When the Oral Gospel Reigned
Before the Gospel was Penned – Part Two on Ancient Literacy
I went to an old-fashioned Sunday school. We didn’t play games, watch VeggieTales, or dress up and re-enact the Bible. We memorized Bible verses and colored pictures. It was pretty boring. As we got older, we memorized the Lutheran Catechism—not the new one. The old one. The one written in middle English from the year 1529. It uses words like thee, thine, and thou. As a teenager, I went through confirmation class, which consisted of memorizing various articles and answering the question of, “And what is meant by this?” with rote memorization. Sunday School was the only time in my life I’ve ever been asked to memorize a chunk of language word for word. Well, except for the Pledge of Allegiance. Other than that, I never had a teacher instruct me to memorize literature or a poem. Sure, I had to know my multiplication tables and memorize a few dates, but I never experienced standing in front of my class and doing recitation anywhere else. That happened only at Sunday School.
Communal Enchantment
At a dinner party a few months ago, the conversation turned to finding beauty in our dysfunctional and desecrated world. At that moment, my friend Anastacia spontaneously recited William Blake’s poem Auguries of Innocence. The clink of forks on plates ceased. Conversations hushed. The room quieted. We sat spellbound as the euphony floated through the air and caressed us. We entered into a dreaming communal enchantment as she spoke:
“Joy & Woe are woven fine
A Clothing for the soul divine
Under every grief & pine
Runs a joy with silken twine”
When she finished, all that remained was a stillness. Eventually we snapped out of our reverie, adjusting to reality, blinking our eyes, inhaling and exhaling, and muttering trite words like “Wow,” and “Huh!” I’d never actually experienced a spontaneous poem recitation. It left me wanting more poetry recitation in my life. It evokes wonder. I want my life to be wonder-filled.
I’m finding myself interested in committing poems to memory. I’ve memorized and absorbed W.H. Auden’s poem “Leap Before You Look” and have recited it to my patient husband so many times that the words are as much a part of me as my muscle fibers and organs. My plan is that when I’m old and demented, I’ll recite poems and charm the staff at my future nursing home. I’ll sit hunched in my wheelchair and accost the staff with the words of Yeats. Maybe I’ll have stringy gray old hair bunched up in a messy bun, drooping jowls, a crinkled face, and absolutely no wits about me. But I’ll gladden others with poem recitation!
Paper Traded for Projectors
At the church I attend, the hymnals are gone, replaced with a screen that projects the words in the front. Looking at a screen and singing the spiritual songs of my faith lessens the enchantment of the experience. It adds a mechanistic element that I wish wasn’t there. I think we should hold the songs in our bodies and sing from memory or physically hold the songs, carried on pine pulp, in our hands. I spend enough time looking at screens. I’d like it if the church was a sanctuary from the frenzied, screen-ridden modern world. (I’d prefer a church that doesn’t use electricity either. And uses a wood stove for heating. And no plastic in sight! Then again, no church exists to meet my Luddite expectations).
I know I am totally in the minority on this one. Absolutely nobody has a problem with screen-based church services except me and
. So, in my subtle rebellion, during the community singing, I try to avert my eyes away from the screen. I sing with my eyes closed, look at the ground, or look to the cross in the front of the chapel. I’ve been hearing the old hymns ever since I was in my mother’s womb, so I can usually sing them from memory. Sometimes, I can’t remember all the verses. And so, I allow the congregation to guide me, and I sing a few beats behind (loudly, enthusiastically, and off-key). Slowly, the songs encase me, and after years of repetition, I just know them. They are as much a part of me as my fingernails and spleen.Committing Spoken Words
I’ve started listening to poems on YouTube, trying to memorize them just from the orally spoken words. Of course, I have never done this in my life. Not even in Sunday School. Back then, we would read Bible verses several times, memorizing them line by line. We didn’t listen to oral words and commit them to memory. We took the written words and turned them into spoken words. Committing spoken words to memory, without the use of written words, is something I can’t really do. I’m from a literary-based society, not an oral one. But that is a skill the ancients did with regularity and astonishing abilities. They could recite a 1,000-line poem after hearing it just once!
