Oral Tradition in Ancient IsraelWipf and Stock Publishers, 2011 M09 8 - 170 pages Providing a comprehensive study of "oral tradition" in Israel, this volume unpacks the nature of oral tradition, the form it would have taken in ancient Israel, and the remains of it in the narrative books of the Hebrew Bible. The author presents cases of oral/written interaction that provide the best ethnographic analogies for ancient Israel and insights from these suggest a model of transmission in oral-written societies valid for ancient Israel. Miller reconstructs what ancient Israelite oral literature would have been and considers criteria for identifying orally derived material in the narrative books of the Old Testament, marking several passages as highly probable oral derivations. Using ethnographic data and ancient Near Eastern examples, he proposes performance settings for this material. The epilogue treats the contentious topic of historicity and shows that orally derived texts are not more historically reliable than other texts in the Bible. |
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ancient Israel Arabian Oral Historical Arabic bard biblical scholars Carr Causse chapter composed composition context Edda Eddic poetry Engnell Epic and History evidence example Finnegan Foley folklore fornyðislag genre Gísli Sigurðsson gobbets Goody Gunnell Hebrew Bible Hilāl Hittite Homer Honko Hurrian Ibid Icelandic sagas Iliad Israelite John Van Seters Kawashima Kings Literacy and Orality literate Lods Lord’s Medieval Myth narrative books Niditch Njáls Njáls Saga Norse ofthe Old Testament oral and written Oral Epic Oral Formulaic Oral Historical Narrative oral literature Oral Poetry Oral Tradition oral transmission Oral World oral-written Orality and Literacy orally derived Paronomasia Parry and Lord Parry-Lord Pentateuch Performance Criticism Poetic prose Rollston Sālfah Schniedewind Scribal Culture Singer sīra Sīrat Banī Hilāl siyar skald Skaldic poems Skaldic poetry Skaldic Verse song Sowayan story suwālif textual Theory Toorn Torah Tradition orale translation Ugaritic variant Verbal Arts William Schniedewind Writing and Literacy written literature written text Würth