Articles
 Justice for All
 Church in Decline
 Striking Similarity
 The Efficacy of Prayer
 Are You Ready for Change?
 A Question of Vocation
 The Challenge of Change
 Elul 24
 Elul 23
 Elul 22

Series [All]
 Administration
 Elul 5777 (9)
 Exploring Translation Theories (25)
 Live Like You Give a Damn
 Memory and Identity
 The Creative Word (19)
 The Cross-Cultural Process (7)
 The Old Testament is Dying
 The Oral Gospel Tradition (4)
 We the People (8)

Archive

Wednesday, 8 June 2016

The Manuscript Bonus

Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity,
Tom Thatcher ed., SBL, 2014, page 176

Keith re-emphasises his last point and adds:

it is crucially important to understanding what a manuscript contributes to the transmission process. Writing opens cultural texts to a virually limitless history of reception, so long as the papyrus or parchment of extant copies endures.

Of course, as Keith admits, in a culture where not everyone may be literate, "there must also be a reader in order to actualise the tradition, but it is precisely this limitation that allows a written text to break the constraints of orality:

the tradition's audience is no longer confined to those who are physically present before the author/performer/messenger. The reader can be anyone, anywhere, at any time. Manuscripts thus enable communicative memory to become cultural memory in a distinct way because they allow cultural texts to cross space and time, becoming long-duration texts that are received generation after generation.

To which I would also add that a text can also be copied, thus extending the reach of a text far beyond what an original speaker or performer can manage. Not only can a performance be at any time or place, it can be in multiple locations and times, simultaneously!

Posted By Jonathan, 8:14am Comment Comments: 0