Theology Today - Vol 40, No. 3 - October 1983 - BOOK REVIEW - The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q

380 - The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q

The Oral and the Written Gospel: The
Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the
Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q
By Werner H. Kelber
Foreward by Walter J. Ong, S.J.
Philadelphia, Fortress, 1983. 272 pp. $22.95.

Three books dwell as one in this volume by the Professor of Religious Studies at Rice and a foremost Markan scholar in the Society of Biblical Literature, whose Southwest Region devoted two sessions last March to discussion of this work. The prime area is Christian Scripture where the author's expertise is evident. He carefully compares the oral origins of Paul and the Q sayings with each other and with Mark, the earliest synoptic writer. The eminent Walter Ong provides the volume's pivotal authority and hermeneutical tools for the second content area, linguistics. By distinguishing oral from written modes of transmission, Kelber skillfully unlocks new doors for biblical interpretation. Using Ricoeur, he acquaints readers with the third field, metaphor. The book thematically treats verbal phenomena as bearers of the life-death mystery in Christian tradition.

The first two chapters lay the groundwork. The first incisively addresses uncritical assumptions that gospel texts developed in linear fashion from speaking to writing. The next chapter argues for discontinuity between the two forms in Mark and climaxes with parable as paradoxical metaphor, thus challenging readers to personalize the open-ended parables. A liberating awareness of the kingdom's nature and possibilities emerges in Jesus, who both orders and disorders his

381 - The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q

hearers with surprising and extravagant alternatives for life: their reality cannot be reduced to one-dimensional interpretations.

A highly interpretive third chapter links Mark's textual medium with a theology of protest against authoritative claims of false prophets. The failed discipleship motif of Kelber's earlier The Kingdom in Mark advances from a fresh viewpoint. Ong's terminology helps explain why Mark's pre-resurrectional perspective is necessary for his theology of death. Chapters IV and V delineate theologies of life as intrinsic to the participative oral worlds of Paul and Q. The connections and interruptions between Paul's oral and Mark's written Gospels are crucial to understanding the traditional acceptance of the two. Q lacks authority without this interaction between the realities and the media of life and death.

Those who maintain linear evolution from orality to textuality must deal with Kelber's theses because his well documented contribution corresponds to form, literary, and redaction criticism of the past. Conversely he may need to deal explicitly with the potential of rhetorical criticism, which goes unnamed. Further research by scholars and graduate students can benefit from the comprehensive footnotes, and hermeneutical and historical summaries throughout; however, the author's preference for the new hermeneutic (Gadamer via Ricoeur) may discomfort some. Because of Ong's and Kelber's interdisciplinary efforts, educators have at hand resources and linguistic principles to bridge gaps between religious imagination and scriptural exegesis. Homilists can use the rich, concise information regarding the structure of heroic, polarization, and didactic stories and parables when coupled with the book's presentation of the psychodynamics involved in ritual speech. Liturgists may rejoice at a brief treatment of an assimilative role for eucharistic symbols in the early Christians' capacity to integrate Jesus' traumatic death; the concept could lead to another book. Applying psycholinguistic awareness, Kelber's critique of faulty law-vs-spirit treatments of Paul should enlighten professional and lay alike. The latter readers need background for other aspects, for example, the unstated assumption of non-Markan composition of that Gospel's present resurrection appearance accounts. Finally, religious professionals can take heart at indications that electronic media, a tertiary level of communication, could combine some strengths of primary orality with secondary textuality although this point is not detailed. Kelber himself has obviously mastered the written mode in his clear, energetic invitation to re-assess the theological vigor of the synoptics, and Paul through their linguistic expressions. Those who accept the invitation will be rewarded for their adventurous academic reading.

Renee Rust
Bergamo Center
Dayton, Ohio