Pre-literate people needed to be skilled in memory. Without the ability to read or write, the only way to remember something was simply to remember it. They could not make lists and double-check things. If they needed to go to an HOA meeting in the evening, they did not check their diary; they had to remember. If they heard a compelling legend told in the public square, the only way to enjoy it later was to have it committed to memory. Without strong memory and oral comprehension skills, one would be at a serious disadvantage in the ancient world. Their oral language and memory skills were far, far superior to ours. I can barely memorize a ten-line poem after hearing it ten times. Yet, the ancients could recite the Iliad, a poem 28,000 lines long! When I compare myself to them, I feel quite stupid.
Sacred Narratives
The ancients must have spent a long time telling and hearing stories. I heard that in my region, the American Indian tribes would spend the damp winters cozied up in their longhouses, sharing stories that took many weeks to tell. Some of the legends began with words like “A long long long time ago, back when the whale people had legs and walked on land…” Whales are mammals. They breathe air. They really did once have legs and walk on land. Like whales, snakes, too once had legs. Snakes descend from lizards. Over time, their legs were born shorter and shorter until they had no legs at all. Pythons and boa constrictors still have tiny hind leg bones where their legs once grew. According to Genesis 3:14, after the serpent deceived Eve, the snake was cursed by having to slither instead of walk: “The LORD God said to the serpent: ‘Because you have done this, You are cursed more than all cattle, And more than every beast of the field; On your belly you shall go, And you shall eat dust All the days of your life.’”
Myths are not necessarily invented tales but often sacred narratives telling the story of a place or people. They do not share history through linearity, reasoning, or mere facts. Rather, they speak to historical events through the lens of spirituality and reverent awe. There is a weightiness in these stories—a sense of wonder, perhaps. In such evocative tales are burning bushes, dragons, talking snakes, and walking whales.
The Klamath and Modoc tribes have preserved the story of how Crater Lake came to be, except their story isn’t told through the linear lens of Western thought. They talk about the Great Spirit who came down through a hole in the clouds, pushing down ice and raising up Big Mountain. The Great Spirit dug trenches for rivers and wetlands and even hidden underground channels where sweet wild spring water bursts forth. The Great Spirit put two bones over one another to create the tribes. As he saw the smoke from the tribes, he declared, “May you live well on the lands created for you, my people.”
One day, the Spirit Chief of the Below World became angry when a marriage proposal was refused. In his anger, he shook like thunder, emitted violent flashes of lightning, and bolted back and forth in the tunnels beneath the mountain, causing Big Mountain to erupt with such force that the top blew off.
This story was passed on orally for 250 generations with wonderful accuracy.
Modern geologists have found the description in this mythological story to depict the development of Crater Lake with “surprising” fidelity. Of course it does. Pre-literate (and non-literate) people have skills we literate folk don’t have. They possess jaw-dropping memory and oral language skills that far surpass ours. Notice how the article I’ve shared speaks of how “surprising” it is that these people could preserve such accurate history. There is an assumption that the story wouldn’t be accurate, so the fact that it is should lead us to surprise. The assumption seems to be that the tellers of the story are either unintelligent or that since it hails from oral tradition, it’s not to be taken with much seriousness. The great orator and Lakota activist Russell Means once said:
I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate thinking”: what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.
Relations over Abstractions
Socrates, too, viewed oral tradition as superior to the written word. He said that those who write “cease to exercise memory because they rely on that which is written, calling things to remembrance no longer from within themselves, but by means of external marks.” According to Socrates, the written word, when compared to the oral tradition, is like comparing a picture of a mountain to an actual mountain. The picture cannot depict the feeling of crisp, thin air, beaming grandeur, the trill of the marmots, the chirps of the birds, or the smell of rain on huckleberries. A picture, like words on a page, is inert and dead.
Modern Western culture tends to retain information in books, whereas in indigenous and ancient cultures, the oral tradition maintains history using legends and mythology—the most vivid forms of storytelling. Vivid stories are much easier to remember and pass on than a linear list of facts.
I’m not sure when written language came to be seen as superior to oral language, but it certainly wasn’t always that way. As late as the second century, the physician Galen said, “There may well be truth in the saying current among most craftspeople that learning out of a book is not the same thing as nor comparable to learning from the living voices.”
Even after the written word had emerged, the ancient world still remained chiefly oral. There was no such thing as popular literature, meaning literature which became known to thousands of people through private reading. All ancient literature was for reading aloud because so few people “knew letters.”
