Includes material on interpretation methods and presentation of research.

Spoken words process knowledge differently from writing. What happens when speech turns into text? In reappraising literary scholars' propensity to trace Jesus' sayings back to the assumed original version, the author argues that in the oral medium each rendition of a saying is the original. Orality works with multiple originals, rather than with single originality. In what may be the most extraordinary thesis of the book, Kelber argues that the written gospel is related less by evolutionary progression than by contradiction to what preceded it.