Oral Tradition vs Written Text

I've started reading Homer's The Iliad and the lengthy introduction has set me to thinking about the tensions between oral tradition and written text. I have written previously on this topic in my blog on My Space, referenced in the sidebar. Modern culture is based on written text--a history that is recorded on paper. Even that is being supplanted today by a Digital record recorded on celluloid and DVD in the form of movies and the like but that's another doctoral thesis I fear. What would become texts such as the Koran, The Holy Bible, and Homer's Iliad and Odyssey were passed down to us by oral tradition. Shaman, wisemen, storytellers, and sages passed these traditions from generation to generation.

There is no archeological proof that a blind poet named Homer ever lived; we have it by traditional wisdom. In an age where TV hosts read their lines from a teleprompter screen it seems incredible that someone could possibly have kept the text of 2 poems that total nearly 1100 pages in memory. However, a few years ago an acquaintance spent 10 days videotaping a recitation of the Great Law of the Iroquois Confederacy at Oswegan--that law, in great part adopted by the framers of the American Constitution. And just how well can we count on the accuracy of remembered sagas? Well, it wasn't until researchers finally paid attention to Innuit storytellers that they got firm leads on the fate of the Franklin Expedition.

What we tend to forget in this society of ours based on written documents is that history is written by the winners and that no text, however true to the events the writer attempts to be is totally free from bias. Once the Holy Bible was recorded on parchment in the time of King David the text became static. Therefore later teachers were unable to adapt it to new realities and discoveries; take for example the belief that the world was flat, that the sun circled the earth, that slavery was justified, that woman were part of a man's goods and chattels. We take for granted another form of adaptation; the translation of ancient texts from archaic languages to Modern ones. How many Bible-thumping Evangelical Christians do you know who seem to believe that Bible was written by hands inspired by God to record it in King James English? The New Testament was written in the predominant language of its day, Greek; the Old Testament in Aramaic and later translated into the Latin of the Vulgate edition. None of these languages are in modern use. Therefore the texts we read are scholar's best interpretation of the intent of those ancient orators given the context in which they spoke.

So what am I saying here? That a text composed about the same time as the prophets in the Old Testament may well have been composed by a poet named Homer. That the scholarship of the last 2500 years reflects the prevailing schools of thought at the time it was conducted. That whoever may have composed these texts, the incites he makes about human nature are as valid today as when they were written.