In the ancient world, literacy and intelligence were not considered correlated. The non-literate were not looked down upon with derision nor were they given the pejorative label of “illiterate.” Just about everyone was non-literate. What would be the point in knowing letters if one was not a scribe? There were far more important things to know and learn, such as how to spin flaxseed into linen, butcher a goat, navigate by the stars or the moss on the trees, weave a robe, gather wild food and medicine, maintain a thatched roof, or brew yarrow ales. Knowing how to read was simply not imperative for survival in the ancient world. There was no sense in learning a skill that is useful only to those employed as scribes. It would be a bit like learning how to code, if one is not a software engineer, nor interested in becoming one.
Holding the Sacred Traditions
In Greco-Roman society, the non-literate had good access to the benefits of literacy. Written texts were regularly transmuted into their oral mode because society was still primarily oral. There were public poetry and prose recitations, theatrical performances, street corner philosophers, and routine traffic and legal documents. Professional scribes were available to compose receipts and letters on behalf of the non-literate. Ancient societies did not view the written word as legitimate and the oral tradition as illegitimate. We see this perspective exemplified in Paul’s letter, “Therefore, brethren, stand fast, and hold the traditions which ye have been taught, whether by word, or our epistle” (2 Thess. 2:15).
Like Greco-Roman culture, early Christianity was fundamentally oral. In those days, it was common for followers of a teacher or rabbi to commit to memory their sayings (versus fervently scribbling down notes like we would today). The Apostles would have recited the sayings of Jesus and retold His stories many times until they were absorbed into their very souls. Paul says, “I have shewed you all things, how that so laboring ye ought to support the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive” (Acts 20:35). According to the German Lutheran theologian and professor, Rudolph Bultmann, early Christian tradition “primarily existed orally and gained its written form only gradually due to the necessities of life.”
Before the first Gospel (that of Mark’s) was ever penned, it was the Oral Gospel that reigned, since the “Written Gospel” was not even a concept. Even once the Oral Gospel was reduced to written words, it still wasn’t seen as superior to the spoken Gospel.
Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis (60 – 120 CE), preferred the Oral Gospel over the Written Gospel even though he himself was literate.
If anyone happened to come my way who had been a follower of the Elders, I would enquire about the sayings of the Elders—what Andrew said, or Peter, or Philip, or Thomas, or James, or John, or Matthew, or any other of the Lord’s disciples; also what Aristion or the Elder John, the disciples of the Lord say. For I did not think I got so much profit from the contents of books as from the words of a living and abiding voice.
A Predictable Pattern
Most ancient tales were passed on verbally centuries before they were ever penned. For example, the Iliad circulated orally centuries before Homer was even born. The structure of ancient texts has a rhythm and a predictable pattern. This is to facilitate memory absorption in oral societies. Their written form reflects their original oral forms.
Like other ancient verbal prose, the Oral Gospel was communicated with a specific rhythm. The American Biblical scholar, L. Michael White, indicates there is a formula used in ancient oral tradition to aid memory. The formula would usually begin with a phrase like this, “I handed on to you what I in turn had received…” and would continue with an almost staccato structure, rhythmically using words “that” and “next.” This is evidenced in Paul’s writing style in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4. “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve.” So, when Paul’s written words were being orally presented to the typical ancient non-literate audience, the cadence and style with which Paul wrote, lends itself well to memorization. Such structure and style were intentional because the letters were being read to non-literate people who would, in turn, spread the Oral Gospel to more non-literate people.
By 70 CE, the time the Oral Gospel was reduced to words, there were Christian communities in Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and possibly even Spain. This signifies there was much preaching, teaching, and witnessing of the spoken Gospel.
In the beginning of Christianity, the sayings and teachings of Christ were spread by the Oral Tradition—the quickest (and most economical) way to spread a message. No papyrus or pens were needed, nor any literacy skills. To spread the news of Christ, people would have gathered at wells, sharing stories; there would have been the street corner philosophers, dinner conversation, and the spoken word utilized in the early Christian churches. The first Christians would have quickly committed the Oral Gospel to memory and verbally passed it on to others until there were so many communities that it had to be written down in order to maintain cohesion and avoid distortion of the facts and events.
Jesus never left a written record of his life. For He is The Word that became flesh. It was through the human ability to accurately (and stunningly) remember large complex chunks of information and transfer the Good News to others that His message spread. What has remained two thousand years later are the immortal writings of the New Testament, which undeniably have changed the course of history.
