Stories about Jesus Before the Gospels: Oral Traditions in the Early Church

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The New Testament writings were produced decades after Jesus' death, but long before that people were passing along stories about Jesus and devising poems and creeds about their new-found faith. What do scholars know about these Christian traditions that were being passed along and preserved by word of mouth in the years before we had written texts. Scholars call them "oral traditions." How do we know such things existed, and can we be certain that they were passed along reliably before there were Christian writings?
Megan asks Bart:
-What, exactly, is an oral tradition, and what are NT scholars referring to when they talk about an oral tradition in the NT?
-When you’re working with a text corpus, how do you go about identifying components that might have originated in an oral, spoken tradition?
-Are there specific book in the NT that show features of an oral tradition particularly strongly, or books that seem to rely more on an oral tradition than others?
-What about non-canonical works?
-Do academics think that the writers of the NT are reproducing this oral tradition verbatim, or writing based on the stories they’d heard?
-Is there any way to estimate how much of the NT is based on oral traditions?
-Do the oral elements present in the NT hint at an older tradition than the sections that were always written texts?
-Do you think it’s possible to get back to what the earliest Christians believed based on these oral traditions, or have their stories been retold and changed so much that it’s not possible?
-Do you think we can get back to any kind of reliable, historical narrative of Jesus’ life?

[@Cor6196]

From my own life: For decades I told the story of how, when I was a child, my father and I went over to my grandmother's place in the middle of the night because the doctor had called to say she was dying. I described how she was sitting in her chair, hand pressing on her heart, repeating "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph" over and over. The doctor gave her a shot in her left arm, she quieted down, and softly slipped into death. Years later I happened to mention the event to my aged mother, and she said, "But that's not true at all! You weren't there! Yes, she died in the middle of the night, and yes your father and the doctor were there. But you were asleep! Why would we have woken you up to go with Dad? You were 6 years old! It would have made no sense at all! We talked about it: My father had come home, had recounted the events to my mother, and she had later told me whatever she thought was appropriate for a child to hear. My imagination was sparked by this huge event in the adult world, I put myself into it as an eyewitness, elaborating on the sparse details I had heard and coming up with an interesting story that evolved with every telling - because a story has to be vivid and intriguing if you want people to listen! 🗣👂🏼😮✍🏼📜 To my great regret, I can no longer tell the story - except here as an example of the creative aspect of human memory and of my very own oral tradition.

[@TheSpringsVagabond]

Wow! I love that story. It's truly very telling about how much you loved your Grandmother and how you earnestly wanted to be a part of her passing. Thank you for sharing that. 😊 P.S. I'd continue to tell it just like you do and then when finished, look up at the person(s) you're telling it to and then with a big smile and wink, say _"Alas, my mom informed me years later that I actually wasn't there but those are the facts nonetheless."_

[@robertunderwood1011]

You either were there. Or you were not there If you are not sure which one it is can you trust your memory for anything that ever happened or any time in your life? Even now.?

[@Cor6196]

@@robertunderwood1011 On the whole, Robert, my answer would be no. My own experience is that much of my memory of the past is based on real events whose details - and sometimes entire meaning - have "changed" over time, so that my "life story" is more like a loose translation of my "real life" and often more a work of fiction than a historically accurate biography. I think it would take a perfect observer, flawless interpreter, ever-present recorder to detail my life accurately, a God rather than me, and we know He doesn't exist. So I'm the only full-time eyewitness of my own life, and research has shown that eyewitness testimony is often unreliable!

[@brookvalley907]

Yes, so many of my memories have been proven wrong, that I no longer trust any of my memories to be "true". They are simply my perceptions. Only God, if there is one, knows the truth of anything. And I thank Him for the knowledge that I do not know anything for sure. So, the question then becomes: Do I want to be right or happy.

[@Cor6196]

@@brookvalley907 But you can be both! Happy that you've discovered the slipperiness of human memory, delighted by the inventiveness of your imagination, proud of creating your very own semi-fictional autobiography, dazzled by your ownership of your very own truth. 🤔🤩🥳

[@artistjoh]

Bart, I can confirm the problems and truths in oral tradition. I am Romani, and we have oral traditions about our origins. One of them is that we came from Saint Sarah Kali, who was the servant of Saint Mary. This tradition is entwined with the catholic tradition that Mary brought Christianity to France. We know our Gypsy tradition cannot be true because it talks of an event from a thousand years before our actual origin in the Thar Desert in India. So the story of the servant Sarah Kali is a fiction, BUT, notice the name. Sarah Kali. Kali is our word for black, and it is also the Sanskrit word for black. It is also part of the tribal name for our people in the Thar Desert - the Kalbelia, which means the men who love black. So the story is fiction, yet contains a word memory from the Thar Desert. I have been with the Kalbelia in the desert. They have their oral memory of us leaving for Afghanistan a thousand years ago. It is such a beautiful experience to reconnect with my people there. They welcomed me like a long lost brother. There is a deep family connection. Romani are a clan based culture. I am Romanisael, the Gypsies of Norway. In the early 19th century the Norwegians were trying to exterminate us, along with the Jews. As a result an ethnologist, Eilert Sundt, collected our oral histories and correlated them with court records and census data, and eventually wrote five books about us. The funny thing is he believed all of our oral history except for our origins. Our tradition was that we descended from the Romanichal of Scotland. Despite the similarity of our clan name, Sundt followed the scholarly trend of the time, that we are Sinti or Roma, who had migrated through Finland, Sweden, and finally Norway. It took until the era of DNA analysis to show that Sundt was wrong, and our oral tradition was correct. We arrived in Norway from Scotland. Probably due to expulsion following the Egyptians Act of 1544 in which all Gyspies were given 30 days to leave the British Isles or be hung. Before that we were in Northern Spain, Egypt, Persia, Afghanistan, and India a thousand years ago. So oral tradition will keep some things alive for more time than seems possible, but it also incorporates pure fictions. Telling which is which can be difficult.

[@lauriehermundson5593]

How very interesting!

