Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible

Studies on the Media Texture of the New Testament—Explorative Hermeneutics

Loubser

• Publisher: Cascade Books
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781621895169
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible is the fruit of Professor Loubser's confrontation with how Scripture is read, understood, and used in the Third World situation, which is closer than modern European societies to the social dynamics of the original milieu in which the texts were produced.

1

Media Criticism of the Bible

Some Issues Raised by the
Orality–Literacy Debate

Media criticism involves an analysis of how messag-es are influenced by the media through which they are transmitted. This influence extends to all aspects of messages—concepts, codes, and media—as they function within a communication system. The properties of the media determine various aspects of the generation, format, distribution, and reception of messages.

The purpose of this first chapter is to review the media technologies that were available in the world of the NT. We shall first make some general observations on the function of media criticism. In a subsequent section we shall note the development of media studies through different phases. In the conclusion of the chapter we look at the psychodynamics of media and the theory of the so-called “great divide” between orality and literacy.

The Function of Media Criticism

Knowledge of media can assist the biblical scholar in two ways: (a) as a tool to analyse the ancient biblical texts; and (b) as a tool to interpret the texts for the present.

A Personal Reflection

The far-reaching importance of media came to my attention particularly when I began teaching at the University of Zululand in 1990. I had been reading material on orality and literacy for some years before; but what previously had only been theoretical knowledge now took on practical shape. The first indication that I had to do with some students (though not all) hailing from a primarily oral background was that some did not read the written notices on my door or the printed handouts. Once a student actually complained in class because I handed out papers without reading them. It then struck me that this mistrust of the printed word reflected cultural preferences. Another feature I experienced regarding students from an oral environment was that they were able to absorb information for hours without apparently growing tired or restless. This ability to “sponge up” the spoken word apparently went hand in hand with an inhibition against asking questions in class. Time and again I had to challenge students to overcome their own cultural conditioning in this regard.

A strange behaviour pattern of some students that I had to get accustomed to was the habit of rubbing instead of knocking on my office door. When entering, they avoided my eyes until they were seated. Someone explained that this was a way of showing respect. In traditional society an inferior is never allowed to be seated higher than a superior. But did this mean that those who knocked audibly and entered were without respect? It occurred to me that this behaviour was—of course with some variation—applicable to oral cultures where both teacher and disciples were also supposed to be seated during teaching. A fellow lecturer who himself comes from a traditional African environment understood the students’ reaction much better than I did and managed this in his own way. He used to get quite upset with students rubbing on his door. On one occasion he went to the door, threw it open and declared to the students: “If you knock like this, you will never drive Mercedes Benzes!”

When I first mentioned my discovery about the primarily oral background of some students to a colleague with a Zulu background, he saw my remarks as disparaging and vehemently defended the intellectual ability of those students. He added that their distrust of books was an asset that had long been forgotten by “white” students. On the basis of what I had read of Marcel Jousse, Jan Vansina, and Walter Ong, I of course agreed with him. Their publications began making more and more sense. The medium of communication—whether it be speech or writing—has little to do with intellectual capacity. Oral cultures can produce extremely complex symbolic patterns and have preserved aspects of human experience that literate cultures have lost to their detriment.

The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has, for example, existed in an oral-manuscript environment for sixteen centuries. On a field trip to Addis Ababa in 1999 I found that the only Western-style library in the Orthodox Church was at the Orthodox Theological Seminary and that it contained only 3,600 volumes. Until recently, training, reading, and writing was restricted to the few, while training for the ministry consisted of students sitting outdoors, reciting the texts and commentaries provided by their oral teachers.2 Along with the occasional reading of the written text of the Bible, this procedure has served the church well in the past. To the Western scholar this is an indication that the oral interpretation of the Bible is a viable alternative in a predominantly oral environment.

