process of transmission and consolidation related to the use of writing? Was the work of collecting and systematising the traditions primarily a literary one, or had it already commenced at the stage of oral narration?
To such questions, of course, no final answers can be given. (1) It is not possible to discriminate accurately between the modifications which a narrative would undergo through constant repetition, and changes deliberately made by responsible persons. On the whole, the balance of presumption seems to us to incline towards the hypothesis of professional oversight of some sort, exercised from a very early time. On this assumption, too, we can best understand the formation of legendary cycles; for it is evident that no effective grouping of tradition could take place in the course of promiscuous popular recital. (2) As to the use of writing, it is natural to suppose that it came in first of all as an aid to the memory of the narrator, and that as a knowledge of literature extended the practice of oral recitation gradually died out, and left the written record in sole possession of the field. In this way we may imagine that books would be formed, which would be handed down from father to son, annotated, expanded, revised, and copied; and so collections resembling our oldest pentateuchal documents might come into existence.[1]
Here we come upon one important fact which affords some guidance in the midst of these speculations. The bulk of the Genesis-tradition lies before us in two closely parallel and practically contemporaneous recensions (see p. xliii ff. below). Since there is every reason to believe that these recensions were made independently of each other, it follows that the early traditions had been codified, and a sort of national epos had taken shape, prior to the compilation of these documents. When we find, further, that each of them contains evidence of earlier collections and older strata of tradition, we must assume a very considerable period of time to have elapsed between the formation
- ↑ See Gilbert Murray, Rise of the Greek Epic, p. 92 ff.
