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² Kouyaté, Mamadou, quoted in Edwards, Viv and Sienkewicz, Thomas J., Oral Cultures Past and Present: Rappin' and Homer (Oxford, 1990), 32Google Scholar.

³ Testimony about a certain Abraham, reputed in some traditions to have been a ninth-century Jewish king of Poland, quoted in Bar-Yitshak, Hayah, Jewish Poland—Legends of Origin: Ethnopoetics and Legendary Chronicles (Detroit, 2001), 96Google Scholar.

⁴ Letter in the Mari archives dating from the early eighteenth century B.C., quoted in Sasson, Jack M., “The Burden of Scribes” in Riches Hidden in Secret Places: Ancient Near Eastern Studies in Memory of Thorkild Jacobsen, ed. Abusch, Tzvi (Winona Lake, IN, 2002), 211Google Scholar. Sasson (ibid., 211-28), discusses several examples of ancient Near Eastern scribal error, as well as in his “Shunukhra-Khalu” in A Scientific Humanist: Studies in Honor of Alexander Sachs, ed. Leichty, E.et al (Philadelphia, 1988), 329–51Google Scholar.

⁵ Holden, Henry, The Analysis of Divine Faith: or the Resolution of Christian Belief (Paris, 1658), 73–74Google Scholar.

⁶ No surprise—David Hume was to see the balance differently. Commenting on the discrepancies he encountered in claims of ancient population levels, he observed that “the commonness of books, by means of printing, lias obliged modern historians to be more careful in avoiding contradictions and incongruities.” Hume, , “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations” in Hume, David, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F. (Indianapolis, 1985), 422Google Scholar.

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¹⁰ Small, Jocelyn P., Wax Tablets of the Mind: Cognition Studies of Memory and Literacy in Classical Antiquity (London, 1997), 219–20 et passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a confirmation of this pessimism at the basic calligraphic level see the discussion of the transcriptional errors in Ptolemy's Geography in Russell, Paul, “On Reading Ptolemy: Some Methodological Considerations” in Ptolemy: Towards a Linguistic Atlas of the Earliest Celtic Place-Names of Europe, ed. Parsons, David N. and Sims-Williams, Patrick (Aberystwyth, 2000), 179–88Google Scholar.

¹¹ For one example see Brown, Virginia, The Transmission of Caesar's Civil War (Leiden, 1992)Google Scholar. The same is of course true for other parts of the world. As Das, Subas Chandra, “The Role of Copyists in MSS Editing” in Problems of Editing Ancient Texts, ed. Jha, V.N. (New Delhi, 1993), 84Google Scholar, put it for India: “Whatever manuscripts are available today it is all due to the constant and selfless effort of copying manuscripts by various copyists since a long period.”

¹² A number of these issues are discussed in the collection of essays Le statut du scripteur au Moyen Age, ed. Hubert, Marie-Clotilde, Poulle, Emmanuel and Smith, Marc H. (Paris, 2000)Google Scholar.

¹³ Two examples, with historical implications, of transcribing only one word see Rubinsohn, Zeev W., “Saumnkos: Ancient History, Modern Politics,” Historia 29(1980), 50–70Google Scholar. and Vansina, Jan, “Slender Evidence, Weighty Consequences: On One Word in the Periplus Maris Erythraei,” HA 24(1997), 393–97Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Washburn, Dorothy K., “Remembering Things Seen: Experimental Approaches to the Process of Information Transmittal,” Journal of Archaeolgical Method and Theory 8(2001), 67–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar, based on experiment comparing trans mid intra-cultural transmission.

¹⁵ For examples of the need for, and possibilities of, this see, e.g., Dawson, Marc H., “The Many Minds of Sir Halford J. Mackinder: the Dilemmas of Historical Editing,” HA 14(1987), 27–42Google Scholar; Hill, Matthew H., “Towards a Chronology of the Publications of Francis Moore's Travels into the Interior Parts of Africa,” HA 19(1992), 353–68Google Scholar; and Finkelstein, David, “Unraveling Speke: The Unknown Revision of a Victorian Exploration Classic,” HA 30(2003)Google Scholar, as well as many others not published in HA, including Pearson, W.H., “Hawkesworth's Alterations,” Journal of Pacific History 7(1972), 45–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which treats the editorial legerdemain practiced on James Cook's writings after his death.

¹⁶ Freeman, Thomas, “Texts, Lies, and Microfilm: Misreading Foxe's ‘Book of Martyrs’,” Sixteenth-Century Journal 30(1999), 23–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Freeman cites n dozen or more modern misconceptions of Foxe based on a failure to reach back beyond the nineteenth century and recognize how dynamic and indeterminate Foxe's text is.

¹⁷ Grubrich-Simitis, Ilse, “Metamorphoses of The Interpretation of Dreams: Freud's Conflicted Relations With His Book of the Century,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 81(2000), 1155–83Google Scholar.

¹⁸ For tensions among early Islamic historians and theologians over the respective benefits of preserving hadith orally or in writing see Schoeler, G., “Writing and Publishing: On the Use and Function of Writing in the First Centuries of Islam,” Arabica 44(1997), 423–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cook, Michael, “The Opponents of the Writing of Tradition in Early Islam,” Arabica 44(1997), 437–530CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The fear was precisely that “books” would become authoritative, thereby depriving formally recognized chains of transmitters of their moral authority.