[@jamesbinns8528]

Thank you for that bit of information.

[@KingDavid1979]

Resurrection return and virgin is a false doctrine!

[@markborok4481]

Fascinating. The Aboriginal people of Australia preserve the history of their land (the geography) in their paintings, and they still have representations of features (such as lakes) that haven't existed for hundreds of years. This is what is important to them.

[@hlnbee]

I like the Hindu Goddess, Kali!

[@MrJasonwoodrow]

As a former fundamentalist who tried to take the words of Jesus literally, it is important to know that the gospels were expressly not eyewitness accounts. So the words we have are at best a generalization of concepts being related by Greek believers at least 40 years after the death of Jesus. That's a far cry from the idea that Jesus literally spoke these words and did these actions.

[@scars73]

Interesting. May I ask why you believe that? I’m a Jew who was caught into Christianity until I started really studying. I not follow Torah but really would like to know who Jesus/Yeshua was/is? God bless.

[@mooshei8165]

@@scars73your a Jew and you know nothing about your own religion? Weird… if someone or people was to use my religion and twisted it and act like they know more than me…. I’ll be piss…

[@mikeharrison1868]

Surely they had video recorders!? Don't we have verbatim transcriptions from the video recorders?

[@jonathandutra4831]

That's actually not true, You think that someone 40 years later just started writing stories about what Jesus said or did based on "What they heard? As far as the canonical gospels it's silly to think there weren't other materials floating around that did not survive. This 40 year hiatus is not realistic.

[@badatpseudoscience]

​@@mooshei8165You have stumbled on the difference between academia and religion. In academia, you are on a search for truth. Reasonable criticism is a wanted. In religion, you decide your beliefs and criticism is not allowed.

[@TerryJLaRue]

As I sometimes note to my friends, my memory is crystal clear. It is often wrong, but at least it is clear.

[@robertlittlejohn8666]

message for Bart---when I was at Chapel Hill (in the 60's) they had classes that started at 7:30am. This was in the summer, before air conditioning.

[@JonathanB138]

Ewwwwwwww.... that sounds horrible!!

[@oliverbrownlow5615]

I'm afraid that whoever assembled this video outsmarted Bart by inserting the "Outsmart Bart" title instead of the appropriate "Bart's Soapbox" title before his remarks about things that annoy him.

[@marcthorpe8057]

I just have to say that it is always a treat to see Megan”s fashion choices from week to week. I especially love your glasses in this episode.

[@nicolawebb6025]

An old friend told a story about my ex husband at our wedding that I'd heard many times before. It was fascinating to see how that story changed and was embellished over the years, sometimes depending on the audience too.

[@jonathanguernsey7051]

Bart, your a man after Gods own heart, in that you take every thought and philosophy into account and want the greater good to be present, not in the traditional way of superior men that skewed such texts to fit their own narrative agenda, but rather as a witness, loved your soap box!!

[@sonjab6127]

enjoyed this. Oral traditions in First Nations (as we Canadians call Native/Indigenous) peoples are intended to convey concepts not facts. Religions like literalisms as a means of promoting their followers’ “only” truth - often at the expense of those who already live the same concepts in their own manner (either through another religion or their own choices)

[@haroldwood1394]

I often wonder whether those concepts survive the oral transmission process much better than do the literalisms. Similar claims are made about the 'Dreamtime' stories of the Australian indigenous peoples (now also called 'First Nation's peoples'), but I cannot see how these ideas are testable. Best wishes to you.

[@user-fq4yz5ek3r]

Joseph Campbell re-defined 'myth' as truths that can only be conveyed by storytelling,not 'falsehoods', In many faiths, looking for 'literalism' is completely missing the point.

[@chipnewton9620]

Milman Parry and Albert Lord were musicologists that traveled to Yugoslavia in the 1930s to study the performances of bards there who were able recite songs/poetry that lasted for hours. These bards did this from memory. They were wanting to compare the Homer stories of the Iliad/Odyssey that were originally shared orally from memory. It's my speculation that many of the oral traditions of the Holy Bible were likely performed and shared by memory in the same ways and possibly in a musical way in order to reproduce these stories more effectively. Even though they are not New Testament, the Psalms were originally "songs," so there was already a precedent.

[@dawndead9591]

I thought that was one of Ehrman's stronger and fuller verbal presentations on textual variability and oral tradition claims. I wonder what my recall of it will be next week?

[@gerardvila4685]

I'm in a choir where we learn the lyrics by heart, as well as the notes we sing - it makes for a better sound when you're not reading and singing at the same time. I've noticed that often I can remember maybe 90% of the words, but 10% of them sort of aren't there - I took them for granted - and I have to look them up (or if we're singing, mumble a bit and hope the other singers will get it right). It's typically the less interesting words that don't stick in my mind, and have to be drilled in later.

[@Zachary_Setzer]

I also spent years singing in the chorus in high school and at my church, and I don't think your experience would resonate with many of my peers, lol. I still remember all of the words to many a song I learned for school chorus over twenty years ago and haven't sung since.

[@gerardvila4685]

@@Zachary_Setzer Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't talking about REMEMBERING words I had learnt. I was talking about LEARNING those words in the first place. While learning, I find some words are more memorable than others; the less memorable words are sort of more ordinary and could be replaced by others without changing the meaning. For instance, in Alice in Wonderland the Duchess says "Speak roughly to your little boy / and beat him when he sneezes"... or is it "speak harshly to your little boy" ?

[@Zachary_Setzer]

@gerardvila4685 I can see that in memorizing other genres, not so much with learning the words to a song. This especially when the setting is that you're learning a song where you have the conscious object to learn the words for a performance where you'll have to perform from memory. Not doubting your experience, but I don't think that sounds typical.

[@gerardvila4685]

@@Zachary_Setzer Yeah, I've been thinking about that... maybe the fact that I'm over 70, and you're about half that, has something to do with it ☹️. Well may you lol. Mustn't grumble, old age is better than the alternative.

[@andrew7944]

It would be great to hear their take on Dennis McDonald’s trope and mimesis work on the gospels using Homer and Vergil.

