Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible: Studies on the Media Texture of the New Testament—Explorative Hermeneutics

Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible

Studies on the Media Texture

of the New Testament—

Explorative Hermeneutics

J. A. (Bobby) Loubser

Second Edition

Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible

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

Second Edition

Biblical Performance Criticism Series

7

Copyright ©

2013

J. A. (Bobby) Loubser. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers,

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This limited edition licensed by special permission of SUN MeDIA, Stellenbosch, South Africa.

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An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

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isbn

13

:

978-1-62032-540-7

eisbn 13: 978-1-62189-516-9

Cataloging-in-Publication data:

Loubser, J. A.

Oral and manuscript culture in the Bible : studies on the media texture of the New Testament—explorative hermeneutics / J. A. (Bobby) Loubser—2nd edition ; foreword by Werner H. Kelber.

Biblical Performance Criticism Series

7

xvi +

286

pp. ;

23

cm—Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

isbn

13

:

978-1-62032-540-7

1

. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc.

2

. Oral tradition. I. Kelber, Werner H. II. Title. III. Series.

BS

2361.3

L

683

2013

Manufactured in the USA

Biblical Performance Criticism Series

David Rhoads, Series Editor

The ancient societies of the Bible were overwhelmingly oral. People originally experienced the traditions now in the Bible as oral performances. Focusing on the ancient performance of biblical traditions enables us to shift academic work on the Bible from the mentality of a modern print culture to that of an oral/scribal culture. Conceived broadly, biblical performance criticism embraces many methods as means to reframe the biblical materials in the context of traditional oral cultures, construct scenarios of ancient performances, learn from contemporary performances of these materials, and reinterpret biblical writings accordingly. The result is a foundational paradigm shift that reconfigures traditional disciplines and employs fresh biblical methodologies such as theater studies, speech-act theory, and performance studies. The emerging research of many scholars in this field of study, the development of working groups in scholarly societies, and the appearance of conferences on orality and literacy make it timely to inaugurate this series. For further information on biblical performance criticism, go to www.biblicalperformancecriticism.org.

Books in the Series

Holly Hearon and Philip Ruge-Jones, editors

The Bible in Ancient and Modern Media: Story and Performance

James A. Maxey

From Orality to Orality:

A New Paradigm for Contextual Translation of the Bible

Antoinette Clark Wire

The Case for Mark Composed in Performance

Robert D. Miller II, SFO

Oral Tradition in Ancient Israel

Pieter J. J. Botha

Orality and Literacy in Early Christianity

James A. Maxey and Ernst R. Wendland, editors

Translating Scripture for Sound and Performance

J. A. (Bobby) Loubser

Oral and Manuscript Culture in the Bible

Forthcoming

Richard Horsley

Text and Tradition, Performance and Writing

Joanna Dewey

Orality, Scribality, and the Gospel of Mark

In Memoriam

Marie Mavis Vos 1922–1974

Coenraad Hendrik Loubser 1918–1998

Foreword

Historical scholarship has served as an intellectual matrix for biblical studies since the pre-modern period, throughout modernity, and into the present. Among the features that typify the historical critical paradigm, the following may be cited: the construction of a chronology that provides a temporal frame for the early history of Christianity, which came to be called Christian Origins; a circumspectly devised methodology with regard to the reconstruction, classification and interpretation of texts; a well-founded theory developed in the twentieth century about oral tradition, called form criticism; a heavy reliance on printed texts as a result of the triumph of typography, the high-tech product of the fifteenth century; the reduction of the medieval plural senses to the one historical sense (sensus literalis sive historicus); the exploration of the historical conditionedness of texts, reading them both in the context of their historical genesis and predominantly with a view towards ascertaining authorial intentionality; the critical production of textual editions with the objective of securing the so-called original text; the recovery of sources that were deemed usable for reconstructing the antecedent oral and literary stages of existent texts; a tendency to envision tradition, even oral tradition, in terms of the model of linear sequentiality and often in terms of an evolutionary ascent; interest in the production of texts more than in their consumption; a general focus on texts, intertextuality and textual stratifications more than on orality and oral-scribal interfaces —form criticism notwithstanding; and a fascination with questions of origin, including the singular originality of Jesus’ ipsissima verba or the ipsissima structura underlying his words.

