Bart Ehrman's 'Telephone Game'

Exposing a flawed model of the Gospel tradition

Behind the writing of the first Gospel lies a black box; a period of almost forty years in which the teaching and stories of Jesus were shared among his early followers.

But what went on in this time?

That the activity was largely oral is universally agreed. This makes sense of the context of the Jesus movement - the ancient Mediterranean - a vastly different setting to the modern world, in which which almost everyone was illiterate.

It also makes sense of what we know about the Jesus movement specifically. Many early Jesus followers - following Jesus himself - thought that the end of the world was nigh. This made redundant the need to preserve Jesus’ teaching for posterity.

But can we say anything more about how the early Gospel materials were transmitted?

One popular analogy for understanding this process is found in the popular textbook, A Brief Introduction to the New Testament, by New Testament Professor, Bart Ehrman.

This textbook is familiar to most students of the Bible in secular Universities, and is one that I taught from during my doctoral studies at the University of Edinburgh.

According to Ehrman, the process of sharing the early Jesus traditions - which eventually found their way into the Gospels - can be likened to the Telephone Game:

“You are probably familiar with the old birthday party game “telephone.” A group of kids sits in a circle, the first tells a brief story to the one sitting next to her, who tells it to the next, and to the next, and so on, until it comes back full circle to the one who started it. Invariably, the story has changed so much in the process of retelling that everyone gets a good laugh. (If it didn’t work this way, who would play the game?!) Imagine this same activity taking place, not in a solitary living room with ten kids on one afternoon, but over the expanse of the Roman Empire (some 2,500 miles across), with thousands of participants— from different backgrounds, with different concerns, and in different contexts—some of whom have to translate the stories into different languages.”¹

In this post, I will explore this analogy in greater detail. I will begin by stating what I find compelling about this analogy, before offering a critique.

Why the Telephone Game Analogy Works

There are several reasons why this analogy works. I will look at just three:

1. Invention in the Gospels: There is some material in the Gospels which, for all of its theological and spiritual value, should not taken as historically true; it was invented, at some stage or another, in the transmission of the Jesus tradition. One example Ehrman gives is the discrepant dates of Jesus’ death in the Synoptic Gospels and John, a contradiction which is not easily harmonised (see here).²

2. Non-malicious Intent: Yet to say that material was invented or adapted in transmission is not to ascribe malicious intent to those who participated in the process. On the contrary, material could be changed to apply Jesus’ teachings to a new context, or to express the theological significance of his life in a new way.

3. Not strictly controlled: The analogy also works because it is doubtful that the process of passing on Jesus tradition - much like the Telephone Game - was strictly controlled by the originators of the traditions. If it was, we would struggle to explain why we find the differences among the Gospels, including differences on such matters as the names of the disciples - the originators - themselves.

Where the Telephone Game Analogy Breaks Down

Yet like all analogies, there comes a point where the Telephone Game breaks down.

Some dissimilarities between the oral Gospel tradition are immediately obvious: while the purpose of the Telephone Game is to muck it up, the early Gospel tradition was designed to recall the teachings of a religious leader. And while the end of the chain in the Telephone Game can be completely different to its initial stimulus, Ehrman assumes that we can recover many things about the Gospel tradition.