[@davidk7529]

Stories get changed within ridiculously short periods of time. People who talk about my girlfriend’s dessert shop spread stories about how she started the shop, none of which are true, and some even said they heard that *I* was the owner, even though I just clean in the morning and she has the chef’s jacket… all stories formed before she’d been open for 2 years! It’s been 5 years now, and instead of getting closer to the truth, the stories have only gained more details based on the original rumors, and the people spreading them are increasingly confident in their “knowledge” of our respective backgrounds. It’s really funny to hear it all relayed by people who actually know us, and we’ve all long since given up on trying to correct anyone who seems sure of their facts.

[@Purwapada]

as for the accuracy of oral traditions, it's complicated. As was mention with Homer, many oral traditions have repeated phrases and various patterns such as rhytmn, syllable count etc In some ways it is likely to be very accurate and other ways not so much. But we must be careful not to commit to the fallacy of equivocation by comparing direct semantic accuracy with accuracy of meaning

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

There's also a huge differences between oral cultures which have developed ways to at least minimize those changes over time and just normal word of mouth. There's no reason to think the early Christians had or were using any such techniques to preserve the stories. They were engaging in evangelism, not in history. Changing the story to appeal to more to potential converts would be more effective and spread faster. Even calling this oral tradition is overstating it.

[@mikeharrison1868]

Would be interesting to have a NT in chronological order (e.g. undisputed letters of Paul first, then Mark, Matthew, Luke, acts, John, then the rest as appropriate). And then marked up to show the various oral traditions, and then which of these events and sayings are likely to be something that actually happened - perhaps with an indicator of probability.

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

Do the whole Bible that way. Though the OT is more complicated, since a lot of it is layers of editing, rather than newly writing texts. It is interesting to read it that way and try to forget what you know and consider what you might have made of the religion with just those texts to go one.

[@mikeharrison1868]

@@jeffmacdonald9863 Useful Charts has done some good stuff breaking down scholarship on at least a basic level (dealing with JEDP, for example).

[@kencreten7308]

That's a great idea.

[@anarchorepublican2.015]

"undisputed" ...my patootie-d💋

[@RaulSoto21]

There is a 2021 académic (non-religious) translation of the New Testament where the books are organized like that, but it's in Spanish. The name is Los Libros del Nuevo Testamento. The main author is Dr Antonio Piñero from the Universidad Complutense in Spain (one of the oldest in the world, founded in 1293)

[@Robert_L_Peters]

Thank you

[@sia9907]

Sorry Bart, she won at spectacles.

[@dukeon]

She’s got the Harry Potter specs today

[@zapkvr]

Her name is Meghan

[@utubepunk]

​@@zapkvrUh. Okay? 🤷‍♂️

[@davidwilliams5497]

@@utubepunklmao her name was on the screen and he still misspelled it.

[@kcl6627]

She always wins that game.

[@davidk7529]

Today’s Soapbox needs to be a short that goes viral. Skeptic discussion is necessary and should be helpful for everyone when done right, but it has to be done rationally and respectfully or its value falls apart and becomes counterproductive.

[@newtonfinn164]

Many years ago, to belatedly fulfill a seminary assignment, I took the gospels apart story by story, saying by saying, event by event, and then reworked and recombined the material to fashion a personal version of the Jesus story. What surprised me was the integrity and consistency of a solid almost interlocking core of what I took to be the oral tradition underlying the gospel accounts. What emerged from this exercise was more than a common message. What emerged was unmistakably, at least to me, a man.

[@kencreten7308]

Interesting.

[@TheDanEdwards]

People started to do harmonies in the 2nd century CE. They, like you, wanted so much for something to be true that evidence to the contrary is just dismissed.

[@anarchorepublican2.015]

...many years ago, out of curiosity..I flirted with "The Jesus Seminar" and its various big name scholar's (Funk, Crossan, Borg..etc)and their various historical Jesus theories...a youthful Bart Ehrman was even then, a prominent new light amongst them... However upon examination, I found all their skeptical, and "pet" postmoderne' Jesus theories many times more inconsistent, arbitrary, and contradictory than the common consistency of canonical Gospels Authors themselves..

[@newtonfinn164]

Wasn't a harmony. My NT classes in a liberal seminary back in the 70s taught essentially the same lessons that Dr. Ehrman now teaches, as he has often indicated.

[@robertunderwood1011]

So you put it all together and you created a man. Perhaps you were divine and don’t know it.

[@hantms]

Some things can be relayed orally almost perfectly from memory.. it's decades since I read the story to my kids, but I can tell you really accurately what The Gruffalo looked like. 😊

[@JamesRichardWiley]

After the body was buried at a common grave outside of town the rumors and stories of visitations from Jesus in visions, dreams and memories began to circulate among his followers and grow into the stories we read in the New Testament.

[@user-om2os5yr6i]

And, there was no need for the body. Visions suffice for the whole thing.

[@cochetah4339]

I caught a fish and it was thiiiiiiiiiiiiis big! Also agendas or audience may color the story...the conf. In Nov. sounds great...I learned in churches all over the country in diff. denominations...and just had so many questions but was ignored so often when I did any analysis as was just to take for granted it was all divinely inspired so not to be questioned. I thoroughly enjoy the catch and pitch between Megan and Bart tho I am hugely conservative I appreciate their presence.

[@Rain-Dirt]

I dropped the idea of having to be either one or the other (conservatism/liberal/progressive/...) since I gave up faith in religion as a whole and more specifically, my christian faith. To put yourself into a box like that is to - in a sense - limit one's understanding and not being honest with their self, imho. (this does not only apply to religion, but also politics, economics or culture even) It certainly was not easy to let it all go, since I build my life around it, I was very conservative in my faith. One can be a mixture of a lot of things and I think this is how we all should approach life. Certain thing ought to be preserved, either temporary or for a (much) longer period of time. Others require adaptation and new lights/ideas. I think that is what life is all about and we ought to flow with it if we want to grow.

