Home > Apologetics > Could the Gospel Message have been Accurately Transmitted Orally?
Jesus's claim to be the Messiah would help convey the importance of his teachings to his followers.
Many of Jesus's sayings are in forms that would have made them memorable to his followers, using phrases, stories, traditions and events they would have been familiar with.
Jesus sent his followers to other places to tell people about him (Luke 10:2-17), so he probably taught them what they should say.
Jewish boys were educated until they were at least twelve years old.
With written languages, there can be a single document by which all copies are judged. For example, the original United States Constitution is kept at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., and the exact wording has been republished many times since it was written. If someone were to try changing the wording of the Constitution, it could be easily detected by comparing the suspected document with a copy, or even the original.
The early church made memorizing scripture a high priority, because written scripture were rare and valuable. An ancient Coptic church in Egypt in the third or fourth century required deacons to memorize the book of John and recite it to the church.5 The pastor of the church at Oxyrhynchus required deacons to memorize 25 Psalms, two epistles by Paul and a portion of a gospel.6 There is no reason to think the early Christians couldn't, or wouldn't, memorize the message of Jesus before the four Gospels were written.