Thank you for the post and ping. Oral tradition, one would suppose, comes with risks. Last year, however, I was quite surprised to factually discover that an oral history of my great, great grandparents was indeed true. Since it had been passed down from one generation to another, with no written record, I had only that tradition to begin an ancestral search. Much to my amazement, everything I had been told proved to be true.
There’s the story about playing a game of ‘telephone’. A teacher gives one student some private information and tells him to privately relay it to the student next to him, who in turn privately relays it to the next student and so on. The last student in the class of course gets the information completely wrong.
But ‘oral tradition’ is nothing like that.
A group of people share an experience and then spend the rest of their lives having public meetings reminding each other of the details, making their own private notes and telling others, especially their own children, about what they had experienced.
As the first generation passes on, the extended family gives monetary awards, leadership and other honors to those who excel at remembering and teaching the original information. Competition keeps the information fresh and complete because of the great reward.
Yes, oral tradition does indeed come with risks. Tell me, without the written records turning up in your ancestral search, would you have had the same confidence in your family history that you did before you researched it? Didn't the fact that there WAS a written record confirm that what you had been told all your life was accurate? The written word of God is no different. That is why we can base the rule of our faith upon the Bible, because it IS Divinely-inspired sacred writings spelling out the basis of our faith.