Oral transmission in the Bible is reliable

Thanks heaps Pro for your interesting argument!Though firstly I will look at what Oral Transmission entails:Oral Transmission or as it is more commonly known as Rote Learning, or Mechanical Learning, is a very good tool for Memorizing stories and even some details in what is referred to as Parrot Fashion.Thus it is long regarded as Parrot Fashion Learning.Which does have some serious flaws that I will get to later.Oral Transmission relies on repetition for accuracy and in some studies it has been found that it does not improve understanding of that which is remembered in parrot fashion.Details are remembered either in direct repetition or repetition of symbols/mnemonics which indicate that which is to be recalled.Rote/Oral learning is actually a form of mechanical learning.The Orator gives a line or sentence at a time and the students must repeat the sentence word for word.There is no expectation nor emphasis on their understanding each line.There are two forms of Oral or Rote Transmission of knowledge that Historians and Anthropologists investigate.1: Rote/Oral Transmission of Tradition:Oral Tradition is the transmission of Law and Cultural values through Rote in that a cultures laws, tradition and heritage is formed into short stories and these stories (parables) are then transmitted by rote to give an overall picture of the culture to the students which they can accurately (through repetition) to their followers and descendants.To a Historian, Oral Traditions are considered as very accurate representations of a Culture, since the stories are so often simple and the scenarios and morals within each story are usually simple, clear and precise.Such Oral Traditions are being recorded from many cultures by Anthropologists in order to keep such cultural heritages for posterity. As many cultures have lost their Cultural Traditions due to Religious Missionaries making them change to their theologies and thus destroying their original traditions or modernization causing these cultures to lose their young students to other influences.2: Rote/Oral Transmission of Historical Events:Here the transmission of actual History is fraught with difficulties and errors, from various forces that does not affect the transmission of Oral Tradition.Historical events are one off incidents, thus not Repetitive, and thus they don't record well in Oral Transmission. The event when transmitted is also only from the viewpoint of that who transmitted it, so individual account of an event often misses aspects and important details, thus is never an accurate account.For Instance, Jesus died only once, Jesus did not repeat his death nor his last words and soldiers repeated their actions until those watching could remember every event accurately. Same problems exist with the resurrection. If the event is overwhelming, those passing the event on will miss details or get aspects wrong due to their delusional and biased view of the events. Thus there are errors of interpretation of the events. Imagine Jesus giving his dying breath and then asking: "Can you repeat what I said to the onlookers/disciples?"Then after the tenth time one of his disciples calls out: "Sorry Jesus, I didn't get that last word, it was a bit quiet, can you repeat it louder?"No! Jesus could not repeat his dying words for his disciples to repeat back until they were remembered accurately.Some problem existed with all events recorded in the Bible, they only occurred once, where repetition is required for accurate Oral Transmission.This would explain why every Gospel has a different account of the Birth, Life, Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Jesus Christ.There is no agreement between the Gospels, which only goes to prove my assumption that these events were never accurately passed on by Oral Transmission, thus they contain transmission errors.The problem then becomes: Which Gospel Is The Accurate One?Another problem with using the Bible is that there is nowhere in the Bible that describes the Learning techniques that Jesus practiced on his disciples apart from teaching them in parables, which can only pass on tradition/laws. Matthew 13They may learn by Experience from following Jesus, but there is no indication of how Oral Transmission was practiced, scholars can only guess on what was common practices at the time.Though with such learning, those experiences cannot be passed on to others, so those experiences are actually lost in the Oral Transmission.They can only transmit Teachings, but not Experiences nor understanding by Oral Tradition.Everybody can learn the same sentences, though their understanding of them may differ, this is the issue of individual minds.Every mind/brain is wired differently, we can all look at the same object, but we all perceive that object slightly differently, due to individual differences in neural connections.Same goes with stories and orally transmitted passages.We all understand the same passage, slightly differently, regardless of the skill of the teacher/orator. Another issue with Rote Learning (Oral Tradition) is it can engender False Memories through repetition.http://www.business-standard.com...It's the old saying: If you tell yourself a lie too many times, you will end up believing it to be Truth.Same goes for any repetitive reinforcement, especially applicable to religion.This can actually be used as a form of Brainwashing, commonly used by Rote Based Religions, such as practiced in Pakistan and other Islamic countries. From an article on Rote learning in Pakistan"The connection between rote learning and impact on society may seem remote but the fact is that with rote learning there are certain advantages but the disadvantages far outweigh when we look at the current state of the so called enlightened institutions of this world. "Source: http://pakobserver.net...They get the students to repeat false notions and bad Knowledge until they can repeat every word and by then it becomes embedded in their psych as Truth.There is nowhere in the Bible where is states that Jesus did not practice such mind control on his disciples.So there is also a possibility that he may have used such brainwashing tactics. Same goes for the Gospels, we are not to know what biases and how much the Gospel scribes had been consciously influenced when they wrote their Gospel. Since there was also a translation from Aramaic to Greek, there would also be translation errors in the Gospels from oral transference."God could have ensured the accurate transmission of Scripture through memory alone but he did not. As Ong and others point out, oral cultures prefer to memorize information thematically rather than rotely. Small variations creep in and can lead to larger variation as the message moves cross-culturally"source: http://culturnicity.files.wordpress.com... Finally Pro mentioned Historical Reliability of Oral Transmission.Such reliability has yet to be proved for one off events.I have already touched on this in that Historical Events are one off events and thus an observer will miss much information and recollection may be biased or inaccurate due to lack of attentiveness at the time the event occurred. Also there is issues with personal emphasis and tone during transmission of an event, the listener may misunderstand points and details due to presentation issues. The scope for transmission errors in Oral Transmission of events are numerous.Though again, the discrepancies in the Bible concerning the life, death and resurrection of Jesus are evidence of either errors of oral transmission or the Gospel writers adding their own interpretations and stories into the fold.Thanks Pro!I'm extremely short on time to research.I hope I've given you something worthy of rebutting.