' life and that they are therefore reliable; or that oral cultures preserve their traditions with a high degree of accuracy. I realized several years ago that these views can be tested by what we actually know, based on modern detailed studies, about eyewitness testimony (psychologists and legal scholars have studied the subject rigorously), about the reliability of memory (psychologists have delved into this question assiduously since the 1930s), and about the ways traditions are preserved in oral cultures (as we now know based on anthropological studies since the 1920s). As it turns out, what many New Testament scholars have assumed about such matters, in many cases, is simply not right. Many of their assumptions are not only unsupported, they have been shown to be highly problematic in study after study." Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior Notice in the subtitle Ehrman says Christians invented stories about Jesus. Would you agree Robert? Edited January 5, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
Not Sure Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 11 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: Notice in the subtitle Ehrman says Christians invented stories about Jesus. Invention implies intent. If there is one thing that we have learned from the study of memes is that there is not always intent to fabricate. There is not always intent when stories are mis-remembered or when a quote is mis-attributed as is common with oral traditions. The embellishment is a side effect of retelling the story.
Robert F. Smith Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 15 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: .............................................................................. "Many scholars have somewhat unreflectively maintained that the Gospels ultimately go back to eyewitness testimonies to Jesus' life and that they are therefore reliable; or that oral cultures preserve their traditions with a high degree of accuracy. I realized several years ago that these views can be tested by what we actually know, based on modern detailed studies, about eyewitness testimony (psychologists and legal scholars have studied the subject rigorously), about the reliability of memory (psychologists have delved into this question assiduously since the 1930s), and about the ways traditions are preserved in oral cultures (as we now know based on anthropological studies since the 1920s). As it turns out, what many New Testament scholars have assumed about such matters, in many cases, is simply not right. Many of their assumptions are not only unsupported, they have been shown to be highly problematic in study after study." Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest Christians Remembered, Changed, and Invented Their Stories of the Savior Notice in the subtitle Ehrman says Christians invented stories about Jesus. Would you agree Robert? You have falsely stated that the Gospels were not composed from oral traditions, based as usual on your off the wall approach to such matters. Ehrman and I agree that oral traditions were used extensively in creating the Gospel accounts. We disagree on whether they can be accurate or not. You would already know this if you had actually read and understood what I have been saying to you. What part of my comments to you on oral tradition did you not understand? Which of my comments on oral tradition were inaccurate?
Robert F. Smith Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 15 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: "Could be" can be used for everything, but let's not speculate please. I have repeatedly explained to you that yokels cannot accurately use oral tradition. Why? Because, like children they play "telephone,' instead of adopting professional mnemonic techniques. Your initial false claims about oral tradition were due to utter speculation on your part.
Robert F. Smith Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 15 hours ago, MDalby said: Robert, Sincere question... why do you waste your time? Patience is a virtue but you go the extra mile. Congrats on your effort. Point well taken.
MDalby Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 9 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said: Point well taken. Robert, I benefit greatly from your posts. But the verse in Matthew of pearls before swine comes to mind... I just don't think there is any indication that Sam is of any mind to openly consider and appreciate your efforts. 1
clarkgoble Posted January 5, 2018 Posted January 5, 2018 (edited) 19 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: "Could be" can be used for everything, but let's not speculate please. The Art of Memory is very well known. Robert is completely correct that there are well known mnemonic techniques. Further at this stage I think the relationship of the Art of Memory to both masonry and thus indirectly the endowment is reasonably well known. (Yates The Art of Memory while dated is a must read) Due to a paucity of sources we don't know as much about memory in the eras and locations we're most interested in. (We know more about Rome of course) In the period of late antiquity memorizing the Torah and related texts was an important part of Jewish education. It could be done and was fairly common. We know that at the time of Ezra there was a school in Jerusalem likely doing something similar to this - although obviously we don't know the texts they were memorizing exactly. It is quite likely that not only were Mark and Q performed orally but that many of the texts we have in the Old Testament were originally oral or were at least performed before