A better way to correct for errors in transmission of a body of knowledge (including stories) is to write the knowledge down (i.e. encode in a “dumb”, semi-permanent physical substrate), rather than rely on oral re-tellers to identify each others’ deviation from the average re-telling.
Yes, but if the question is whether redundant oral re-tellers is an improvement (in transmission fidelity) over single re-tellers, the answer is trivial. And so is the comparison to writing.
But that’s not relevant to the current discussion, as the people in question had not yet invented the technology to do so.
That’s not quite accurate in the original context. The Hebrew Bible was written well before the Talmud. The Talmud and associated texts claim to be oral traditions that were not written down when the Biblical text was written down. There’s a fair bit of evidence that at least some of the Talmudic texts did descend from old oral traditions.
A better way to correct for errors in transmission of a body of knowledge (including stories) is to write the knowledge down (i.e. encode in a “dumb”, semi-permanent physical substrate), rather than rely on oral re-tellers to identify each others’ deviation from the average re-telling.
Well, duh.
But that’s not relevant to the current discussion, as the people in question had not yet invented the technology to do so.
Yes, but if the question is whether redundant oral re-tellers is an improvement (in transmission fidelity) over single re-tellers, the answer is trivial. And so is the comparison to writing.
So what’s the actual hard question here?
That’s not quite accurate in the original context. The Hebrew Bible was written well before the Talmud. The Talmud and associated texts claim to be oral traditions that were not written down when the Biblical text was written down. There’s a fair bit of evidence that at least some of the Talmudic texts did descend from old oral traditions.