[@cochetah4339]

@@Rain-Dirt thank you. Though I continue to be conservative in everything hence not popular, and there are basic truths that are not to be changed or "let go" as society is unraveling due to that...I do appreciate your comment. I agree often with Dennis Prager, as more about society must have guidelines/instruction though individuals will deviate/ ignore. I still agree in the OC as this is a great week/ 40 days of repentance and opportunities for improvement to gain in recognizing what oppression was/is as we are on the cusp.

[@hantms]

The Game of Telephone is not a great analogy: the starting line is deliberately made weird, e.g. "The queen sat on her throne and ate thorny kumquats." On the other hand, the specific goal in Telephone is to retell something accurately. The specific goal of people/apostles telling people about Jesus is to show how amazing he is. Those kinds of stories tend to get more amazing with time. This may impact stories of his miracles more than his sermons and parables because few people would consciously want to change his teachings. And of course times and places get mixed up: someone may have a vision of a risen Jesus while out on the Sea of Galilee; that can easily turn into a story how Jesus physically walked on water.

[@rhondah1587]

My mother's dad, one of my grandfathers, was a fabulous story teller and he could make up a fascinating fictional tale on the spot with details you couldn't imagine. He made up human characters and used animals as characters too and spun the best tales that could go on for hours and hours telling without missing a beat. Humans have made up stories since they realized they could imagine things and put them in a tall tale. Probably started with telling a tale to get out of being caught doing something naughty. LOL I remember when I was 4 making up a story on the spot when I got caught using a shoe polish dobber to make spots all over my aunt's bathroom. I knew the adults knew I did it but I invented a tale of a tiger who had sneaked in and done it and I had seen that tiger do it. The adults were so impressed with my story, I didn't even get punished.

[@jamesbinns8528]

It is human nature to improve a story, and to entertain one's audience!

[@eswyatt]

Hey Bart, I would be very interested in a segment about the textual support for predestination and so-called "double predestination."

[@MichaelYoder1961]

I tend to think that oral tradition is just the "Telephone Game" - people passing on information they heard from someone who heard it from someone, etc. and by the time someone writes it down it's completely different than how it started. 28:00 perhaps she was Schrodinger's almost maybe dead or not dead or dead girl at the same time. Always look forward to these episodes. Thanks Bart and Megan.

[@saidzouhri8524]

Wow very good, thank you Dr Bart ehrman you are genial and honest man

[@soupbonep]

Bart, I'm glad that you are talking next week about education for non-scholars. Many academic scientists looked down on Carl Sagan for wanting to popularize science. And now he is a regarded with respect. I think that your approach is well past due and I'm a fan of your books and podcast and podcasts like Mythvision and Gnostic Informant and Digital Hammurabi, etc.

[@welcometonebalia]

Thank you.

[@OldMotherLogo]

Thanks, Bart. I really appreciate your commitment to accurate language and careful thinking. The point of which you complain is common just in life. People are often too quick and eager to jump to conclusions. I think part of it stems from a desire to know. People tend to be uncomfortable with ambiguity. Just as it is said that nature abhors a vacuum, so it is with people and knowledge. They want closure and will accept an explanation whether it is correct or not. This is why we need to teach and cultivate critical thinking. Thank you for your own contribution to that, you are truly an educator.

[@stevearmstrong6758]

True…people long for certainty but in many areas, we can never be truly certain. Or course some bypass this dilemma by simply assuming certainty and then surrounding themselves with others who share their belief. Back in my days as a chemist we followed the standard rules for reporting results: Results could never be stated with more certainty than the sum of the uncertainty of the data used. I think that concept is a good one to use when looking at history as well.

[@philiplee9183]

​@@stevearmstrong6758ko ki

[@kenwin5845]

interesting discussion.

[@shock_n_Aweful]

Ancient/Classical Europe and Religious history(Abraham focus) is what I studied at Uni and everything Dr. Ehrman is saying is absolutely true about how we view sources. We will consider oral histories but it suffers from all the same concerns that written records do plus many more. When I read primary sources(self written) I am looking for the following: How well does it line up with other sources, is it logically consistent with what we know about the culture in question. There is a lot more to consider than that but these can be applied to oral sources. The following are no less important but can only be considered with written sources: who wrote it and when did they live, where are they from, what is their perspective who are they loyal to or against, what religion are they are they devout or just cultural adherents, what other kinds of things have they written, how far removed in time from the events they are speaking of, what do other writers say about them, who translated it and what is the consensus opinion on the translator within their own field, are the original language consistent with the time frame it claims to be written in? The more of these things that can be corroborated the better the source can be counted on for accurate info. It is not reasonable to think oral histories can be better than written ones, even if the writer is intending to deceive the reader because other evidence will make you aware of that.

[@jamesbinns8528]

Well, God told those people what to write. I've heard that time and time again when I've tried to explain to people why I don't accept the Bible literally.

[@shock_n_Aweful]

@@jamesbinns8528it yea its special pleading to imagine the same being that can create the universe and intelligent life, very much wanted to speak to people but instead of just projecting the thoughts into our minds or just create an immutable text, he decided that the best way to communicate this important information was to filter it through dozens of writers over a hundreds of years in multiple languages which would then have to be translated into something readable to a single person.

[@haroldwood1394]

In a different context, we frequently are told about traditional stories passed on orally, in some cases over tens of thousands of years, amongst non-Westerners, e.g the indigenous peoples of Australia (40,000 years plus). For some reason, the accuracy of these traditions seems to be rarely publicly questioned; they have become 'gospel'.

[@utubepunk]

Oral tradition reminds me of a comedian workshopping a bit with many different audiences & fine tuning it until until you have the final bit for the recorded comedy special.

[@captaincall25]

Excellent

[@ruefulradical77]

Absolutely Brilliant! The best so far for you 7x7 th episode. In my one BA New Testament Literature course I studied back 2000 at ANCC, I remember reading one article about oral communication in an Arab culture, I think. The thesis was that the gist of the story was preserved. Though [my speculation] hearing preachers in church, it happens that the emphasis / gist might change ... Thanks again

[@jamesbinns8528]

My father told me stories about relatives on his side of the family that I had never met. I kept notes on some of his stories. Over time, the names of who built this or that, and where an item that is over 150 years old came from, changed. That is in one man's lifetime.

