Saturday, February 1, 2020

Two gospel, the written and oral

The earliest gospel writing indicate Jesus the social philosopher. That written version co-exited with the oral version, Jesus is divine.  The former subject to Greek literature, the latter subject to oral traditions of simple stories.

At the time the two dived together without conflict. To be a divine idea as written philosophy or to be oral myth of divinity likely seldom distinguished. This was still the time when it was expected he great masses can never afford scribes or parchment and will never be widely read.

I think the rise of Latin, once again changes this formula a bit. I would expect Latin to push the availability of literate to reach the parish level, rural priests could have parchment documents under the Catholic system of scribes. So e have a push to reconcile he oral and written versions in the next century as the peasants are making ad hoc reading visits to the local church.

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