User:Christianorality/Theology of orality

Introduction:

Through out both the Old Testament and the New Testament a clear distinction is made between idols and the True and Living God. The apostle Paul frames this distinction well when he writes, “Now concerning spiritual gifts, brothers, I do not want you to be uninformed. You know that when you were pagans you were led astray to mute idols, however you were led.”  The distinction is the ability of the True and Living God to speak His message into human culture contrasted with the inability of idols to speak even though they may be the material product of human culture. The apostle is echoing the thoughts of the Old Testament writers who often made statements like, “Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths, but do not speak ….”  The Old Testament prophet Habakkuk expands the idea with, “What profit is an idol when its maker has shaped it, a metal image, a teacher of lies? For its maker trusts in his own creation when he makes speechless idols!” The futility of waiting for an idol to speak is clearly shown in the experience of the prophet Elijah when he meets the prophets of Baal at Mt. Carmel. “And they took the bullock which was given them, and they dressed it, and called on the name of Baal from morning even until noon, saying, O Baal, hear us. But there was no voice, nor any that answered.”  Elijah confidently seizes on the silence to mock the prophets of Baal, “And at noon Elijah mocked them, saying, ‘Cry aloud, for he is a god. Either he is musing, or he is relieving himself, or he is on a journey, or perhaps he is asleep and must be awakened.’ And they cried aloud and cut themselves after their custom with swords and lances, until the blood gushed out upon them.”   The final futility of the prophets of Baal is reported in these few lines from the end of the account, “And as midday passed, they raved on until the time of the offering of the oblation, but there was no voice. No one answered; no one paid attention.”  Obviously the spectators were paying attention. Certainly Elijah was paying attention to the frantic cries of the prophets of Baal. So, when we find that “No one answered; no one paid attention.” the record is specifically referencing the idol to which the prophets of Baal were appealing.

Elijah’s confidence came out of his long term relationship with God. Each of the times the text of 1 Kings records one of Elijah’s encounters with God it is prefaced with the formula, “…the word of the LORD came to him …” So, Elijah’s experience was with a living and speaking God. But, the question must be asked, “What gave Elijah the initial expectation that God could, and would, speak directly to him?”

Our Oral God

Walter Ong notes, “Oral speech is fully natural to human beings in the sense that every human being in every culture who is not physiologically or psychologically impaired learns to talk”. That fully natural capacity for speech was present in the first man. It is apparent from the Genesis record that this natural capacity for speech is also a natural capacity in man’s creator as well. So, from the very beginning of Genesis we find that the True and Living God has been quite active in His communication with the humans he has created. The initial exchange between God and the man is an oral exchange. “And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, “You may surely eat of every tree of the garden ….”  One commentary points out, “Verse 16 includes the first use in the Old Testament of ṣāwâh, the major verb for “command.”    The relational exchange between God and the first man certainly blossoms far beyond command. Even after the discovery by God that the man and the woman were hiding from him, the event is a primarily conversational and relational event. Like a parent who already knows the answers, he patiently questions Adam, the woman, and the serpent listening carefully to the answers and dispensing punishment accordingly. It is also in this setting that God makes his first covenant with mankind in the protoevangelicum. A common misunderstanding supposes that Adam’s fall into sin cut the oral communication between God and mankind. That is not readily apparent from the text of Genesis. In fact, God continues to be quite communicational with people after the fall. A good example of this is the conversation between Cain and the Lord. One commentary notes, “Just as God had questioned Cain’s father in a manner designed to elicit a confession of sin, so too the Lord now says unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother?”   The conversation that follows is again a patient fatherly exchange between the Lord and Cain. Genesis continues to record multiple conversations of God with a variety of human recipients.

Saying that our God is an oral God does not limit the way in which he functions with oral cultures to verbal communication alone. The evidence in the Old Testament is that the Lord uses a wide range of culturally appropriate expressions to communicate. For example, the fact God later gives Cain a “mark” should not be taken to be equivalent of “writing” or “literacy” since the Hebrew word owth contained in the text covers the gamut of meanings from “signpost” to “miraculous sign.” As the TWOT points out, “This is the general word for “sign,” and it covers the entire range of the English term and the Greek word sēmeion. On the pedestrian end of the scale it includes what amounts to a ‘signboard’ or ‘standard’ (Num 2:2). It also includes such important concepts as the rainbow ‘sign’ to Noah….”   Cain’s mark, then, would be more analogous to the adinkra symbols of the Ashantis of Ghana. Each of the adinkra symbols represents both a proverb and a particular Ashantihene. The symbol itself is not writing because absent the background proverb (which is both oral and later, written) the symbol in and of itself would not communicate the meaning. The adinkra symbols are features of an oral culture. Twi, as a written language, did not exist until long after the advent of the adinkra symbols.

Ong points out that one of the features of oral communication is that it is additive rather than subordinative. In other words, the communication adds elements together in a string connecting them with the word “and” or other equivalent. Each new element is adding to the previous element. Literate people are more comfortable with a communication that indicates which is most important and what is subordinate to the major themes. A good example of this additive feature (that survives in our English translations of the Old Testament) is found in Genesis 15 (KJV), “And when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram; and, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. 13 And he said unto Abram, Know of a surety that thy seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs, and shall serve them; and they shall afflict them four hundred years; 14 And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. 15 And thou shalt go to thy fathers in peace; thou shalt be buried in a good old age.”   This overuse of the word “and” grates on the ears of the literate and technologically savy. It seems archaic to us. But, God, who enters into man’s world of orality long before entering into literate communication with man, speaks to Abram in a way that feels perfectly right to an oral learner.