Regarding the Accuracy of Oral
Traditions
with reference to
Daniel Kikawa's book
“Perpetuated In Righteousness”
by Sandy Simpson, Apologetics Coordination Team,
May 2005
The accuracy of oral tradition
is, in a word, "inaccurate". I dare say that if we were able to
trace back most oral traditions today, as God sees them from an eternal
perspective, we would see the mutations, changes and fabrications involved in
modern mythology. We would also see a lot of "fables".
However, there
are ways to preserve oral tradition that keep the original information fairly
pristine (assuming it was accurate to begin with!). The method of oral
tradition memorization called "mnemonics" was used by the Micronesians
on islands such as the Carolines, Palau, Satawal, Pulawat and the Marshall
Islands.
For example, the chant “Ufi Mwareta” sang of birds and fishes,
landmarks, and sweet smelling flowers, whose “superficial” meanings, according
to Sosthe, was nothing less than part of the map of the seaway from the Central
Carolines to the Northern Marianas. My students—modern day Chamorros and other
non-Chamorro Guamanians (Asians and Statesiders alike)- were stunned when they
discovered that this chant was not only a mnemonic map but that navigators,
including children in training, from the Central Carolines, possessed intimate
knowledge of specific land- and water-marks in Guam and the Northern Marianas.1
Among
the mnemonic devices and concepts McKnight discusses is the use of a
“series of scars” on stone to enable “elder experts” to anticipate “certain
meteorological events and festivals,” the association of the piercing of ears
with the memory of events, and acknowledging the positions of the moon and
stars to provide calendar based timemarkers. McKnight also discusses the
tying of 10 knots in twine (teliakl) to mark the completion of the turtle
egg-laying cycle, a synchronization of these knots between male and female
“clubs” to orchestrate the “kidnaping” of females to play “hostess” to male
clubs in other villages, and the use of the teliakl to schedule village council
meetings and for elderly Palauan women to establish and maintain seasonal
almanacs. (McKnight, Robert K. 1961. Mnemonics in Pre-Literate Palau.2
In discussing
the stellar determination of latitude, Lewis describes the Satawal (central
Caroline Islands) method of estimating the height of the pole star by “the
span of the fingers loosely extended at arms length.” This measure is one
ey-ass and is equal to 15 degrees (an ey-ass is a hooked breadfruit-picking
pole). The senior Satawal navigators told me that the pole-star was half an
ey-ass above the horizon at their home island and one ey-ass at Saipan,
proportions that are exactly right”3
Riesenberg
examines the classification of geographic knowledge by the people of Polowat
atoll through mnemonics, particularly the organizational structures
of star courses for voyaging. Riesenberg stresses the use of metaphor in most
of the eleven categories of information that he describes in detail. He lists
the 32 primary stars used in Central Carolinian navigation with their European
compass positions. Risenberg provides a diagram of the course followed in the
“Sail of Limahácha category of navigational information that depends on
following the Limahácha fish. He also includes three other detailed course
diagrams centered on the voyaging image of certain fish and provides very
detailed component listings of star-and-fish based courses - both imaginary and
regularly pursued - with their integral relationships between spaces
emphasized.4 5
Playdon
stresses the presence and functional nature of mnemonics in Marshallese
stick charts, particularly as they relate to the actions of swells in
relation to Marshall Islands geography and methods used by the three main types
of stick charts to reflect those dynamics. Playdon notes extensive processes
of memorization involved in chants related to knowledge of natural phenomena
and magic. Several related illustrations of stick charts are included.6
Mnemonics
were almost exclusively used to pass down important navigational information
that, if forgotten, would severely limit islanders from inter-island
travel. Mnemonics were HARDLY EVER used as a learning and memory device to
retain other information such as religion, history, traditions, myths, etc.
It is clear
that the use of mnemonics ceased to be employed in Hawaii a long time ago, and
this is evident in the case of handing down navigational information. The proof
of this is that, in 1975, Hawaiians had a master navigator from Satawal come
and teach navigation to Hawaiians so that they could, once again, make sea
voyages using island navigational techniques they likely possessed in the past.
