[squirt]

even if the writers (of the Gospels) intended to reliably record history, were they able to do so? how can we be sure that the material about Jesus' life and teachings was well preserved for 30 years before it was finally written down in the gospels? won't you concede that faulty memories, wishful thinking, and the development of legend would have irreparably contaminated the Jesus tradition prior to the writing of the gospels? we have to remember that we're in a foreign land in a distant time and place and in a culture that has not yet invented computers or even the printing press, books - or actually scrolls of papyrus - were relatively rare, therefore education, learning, worship, teaching in religious communities - all this was done by word of mouth, Rabbis became famous for having the entire Old Testament committed to memory, so it would have been well within the capability of Jesus' disciples to have committed much more to memory than appears in all four gospels put together - and to have passed it along accurately, frankly, that kind of memorization seems incredible, how is that possible? it is difficult for us to imagine today, but this was an oral culture, in which there was great emphasis placed on memorization, and remember that eighty to ninety percent of Jesus' words were in poetic form, this doesn't mean stuff that rhymes, but it has meter, balanced lines, parallelism, and so forth - and this would have created a great memory help, the other thing that needs to be said is that the definition of memorization was more flexible back then, in studies of cultures with oral traditions, there was freedom to vary how much of the story was told on any given occasion, what was included, what was left out, what was paraphrased, what was explained, and so forth, one study suggested that in the ancient Middle East, anywhere form 10-40% of any given retelling of sacred tradition could vary from one occasion to the next, however, there were always fixed points that were unalterable, and the community had the right to intervene and correct the storyteller if he erred on those important aspects of the story, it's an interesting coincidence that 10-40% is pretty consistently the amount of variation among the synoptics of any given passage, it is likely that a lot of similiarities an diffrences among the synoptics can be explained by assuming that the disciples and other early Christians had committed to memory alot of what Jesus said and did, but they felt free to recount this information in various forms, always preserving the significance of Jesus' orginal teachings and deeds, you've probably plaed the game of telephone as a child, one child whispers something into another child's ear and at the end it comes out grossly distorted, is this a good analogy of for what probably happened to the oral tradition about Jesus? no, not really, here's why: when you're carefully memorizing something and taking care not to pass it along until you're sure you've got it right, you're doing something very different from playing the game of telephone, in light of the checks and balances of the first century community, you'd have to say that every third person, out loud in a very clear voice, would have to ask the first person, "do I still have it right?" and change it if he didn't, the community would be constantly monitoring what was said and intervening to make corrections along the way, that would preserve the integrity of the message