Media Criticism as Analytical Tool

These personal anecdotes already provide some indication as to the necessity of applying media criticism when it comes to the interpretation of ancient texts. Any interpreter who seeks to understand communications of ancient cultures should be aware of the constraints and opportunities afforded by the media of that time. This especially holds true for societies where media of communication different from those of the present were used.

The degree to which technology can be generated and transmitted is directly related to the information culture of that society. By determining the flow of information, media technologies also determine the size of the political units that can be effectively managed. In hunter-gatherer societies, where the oral-aural medium is the basic medium, political units seldom extend further than the clan. With the development of writing, city-states and empires became a possibility.3 The Hellenistic and Roman empires mainly depended on the manuscript medium. It probably is no coincidence that nation states developed in Europe in the wake of the printing press. In our time it is already evident that the advent of the electronic media has facilitated the creation of trans-national political units such as the European Union.

It would serve us well to keep in mind that for 99 percent of the time of our human existence we lived in hunter-gatherer groups no larger than 50 members, depending only on gesture and sound as media of communication. For the approximately 150,000 years that Homo sapiens have existed, only the last five millennia saw the development of writing. Through a gradual process, communication through gestures and sounds was supported by graphic signs. For millennia after this, only the select few in society had the capacity to write and to read. After that it still took centuries for the printing press, the radio, film, television and the internet to develop. Each change in media technology coincided with a major change in social conditions as a whole. This does not mean that all changes are media driven, but it does mean that an understanding of the media culture of a society provides an indispensable window into the social and psychological dynamics in that society.

Media Criticism as Hermeneutic Tool

A media awareness not only prepares scholars for understanding the codes operating in the texts they are working with, but also helps to assess the “gap” between then and now, between present and ancient cultures. In other words, media criticism has the dual function of being a tool of interpretation as well as a hermeneutic tool for contextual studies.

In interpreting ancient messages we need to be aware of the historical distance between our own culture and the culture being studied. This especially applies because modern scholars are constantly tempted to understand ancient messages in terms of their present literary frame of mind. Almost by default, most people living in modern literate cultures are “media blind.”

In this regard it must be noted that transposing a message from one medium into another is bound to alter the message. When we translate information from one medium into another, some inevitable transformations in style and contents occur. So, for example, we can note the development of the character of Mary Magdalene in the cinema. In oral-manuscript culture, as also in the succeeding printed media, characterisation of her remained relatively stable. However, when the Gospel narrative was transposed to the film medium, a significant transformation occurred. Initially portrayed as a follower of Jesus, she increasingly became his sexual counterpart and fleshly temptation. This development can be consistently traced in the long range of successive Jesus films since the 1920s.4 The manuscript gospels do not provide any evidence for this development, so it can be ascribed to the demands of the cinema for dramatic characterisation and conflict.

Another example of this phenomenon is that contemporary Bible translations cause shifts of meaning on various levels. One such shift is that modern translations change the paratactic style of the primary text into a subordinate style. Instead of using words like “and” / “or” for links between different narrative units, they use a variety of intricate constructions (“if,” “because,” etc.). This undermines the oral style of the primary text. Walter Ong illustrated such a shift by comparing Gen 1:1–5 in the Douay version (1610) with the New American Bible (1970). Instead of nine introductory “ands” as in the former, the latter has only two “to provide a flow of narration wi...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Foreword
• Preface
• Chapter 1: Media Criticism of the Bible
• Chapter 2: A Model for Interpretation
• Chapter 3: Orality and Manuscript Culture in Early Christianity
• Chapter 4: Application of Media Criticism
• Chapter 5: Orality and Literacy in the Pauline Epistles
• Chapter 6: Rhetorical Christology?
• Chapter 7: Paul as Contextual “Theologian”
• Chapter 8: Orality and Literacy in the Johannine Manuscripts
• Chapter 9: Reconciling Rhetorical Criticism with Its Oral Roots
• Chapter 10: The Oral Christ
• Chapter 11: Media Theory and Religious Interpretation
• Chapter 12: Media and the Ethics of Interpretation
• Endnotes
• Bibliography