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

There's also a difference between the practice of oral tradition in cultures that rely on such for their sense of history. It's a skill, practiced by professionals trained in it, not just random people telling stories. Even then, it's clear that it's not that reliable. Even in such cultures, it would take time before stories of events would get from eyewitnesses into the repertoire of the bards or griots who would carry them forward. Who knows how much distortion would happen in the early days. And of course, 1st Century Judea was a literate culture. Not most people of course, but the scholars worked in text, not oral traditions. The disciples (or their early followers) weren't trained in preserving stories orally any more than they were literary historians. Their interest was in spreading the gospel, which they did by word of mouth. Almost certainly adapting their stories as they found which were effective at persuading others to believe.

[@ruefulradical77]

PS Now I can appreciate that the synoptic Gospels likely contain earlier oral fragments / forms though they were compiled/composed later than Paul.

[@nasonguy]

I've probably commented this on a hundred videos, but it's especially apt here. The story "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling" by Ted Chiang is a frankly amazing (and heart breaking) story that is precisely about the differences between oral and written tradition. Well, at least one half of the story is, but I don't want to spoil anything. Truly, it is one of my favorite short stories ever, and it deals quite directly with this topic in a wonderful, mysterious, beautiful, and devastatingly sad way.

[@grumpy9478]

the world of Faith is replete w/ assumptions, axioms, a prioris & the like. no one seems to enumerate, examine & test their own, even as they proffer a comprehensive narrative &/or theology based upon those unexamined underlying "truths'. one of the underlying insights gained from chaos theory is that initial conditions have a profound influence upon ultimate outcomes. it's a simple statement that's logical and provable via evidence. if one proceeds to endorse & promulgate a religious belief system w/o deep examination of its foundational assumptions, one might as well be engaged in speculative philosophy or pure fiction. internal consistency is not enough to qualify as proof of a faith's reality... that's just a feature of logic - which is a process, not itself factual truth. further, the failure to identify, articulate & provide examples that support the assumptions upon which a faith is built is an implicit admission of incompleteness, uncertainty, of possible error. to fully represent one's faith as real & true, one must also attack it beyond the critique of any & all outsiders. only through internal critique can a faith be offered as a valid truth for others. this critique is also the means by which a faith (& all its a priori assumptions, etc) can be perfected, or at least improved - made believable. it is the critical path to an honest faith held by honest believers. frankly, I'm not holding my breath. appeal to subjective revelation is far easier. & no one wants to subject their fondest foundational beliefs to that sort of fundamental critique. that's what one does to others, not themselves. humans... so emotional... so insecure... so certain.

[@exaucemayunga22]

Megan always got the coolest glasses and the coolest hairstyles, innit?😂

[@lauriehermundson5593]

Very much looking forward to a future discussion regarding oral tradition. Does anyone have any book recommendations about Oral Tradition for the lay person I might delve into?

[@keraysun]

Jairus' daughter is both alive and dead like Schrödinger's cat at the time when Jarius asks for help.

[@AnnNunnally]

It is possible that the oral traditions were passed on by rhythm or song which would help retain the memory.

[@dylanjames8792]

Like your assortment of cool glasses Megan!

[@carolynsilvers9999]

I actually went to sleep , face đown on my desk, during a film in archeology class.😮

[@Gaming_Vegan_Ape]

Always an informative video. Keep up the great work, people.

[@kencreten7308]

Maybe you both already said this, but it would be interesting to know how you two got to know each other and how you decided to start doing this series.

[@jeffryphillipsburns]

Snore.

[@ObjectiveEthics]

I can't help but pity the men who come off so desperately pining for an opportunity to compliment her in these comment sections. I am sure she is a reasonably nice person but she is not even remotely attractive. And her awkward fashion style makes her look like she really wants to fit in with the alphabet maphia.

[@ObjectiveEthics]

​@@ellie698Agreed 👍

[@sanddollar252]

Our classes started at 7:00 a.m., and in the dead of winter, with two feet of snow on the ground & fierce winds outside, the air conditioning would be on so cold (to keep us awake) that only a zipped up winter coat, hat, scarf, and gloves kept us from freezing to death. Did I mention it was a ‘Christian’ college? Of course, it was. Oh, if I had only know 40 years ago what I know now.🙃😳

[@mtheinvincible4156]

Why didn't they take listener questions in this episode? I've got tons of questions on exactly this foundational topic. How did stories told and retold evolve into written accounts "q' and the first gospel and how do we know these have any historical reliability to them? This is a huge topic.

[@CarlosTorres-cb5fb]

Great🎉 awesome

[@EconAdviser]

I wish he'd talk about the specific reasons people change things on repetition more, such as defensively to a hostile audience or to emphasize the "lesson" they got out of the story. Also important is when two or more messengers of a story confront each other, resulting in either a partial consensus or a dispute (there's a reason people learn to never talk about money or religion).

[@lh7550]

Regarding "Jesus Not being buried on the same day he was crucified": My opinion is that "Yes, He was". Though Romans, indeed, used to leave crucified criminals and rebels hanging on the cross for days (so they decomposed and scared people of suffering the same fate), I would argue that Pilate, in fact, may have conceded the body of Jesus because: 1-It was a special Sacred Feast (The Jubilee of Jubilees), and he didn't want the people's discontent. 2-Pilate didn't think that Jesus really was a criminal, and feeling pity about his "unnecessary" fate, he agreed to "lessen" the punishment.

[@awebuser5914]

Bart has mentioned many times that Mark (and others) are based on oral traditions, but is it not plausible that there were other, diverse and shorter, written accounts that had been created prior to Mark's account? It seems that in a 40-year timespan after Jesus' death, some effort to "write things down" would have been undertaken. On a connected idea, _whoever_ wrote things down the "first" time clearly did a tremendous amount of creative embellishment since the chance of anything being what Jesus _actually_ said, other than a general concept, is near-zero. Themes and core concepts could survive oral transmission, but verbatim quotes would be a virtual impossibility.