After Christ’s death and miraculous resurrection, his followers finally began to understand the Messiah. Transfigured in the glow of the incredible resurrection, luminous memories of Him came flooding back. His sayings, committed deep in their memories, took on new significance. Out of richly stored recollections and with bursting hearts, the Apostles spread the Good News far and wide, speaking the Oral Gospel before large crowds in Jerusalem and then “in all Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth” (Acts 1:8). Gentile and Jew alike caught the fire from those early missionaries and were made into new people. Strange people. Peculiar people.
People who, unlike their contemporaries, valued every single life as equally precious. They did not leave weak children to die in the blazing sun as the Spartans did. Instead, they cared for these vulnerable ones. In comparison to Roman Pagan culture, the status of women was elevated so much that the Romans scorned Christianity as a religion for women.
In 539 CE, King Chilperic defied his male-centered culture by bequeathing land to his daughter.
A long-standing and wicked custom of our people denies sisters a share with their brothers in their father's land; but I consider this wrong since my children came equally from God… Therefore, my dearest daughter, I hereby make you an equal and legitimate heir with your brothers.
St. Paul himself interceded with a man called Philemon on behalf of his runaway slave. He encouraged Philemon to think of his slave as a brother. Over time, slavery (a common and acceptable ancient practice) became seen as unjustifiable, even in medieval Christendom.
William Wilberforce, a passionate Christian and slavery abolitionist, said,
God Almighty has set before me two great objects: the suppression of the slave trade and the reformation of manners. It is the true duty of every man to promote the happiness of his fellow creatures to the utmost of his power.
Melodious Repetition
I have memorized the Apostle’s Creed. I haven’t really tried to, but after reading it Sunday after Sunday in unison with the body of Christ, it’s found its way into my memory. When the Apostle’s Creed was composed, most people still relied on memory and oral language, not literacy. It was composed for oral purposes. Mass literacy did not exist in Europe, across all social classes, until the 19th and 20th centuries. As I contemplate the structure of the Creed, I now realize that the authors intentionally used a mellifluous repetition—to reach the non-literate commoner. Just like Paul did when he wrote a letter to the church in Corinth.
Hundreds of years later, the strategy proves effective, even for the literate such as myself. The melodic words have lodged into my memory and also into the memories of millions of believers; these words have echoed across time for centuries. From both the non-literate and literate, a harmonious hum vibrates through the collective Body of Christ, declaring the faith:
I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting.
Amen.
I once went to a church where communion was served with the congregants huddled around the altar together as a group. Embroidered into the altar cloth was “Do this in remembrance of me.” We were given glass (not plastic) vessels of wine, and we passed around a loaf of bread, each breaking off a chunk. As the pastor repeated the lines of the sacrament, in the recesses of my memory, I found I could recite the lines that I memorized all those years ago for my first communion: “After the same manner, also, when He had supped, He took the cup, and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; this cup is the New Testament in my blood which is shed for you and for many.” And then we jointly clinked our glasses in joyful remembrance of Christ. We drank and ate as one, just as Christ did with his disciples two thousand years earlier in that sacred moment so many times remembered through generations of the faithful followers.
May we remember the healing sayings of Christ and the wonders of his life, just as our ancestors in faith have done for millennia. May we remember to remember, committing to memory the Oral Gospel, as we tell and retell the old old stories of our healing, saving, and risen Messiah. Amen.
Divine Nature is intended to heal, inspire, and cultivate hope—thus, it is given freely.
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Alyssa!!! We are guided by the same Spirit. Wonderful ideas and practices you receive and give in the wind. I'll remember how spoken poetry felt to you, and be encouraged to share what I have hoarded.
For 3 years now I've insisted on using only pencils for my songwriting, notes, and sketches, and have memorized Yeshua's Prayer ("The Lord's Prayer") in Ancient Aramaic - and some other sayings. (That passage "Ask/Seek/Knock" IT RHYMES!) My church allows me to lead worship a few times a year. I gather the chairs into a circle, kids in the center, and sing easy songs no projection or microphone required. Yes, we were meant to have these words in breath and tone, not on paper or screens.
Thank you, sweet friend.
Alyssa, thank you for recommending me. You are so sweet and my heart goes out to both of us here finding our way and writing inspiring thoughts and archives. And I love your green, pledge your support button, it's elegant and stands out amongst the others. Deborah