Musings on biblical studies, politics, religion, ethics, human nature, tidbits from science
Earlier this month on The Jesus Blog, Anthony Le Donne, one of the main Memory Mavens, let us know that he had publicly posted a chapter of his monograph, The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David. (You can, incidentally, read the original version of Le Donne’s thesis at the Durham University web site.) While I expect … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 5: Rituals and Remembrance (1)”
Another lifetime ago, back when I was a U.S. Air Force field training detachment commander, one of our instructors came into my office with a worried look. He told me he had been teaching basic circuitry to a group of enlisted students. “Lieutenant,” he asked, “when you were in school what did they teach you … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 4: The Analytical Power of Failure”
As you may recall from the first part of this series, Maurice Halbwachs wrote an important and detailed treatise on social memory and its relation to memorialized places (les localisations), which he called The Legendary Topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land: A Study of Collective Memory (La topographie legendaire des evangiles en terre sainte: Etude … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 3: Bethlehem Remembered”
Legends that stick Some myths have extraordinary staying power. Because modern media causes us to believe we’re witnesses to real events, we often reject good evidence that disproves what we think we saw and heard personally. I grew up thinking that the embarrassing mistakes Kermit Schaefer presented on his record albums were completely authentic. We all rolled … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 2: A Case Study at Ellis Island”
A muddle of mavens For several months now, I’ve been poring over works written by a contingent of New Testament scholars who I like to call the Memory Mavens. This group claims that “memory theory” offers new perspectives on Jesus traditions and provides new insights on how those traditions eventually found their way into the … Continue reading “The Memory Mavens, Part 1: A Brief Introduction to Memory Theory”
In our last post, we discussed the genre of the gospels. We saw that Bart Ehrman, at least for this book (Jesus Before the Gospels), chooses to gloss over the issue of genre, and simply assumes that the gospels contain memories of the historical Jesus. Of course, he concedes that those memories may be distorted. … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 5: Memory Distortion”
In a recent post, Neil cited a paper by Dr. Alan Kirk called “Memory Theory and Jesus Research.” While Kirk does an adequate job of explaining the current state of play in memory theory, I couldn’t help but notice yet again some misunderstandings in the ways Memory Mavens remember German critical scholarship in general and … Continue reading “Alan Kirk: Misremembering Bultmann and Wrede”
Just briefly, here are some things that I (and probably Neil, as well) intend to write about in the coming months. How do historians treat possibly legendary or semilegendary figures other than Jesus? The search for a common methodology of historicity. How do historians weigh the evidence surrounding characters such as King Arthur and Robin … Continue reading “Blog Subject Matter for 2019”
A Long-standing Tool While searching for other things, I stumbled upon this paragraph in a Wikipedia entry. The criterion of embarrassment is a long-standing tool of New Testament research. The phrase was used by John P. Meier in his book A Marginal Jew; he attributed it to Edward Schillebeeckx, who does not appear to have … Continue reading “The Criterion of Embarrassment: Origins and Emendations”
Recently, I was researching and preparing for the fourth chapter of the most recent Memory Mavens post. I wanted especially to resurrect, and then dismiss, Albert Schweitzer’s characterization of William Wrede’s work as “thoroughgoing scepticism.” I had already touched on this subject back in 2012 in our series on the Messianic Secret. At the time, … Continue reading “When Schweitzer Changed His Mind and Nobody Noticed”
The horses are on the track In Daniel Gullotta’s “On Richard Carrier’s Doubts,” we see a phenomenon common in nearly every apologetic debate, but comparatively rare in print: namely, the Gish Gallop. It works better in a live, oral/aural environment, of course, because the wave of information washes over and stuns the opposition, while on … Continue reading “What’s the Matter with Biblical Scholarship? Part 3”
In true stories, as well as most conventional fiction, when characters move about, do things, say things, and interact with one another or with their environments, they operate logically. That is, we understand their motivations. The chicken crosses the road not simply to get to the other side, but because she wanted something over there. Motiveless motion … Continue reading “The Motiveless Behavior of Fairy-Tale Characters”
In the previous post, we looked at the basic element of form criticism. Bart Ehrman in Jesus Before the Gospels uses the findings of the form critics to explain a commonly held assumption in NT scholarship. Many, if not most, of today’s critical scholars believe the stories found in our canonical gospels survived orally over a … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 3: Oral Tradition”
Nearly a year ago, while reading Bart Ehrman’s blog, I became aware that he was writing a book on memory. That news gave me no joy. My sense of unease, if not distress, did not diminish even when he said he had spent practically all of his spare time for two years reading up on the subject, … Continue reading “Bart Ehrman: Jesus Before the Gospels, Basic Element 1: Maurice Halbwachs”