[@entropytango5348]

Great discussion but whats up with those new glasses?

[@thompsonbaseball]

Great podcast.

[@relaxman8076]

Salute to Bert,,,

[@riddlezastra1496]

first here lol.. #EDIT: who else enjoys the small talk they make at the first.. always witty and funny... love it.. why is this pod so perfect..??????

[@paulokas69]

I don't like the small talk. 3 or 4 minutes lost

[@lisaboban]

I don't like it because neither of them is very comfortable with it. It always feels a bit forced - like someone is making them do that.

[@kencreten7308]

@@paulokas69 Lost how? There's a ... slider in KZbin. You can skip it!

[@kencreten7308]

I do!

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

I liked the bit about the kid and Halloween being a million hours away. Time is much slower when you're little.

[@Demosophist]

Whenever I played telephone I always tried to tell the same story in such a way that it would be heard and interpreted differently from what was told to me. I thought that was the point. If there were a reward for accuracy that might be quite different since, as it is, the reward is for inaccuracy.

[@Demosophist]

About the assumption that memory works the same as it did 2,000 years ago, that isn't true in the media science of the McLuhans. The hardware is the same, but the dominant medium of a period weights or biases the distribution of the exterior and interior senses. For instance, writing and especially print enhances imagination whereas orality enhances memory, and these are at the expense of one another. This is the reason rhapsodes and their audiences could remember a story they had heard once 30 years ago. Of course once writing came into being this released the portion of hardware devoted to memory which then freed it up to imagination. We ended up with a lot *more* stories, but the price was that the stories had or carried less meaning. The crux of the Jesus narrative is that it occurs at the cusp or threshold when there was a massive increase in literacy. It also coincides with the transition from the scroll to the codex, which is something that, for the most part, M. McLuhan missed. Then, about a century or so after the invention of the Gutenberg press the "novel" came into being, which was a fundamentally different kind of story telling than the romance, as René Girard observes. Part of the intention of the novel is couched to influence the perception of realism by reproducing consciously an overtly the mimesis that had been so carefully concealed in the romance. It because a game between the writer and the reader, of "now you see me, now you don't".

[@dhchilton3323]

About the accuracy of oral tradition. There is room to believe that poetry was devised in order to preserve the accuracy of oral transfer of infromation. For example, the rules of metered Welsh verse (cynghannedd) are of a complexity that is at the same time accessible to the general, naturally cultured, population while also allowing for practically no variation from one telling to the next i.e. in a given phrase only a particular set of words in a particular order would fit.

[@arthurzetes]

But most of the gospels are prose

[@dhchilton3323]

I wasn't talking about the gospels. I was referring to Bart's comments about oral traditions generally and his inference that they could never be accurate. The purpose of my comment was to point out that he was making a sweeping statement, one that was not true in every case of oral tradition.

[@dhchilton3323]

Sorry, implication not inference.

[@keitho8131]

You are sort of making the same point that Bart made when he spoke about the Homeric tradition, but reaching the opposite conclusion.

[@keitho8131]

What is the Barnes and Noble of which you speak?

[@fepeerreview3150]

7:00 I'm only a few minutes in and maybe he'll cover this later ... as far as oral traditions or "making things up". Given how the more supernatural elements seem to increase with the later gospels, I'd gather those elements are less likely to have had their source in oral traditions and would represent a desire by the later authors to fabricate material for their own reasons.

[@malchir4036]

Huh? Oral tradition is more likely to include embellishment and all that sort of stuff, there's no real stuff to compare it to or fact-check.

[@fepeerreview3150]

@@malchir4036 It's just that it's the later material, John in particular, that seems to have more of the supernatural stuff. It looks to me like the story got more and more embellished with time, i.e. that the supernatural bits were added in later. What you said also makes sense. Maybe John was including oral traditions that coexisted alongside the writing of the earlier gospels and that's where the progressive elaboration came in. That starts to make sense, in fact. During that period (around 70-120 CE) there were many apocryphal gospels floating around as well. Mark, Matthew and Luke weren't yet considered the "canonical" gospels. They were still just 3 accounts among many. John may represent the next generation of oral embellishment.

[@rainbowkrampus]

@@fepeerreview3150 If John got it from non-surviving texts, then it wouldn't be oral tradition. Kinda the major problem with the entire oral tradition narrative from some scholars is that it ignores how highly literary the gospels are. They're lifting straight from the septuagint, they're borrowing themes and incidents from Homer and other playwrights. Hell Paul straight up says that he knows of Jesus from scripture and revelation. There's no reason to think there was an oral tradition and several to think that there never was one.

[@malchir4036]

@@fepeerreview3150 I've always considered John to be just (proto-)Gnostic, indifferent to Q which is often considered the oral tradition source. Lots of Gnostics thought dreams were a source of knowledge, at that point all gloves are off and it's just who dreamt the better story rather than history or oral tradition.

[@jeffharper9703]

What a collection of specs Megan.

[@BlueOceanBelow]

2:26 True, yet we all do it for at least 13 years!

[@Vincentjwhite]

Really enjoyed stumbling across this, and will look up other videos. I was curious: has anyone ever done any comparative research into western English, mythological oral traditions that were later written down, elaborated on and changed/embellished over time? I’m thinking King Arthur, Robin Hood etc. Obviously I think, even as an atheist, that on balance it’s far more likely the gospels are based on a real person than the King Arthur / Robin Hood legends. But I’m curious that there must be similar processes taking place… Oral story telling tradition - and then written down and formalized much later.

[@LevEakins1]

Good to see Megan in so many autumal reds and oranges.

[@thewb8329]

Two thirds of Mathew and Luke were copied verbatim from Mark.

Is Fahrenheit 451 possible : people memorizes one of few books word for word and become these living books for others.

