Reasons for thinking that no notes were taken while Jesus and apostles were teaching?

[Thomas]

What I’m discussing in this thread is the imaginary scenario where the disciples of Jesus did not do what disciples of others teachers did. In asking and searching for reasons for people thinking that, what I found reduces to:
1: No one ever said that the disciples wrote notes, which is not actually true.
2. The literacy rate was low. Disciples of other teachers lived in the same society, with the same literacy rate, but they wrote notes, copied them into compilations, and recopied them as needed for their purposes.

What you're doing here is offering a weave of fiction and history.

In making sense of the Christian narrative, you are imagining a solution and imposing that on events, coming up with your own fictive history.

What you're offering is not historically accurate – nor can it be – it's a mixture of history and imagination shaped round each other – you keep making the same claim as if it is an indisputable fact, whereas it's nowhere near as certain as that, and your argument in support rests on comparing chalk and cheese – unalike scenarios.

I've repeated this over and again, and you won't address it.

You're offering an imagined fiction of text transmission as a historical fact.

I have nothing further to say on the matter.

 

[TheLightWithin]

It seems to me we've offered good reasons to doubt it

Additionally

I seem to remember learning somewhere, maybe in adult bible study at some point, that written materials were often not trusted as much in the ancient world due to the fact that you could not quiz and interrogate them the way you could a speaker.

Also I don't think people carried writing implements around on the regular like in more recent times.

So in conclusion it's hard to say yay or nay, only that AFAIK there is no clear evidence to support the speculation of contemporary notetakers.

 

[TheLightWithin]

There were people taking notes about what Jesus and the apostles were saying and doing, as it was happening, and those notes were recopied as needed, until the gospels were written. "Oral only" does not actually mean oral only. When pressed, scholars say that it actually means mostly oral, with some written memory aids.

Where is the evidence?

No one is willing to even say that it might possibly not be true.

Ok, I am. It is in fact POSSIBLE that NOBODY took notes.

I see now that what I'm saying is actually not controversial.

It could be? I don't know whether it's controversial or uncontroversial. It's just a speculation without direct support.

 

[TheLightWithin]

If there is no God, then the Bible is a total fabrication.

Even if there is a G-d, the Bible could still be the work of men.

If, and only if there is a God who created the universe and life, then God has the power to oversee what is written in the Bible.

Or not do so. Think of the perspective of non Abrahamic traditions. They have beliefs about G-d and creation, but not precisely in line with the assumptions of the Abrahamic traditions. They think it was their scriptures which are privileged.

Even if some all powerful emperor wanted to corrupt the Bible, he would have to fight against God.

Scholars find all sorts of evidence that scriptures were redacted and edited, so I guess alot of scribes fought G-d?
But wait a minute. Why preserve scriptures rather than preserve humans? Change that to "if any jerk wanted to steal or destroy property, or assault or kill people, they would have to fight against G-d to do it"

The free will argument is usually used to defend why G-d does not stop cruelty or crime.
What stops that argument from being equally cromulent if someone wants to alter something in the printed word?
The book is more sacred than people?

 

[TheLightWithin]

’ll ask you again, do you honestly, sincerely think that it’s possible that there weren’t any witnesses writing notes?

Yes, it's absolutely possible that there weren't.
Maybe there were. Maybe.
We just don't have direct evidence OF it AFAIK.

 

[TheLightWithin]

Don't you believe that God has made mankind vicegerents on earth?
i.e. in charge of planet earth

Do you mean vice-regents?
Isn't that Jesus?

 

[Longfellow]

Do you mean vice-regents?
Isn't that Jesus?

No. Jesus is Regent.

 

[Longfellow]

Where is the evidence?

I there some evidence that you would expect, if disciples of Jesus wrote notes? I’ve posted all my reasons for thinking that they wrote notes. If you don’t call any of that “evidence,” then there’s no evidence.

Ok, I am. It is in fact POSSIBLE that NOBODY took notes.

Thank you.

 

[Longfellow]

What you're doing here is offering a weave of fiction and history.

In making sense of the Christian narrative, you are imagining a solution and imposing that on events, coming up with your own fictive history.

What you're offering is not historically accurate – nor can it be – it's a mixture of history and imagination shaped round each other – you keep making the same claim as if it is an indisputable fact, whereas it's nowhere near as certain as that, and your argument in support rests on comparing chalk and cheese – unalike scenarios.

I've repeated this over and again, and you won't address it.

Not true. I have addressed it.

You're offering an imagined fiction of text transmission as a historical fact.

Also not true. I’m not claiming that anything I’m saying is a historical fact. I think that you might be misunderstanding what I’m doing, but if so I don’t know how to explain it any better than I already have.

I’ve changed my mind about the burden of proof being on people who exclude the possibility of text transmission in their proposed solutions to the Synoptic Problem. There isn’t as much documentation as I thought for disciples of Jewish teachers writing notes.

 

[Carlos]

What have we got with your note takers?

We got a pretty infamous stories about frankincense and myrh....of course those stories are about following a star...and while the implication to most they showed up at birth in a manger...and scholars say not really.

We got a few other stories between birth and 13...those obviously not taken at the time but made up / recalled later....then what 30?

