Word: orall
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...book listed positive and negative criteria employed before taking up the colored beads. The voters favored passages attested to by two or more sources. Since Jesus' culture was oral, not written, they assumed that shorter, punchier passages were more likely to be accurate. They also felt safer confirming idiosyncratic thoughts that ran against the social or religious grain of Jesus' day, involved role reversals or, in keeping with the style of the wandering wise men of the time, employed exaggeration, humor and concrete and vivid images. They preferred parables without explicit applications...
...anything "mythical" or concerned with the actual possibility of a world to come, but reflective instead of the countercultural attitude favored by liberal academics. Although Johnson approves of some of the criteria the group applies to Scripture, he is derisive of its elimination of most long passages (members of oral cultures, after all, are renowned for memorizing epics) and fails to find a historical basis for its preference for quotes that flout the established order. Most important, he is dismayed by what he calls the Seminar's refusal to consider the Gospels' general "pattern" in favor of isolated passages. "What...
...Johnson's staunchest ally. Wright knows and likes Crossan--the two go drinking after their debates--but he calls his friend's latest book "radically wrong in almost every second thing it says." His own 40-page critique of the Jesus Seminar's work echoes Johnson's point regarding oral cultures and similarly questions the Seminar's snub of Jesus' apocalyptic, eschatological side. Most important, he concurs that it is a mistake to "carve up" the New Testament and analyze the pieces separately. Wright believes the Gospels are more supportive than subversive of one another: "If I read about...
...context, what they say is true." That allows him to concede that the Sermon on the Mount might have gone on longer than the Gospels suggest, and also to credit the differences among Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to "omissions and paraphrases" that were a natural part of an oral culture. Once that is settled, he believes the picture of Jesus that they present is fundamentally accurate...
...property-rights conservatives, Bennis has pressed a lawsuit to recover her half of the $600 value of the car. Last week the Supreme Court surprised the legal community by ruling against her. Court watchers were most surprised by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who had appeared sympathetic to Bennis during oral arguments...