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You're vastly underrating the value of oral records and overrating the value of written records. We have quite few surviving written records from Antiquity, and

You're vastly underrating the value of oral records and overrating the value of written records. We have quite few surviving written records from Antiquity, and far fewer still if you discount those records which are (possibly edited!) copies of original works rather than original works themselves. Even for someone as consequential as Alexander the Great, we have exactly 0 surviving contemporary works (even in copied form) about him, and our oldest sources are 4 secondary sources (largely incomplete), some of which have clear bias in interpretation, drawing on the primary sources. There's also the matter that the decision of which written records to preserve itself is a reflection of bias from people in intervening years. I mean, we have some pretty ancient extant religious manuscripts (in the sense of "this copy was produced around AD 300"), but manuscripts of those sects deemed heretical haven't survived, so most of what we know about, say, gnosticism comes from its ideological opponents.

AlbertCory 2y ago
> most of what we know about, say, gnosticism comes from its ideological opponents Bad example. The Gnostic Gospels tells us quite a lot about what they thought, and in their own terms. Secondly, saying "written records are incomplete and/or biased" does not say that oral records are any better. In fact, the Telephone Game grew up to illustrate their own weakness. https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game
- jcranmer 2y ago
  The Gnostic gospels were only relatively recently discovered (1945 per Wikipedia), perhaps I should have picked one of the other heresies in early Christianity that are virtually unknown outside of some early church father dismissing them. And my point isn't that oral records are better than written records, it's that they're not really worse. Or put differently, written records are rather incomplete accounts: there's a tendency to treat written records as the ground truth of history which isn't particularly warranted.
  - AlbertCory 2y ago
    I think they are worse, usually. But yeah, the written records are definitely incomplete and one-sided.

AlbertCory 2y ago

> most of what we know about, say, gnosticism comes from its ideological opponents Bad example. The Gnostic Gospels tells us quite a lot about what they thought, and in their own terms. Secondly, saying "written records are incomplete and/or biased" does not say that oral records are any better. In fact, the Telephone Game grew up to illustrate their own weakness. https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game https://www.wikihow.com/Play-the-Telephone-Game

jcranmer 2y ago
The Gnostic gospels were only relatively recently discovered (1945 per Wikipedia), perhaps I should have picked one of the other heresies in early Christianity that are virtually unknown outside of some early church father dismissing them. And my point isn't that oral records are better than written records, it's that they're not really worse. Or put differently, written records are rather incomplete accounts: there's a tendency to treat written records as the ground truth of history which isn't particularly warranted.
- AlbertCory 2y ago
  I think they are worse, usually. But yeah, the written records are definitely incomplete and one-sided.