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Introduces key technical terms referring to the composition and transmission of oral tradition, and proposes a general theoretical model for studying the various elements of Jewish oral tradition in particular. The most important technical terms are: “oral‐literary tradition” (defined as “verbal products of a culture that have pretensions beyond everyday speech”); “oral‐performative tradition” (defined as “the sum of performative strategies” for transmitting the content of oral‐literary tradition); and “text‐interpretive tradition” (defined as “the body of interpretive understandings that arise from multiple performances of a text”). The theoretical model of oral tradition employed here enables studies of the interrelationships among three dimensions of Jewish oral tradition: the textual substance of the tradition, the social settings for its transmission, and, most importantly, the ideological system by which the texts of oral tradition are represented. For rabbinic Judaism, the concept of Torah in the Mouth and the description of the earliest rabbinic text (the Mishnah) as repeated tradition are the crucial ideological elements under study.

While rabbinic texts represent halakhic tradition as a tradition transmitted by word of mouth, the surviving texts show many signs of having been composed in their extant form with the use of writing. The present chapter offers some examples of the interpenetration of oral traditional elements and written compositional elements in the shaping of early rabbinic texts, such as the Mishnah in particular. The focus is on materials that employ classic oral genres such as narrative and song (in Mishnah Tamid), complex lists (Mishnah Eruvin), and sophisticated mnemonic codes (Mishnah Pesahim). The chapter concludes with an attempt to reconstruct an oral‐performative narrative that informs parallel written accounts of the red heifer ritual as described in Mishnah Parah and Tosefta Parah.

This chapter discusses the inadequacy of other theories for explaining the similarities between the Covenant Code and the Laws of Hammurabi, including coincidence, the use of common scribal techniques, oral tradition, oral transmission of Hammurabi's text, and the use of an unknown mediating Northwest Semitic/Canaanite text. The chapter outlines in detail the evidence for placing the composition of the Covenant Code in the Neo-Assyrian period, between 740–640 BCE and the opportunity for the use of Hammurabi's Laws. It also discusses the wide attestation of the Laws of Hammurabi as a canonical-scribal text in the Neo-Assyrian period. It discusses the Covenant Code's occasional use of laws from other cuneiform law collections and the attestation of these other collections.

This chapter examines three passages that associate with the “conservative,” transmission-oriented aspects of Torah study the occupation with the two bodies of knowledge that the rabbis received: the Written Torah (Scripture) and the Oral Torah (rabbinic tradition). These passages are all premised on a dichotomy between the “received” knowledge of Scripture and oral tradition, on the one hand, and the innovative, creative aspects of study on the other. Building on the work of Daniel Boyarin, Jeffrey Rubenstein, and others who showed that the Babylonian Talmud places a high value on dialectic and analysis at the expense of tradition and memorization, the chapter demonstrates the centrality of this preference to the self-perception of the Talmud's creators and situates it within a polemical conversation among Jews in late ancient Mesopotamia.

This chapter discusses the gospel message as it was transmitted in “proto-orthodox” Christian communities in the first through fourth centuries CE “Proto-Orthodox” communities were those early Christian communities whose teachings were consistent with those of later-existing Christian churches. The chapter shows how the basic gospel message was embedded in New Testament texts; how it was transmitted in an oral tradition alongside the New Testament texts and formed the basis of early Christian creeds; and how it helped structure the canon of Christian scripture as it developed in the first through fourth centuries CE.

Explores the role of orality and oral‐performative tradition in the written literary activities of various scribal communities in Second Temple Judaism. It points out that true literacy was rare among Jews in this period, and was confined to various professional scribal groups associated with the Temple and its governing agencies. Even among scribal groups who created literary works, writing and literary transmission was highly oral in character. Nevertheless, these groups did not radically distinguish oral tradition from the written tradition of books claimed to stem from prophetic revelations. Rather, books were seen to stem from a kind of oral dictation from God to the prophet, as in the Testament of Levi and 4 Ezra, who functioned as a kind of scribe in transmitting the words of a divine or angelic author.

This chapter focuses on Native American language and song. It looks at the progressive compromising of tribal languages by the Western world. It discusses the value of oral traditions, the special role of elders in society as keepers of oral tradition, and the art of storytelling.

