Gotta run, so I'm just going to address the 1st part of your post.Interbane wrote:Oral culture will follow the Chinese telephone game no matter how superhuman the people were that memorized the stories. Unless… unless they memorized from an objectified source, meaning text. Whoever it is that was the “original” witness or source of the stories would have to dictate his account for the rest of his life to even approximate the fidelity that can be attained by memorizing written sources. Which brings back my original issue with this…. Where is the original text, or at least the text that people used as a memorization source?1) Oral versus Written Culture
- We've found no record of the hypothetical Q gospel, and part of the reason may be that it was an oral transmission.
What you're saying is a common assumption from people in non-oral cultures. Studies and research has demonstrated that this is not factually correct in oral cultures however. I'm afraid I can't think of books on the topic off the top of my head, but a good librarian should be able to point you towards one of the major studies on this issue.
Depending upon her areas of specialization in anthropology, Olivia may be able to suggest relevant texts as well.