To a very large extent, our assumptions about the verbal arts—e.g., the functioning of speech and texts, notions concerning authorship and tradition, writing and reading, texts and intertextuality, memory and imagination, logic and cognition, which are central metaphors of Western culture—are deeply entrenched in this historical paradigm. Its intellectual accomplishments have been incontestably huge, monumental even. Modernity in Western culture is unthinkable without the contributions of historical, critical scholarship. More to the point: the critical analysis of the Bible and the historical reconstruction of Christian Origins represent a hallmark of the intellectual ethos of modernity.

Two features have raised fundamental questions about the viability of the basic assumptions of the historical paradigm and its treatment of texts. One was the academic discovery and exploration of oral traditional literature. Milman Parry in the 1920s and 1930s, Albert Lord in the 1950s and 1960s, Eric Havelock from the 1960s to the 1980s, Walter Ong throughout the second half of the twentieth century, and John M. Foley in the last 30 years are among the pioneers who launched the field of oral traditional literature which concerns itself with the study of compositional, performative and aesthetic aspects of living oral traditions and the texts dependent on, or interacting with, them. Broadly speaking, the impact of these scholars extends beyond the subject matter of orality and oral tradition. The discovery of a culture of speech and scribally composed texts embedded in an oral biosphere has encouraged renewed attention to the world of ancient and medieval communications and in turn exposed a post-Gutenberg mentality at the root of the historical critical paradigm. It has become evident to a growing number of scholars proficient in the field of oral traditional literature that there is something different about many of our classical, biblical and medieval texts, and our historical reading of them that the academic disciplines of history, literary criticism, classics, medieval and biblical studies conventionally have withheld from us. Today the field commonly known as orality-literacy studies challenges us to rethink a set of concepts we thought we comprehended for certain. Notions concerning speech and texts, authorship and tradition, writing and reading, texts and intertexuality, memory and imagination, logic and cognition—these central metaphors of Western culture—are all affected by our growing knowledge of oral tradition and of handwritten documents that functioned in a largely oral biosphere, interacting with it in diverse ways.

The second development that raised questions about the basic assumptions of the historical paradigm occurred within the confines of New Testament Studies. What makes orality-literacy studies of the New Testament, and of gospel texts in particular, all the more consequential is the fact that form criticism, the academic discipline that was designed to attend to orality, is today besieged with serious challenges to many of its basic premises. Willi Marxsen in the 1950s, Erhardt Güttgemanns in 1970, and myself in 1983 all objected to form criticism’s trivialisation of any differentiation between oral and scribal communication. In dismissing a distinctive treatment of oral versus scribal dynamics, form criticism failed to grasp the nature of speech, and so in turn did not arrive at an appropriate comprehension of the nature of the written gospel, and for these reasons was unable to contribute to an understanding of the diverse oral-scribal interactions that are symptomatic of the ancient world of communication. It now appears that the very discipline which had operated for more than fifty years as the dominant methodological approach to gospel studies had focused on oral forms without an adequate understanding of speech and performance, while deriving forms of oral speech from gospel texts without a prior grasp of gospel textuality and textualised narrativity.

Professor J. A. Loubser has now articulated, as no one before him had done, the broad implications of a genuinely developed oral and oral-scribal poetics for our understanding and interpretation of the New Testament. Readers are well advised to distance themselves from the notion that the recovery of an ancient cultural matrix of speech and oral-scribal interfaces and the contextualization of the New Testament texts in their authentic media world only puts the finishing touches on conventional textual scholarship, constituting, as it were, a mere preface or footnote to what really matters, namely the written, i.e. printed texts. Something far greater and different is at stake here. The project at hand entails a revision of basic assumptions about the verbal arts that are intrinsic to the historical critical paradigm. The task before us, as Prof. Loubser reminds us, goes against the grain of our deep-seated literate inclinations, and for this reason is a most difficult one.

Drawing on a wide range of scholarship dealing with the properties and function of the materialities of the oral and scribal arts, as well as oral-scribal interfaces, Prof. Loubser unfolds before our eyes and makes manifest to our ears a world of communications in which there are no original texts, let alone original speech, where manuscripts are written to be remembered and read out aloud, where scribal products exhibit both a metonymic and a polyvalent quality, where many handwritten documents are oral transcripts, i.e. written records of multiple oral performances, where tradition supersedes individual creativity, where correspondences between Matthew and Luke are not readily taken for signs of literary dependence, where great variability exists in scribal-oral interfaces, and much more. Notably, Prof. Loubser’s media criticism, while strenuously focused on the dynamics and processes of the communications of the ancient world, develops vital implications for the theology of the New Testament. New and often surprising insights are gained when matters of christology, eschatology, soteriology and ethics, as well as concepts of time, personality, community and authorship are examined in light of the media culture of the ancient world. Professor Loubser’s work consistently exposes our frequent media blindness, revealing a historical paradigm that is patently (print-)culture bound.

