Chapter 5 Oral Traditions and Legend Making - Are Long Narratives Accurate?

If you read one of the Gospel accounts of Jesus, you find that it is a fairly long story. One of the reasons people doubt the accuracy of the accounts of Jesus we have today is the idea that long stories could not be transmitted orally in an accurate form. This would be due to the challenge for the story teller of remembering the whole story.  However, those who study oral cultures have found that there are in fact numerous examples of the transmission of long oral epics. They have documented some that last 25 hours and take several days to perform. These studies show that the narrator is given flexibility in how the narrative is presented but not allowed to alter the core facts. The audience will actually correct the speaker during the performance. When reading the four Gospels, ones sees that the order of events and wording of Jesus's sayings vary, but the overall story is consistent. It could be that the Gospels were written versions of oral performances that were common among the early Christian communities. We can't be sure about that, but we can be sure that the fact that the story of Jesus is a longer narrative does not mean that it is not historically accurate.