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The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (African Systems of Thought)

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The sub-title gives a good concept of the theme of the book: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul and Q. The writer analyzes the gospels and looks at early gospel forms in the teachings of Jesus and Paul, finding the forms we find in oral societies today.

Kelber explores how the teachings of Jesus, presented orally to mostly a common people, would take form and have effect in an oral society, and be handed down as community treasures. He contrasts oral forms and their modes of transmission with written forms and their modes of transmissions.

He presents some keen insights on the differences in the Gospel form of literature, first developed by Mark as a written form, and the standard Greek letter form used by Paul, who emphasizes the theme that the gospel came in the spoken word, hearers are saved by response to the spoken word, presented in the power of the Spirit.

The teachings of Jesus in the gospels, the sayings in the various gospels and the variety of forms they take in the different gospels are signs that match the patterns now documented in oral societies. Other studies in recent years have indicated the primary role of orality in the records of the both the Old and the New Testaments.

This study is critical and precise in its analysis and deftly covers the comments and views on textuality of all the major contributors of the modern period of text and form studies. He points out the errors in assumptions by early and later textual and form critics, beginning with Bultmann, in assuming literacy to be the context and the worldview of the records. He explains primary and secondary orality.

The study of Orality has become a whole academic discipline. Courses on orality are now offered in various departments in North American universities. Orality has become a whole sub-discipline of mission strategy.

Kelber never uses a small word where a big one will do, but they reflect the large scope of his intellect. I have been reading in New Testament Studies for the past few years and this is one of the most important books, in my opinion,that I have found. It opened up vast areas for consideration that I had not even thought of. I'm a psychologist by training and could immediately see how what Kelber talks about regarding how an oral gospel and a written gospel affect people differently, reflects how stimuli are processed in these two, very different sensory systems. Just one example of this is how the cochlea (at least for less rapid vibrations) "bops along" with the beat of what it hears (cochlear microphonic), while vision, at virtually every level, is an either-or, totally ungraded, system. Implant electrodes in the visual cortex of frogs and you will find neurons that respond only to certain shapes. I suspect we have something analogous to these "bug detectors" that only recognize certain "shapes" in reading the New Testament. In ways we are blind to, the sensory experience shapes how we understand and think about the gospel. One way that Kelber mentions is the quest for the "original" version of what Jesus said. It is the frame of mind so used to written text that even imagines an "original" version of anything. Jesus was an oral performer. He traveled about and spoke repeatedly, we can assume, about similar matters of concern to him. Each performance was, in some ways, an original, but there likely was no one "original" version of anything that he said. i suspect that there are many other matters that we are blind to as readers about, rather than participants in, Jesus' performances and Kelber, more than anyone, has helped me get clear about that. I think this would be a good book for everyone to read! It is well worth wading through the big words to arrive with far more open eyes.