It is the primary form in which the community has maintained its knowledge of what happened to one of its most significant members.

The specific oral accounts that address the burial are held by specific people with specific connections to the events.

They are not freely available to outsiders, and their selective accessibility is itself meaningful: the tradition of protecting the information is maintained by the way the information is transmitted.

Understanding this — understanding that the oral tradition is not simply “what people said” but a specific form of knowledge with its own rules and practices — is essential for understanding why outside searches for the burial site have consistently failed to confirm a location.

The location may be exactly where the oral tradition says it is.