Anyone who followed the interaction between Jimmy Dunn and Theodore Weeden about the claims Kenneth Bailey made about oral tradition in Arab society, may be aware of an example Bailey appealed to in support of his case for “informal controlled oral tradition”. He mentions a story about missionary John Hogg recorded in the biography of him written by Rena Hogg, his daughter, a story that was still circulating when Bailey visited the area in which Hogg had worked after many decades had passed.
Rena Hogg’s biography of her father is available for download at the Internet Archive, and so those wishing to engage in further research on this topic can get much easier access to key primary source material than might otherwise have been possible. The title of the biography is A Master Builder on the Nile.
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