This introduction provides an overview to the comparative study of the Covenant Code and Mesopotamian law, particularly the Laws of Hammurabi. It provides a summary of the argument of the book and contrasts the views of other recent academic studies, including those of Eckart Otto, Raymond Westbrook, Ludger Schwienhort-Schönberger, Ralf Rothenbusch, and Bernard Jackson. It also discusses methodological questions and problems arising in the comparative study of Near Eastern law, including similarities as proof of literary borrowing and the "hermaneutics of legal innovation" (as pioneered by Bernard Levinson) or compositional logic of the text.

This chapter contains the core of the oral tradition/Internet technology discussions, listed in alphabetical order albeit the reader is free to create their own node-sequences as they please. The myriad topics here cover various areas of the three agoras and can range from anecdotal insights into verbal marketplaces to more comprehensive definitions of the terms and concepts used in the Pathways Project to discussions and divergences of networking among the three Agoras to reintroductions of familiar topics cast in a new light. Alongside these are further articles relating to the Pathways Project and its website proper. It must be noted, however, that, as a previous chapter has indicated, the nodes here are subject to the limitations of the tAgora, and that the website contains further and continually updated information for those who have exhausted the insights presented in this chapter.

This chapter establishes the cultural and thematic contexts for understanding folk saint devotions. It explores the nature of devotion, the means by which devotions are initiated and disseminated, and the relation of folk saints to canonized saints and to the Catholic Church.

The historical background of the patriarchal narratives has been much contested in modern scholarship. Among the authentic historical details advanced by scholars, three bodies of data have a strong claim to historical antiquity: the antiquity of the traditions about Abraham, the pre-Israelite worship of El, and the memory of an Amorite homeland.

Chapter 1 proposes that oral-traditional and literate features of a text do not correlate with a Germanic past and a Christian present. Instead, poets treat these modes of communication, simultaneously, as part of their poetic inheritance. In order to better describe how hybrid signs communicate, this chapter surveys defining characteristics of oral traditions (i.e., metonymy as described in the theory of Immanent Art), rituals (i.e., ritual signification), and literate traditions (i.e., medieval hermeneutics). The chapter explores oral-connected, oral-literate, and ritual signs in Exeter Riddle 30a/b to demonstrate how hybrid poetics can further our understanding of an Old English poem.

This chapter attempts to clarify the importance of the connections between witches and fairies coupled with their deep roots in pagan and Greco-Roman beliefs by moving away from western Europe to look at the great witch Baba Yaga of Slavic countries. It cites three reasons for concentrating on Baba Yaga and Slavic fairy tales. The first one regards neglect. For the most part, the focus of folklore and fairy-tale studies in the United States and western Europe has been on the works of the Brothers Grimm and other notable western European writers and folklorist. The second is to understand the relationship between goddesses, witches, and fairies. The third reason is that a brief analysis of Baba Yaga tales with a focus on the neglected work Russian Folk Tales (1873), translated and edited by W.R.S. Ralston (1828–89), might assist us in grasping how oral and literary traditions work together to reinforce the memetic replication of fairy tales.

This chapter draws on the oral traditions preserved at Sufi shrines in south India to show how the shrines serve as concrete anchors of historical memory that preserve the past into the present. Showing how stories of saints are linked to the memory of kings, empires and settlers, the chapter shows how with the emergence of Muslim communities in India, the institutions of Sufi Islam helped create places of belonging in new homelands. Early modern history and the present day are in this way seen to be connected through oral traditions rooted in specific urban spaces.

This chapter discusses aspects of Demotic Egyptian prose narratives of the Greek and Roman periods, viewed against the background of the growing significance of reception theory in the study of ancient Egyptian literature in general. It reviews the development since the nineteenth century of ideas on the ancient audiences for Demotic literature. The problematic evidence for readers and performance is examined, to a very limited extent with reference to the nature of the finds and find-spots of manuscripts, but chiefly by paying attention to their format and their contents. As for the relationship with oral literature, it is suggested that the material essentially belonged to a written tradition, and was designed primarily for oral performance within temple communities.