[@kencreten7308]

This show needs an Awesomness License. Your vids are far too awesome for a mere KZbin vid.

[@spankflaps1365]

As well as the issue of Chinese Wispa’s, there is the Winnie Mandela Effect, where people conflate, confuse and misremember um…?

[@KaiHenningsen]

I could swear I saw that as the Winfried Mandel effect!

[@russellmiles2861]

and it is the Mandela effect @@KaiHenningsen which is not a thing outside of the USA. Mind you the Winnie Mandela football club choir is a real thing; it was performance at the comedy festival in Melbourne.

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@russellmiles2861Actually, it's a worldwide thing, or I should say a human species thing. People might not know the term, but false memories are very common.

[@russellmiles2861]

@@KaiHenningsen false memories is one thing. A collective view of a event that is misleading - hmmmm. I imagine folk in the USA are less informed about events. Whereas my parents met Nelson Mandela. But you are right: many folk believe there is a list of 10 Commandments in the Bible when there aren't.

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@russellmiles2861 There are three, plus for the famous one, people disagree about the numbering.

[@garthly]

If it isn’t made up on the spot, and if it isn’t taken from another written account, then it’s oral tradition. There is no sign that the fishermen in Galilee were keeping diaries of what happened. Hence the gospels are records of oral traditions. What we see in the gospels is a tendency to magnify and elaborate stories, from Mark onwards, increasing numbers of healing miracles, data about birth and family trees etc., as well as a move to greater universal relevance. Presumably if we go the other way, these can be traced back to smaller and more local original events. This is such a common pattern in religious and other traditions, that it’s no great surprise.

[@fzen2432]

The circular face-window point goes to . . . Megan

[@elainejohnson6955]

The birth stories of Jesus that are told in Matthew and Luke are totally different and irreconcilable since they can't be happening at the same time period.

[@nelson6702]

It's said that God intervenes to make sure the stories are not corrupted. But you have to believe the stories to have the idea of a God that could or would do that. It's circular.

[@murph8411]

Megan and her glasses always outshine her husband’s bow ties! 😂 How about Megan doing a course about cuneiform, Akkadians, Mesopotamia or something in her field?

[@lamalama9717]

That would be fascinating to find out about. It's far more neglected as a field compared to biblical studies.

[@OldMotherLogo]

She and her husband have their own channel, Digital Hammurabi. (sp?)

[@lamalama9717]

@@OldMotherLogo would be interesting to see Bart interview Megan about it

[@inregionecaecorum]

What stories did Jesus tell about himself and his origins? At what point did Joseph exit the picture and what did Mary tell young Jesus? Many of the stories we tell about ourselves are not our own memories but our memories of what our parents told us about our early selves.

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

We don't know if there's anything tradition at all to the birth narratives. Neither Paul nor Mark mention anything strange about his birth or parentage. That story comes in with Matthew and Luke and it comes in two different forms. It's likely that it originated late, as the idea of Jesus as the Son of God grew from an adoption understanding to a more literal one. That said, if anyone knew, it would have been James the brother of Jesus. It might be telling that we don't see the story until texts that date to after his death.

[@dukeon]

I’m from the future and this was awesome. I just popped back in time a half hour or so to post that fact. Back to the future!

[@NFREAK141]

bro what's it like in hte future?

[@KaiHenningsen]

@@NFREAK141He already told you. It's half an hour later.

[@kencreten7308]

Is this a capability I can rent?

[@matthewwood2638]

There is one incident where we actually have a good 'paper trail' of the oral tradition. When the author of Mark recounts the story of Simon of Cyrene, compelled to carry the cross of Jesus, he makes an aside that he was the father of Rufus and Alexander--treating them as well known to his readers. The account therefore must at least agree with that told by the sons of Simon and that brings us one step from an eyewitness who must have repeated the story in his family time and again. Another place where we are very close to the eyewitness is in the parable of the sower. Jeremias pointed out that the type of agricultural land described in the gospel is (was) common in Galilee. I've walked that kind of field in Galilee myself and as soon as I saw it I realized that Mark describes it exactly and there is no mistaking that this is an accurate description of something that is unique, highly complex, and difficult to describe unless one has seen it oneself. The only way to really describe it is from the perspective of the sower: little cleared spots with piles of rocks around them with shrubs growing here and there with trails running all over between them--with no way for a sower to prevent seed from falling in all sorts of places besides to bit of nice ground in the middle.. Nobody could have written that who (1) had not seen the fields themselves or (2) memorized the words of Jesus very carefully. before they had morphed into something different.

[@russellmiles2861]

This is unlikely: that was a climate cooler period compared to present. Moreover, there are different agriculture techniques today. The field would be a different variety, shorter, paler in colour and growth more irregular.

[@user-om2os5yr6i]

Rufus and Alexander, if they existed, would be long dead by the time Mark wrote. _Anybody_ could have written about the fields who only read about the fields, as you did. Acts is packed with local color cribbed from contemporaneous reference works. So, no, local color does not make a paper trail. And we already know the sower parable was made up.

[@Thagomizer]

​​@@user-om2os5yr6i If Mark wrote his gospel around the year 70 as scholars believe, then Alexander and Rufus could very easily have been alive at that time if they were sons of Simon.

[@superpuppy7854]

Surprised to hear no mention of Holy Writ as Oral Lit. A great little book on this subject by a professor of folkloristics

[@bubbles581]

The NINT conference was great! Too many things using the title misquoting jesus now tho name the course something else IMHO

[@machonsote918]

I think Christianity could have avoided so many problems if religious leaders had not pushed it as "The Word of God". Once you mention "God", then it is expected for such "word" to be perfect (no contradictions, etc.).

[@kennethblevins5531]

Im surprised that Bart didn't bring up the potential influence of Paul in forming the gospels

[@lepidoptera9337]

You can clearly tell that the other Evangelists didn't agree with Paul, even though they wrote later. That means they either didn't know about him or they ignored his theology completely.

[@scottmitchell6640]

wonder what Bart thinks about Mithraism being integrated into church texts during the Roman adoption of Christianity? Or was it done even earlier?