But the art of long-distance voyaging was almost lost under
centuries of colonial rule that changed, even banned, the traditional way of
life. The 67-year-old Piailug, seeing little interest in his home islands, worried
that celestial navigation would die with him. It already had died in Hawaii,
and people here wanted to resurrect the tradition. University of Hawaii
anthropologist Ben Finney asked Piailug to navigate Hawaii's first voyaging
canoe, the Hokule'a, which set sail in 1975.7
The
fact that mnemonic learning methods are not known to have even been employed in
Hawaii with regard to navigational information proves that the Hawaiian oral
traditions of religion and culture are suspect as to their factuality. The
mythology of the Hawaiian islands therefore must be taken “with a grain of
salt” in the area of historical accuracy. For Daniel Kikawa to base an entire
book on trying to syncretize various unsubstantiated myths, legends, fables and
stories from Hawaii with factual Biblical accounts is really oxymoronic.
Oral tradition
is fraught with problems of accuracy, as is made evident in the following
explanation of the accuracy of oral traditions by Andrei Simic, professor of
anthropology in the Department of Anthropology, University of Southern California
("USC"), Los Angeles, California. He specializes “in ethnic
studies, including the role played by folklore and oral tradition in the
formation and development of the cultural identity of ethnic groups.”
… It is
one thing to use folklore and oral tradition as a means of ascertaining or
demonstrating what the members of an ethnic group believe (or once believed)
about the world and their collective past. It is another thing entirely to
use folklore and oral tradition as proof of the truth of what the group
believes. As a general rule, folklore and oral tradition are not stable enough
to be taken as inherently accurate witnesses of events from the remote past. ... Folklore and
oral tradition are not fixed, immutable elements of an ethnic group's culture. Change
in both content and meaning is the general rule rather than the exception.
Change can and often does occur with each new generation of group members, and
can include the addition of new stories, deletions, substitutions and
reinterpretation of meaning. .... Folklore and oral tradition represent an
ethnic group's response to the conditions confronting the group. As
conditions within and outside the group change, its folklore and oral tradition
will change to adjust to the new conditions that must be addressed. … Folklore
and oral tradition can also change because of unintended errors in
transmission. …Revitalization movements provide a vivid illustration of how
an ethnic group's beliefs can change in response to new conditions. … Because
folklore and oral tradition are subject to human control and change, their
factual accuracy cannot be taken for granted. In some instances they may
contain elements of historical truth, but critical analysis is needed to
separate fact from fiction. … Because
of the central importance of folklore and oral tradition to an ethnic group's
culture and identity, it is highly unlikely that any modern Native American
tribe can have a "shared group identity" with a population that lived
9,200 years ago. … In summary, it is highly unlikely that contemporary Native
American tribes can trace any direct cultural or social continuity to a
population that lived 9,200 years ago. No culture has been known to have
remained static for that period of time. ...8
Obvious
errors in dating methods in the above article aside (9,200 years?) the question
remains: why do Daniel Kikawa, Richard Twiss and other “First Nations” leaders
fail to base their conclusions on what the Bible clearly teaches, where
historical accuracy has been proven time and again? Instead they have
chosen to rely on faulty oral tradition, attempting to pick out a few verses
from the Bible in order to justify their mythological positions.
There is a big
difference between oral fables and the accuracy of the Bible. Biblical accuracy
in all its accounts of the past is beyond dispute. The Bible has been
protected by God over the millennia, and has been handed down accurately from
generation to generation (Rom. 3:2).
Those oracles
may also have been handed down in written form. Dr. Henry Morris, among
others, makes a clear argument that the book of Genesis, compiled by Moses, was
likely handed down in written form from the beginning through the
lineage of Adam/Noah/Abraham. There is no reason to doubt this assumption
as Adam had 900+ years to develop a form of writing to accompany the language
he was created already speaking.