Unmistakably, this book is a genuine outgrowth of African scholarship and Christianity. The linguistic sensitivities it cultivates and the hermeneutical values it sponsors are unthinkable without the media world of African traditional society. While being a significant contribution to South African biblical scholarship, it is nonetheless my hope that its readership will extend beyond Africans to include North American as well as European colleagues. For the theses that Prof. Loubser’s work posits and the challenges it presents need to be pondered by all of us who care about revitalizing the biblical tradition.

Werner H. Kelber

Isla Carroll and Percy E. Turner

Professor Emeritus of Biblical Studies

Rice University

Houston, Texas

Preface

One of the most significant developments in the study of the Bible has been the introduction of investigations focusing on the media of text production. Most of these studies are directed at the oral traditions that preceded much of the biblical material, while some target the ancient manuscripts. These studies usually appear under the heading of orality studies or as issues related to orality and literacy in the Bible. While producing many new insights, these studies are not conducted within the framework of a comprehensive theory. Such a theory only became possible during the past few decades with the incorporation of ideas from communication science and media theory. In this study I intend to introduce and explain the discipline which carries the name biblical media criticism. Although I first heard the term media criticism with the predicate biblical used by Thomas Boomershine, the development of non-biblical media criticism has been underway for several years.¹

As human beings we tend to discount our observations of those aspects of our world that we are most familiar with. Usually it is only the unfamiliar that draws our attention. One such blind spot is the medium of communication. When sending or receiving messages, we seldom notice the media we use whether it is speech, gestures, letters on paper, or email. Only when a specific study is made of media does their decisive importance come into focus. The last few decades have seen a rising interest in issues of orality and literacy, and communication science as an academic subject has gained in popularity.

The importance of media has not escaped the attention of biblical scholars. Over a vast range of fields significant new insights are being championed. These include theories regarding the origin and function of the biblical texts, hermeneutic method, systematic studies, ethics, canon criticism, etc. In the light of what follows, much if not all of present biblical scholarship needs to be revisited and reviewed. Presently many biblical scholars—like many in the human sciences as well—still remain struck with a media blindness.

This study will show that the media of communication are of particular importance to biblical scholars. This fact has been acknowledged over many centuries by textual critics who employed a sophisticated knowledge of the manuscript medium in order to establish the best text of the Bible. However, a knowledge of the medium implies much more. An understanding of the psychological and social dynamics of the medium can assist modern interpreters in ways that have previously eluded them.

Furthermore, an understanding of media is not only important for the interpretation of ancient texts, but is also vital for the understanding of culture in general and for cross-cultural communication. In biblical studies this means that ancient media criticism is not only necessary for understanding the Bible, but for understanding how the Bible is being read and interpreted today in many different cultures. This approach is bound to complement recent hermeneutical developments focusing on the reader.

This book brings together a number of studies I have conducted since the late 1980s. Some of these have been published in local South African journals and are here presented in revised form.

In order to describe the role and function of the media of interpretation it is necessary to develop a theory of communication that would account for the role of media. This is done in the first two chapters. The first chapter presents a historical review of studies of the media in the Bible, while the second chapter represents an attempt to place such studies within a wider theory of communication.

From here the focus shifts to the role of orality and literacy in early Christianity (chapter 3). Having established the variety of media available to early Christians and the possible ways in which media could have influenced the construction of the text, I suggest a series of steps for studying the media texture of biblical texts (chapter 4).

Chapters 5–7 focus on media criticism of the Pauline materials. Chapter 5 investigates issues of orality and literacy in the Pauline epistles and concludes with a general overview of how concepts such as the corporate personality, the efficacy of the word, and the soteriological significance of the apostle’s person are influenced by the media employed. Chapter 6 indicates how the oral-manuscript medium contributed to the specific profile of Pauline christology. Chapter 7 demonstrates how the broad outlines of Pauline theology were determined by his media culture.

A study of the media texture of the Johannine materials proves to be significant, because these materials were the latest to be committed to writing. As such they signify a transition from a pure oral culture to an oral-manuscript culture in early Christianity. This is the subject of chapter 8.

