Monday, December 30, 2013

Dual citizenship

The cognitive environment of the gospel message was entirely oral. Jesus presented his teachings in oral forms, and his hearers grasped the truths that Jesus proclaimed by aural means. The Evangelist, who recorded Jesus’ words and deeds, preserved the orality of Jesus’ public ministry in their written records. There is no indication that they understood their written texts to somehow be different from or superior to the oral texts.—The Lost World of Scripture, page 127

<idle musing>
The oral and the written existed side-by-side. Bauckham makes a similar claim in his books; the ancient world was an oral one with a written element. But the written element was subservient to the oral element...not the way we see things, is it?
</idle musing>

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