¹⁹ For a recent discussion citing earlier literature see Feldman, Louis H., Josephus's Interpretation of the Bible (Leiden, 1998)Google Scholar, idem., “Rearrangement of Pentateuchal Narrative Material in Josephus' Antiquities, Books 1-4,” Hebrew Union College Annual 70/71(1999/2000), 129-51.

²⁰ Josephus, , Jewish Antiquities, 1:17Google Scholar, with emphasis added. For a similar claim, similarly disingenuous, see ibid., 4:197

²¹ E.g., Hardwick, Michael E., Josephus as an Historical Source in Patristic Literature Through Eusebius (Atlanta, 1989)Google Scholar; Hata, Gohei, “Eusebins and Josephus,” Patristica (Supplement 2001), 49–66Google Scholar.

²² Shapiro, James, Oberammergau: the Troubling Story of the World's Most Famous Passion Play (New York, 2000), 44Google Scholar. Shapiro devotes extended attention (ibid., 44-100) to detailing the whats and whys of this.

²³ The same is true for songs, which are often regarded as an effective way of harnessing a text in order to preserve it verbatim. The song known as “Wildwood Flower,” first published in 1860, became popular in folk circles, where it was handed down orally from one musical generation to the next, but neither the combined requirements for rhyme or rhythm or melody were able to keep the text honest. A century later the oral text, constrained as it was, had degenerated into partial gibberish, which retained some of the sounds, along with the rhythm and melody, etc. Data obtained by searching “Wildwood Flower” on the Internet. For another example, of an even more famous song that came unfixed, see Spitzer, John, “Oh! Susanna:” Oral Transmission and Tune Transformation,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 47(1994), 90–134CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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²⁶ Macpherson, James, The Poems of Ossian and Related Works, ed. Gaskill, Howard (Edinburgh, 1996), 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar. First published in the 1760s, it was soon determined that Macpherson's “edited” originals were actually more his tlian his purported sources'. Four essays in Journal of American Folklore 114(2001), 396–477Google Scholar, treat Macpherson leniently, though not to the extent of believing in centuries-old pristine oral poetry.

²⁷ Anyon, Rogeret al, “Native American Oral Tradition and Archaeology: Issues of Structure, Relevance, and Respect” in Native Americans and Archaeologists: Stepping Stones to Common Ground, ed. Swidler, Ninaet al (Walnut Creek, 1997), 78Google Scholar.

²⁸ Lieber, Michael D., “Wringing It Dry—Kenneth Emory's Reconstruction of the Ancient Religion of Kapingamarangi Atoll: A Lesson in Historiography” in Pacific History. Papers from the 8th Pacific History Association Conference, ed. Rubinstein, Donald H. (Agana, 1992), 384, with emphasis addedGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ For claims of sanctions among the Hopi see Whiteley, Peter M., “Archaeology and Oral Tradition: the Scientific Importance of Dialogue,” American Antiquity 67(2002), 405–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³¹ E.g., Khoury, Raif-Georgcs, “Pour une nouvelle compréhension de la transmission des textes dans les trois premiers siècles islamiques,” Arabica 34(1987), 181–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Osman, Ghada, “Oral vs. Written Transmission: the Case of Tabari and Ibn Saʿd,” Arabica 48(2001), 66–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Neither come out well; see especially the series of rhetorical questions, ibid., 80.

³² Thucydides, 7.8.2. Ironically, this was almost exactly the same time that Plato was extolling the superiority of the spoken word in his Phaedra.

³³ Zahir al-Din Marʿashi, Tarikh-i Tabaristan, quoted in Melville, Charles, “The Caspian Provinces, a World Apart: Three Local Histories of Mazandaran,” Iranian Studies 33(2000), 73CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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³⁶ Kay, Charles E., “Aboriginal Overkill: the Role of Native Americans in Structuring Western Ecosystems,” Human Nature 5(1994), 380–81CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed; idem., “Are Ecosystems Structured from the Top-Down or Bottom-Up: a New Look at an Old Debate,” Wildlife Society Bulletin 26(1998), 490.

³⁷ Yochim, Michael J., “Aboriginal Overkill Overstated: Errors in Charles Kay's Hypothesis,” Human Nature 12(2001), 141–67CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed, traces the course of the error but probably will not put an end to it.

³⁸ Curtin, P.D., The Atlantic Slave Trade: a Census (Madison, 1969), 1–10Google Scholar.

³⁹ Shinbrot, Troyet al, “Using Small Perturbations to Control Chaos,” Nature 363(3 June 1993), 411–17CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simmons, I.G., “Bach's Butterfly Effect: Culture, Environment and History,” Environmental Values 6(1997), 201–12CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Szómbathy, Zoltan, “The Nassâbah: Anthropological Fieldwork in Mediaeval Islam,” Islamic Culture 73(1999), 86Google Scholar. On the reluctance to treat scripture as the result of transmission see, e.g., Deol, Jeevan Singh, “Text and Lineage in Early Sikh History: Issues in the Study of the Adi Granth,” BSOAS 64(2001), 34–58Google Scholar, plus of course the thousands of efforts to neutralize the difficulties with respect to the Old and New Testaments.

⁴¹ Westcote, Thomas, A View of Devonshire in MDCXXX, ed. Oliver, George and Jones, Pitman (Exeter, 1845), 30Google Scholar.

⁴² Henige, David, “Mis/adventures in Mis/quoting,” Journal of Scholarly Publishing 32(2000/2001), 123–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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