Werner H. Kelber

Spoken words process knowledge differently from writing. What happens when speech turns into text? In reappraising literary scholars' propensity to trace Jesus' sayings back to the assumed original version, the author argues that in the oral medium each rendition of a saying is the original. Orality works with multiple originals, rather than with single originality. In what may be the most extraordinary thesis of the book, Kelber argues that the written gospel is related less by evolutionary progression than by contradiction to what preceded it.

The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q

The Oral and the Written Gospel

Wilhelm Kelber

The primary objective of this book is an interpretative retelling of Mark's story of the life and death of Jesus. Mark's Gospel is viewed as a dramatically plotted journey of Jesus. Mark invites the reader to follow Jesus on His travels, unexpected experiences and crises. The reader who follows Jesus' journey to the end will be shown a way out of the crisis.

Mark's Story of Jesus

Paula A. Sanders

In April 2008 a conference was convened at Rice University that brought together experts in the three monotheistic religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The papers discussed at the conference are presented here, revised and updated. The thirteen contributions comprise the keynote address by John Miles Foley; three essays on Judaism and the Hebrew Bible; three on the New Testament; three on the Qur'an; and two summarizing pieces, by the Africanist Ruth Finnegan and the Islamicist William Graham respectively. The central thesis of the book states that sacred Scripture was experienced by the three faiths less as a text contained between two covers and a literary genre, and far more as an oral phenomenon. In developing the performative, recitative aspects of the three religions, the authors directly or by implication challenge their distinctly textual identities. Instead of viewing the three faiths as quintessential religions of the book, these writers argue that the religions have been and continue to be appropriated not only as written but also very much as oral authorities, with the two media interpenetrating and mutually influencing each other in myriad ways.

Judaism, Christianity, Islam

Oral-Scribal Dimensions of Scripture, Piety, and Practice

John Miles Foley

Richard A. Horsley

Jonathan A. Draper

Previous thinking regarding "oral tradition" imagined a one-way process of transmission, handing down the fairly intact textual chunks that would constitute what we know as the end result, the written Gospels.

Orality, Memory, and Mark

Performing the Gospel

Luke Timothy Johnson

John Dominic Crossan

"The current controversy over the historical Jesus and his sginificance for both scholarship and religious belief continues to rage inside and outside the academy. In this volume, three distinguished New Testament scholars debate the historical, textual, and theological problems at the core of the controversy."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Werner H. Kelber

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