Oral Tradition & The Gospels

In the previous post I listed reasons why the Jesus tradition wouldn't have been so corrupted to the point to where we couldn't prove fact from fiction, myth from history. However, with that said, there are still some issues with regards oral tradition.

Oral tradition has affect the gospels in many respects. Below I will list one example (with underline added):

(Mark 10:17-18) . . .And as he was going out on his way, a certain man ran up and fell upon his knees before him and put the question to him: “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit everlasting life?” 18 Jesus said to him: “Why do you call me good? Nobody is good, except one, God. . .

(Luke 18:18-19) . . .And a certain ruler questioned him, saying: “Good Teacher, by doing what shall I inherit everlasting life?” 19 Jesus said to him: “Why do you call me good? Nobody is good, except one, God. 

(Matthew 19:16-17) . . .Now, look! a certain one came up to him and said: “Teacher, what good must I do in order to get everlasting life?” 17 He said to him: “Why do you ask me about what is good? One there is that is good. If, though, you want to enter into life, observe the commandments continually.” 

These are clearly parallel accounts, I don't think anyone would deny that. In Mark we see the man call Jesus, "Good Teacher," and the same is found in Luke. However in Matthew, the man doesn't call Jesus "Good Teacher" as he does in Mark and Luke. Jesus in Matthew doesn't ask, "Why do you call me good?" Rather, he asks, "Why do you ask me about what is good?"

Logic and common sense tells us that Jesus didn't say both things and that the man didn't call Jesus both things, though all three evangelists are portraying the same event. What truly did the Jesus of history say? 

I'm not suggesting this is a contradiction but I am suggesting this is due to the affects of oral tradition, oral tradition that we should accept for the good reasons we have to believe in its reliability. In a study by A. B. Lord, a fairly well known anthropologist, he conducted several important studies relevant to oral tradition. He studied Yugoslavian folk singers who would memorize stories of up to 100,000 words in length. Every time the folk singer would retell the story, the characters, the plot, the main events and most of the details to a large extent, stayed the same. There was only a 10% to a 40% variation in wording (which is 1000 to 4000 words) every time the story was told. 

Lord said the variations were due to (1) "saying the same things in fewer or more lines," (2) "adding details to the description," (3) "changes in order of sequence," (4) "addition of material found in texts of other singers," (5) and "omission of material."  Many of these variations is exactly what happens with the gospels. Not to mention, that if a folk singer got part of the story wrong, the community of listeners could have easily corrected the singer. In a similar manner, eyewitnesses and disciples could have corrected any fictitious story floating around. (see also Kenneth E. Bailey in "Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels")

In comparison to the 100,000 word stories of the Yugoslavian folk singer, the New Testament has roughly 138,000 words in it. (see New Testament Statistics) We can see, then, that the New Testament but especially the Gospels, could have been memorized fairly accurately and not just by one person but by communities of individuals including the disciples themselves, as well as eyewitnesses. 

We can confidently conclude, then, that there may be variations within the gospels' wording of certain key events and that we may not know what the Historical Jesus said down to the exact letter, but those aren't reasons to reject the reliability of the Gospels. And chances are that one of the 4 Gospels does indeed have the Historical Jesus' original saying down to the letter or close to that. But we shouldn't worry if we have Jesus' words down to the letter, it is the overall central message of the event being described that matters.