Fair enough. But Homer has not experienced a development in its tradition. Oral tradition is a way of communicating history forward and would be a bit incongruent with a "development" like we see in the "development of doctrine" in Catholic tradition.
Textual analysis has shown that it wasn't just written down all at once -- the "received version" was only established over a period of time. Just like the Canon established by the Church . . . the conversion of oral to written tradition really does follow a pattern!
Then, of course, you have the issue of translations. I always thought that the Lattimore translation was as good as it was going to get, until Fagle came out with his. Lattimore is line-for-line more accurate in terms of a literal translation of the Greek, but Fagle catches the meaning better, if that makes sense. I wish I read Greek well enough to enjoy Homer without a "crib" . . . but I don't now and was just barely literate in Greek back when I was taking it seriously with an eye to a Classics major . . . but I started Greek too late and had switched Latin for German in high school, so there was no way I could get the required courses done in 4 years . . .