These are excerpts from academic papers about Scripture use, written by Richard Brown, who works in England. These quotes are from a manuscript, "Communicating God’s Word to an Oral Culture." Page numbers in brackets refer to this manuscript.
Communicating God's Word to an Oral Culture
It is only natural for us to bring to our work the natural bias of our own ways of thinking, learning and communicating, but we need to adapt our media to our audience. Otherwise we limit our audience to those who think as we do. Our potential audience, however, includes a majority of people for whom reading and analysis are not important features of everyday life. In fact, the general culture of our potential audience prefers oral modes of communication. Many are non-readers who are more at home with communication methods natural to oral communicators.
We are kidding ourselves when we say we are reaching the world by providing printed Scripture only, when less than half of the world’s people know how to read.
“At the close of the 20th Century, we are witnessing the coming of a new age, which we could call the ‘Post-Literacy Age’, in which even those who can read and write well are not doing so. The epoch of the audio-visual, termed by some the ‘the Multi-Media Era’, has set in” (Ansre 1995).
By choosing portions that relate well to relevant issues in the lives of the listeners, we increase the attractiveness and effectiveness of the Scriptures. The same principle applies to the selection of appropriate testimonies, stories, proverbs and songs. [p 5]
Music is Not the Universal Language
A common mistake made by some cross-cultural broadcasters and producers is to assume that music is a universal language. This is far from the truth. For one thing, rhythms and melodies usually originate in the metrical and intonational patterns of each language, and these are not universal. An intonation that signals politeness in one language may signal disbelief in another. Beyond that, people prefer their own music, and it helps them identify with the program. A western sound score that sounds beautiful to a westerner may sound dissonant to someone else and hinder them from opening up to the message. But even the use of local music can be unhelpful if it is not used appropriately.
Each culture has its own genres of music, and each genre has a particular function. It would be inappropriate to use victory music at a tragic scene, party music at a serious scene, or shaman music at a worship scene. Skilled local musicians can usually apply the appropriate kinds of local music to each scene, but to assure quality control one can consult an ethnomusicologist. [p 8]
Early Church Was Not Literate
The record of the Scriptures themselves indicates that most were transmitted orally before being committed to writing. In the Gospels, God has “spoken to us through His Son”(Hebrews 1:2, NLT), but Jesus does not seem to have written any of His messages, but rather committed them to the memory of His disciples. There is little indication that Peter was literate, so we can believe he was a good memorizer of what Jesus said. Paul was literate, but he seems to have orally dictated many of his letters. They were intended to be read aloud in the churches (Col. 4:16; 1 Th. 5:27), as was the Revelation of John. In fact, it has been estimated that only 5% of the people in the New Testament churches were literate (Søgaard 1995), certainly no more than 10-15%, and the Word was mediated to most of the believers orally. Oral transmission is also modeled in Nehemiah 8:8 below:
And they read from the book, from the law of God, clearly; and they gave the sense, so that the people understood the reading. (RSV) [p 11]
References:
Ansre, Gilbert. 1995. "The Crucial Role of Oral-Scripture: Focus Africa". International Journal of Frontier Missions 12(2).
Søgaard, Viggo. 1995. "The Emergence of Audio-Scriptures in Church and Mission". International Journal of Frontier Missions 12(2).
Our author, Richard Brown, writes about translation and Scripture use and lives in England.