It has been pointed out that some distinction should be made between the earlier discussion of oral tradition by GUNKEL and others and the discussion going on in our own time. In his book Oral Tradition, NIELSEN argues that GUNKEL'S supposition that there was a period of oral tradition before the stories in Genesis were written down has been widely accepted, whereas the 'modern' problem relates rather to the presuppositions of the literary criticism which GUNKEL accepted and employed 3). Or, as VAN DER PLOEG has stated the distinction, earlier scholar were concerned primarily to discover how and where a text came into being, while the more recent scholars have concentrated on how texts were transmitted 4). However this may be, both the older discussions and the more recent discussions employ the term 'oral tradition'. The very simple question might be asked, what is oral tradition? Now, of course, the term itself implies something passed on by word of mouth. But what is the process involved and how does it happen? Neither the older scholars nor the later scholars have set this out with sufficient preci-