musing on Saint Paul, with a historian…ish… eye.
I found them interesting, and it seems like something that will bear good fruit.
Apparently it’s less like a letter, and more of a sermon format, or even multiple sermons on the same topic.
Oral Literature Was the Prestigious Literature
In the ancient world, and in the world of the early Christians, we need to remember this. Prestige was associated with oral literature first, and with written literature only second. Learning was training the memory first, and the ars memoriae of locative memory and memory palaces.
Interesting that training the memory to pass on literature was the highest form of literary tradition. These days if we don’t have proof in black and white print it’s called here-say. It’s amazing how much trust is required in order to rely on passing down accurate and unchanged oral literature. I mean, Chinese whispers…