[@Thagomizer]

Most likely it wasn't done at all.

[@rebeccaippolito912]

Why is it the early church made 2 of their only cannonized gospels Luke and Mark?? They weren't even Jesus's disciples.. weren't they associated with Paul?? The Jewish guy who worked for the roman government?? You know, the guy who probably was appointed by the roman empire to Create a universal religion?

[@TheSoteriologist]

Starts 3:33.

[@HomelessIndustrialComplex]

The topic discussion starts about 4 minutes into this.

[@lvivlion3036]

I agree on Roman crucifixion. The ultimate shame came in being left on the cross to decompose.

[@fakhruddinnalawala5451]

To note, it says "Outsmart Bart" but it ends up being "Bart's Soapbox"

[@AbdulHannanAbdulMatheen]

👏🙂

[@allanwilliams2079]

@Bart D. Ehrman Between @8:18 and @8:32, you said that Mark was not one of the disciples, can you tell us who are the people who were the disciples?? The bible gives the names of 12 disciples of Jesus who were regularly around him: it also said that he gave power to, and sent out, another 70 disciples: do you know the names of any of the 70?? The bible also speaks of an hundred and twenty disciples at the time of Pentecost: did these, at least 25 others, become disciples after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus or before he was crucified?? Acts 12:12 And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark; where many were gathered together praying. Seeing that the house of Mary, the mother Mark, was a regular gathering place, can you say whether the gathering started before the crucifixion of Jesus or after his resurrection?? Can you say at what time did Mark become a disciple?? The bible tells us that all who believed were together, and that they had all things in common. Acts 2:44 And all that believed were together, and had all things in common; The bible tells us about the things which shows that a person believed. Mark 16:17 And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues Is Mark among the gathering simply because it is his mother's house or is Mark also one who believed?? ● Here is a question: was there an oral tradition about Moses which was going around before the Torah was written down?? ● The only information which presents a character that represents Jesus is found in the gospels: if the gospels were not written before 70 AD, with whom were the disciples identifying when they preached what they preached?? The disciples preached of Jesus of Nazareth. Acts 2:22 Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know. ● Can the verse above, as a preaching, be effective with people, outside of Jerusalem, who did not interact with Jesus?? Who Jesus of Nazareth is can only be confirmed through the information in the gospels. ● The people who were preached to in Acts 2:22 had other information, with which to confirm, what the disciples were preaching. ● The gospels provides evidence of a being who exists: the other books present the relations which this being has, with the world. ● An oral tradition of Jesus, before the gospels, is like the cart traveling the road before the horse.

[@johnstewart3244]

Perhaps someone can enlighten me! I have just read the 2 accounts mentioned in Luke and Mark about Jairus and his daughter. I'm in the NIV! Both stories recount that Jairus came to Jesus whilst his daughter was still alive. Both then state that he was informed that his daughter had subsequently died. One account relates that one person told him, another that more than one told him. This difference is negligible. I don't understand what Bart is stating here.

[@dorothysatterfield3699]

Ah, but listen again to what Bart says at 27:47. He's comparing the story in Mark 5:22 - 43 (the daughter is dying) with the story not in Luke 8:41 - 56, but in *Matthew* 9:18 - 26 (the daughter is already dead).

[@johnstewart3244]

@dorothysatterfield3699 Thanks for that. It's pretty obvious they are all recounting the same stories . We could go deeper into this. If Matthew got his story from Mark, Why did he change it? It seems to me that all 3 stories don't show much deviation after 40 years from what probably happened. In Matthew the events are much briefer than in the other Gospels, which is odd since Mark is the shorter Gospel! Discuss!

[@hive_indicator318]

​@@johnstewart3244I guess I'm weird. I consider being very sick quite different to being dead

[@johnstewart3244]

@hive_indicator318 As far as I understand it, she was dead in all 3 stories! And was brought to life in all 3, by the power of God in Christ@ 😁 But there are differences, I grant you. The question is that they are not big enough for us to decide that they are different stories, but the details are different. We would expect this in any eye witness testimony of a crime. Bart has previously stated on recorded that some of these stories in the Gospels were just copied from each other. However in this case the differences in my opinion rule this out!

[@kelvinmurphy2108]

I’m understanding he is comparing two stories related to a young girl’s death in Matthew 9:18 and what happened in Mark. Vastly different. As you say, Mark and Luke are quite similar. Approximately 28 minutes into the podcast.

[@darlebalfoort8705]

Simple logic escapes a great many people.

[@tookie36]

Is western scholarship unaware of devices used to preserve oral teachings? Or do they not apply here?

[@donsample1002]

I’ve always found the prerecorded segment intros that your editor drops in annoying, because they are usually just repeating something Megan just said, but it was especially annoying in this case as the editor dropped in the wrong intro

[@rpoorbaugh]

6:34

[@pamalamurphy1349]

Then you must also conclude the same about the Hebrew Scriptures that are based on oral tradition.

[@awebuser5914]

Outsmart Bart title versus Soapbox... (minor bug!)

[@tedgrant2]

I've noticed that there are contradictory equations in religions. According to Islam, G=1 But according to Christianity, G=F+S+Hg

[@MessianicJewJitsu]

Bart's approach to Jesus and his "agnosticism" reminds me of when WWE or Moody Bible Institute pays a guy to play heel or to offer up storylines and accusations the audience knows is said to make them boo despite not damaging the Face one bit.

[@mauricegold9377]

I'd like to get a sense of the documents biblical scholars are reading from. If we look at the translations of the bible from the 17th century or so, we have so much gained or lost in meaning and texture, and just what sources were the King James bible based on, and just how much could we trust the translators. In other words, how far back have the scholars gone beyond the partisan, politically motivated 'translations' of earlier documents, that we now call the bible.

[@jeffmacdonald9863]

That's why scholars learn Greek and Hebrew. To read the oldest manuscripts in the original languages and not to rely on past translators. (And Latin, since there are many early Latin manuscripts, though those are still translations.)