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Q and oral tradition
> I know I'll regret this but while I don't deny "conclusively" any literary
> relationship, I would argue for much more of a dependence on a common
> oral source. It makes sense to me that in the Jerusalem church there was
> a common glob of teaching, repeated over and over, which all the apostles
> contributed to and knew. Since I trace the contents of all the Gospels
> to the apostles in one way or another (I KNOWWWWWWWWW that many will
> disagree with that, so there's no point in telling me so), I have no
> trouble seeing each of the Synoptic Gospels containing large amounts of that
> common body of teaching. That makes more sense to me than a written Q that
> sometimes was followed and sometimes heavily changed by the Gospel
> writers. Why followit exactly one breath and depart radically the next? I
> suppose my theory is for more of an "oral" Q,
But doesn't an oral Q, or merely oral traditions face the same
problem? If this material was passed around so much that it became
memorized, why was only part of each pericope memorized? John S.
Kloppenborg in _The Formation of Q_ pp. 44-46 summarizes the arguments
against an oral Q quite well. While memorization and oral
transmission are possible and examples (outside the NT) can be given.
The gospels do not show the formal characteristics that are normally
used to allow for oral transmission, i.e. different means of balancing
phrases so one makes the other easier to remember. In the absence of
evidence that the verses as we have them were composed to make
memorization easier, I find arguments based on oral tradition
unconvincing.
Stan Anderson
The Claremont Graduate School
Institute for Antiquity and Christianity
ANDERSOS@CGS.EDU