In the last five chapters some of the broader implications of media studies for biblical scholarship are outlined. Chapter 9 addresses some shortcomings of rhetorical criticism. Chapter 10 shows how media criticism enables a better understanding of cultural difference. The issue of African Messiahs that are seen to replace the Christ of the church is examined as example. Chapter 11 reviews the media aspect of religious texts in general, while the last chapter (12) shows how an understanding of media influences the ethics of interpretation.

The book as a whole points to the pervasive influence of media on the issues that biblical scholars deal with. It uncovers vast fields for new investigation and research, and shows that there is hardly a discipline that does not need rethinking in the light of our new knowledge of the influence of media.

For this study I am indebted to my students at the University of Zululand for providing me with ample references to the media world of African traditional society. A great number of learned scholars have honoured me with their time and input through the years. Professor Gert van W. Kruger of the University of Stellenbosch first roused my interest in the subject by his brilliant insights into the ancient Greek codex. Professor Jan L. de Villiers, my promoter, never ceased to encourage me to pursue my interests in this field. Other South African colleagues who have contributed through their own work and conversations are Gerhard van den Heever, Pieter Botha, Jonathan Draper, and Edgard Sienaert. I also wish to thank some overseas scholars who have each invested time and effort in my work: Professors Werner Kelber, Daniel Patte, Vernon Robbins, Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, and Peter Tomson.

Were it not for the persistent understanding and encouragement of Alrah Pitchers, Danie Bekker, Arthur Song, Gerrit van Wyk, Lincoln Michell, Johan Ras, Mike Kitshoff, and Pippin Oosthuizen, my colleagues at the University of Zululand, I would never have found the energy to complete this study. Research for this book was funded by grants from the University of Zululand and the Centre for Science Development.

Lastly I wish to thank Minnie, my dear wife, for her consistent support, without which none of this would have been possible.

University of Zululand

Empangeni

KZN

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 with the analytic, reasoned subordination that characterizes writing (1982a:37). A further example is the transformation that preachers experience when a written sermon is preached from the pulpit. Unless the written text is deliberately read out, it is almost inevitable that repetitions and interpolations occur to suit the demands of a live audience.

Whenever modern people interpret the Bible they are inevitably in a process of generating new messages, expressed in new media contexts. In this process, it serves us well to consider that between the time of writing and the present day there are not only philosophical and sociological gaps, but also a media gap. As pointed out, the media exercise an influence on every aspect of the message, from the codes used to organise the material to the very themes and concepts that are communicated. When a preacher, for example, addresses an audience over television, he or she will inevitably introduce subjects that interest all the potential listeners and in a style appropriate to that medium. Style and contents differ according to the medium employed.

A first step in biblical interpretation could be to assess the status and function of the available texts. For this, both a synchronic and a diachronic understanding of the media cultures involved are necessary. In this regard, media studies, especially those generated by the recent orality-literacy debate, prove to be most helpful. The issue of orality and literacy is one of the most significant new developments in the study of ancient cultures/religions, though ignored or underestimated by most biblical scholars. Biblical hermeneutics has yet to come to terms with the epistemological implications of the media we operate in.

New Theories

Some of the proposals put forward by proponents of orality theory have met with profound scepticism. After his publication of Memory and Manuscript in 1961, the Swedish scholar Birger Gerhardsson was severely criticised and then disregarded by the scholarly world. It is most significant that Jacob Neusner, one of his former critics, supplied the foreword to the 1998 edition of the book with an apology and explanation for this unfortunate turn of events.⁵ He ascribes it partly to the influence of Morton Smith, partly to a predominant historical positivism that was so strong that it left no space for investigating historical paradigms. We shall return to this issue later.

Werner Kelber, the first NT scholar to apply orality theory to the gospels, has been extensively criticised for suggesting that the Passion Narrative in Mark and the fact that it had been put to writing can be explained through orality theory (1983).⁶ In his view there is a correlation between the death of Christ and the distanciation brought about by writing. Among other theories that were put forward is, for example, Thomas Boomershine’s thesis that Jesus’ parables were appropriate for a literate mentality in the same way as the dialogues of Socrates were. Sometimes we find a romantic notion of orality, for example, that of Joana Dewey, who views oral-based Christianity as an egalitarian seedbed, replaced by a male-dominated literate version of Christianity.⁷ Statements such as that of Levi-Strauss, equating writing with slavery, have also been understood without the necessary nuance.

What is clear from these bold positions is that theories