an audience rather than to be read. There's still controversy over how to unpack these oral traditions. After all we can have originally written texts that are designed to be performed orally. (Think Shakespeare for instance) So we have to distinguish between oral performance and oral transmission yet those can be difficult to separate unambiguously. Further, as with a lot of form criticism, there's a lot of speculation and not a lot of replication or predictive testing involved in the scholarship. Going back to my comments on 1 Nephi 13, it's worth noting that this emphasis on oral teaching can be found explicitly in the Deuteronomist tradition which Nephi (and Jeremiah) appear to have a complex relationship to. So in Deut 31 Moses is supposed to speak and orally teach God's word. Deut 6:6-7 is usually taken to imply a commanded oral memorization and repetition. Even later in Malachi we have this emphasis very similar to Nephi on the mouth of the prophet/priest. Some scholars even argue that for early Christians the living voice was seen as more important that written texts. This parallels Moroni in Ether 12 I might add as well as 1 Nephi 13. This importance on living voice actually persists well into the rise of modern semiotics with Saussure. Skepticism into voice just being an other type of writing then appears with the post-structuralists with Derrida and others. Problematizing all this is the idea of heavenly book (of which the book in 1 Nephi 13 is an example) represent what the prophets would speak. So there's an inherent relationship between archetypal heavenly book of prophecy and the living oral word. That's especially true in apocalypses in the late second temple through the end of late antiquity. Getting back to the factual question of how accurate oral traditions are, Greg Boyd's article on it is worth reading. I'm skeptical of Boyd on several items - particularly his place in pushing Open Theism - but he makes some compelling arguments here. If nothing else he does a good job illustrating the premises behind those skeptical of accuracy. Edited January 6, 2018 by clarkgoble 2
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 6, 2018 Author Posted January 6, 2018 (edited) 7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: You have falsely stated that the Gospels were not composed from oral traditions, based as usual on your off the wall approach to such matters. Yes from a religious point of view that I cannot prove. Joseph Smith taught us John was "The Testimony of St. John". Book of Mormon teaches John wrote the Book of Revelation "Behold one of the twelve apostles of the Lamb. 21 Behold, he shall see and write the remainder of these things; yea, and also many things which have been" Robert, the Bible dictionary says, "The four Gospels are not so much biographies as they are testimonies" which is a view shared by most members of the church. I suspect most members don't believe the gospels come from oral traditions. 7 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Ehrman and I agree that oral traditions were used extensively in creating the Gospel accounts. We disagree on whether they can be accurate or not. and Ehrman and I agree oral traditions are not accurate 23 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: I did not say that he claimed oral traditions are accurate. I said that oral traditions could be accurate. To be clear, if oral traditions "could be" accurate, it means they could also be inaccurate. Robert, how do you know the nativity and many other stories in the gospels are accurate? Or it is impossible to know? Edited January 6, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
Robert F. Smith Posted January 6, 2018 Posted January 6, 2018 4 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: ......................................................... Robert, the Bible dictionary says, "The four Gospels are not so much biographies as they are testimonies" which is a view shared by most members of the church. I suspect most members don't believe the gospels come from oral traditions. You have a lot of off the wall beliefs based on complete lack of familiarity with the Bible, and you continue to believe that off the wall opinions are just as valid as scholarship. Most LDS members have no opinion on oral tradition because they have never even considered the issue. Just like you, most of them have no idea what oral tradition is. Once again, you have made your own ignorance the measure of reality. 4 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: and Ehrman and I agree oral traditions are not accurate Ehrman looks at the diversity of views found in the Gospels and concludes that the mutual contradictions therein must mean that oral tradition has to be inaccurate. You ignore the diversity and contradictions in the Gospels and pretend that they don't exist. How does that help your case? 4 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: To be clear, if oral traditions "could be" accurate, it means they could also be inaccurate. I provided details on how professional oral tradition could be practiced so as to be accurate. Why have you not responded to those details (with citations)? Why are you afraid of oral tradition? 4 hours ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: Robert, how do you know the nativity and many other stories in the gospels are accurate? Or it is impossible to know? There are several ways to know whether a claim of Scripture is true: (1) by the witness of the Holy Spirit, (2) by putting the Scriptural principles into practice to test their personal validity, and (3) by careful scholarly evaluation. Do you practice any of these?