And in three years the Son of G!d got a couple chapters....upgraded to four when Q turns into 3 of the four and then the claim for years was that was proof of truth since the synoptics had so many similarities!

Me thinks the sin is the optics or disinformation based on conjecture declared as gospel so much of which later discredited with investigation.

Don't get me wrong, the beatitudes and gospel of Thomas have some great thought which have helped our world progress (albeit slowly) the past couple thousand years.

The gospels are following the same style of the former scriptures, informing solely things of importance.

Let's say from Jesus. His birth. Later his circumcision. Nothing else up to his Bat Mitzvah. And from there up to about 30 years old when he finally reached the allowed age to get out of home to work for his god as a priest or rabbi. These events mentioned right above are practically a "requirement" to solidify that his parents obeyed the laws and traditions fulfilling them in their son. In other words, that no Jewish person might have doubts about him in reference with the law and traditions.

Nothing else appears to be important in his early years, just a normal life as a child and a young man.

Scribes were people who went to school and learn writing and reading. They worked for business people, government, religious leaders, historians, and more. But it was hard to find freelancer scribes in those years.

Besides of that, the Judah Town newspaper was in bankruptcy, the TV stations were just a project, same with the printing business because the dogs went on strike and ink became more expensive. Those were times of changes. The best ways for communication were rumors and gossip. In this matter they became experts since Exodus.

So, someone might ask, why an illiterate fisherman like Peter didn't just take a papyrus paper and wrote at least his date of birth? Why Peter didn't visit at least one time in his life the King David Library located in downtown three blocks from the Temple?

Well, we can't ask for those people to make things that today for us are very easy to do or perform. For us is very easy to know what is going on around when we use the several modern devices. If we were in 1960, news from the world will be known with a delay, sometimes hours, sometimes days, weeks, months or never. This is 65 years ago, now think how it was 2000 years ago.





After that, his life as a rabbi took great importance to the narrator(s).

 

[Longfellow]

You're offering an imagined fiction of text transmission as a historical fact.

I'm not doing history. I'm thinking about what could possibly have happened, that would best explain what we're seeing now.

 

[Thomas]

I seem to remember learning somewhere, maybe in adult bible study at some point, that written materials were often not trusted as much in the ancient world due to the fact that you could not quiz and interrogate them the way you could a speaker.

The critics of 'oral tradition' – and sadly Bart Ehrman is one of them – invariably bases their argument on the assumption that the Tradition works like the 'Telephone Game'. It's a false analogy to start with. There are plenty of online resources that drive a horse and cart through those arguments.

Oral tradition is not just people 'telling stories round the camp fire'. Oral Cultures were much more sophisticated in the preservation and transmission of stories that were of vital cultural importance.

Also, unlike the Telephone Game, it's not a single line of transmission, it's within groups, from families up to entire cultures, and there are checks and balances and, as you say, listeners could 'quiz and interrogate' the speaker. What can you do with a piece of paper?

I think, me working from memory here, that there's a common assumptions that because, having grown up in a written transmission milieu, that oral transmission is somehow defective and unreliable, whereas Oral Cultures had far better means of store and recall, which we lost as we gave away those skills in favour of new technologies.

(Illustrated manuscripts, for example, were aides memoire to enable the reader to memorise the page for oral recitation.)

It's hard to recognise the importance of oral transmission, and yet it was central to cultural life.

Services were performed in the synagogues and temples, and sacra doctrina was read, and people listened. But people didn't have sacra doctrina at home, nor was there a 'personal reading' culture as we have it today.

Reading, even personal reading, was done aloud! I have a reference to one of the Fathers, in the 4th century or later, in which it was remarked that so-and-so read in silence, which was startling to the observer! Who does that?!

(Being the designer for a now 40-year old public poetry programme, I would happily argue that poetry read aloud is often more profound and effective than poetry read in silence in a quiet corner.)

I am of the opinion that the argument that regards a written source as somehow a superior guarantor of veracity is somewhat anachronistic. We make it because we rest on literary dependence. Dependence on the written word is our weakness, not theirs.

Also I don't think people carried writing implements around on the regular like in more recent times.

I rather agree. It was be as required.

So in conclusion it's hard to say yay or nay, only that AFAIK there is no clear evidence to support the speculation of contemporary notetakers.

None.

 

[muhammad_isa]

Do you mean vice-regents?
Isn't that Jesus?

No, vicegerent..

A vicegerent is an administrative deputy appointed by a sovereign, supreme chief, or higher authority to exercise their power, rule over a region, or assume their duties.

I use it in the sense that G-d gave mankind the responsibility to look after planet earth..
..through Popes and Kings .. govts. etc.

That is what I observe to be the case.

 

[Longfellow]

I am of the opinion that the argument that regards a written source as somehow a superior guarantor of veracity is somewhat anachronistic.

That helps me understand better your objections to what I've been saying.

(later) In my research I noticed that there's been an attack against the reliability of any kind of oral transmission. That is not where I'm coming from.

 

[rocala]

, I would happily argue that poetry read aloud is often more profound and effective than poetry read in silence in a quiet corner.)

I think that Quranic recitation this way too.