One of the more substantial works that casts tremendous light on adjusting our interpretive focus for OT understanding in light of orality in Ancient Near Eastern culture is Susan Niditch’s Oral World and Written Word: Ancient Israelite Literature.
A quick synopsis of this work gives us a good starting point for our journey.
This work is Susan Niditch’s response to a misguided scholarly approach to orality and its affects on the Hebrew Bible. Niditch observes that streamline scholarly approach to orality in the Old Testament is a diachronic one that separates periods of early writings from a highly literate monarchial period. Niditch establishes a context for this work by stating:
“This diachronic approach to orality and literacy is, however, misguided, devaluing the power of oral cultures and misconstruing the characteristics of orally composed and oral-style works. Such an approach ignores the possibility that written works in a traditional culture will often share the characteristics of orally composed works. It misrepresents ancient literacy as synonymous with literacy in the modern world of print, books, and computers and draws too artificial a line, chronological and cultural, between oral and written literatures” (3).
Niditch’s aim then, is to demonstrate that “an oral aesthetic infuses Hebrew Scripture as it now stands. Without an understanding of this aesthetic and the world that provided its context, we cannot fully appreciate the literature of ancient Israel preserved in the Bible.”
To accomplish her stated objective, Niditch first explores particular “oral aesthetics” in the Hebrew Bible. Second, she seeks to “discover how Israelites themselves understood orality and literacy” (6). Third, Niditch demonstrates the Hebrew Bible’s “attitude” towards literacy. Concluding Niditch’s work is a critique of the Documentary Hypothesis (JEDP Hypothesis) and a suggested alternative to understanding how the written texts of the Hebrew Bible logistically emerged out of an orally dominated culture.
At the heart of Niditch’s understanding of the development of the Hebrew Bible is the concept of an oral-literacy continuum. Niditch’s oral-literacy continuum suggests logistical ways in which writing and literacy would have emerged out of an oral context. Chronologically, the continuum begins with orality and moves towards textuality while still maintaining much of orality’s communicative and stylistic attributes. While those attributes are primarily reflected in the writing itself, including style, linguistic formulas associated with a particular setting, etc., they are also reflected in the compilation of the texts; thus explaining dynamics such as doublets and repetitions.
Niditch’s eighth and final chapter is most exciting. In this chapter, Niditch directly challenges the Documentary hypothesis (both Wellhausen’s model and modern models) on the basis that its presuppositions are misinformed regarding textuality in the ancient world.One of Niditch’s primary arguments against the documentary hypothesis is that it is simply not logistically feasible. According to what history reveals concerning an oral-literacy continuum, along with the materials used for writing, the concept of an individual arranging material using a “cut-and-paste” method just does not match. Niditch writes:
“If the texts are leather, they may be heavy and need to be unrolled. Finding the proper passage in each scroll is a bit of a chore. If texts are papyrus, they are read held in one arm, one hand clasping or “supporting” the “bulk” of the scroll, while the other unrolls. Did the redactor need three colleagues to hold J, E, and P for him? Did each read the text out loud, and did he ask them to pause until he jotted down his selections, working like a secretary with three tapes dictated by the boss?” (113).
Another point of argument against the documentary hypothesis and its methods is the fact that there is still no consensus among scholars about which texts are which! The only fact that is agreed upon is that there are texts of different origins. Perhaps there is a different explanation for the fact that there seems to be texts stemming from different traditions being strung together. Perhaps the explanation, Niditch argues, lies in the oral-literacy continuum.
From here, Niditch is in the position to offer an historically informed alternative for how texts might have logistically developed. In doing so, she identifies the following categories:
| Oral to Written Performance dictated and copie | “when an oral performance is dictated to a writer who preserves the text in an archive, creating a fixed text out of an event” (130) |
| Oral to Written and Written to Oral – The Pan-Israelite Story | “the slow crystallization of a pan-Hebraic literacy tradition through many performances over centuries of increasingly pan-Isralite tales to audiences with certain expectations and assumptions about shared group identity; late in the process authors write down the shared stories” (130) |
| Literary Imitation | “a written imitation of oral-style literature to create portions of the tradition” (130) |
| Written Sources for Written Compositions | “the production of a written text that is excerpted from another written text by a writer who deftly edits or recasts the text in accordance with his own view of Israelite identity” (130). |
These four concepts work remarkably well with the orality-literacy continuum. This approach considers the historical realities of orality and its affects on literacy in the ancient world. Niditch’s approach here is also complete. She not only covers the logistics of how oral traditions were transferred to text, but she also includes a concept (Written Sources for Written Compositions) that accounts for the development of the Hebrew Bible as it now stands without compromising the integrity of the text. These concepts also take into account the consideration of a textual expansion process being a sensitive one, not one without limits or boundaries.
Niditch’s application of the oral-literacy continuum on the Hebrew text harmonize tremendously well with the evidence. By imagining the relationship of orality and literacy as a continuum, Niditch leaves room for explanatory power over all areas of the Hebrew text. While Niditch contends that the shape of Old Testament text and ancient literacy are primarily determined by orality, she still leaves enough room for the literate end of the continuum to function in light of evidence for a developing literacy over the years.
More specifically, by presenting the primary role of Israelite literacy as iconic, Niditch brings two seemingly contradictory domains of orality and literacy together beautifully. Niditch understands and presents the concepts of the realities of oral culture reflected in the Hebrew Bible with an unparalleled clarity. She summarizes the relationship between orality and literacy with this, “the world of orality frames and colors a world of writing. We employ the term ‘literacy’ in exploring ancient Israel with great caution. Israelite worldview and the Israelite literary tradition have been shaped, in part, by a complex interplay between oral and literate mentalities” (107).
Now that we’ve gotten an idea as to the relationship between text and orality thanks to Niditch’s work, we will next interpret some passages in light of this reality.