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 7, 2018 Author Posted January 7, 2018 (edited) 18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Ehrman looks at the diversity of views found in the Gospels and concludes that the mutual contradictions therein must mean that oral tradition has to be inaccurate. You ignore the diversity and contradictions in the Gospels and pretend that they don't exist. How does that help your case? Didn't ignore the contradictions, according to the Book of Mormon "And after they go forth by the hand of the twelve apostles of the Lamb, from the Jews unto the Gentiles, thou seest the formation of that great and abominable church, which is most abominable above all other churches; for behold, they have taken away from the gospel of the Lamb many parts which are plain and most precious; and also many covenants of the Lord have they taken away." Ehrman argues oral traditions of 1st century Christians were not accurate because memory is very fallible and because you get significant changes after many decades. For Ehrman the gospels are what the Christians believed at the time after 70 AD. 18 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: I provided details on how professional oral tradition could be practiced so as to be accurate. Why have you not responded to those details (with citations)? Why are you afraid of oral tradition? Robert, You didn't respond to Frier's research. I know oral traditions could be accurate, but do you have any evidence most New Testament stories were widely circulated by well trained Christians? It is my understanding that was not the case for 1st century Christians. On 1/5/2018 at 11:56 PM, clarkgoble said: The Art of Memory is very well known. Robert is completely correct that there are well known mnemonic techniques. I know, but is there any evidence that most first century Christians used such memory techniques for stories about Jesus? It is my understanding that Jews were very careful with Hebrew scriptures, but it was not the same for stories about Jesus that were not seen as scriptures at the time. Edited January 7, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
SamuelTheLamanite Posted January 7, 2018 Author Posted January 7, 2018 (edited) 19 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: by careful scholarly evaluation. Do you practice any of these? Okay Robert, let's get scholarly. According to scholars there are only seven authentic Pauline epistles and none of them say anything about Jesus ministry on Earth. The epistles make no mention of the nativity, no Jesus of Nazareth, no lazarus, no empty tomb, no garden of gethsemane, no Joseph of Arimathea. For scholars all we can really know about Jesus is that he was a preacher that was crucified. Scholars argue that first century Christians were not careful with the stories. There were no "strict rules" among Christians as you claim. Just letting you know what scholars say. So for you Robert, how do we verify the accuracy of oral traditions before 70 AD? 19 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said: Most LDS members have no opinion on oral tradition because they have never even considered the issue. Just like you, most of them have no idea what oral tradition is. Once again, you have made your own ignorance the measure of reality. If tomorrow in the pulpit I say "the new testament gospels were not written by the apostles, the gospels come from stories that circulated orally for decades" I would suspect many would look at me with a weird face. Edited January 7, 2018 by SamuelTheLamanite
Robert F. Smith Posted January 7, 2018 Posted January 7, 2018 35 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: Okay Robert, let's get scholarly. According to scholars there are only seven authentic Pauline epistles and none of them say anything about Jesus ministry on Earth. The epistles make no mention of the nativity, no Jesus of Nazareth, no lazarus, no empty tomb, no garden of gethsemane, no Joseph of Arimathea. For scholars all we can really know about Jesus is that he was a preacher that was crucified. Scholars argue that first century Christians were not careful with the stories. There were no "strict rules" among Christians as you claim. Just letting you know what scholars say. So for you Robert, how do we verify the accuracy of oral traditions before 70 AD? Since you don't know what the scholars say, and can only repeat what you have heard one of them say on a YouTube video, it makes no sense at all to you that I have already cited a variety of sources which you could have consulted by now. Instead you waste your time pretending to discuss something about which you know nothing. As I have already advised you: Learn the basics first, then discuss them. You might have discussed the comments I have already made and those I have cited, but you fear to do that. Why? 35 minutes ago, SamuelTheLamanite said: If tomorrow in the pulpit I say "the new testament gospels were not written by the apostles, the gospels come from stories that circulated orally for decades" I would suspect many would look at me with a weird face. Whether in your evangelical congregation, or in a Mormon one, many of those listening to you would say to themselves, "Yeh, right," in as sarcastic a fashion as possible. Since they already know you well to be a pretender who hasn't got the slightest idea what he is saying, they would immediately dismiss whatever you had to say. They might even think that you were putting them on. Not that they would know anything about such issues, but only that they would know that they can't trust you -- a well earned reputation.
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