totally unforeseen turn of events. How can this possibly be? The oral tradition? With multimedia texts and IMs and Facebook status updates, aren’t we relying on oral communication far less than ever? Yes, of course. But our new digital culture of information sharing has so rejected the broadcast style and embraced key elements of oral traditions that we might meaningfully call whatever’s coming next the digitoral era. And while this new age will undoubtedly contain elements of both traditions — which we will explore momentarily — the digitoral era borrows much more from oral traditions than broadcast.” — Jonah Sachs4 Human societies around the globe had communicated the same way for thousands of years: since the Fall, through the flood and tower of Babel, the scattering of societies across the planet and the ages of empires and kingdoms to the birth of Christianity. All cultures prior to 1450, despite vast differences in culture or language, shared a unified mode of primary communication, namely oral culture. Although the languages and themes varied from society to society, the traits remained the same. The invention of the printing press was a radical shock to that global culture of communication in the same way that the present digital revolution is sending shockwaves through the culture of literacy. Recently, there has been significant study dedicated to the oral cultures that (from a numerical standpoint) still dominate the globe. Many sociologists argue that we are returning to oral culture through our new technologies. So, right off the bat, it is important to deal with the word “illiterate” that has become synonymous with unintelligent in literate society. Oral cultures must first of all not be mistaken as in any way less intelligent or capable than literate societies. They simply apply their intelligence in different ways and organize their thought based on the technologies available to them. The way of thinking of an oral society is almost impossible for us to fully understand and imagine as people of literate/post-literate societies. It is worth remembering that the renowned work of Greek literature, The Iliad, is itself an oral composition,5
Jonah Sachs. Winning the Story Wars: Why Those Who Tell—and Live—the Best Stories Will Rule the Future (Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2012).
as was the formative English work Beowulf.6 7 Jesus Himself preached and taught in the midst of a primarily oral society and did so in oral ways. Orality does not indicate a lack of sophistication. Perhaps for Western minds to avoid unnecessary and inaccurate stigmas, it is best to refer to primary oral societies as “oral” and not illiterate. One of the key characteristics of the “technology” of human speech is its relationship to the nature of sound. Sound is never static. You cannot stare at a sound. The instant you begin to hear a word it is also already passing by you. Compare a cassette tape with a photograph (for those of you who remember tapes). A photograph you can stare at and continue to find new details; the image is static. The cassette tape is a long, wound-up ribbon of magnetic tape, but you can only experience its content one instant at a time. You are, in a sense, always hearing in the present. If you pause the tape, you don’t hear anything. Oral societies reflect this in their own understanding of the world. Words are always fluid; they are not something you can tie down and examine. Information, therefore, is perpetually in motion. One major effect of this is the necessity for constant repetition and remembering of important things, so that they continuously affect the present. A close study of the Book of Deuteronomy will demonstrate the importance of this. Throughout Deuteronomy, the phrases are repeated, “Hear oh Israel,” “Remember and do not forget,” and “Write this upon your hearts.” The Israelites were an oral society (the existence of writing does not make them a literate society as we will explore later). It was important for the Israelites to constantly repeat the Law and to use mental guides and symbols like fringes, symbols in the tabernacle and temple, circumcision and the like to keep the truth in front of them at all times. And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on
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J. A. Davison. “E. T. Owen: The Story of the Iliad as Told in the Iliad. Pp. Xii 248. London: Bell, 1947. Cloth, 10s. 6d. Net.” The Classical Review 63, no. 02 (12 1949), 70.
“Beowulf: A New Translation for Oral Delivery.” Choice Reviews Online 47, no. 01 (12, 2009), 47–0122 6 7
Robert Payson Creed. “How the Beowulf Poet Composed His Poem.” Oral Tradition 18, no. 2 (12 2004), 214–15.
Journal of Lutheran Mission | The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod
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