Critics of the historical credibility of the Gospels often point out the time gap between Jesus and when the Gospels were being written and compare it to the “telephone game.”
Bart Ehrman comments:
This is how Christianity spread, year after year, decade after decade, until eventually someone wrote down the stories…Did you or your kids ever play the telephone game at a birthday party? The kids sit in a circle, and one child tells a story to the girl sitting next to her, who tells it to the next girl, who tells it to the next, and so on, until it comes back to the one who first told the story. And it’s now a different story…(If it weren’t a different story the game would be a bit pointless.)...Is it any wonder that the Gospels are so full of discrepancies?[1]
In a later tome, he cites several laboratory studies to demonstrate the unreliability of both individual eyewitness memory and group memory. [2]
Moreover, Ehrman cites F.C. Barlett’s famous experiment on serial production in which a short story passed along a chain of subjects unsurprisingly corrupts overtime. [3]
Thus, Ehrman concludes that experimental psychology experiments confirms his “telephone game” model for the transmission of the Jesus tradition
There are several issues with Ehrman and others' attempted analogy.
Laboratory settings do not reflect the social context in which actual remembering occurs.
New Testament scholar Alan Kirk points out:
“...[D]istortion experiments typically are de-contextualized from the natural social environments in which actual remembering occurs.”[4]
Subjects in these experiments usually have no social connection to each other or the material they are asked to memorize. In this particular experiment, Barrett failed to tell the subjects that their task was part of a test. This means that the subjects had even less of a motivation to seriously connect with the material.
Moreover, laboratory experiments usually utilize single chains of transmission which primarily deal with semantic memory (which is basically memory concerning general knowledge and concepts). The context in which actual remembering occurs, however, relates more to “net” transmission and communal/group memory. (Keener, Christobiography 410 cf. n. 44)
The cultural memory expert David C. Rubin describes the difference between net and chain transmission:
For a single individual, the chain would have a single line leading in and a single line leading out. In contrast, for a single individual, the net would have an indefinite number of lines leading in and out. . . . That is, the difference between chains and nets is that in a chain an individual hears only one version and transmits it to only one other person, whereas in a net individuals can hear and combine many versions before passing on their own version any number of times to any number of people…[thus] [t]he changes that occur when a passage is transmitted from person to person are much greater in psychology experiments than they are in oral traditions. [5]
[6]
The latter model produces a more stable transmission. Again David C. Rubin says:
The main advantage of a net over a chain is that if the version transmitted by one singer omits parts or introduces changes that are outside the tradition, then other versions can be substituted for these lapses. . . . Multiple versions from many sources serve another purpose. They allow a listener to learn the range of acceptable variation...transmission in oral traditions . . . is much more complex and much more conducive to stable transmission. [7]
In fact, one could point out that oral tradition is specifically designed to counter the weaknesses of memory. For example, oral transmission allows for more overlearning, spaced practice, and recitation (Keener Christobiography, 410). Additionally, oral tradition relies on cues and constraints such as rhythm, meaning, imagery, and sound that strengthen the stability. [8]
Additionally, Jesus and his disciples preached publicly to many people, not a few isolated people secretly spreading teachings. Those in the audience who misunderstood the tradition had both original eyewitnesses in leadership roles into the 50s (Gal. 1:18-19; 2:9; 1 Cor. 1:12;3:22;9:5; 15:5) and delegates (Acts 6:6; 14:23; 2 Tim. 2:2; Tit 1:5; James 5:14; Gal. 6:6; 1 Thess. 5:12-13; 1 Pet. 5:5; 3 John 9) to correct them. Tradition core to the early Christian community would not be treated as mere “party games.”