However, the probability exists that the Biblical account
had been preserved either as an oral tradition, or in written form handed down
from Noah, through the patriarchs and eventually to Moses, thereby making
it actually older than the Sumerian accounts which were restatements (with
alterations) to the original.9
The Lord
Jesus Himself and the gospel writers said that the Law was given by Moses (Mark
10:3; Luke 24:27; John 1:17), and the uniform tradition of the Jewish scribes
and early Christian fathers, and the conclusion of conservative scholars to the
present day, is that Genesis was written by Moses. This does not preclude the
possibility that Moses had access to patriarchal records, preserved by being
written on clay tablets and handed down from father to son via the line of
Adam–Seth–Noah–Shem–Abraham–Isaac–Jacob, etc., as there are 11 verses in
Genesis which read, ‘These are the generations [Hebrew: toledoth = ‘origins’ or
by extension ‘record of the origins’] of … .’1 As these statements all come
after the events they describe, and the events recorded in each division all
took place before rather than after the death of the individuals so named, they
may very well be subscripts or closing signatures, i.e. colophons, rather than
superscripts or headings. If this is so, the most likely explanation of them is
that Adam, Noah, Shem, and the others each wrote down an account of the events
which occurred in his lifetime, and Moses, under the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, selected and compiled these, along with his own comments, into the book
we now know as Genesis (see also Did Moses really write Genesis?).10
"After
all, the events of Genesis took place long before Moses was born, whereas he
was a direct participant in the events recorded in the other four books of the
Pentateuch. It is reasonable that Adam and his descendants all knew how to
write, and therefore kept records of their own times (note the mention of 'the
book of the generations of Adam in Genesis 5:1). These records (probably kept
on stone or clay tablets) were possibly handed down from father to son in the
line of the God-fearing patriarchs until they finally were acquired by Moses
when he led the children of Israel out of Egypt. During the wilderness
wanderings, Moses compiled them into the book of Genesis, adding his own
explanatory editorial comments where needed. Genesis is still properly
considered as one of the books of Moses, since its present form is due to him,
but it really records the eye-witness records of these primeval histories, as
written originally by Adam, Noah, Shem, Isaac, Jacob and other ancient
patriarchs. The respective divisions of Genesis can be recognized by the
recurring phrase: 'These are the generations of...' The archaeologist P.J.
Wiseman has shown that these statements probably represent the 'signatures,' so
to speak, of the respective writers as they concluded their accounts of the
events during their lifetimes.11
Summary
The accuracy of
the Biblical accounts, whether they were handed down in written form or not, is
beyond question. The accuracy of the Scriptures has been proven through
archeology, anthropology, history, science and most importantly, prophecy. The
accuracy of Hawaiian mythology, on the other hand, is quite subjective in
nature.
To try to
harmonize myth with Scripture is exactly what God warned true followers of
Christ not to do:
1 Timothy
1:4 Neither give heed to fables and endless genealogies, which
minister questions, rather than godly edifying which is in faith: so do.
1 Timothy 4:7 But refuse profane and old wives’ fables, and
exercise thyself rather unto godliness.
2 Timothy 4:4 And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall
be turned unto fables.
Titus 1:14 Not giving heed to Jewish fables, and commandments of
men, that turn from the truth.
2 Peter 1:16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when
we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were
eyewitnesses of his majesty.
Endnotes
1—http://www.hawaii.edu/cpis/conference/DiazPaper.htm
2—Anthropological
Working Papers Number 9, Guam: Office of The Staff Anthropologist, Trust
Territory of the Pacific Islands.
3—Lewis,
David. 1977. From Maui to Cook: The Discovery and Settlement of the Pacific.
Sydney: Doubleday, pg. 34.
4—
Riesenberg, Saul H. 1972. The Organization of Navigational Knowledge on
Puluwat. Journal of the Polynesian Society 81(1): 19-56. (Also in: Pacific
Navigation and Voyaging, Ben R. Finney, compiler. Wellington: The Polynesian
Society Incorporated. 91-128.
5—Also
see Speculations on Puluwatese mnemonic structure, P. Hage, Oceania, 49
(1978) 81-95.
6—Playdon,
George W. 1967. The Significance of Marshallese Stick Charts. Journal of
Navigation (London) 20(2): 155-166.
7—Going
Home by Susan Kreifels, Honolulu Star-Bulletin, April 19, 1999,
http://starbulletin.com/1999/04/19/news/story1.html
8—DATED
this day of March, 2000. ANDREI SIMIC´, Affidavits Address Oral Tradition and
Cultural Affiliation, ANDREI SIMIC´,
http://www.friendsofpast.org/kennewick-man/court/affidavits/oral-tradition-5.html
9—THE
FLOOD OF NOAH AND THE FLOOD OF GILGAMESH - IMPACT No. 285 March 1997 by
Frank Lorey, M.A. http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-285.htm
10—Should
Genesis be taken literally? by Russell Grigg,
http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation/v16/i1/genesis.asp
11—Dr. Henry M. Morris, The Defender's Study Bible (Iowa Falls, Iowa: World Bible Publishers, 1995), p. 1-2.