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6-Memory
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Alan Kirk Memory Chapter 6 155 It was because Birger Gerhardsson was concerned for a history of the gospel tradition grounded in historically attested cultural practices that he came to assign to memory the crucial operational role in the origins and transmission of tradition. In so doing, moreover, he anticipated important contemporary developments in the humanities and social sciences , where memory has become a dominant research paradigm.1 This is all the more remarkable given that Memory and Manuscript appeared at a time when gospel scholarship, dominated by form criticism, was devoid of interest in memory. Gerhardsson indicted the form critics and their followers, sometimes to the point of exasperation, for their failure to ground their history of the gospel tradition adequately in historical and cultural realities.2 In fact, the form critics’ lack of interest in positioning their model for tradition plausibly in ancient milieus and the peculiar absence of memory from their model for the tradition were closely connected. Opposing eschatological to historical consciousness, Rudolf Bultmann held that orientation to the past arose in the early Christian communities only secondarily, as a consequence of the exhaustion of eschatological enthusiasm . Therefore, he argued, this reorientation and with it conscious traditioning activities were not significant factors in the formative period of the gospel traditions.3 Given this scenario, Bultmann and many of his 156 B Alan Kirk contemporaries could be persuaded that the gospel tradition was largely the reflection of the present, enthusiastic life of the eschatological communities . They could assume, moreover, that the Umwelt could not offer many points of contact with early Christian traditioning activities and that the gospel tradition had to be approached as virtually sui generis, as Kleinliteratur, by definition lacking significant analogies in ancient cultural practices. This helps account not just for the striking absence of the factor of memory from their theorizing on the formation of the tradition, but also for the curious insouciance in the face of challenges like Gerhardsson’s to give historical and cultural justification for their views.4 Gerhardsson’s recognition that memory, that is, orientation to a normative past, and correspondingly the cultivation of tradition are constitutive of viable communities is now axiomatic in studies on the social and cultural aspects of memory. By the same token, Gerhardsson ’s original working conception of memory may itself be critically reassessed in the light of contemporary advances in research. In what follows we will work through Gerhardsson’s understanding of the operations of memory and identify its limitations but show how memory in its cultural, social, and cognitive dimensions is indeed the crucial factor in the formation and transmission of tradition. We will give particular attention to what has been a primary focus of Gerhardsson’s work, namely, the nexus of memory with the origins of tradition. Rethinking the Framework: Memory in Ancient Education Gerhardsson conceives the factor of memory in tradition in terms of memorization of more or less fixed texts through repetition, with faithful repetition also being the mechanism of transmission.5 This is reminiscent of the replication of fixed texts associated with the written medium, and Gerhardsson in fact will defend taking the model of written fixation as his major point of reference. Though the focus of his discussion is rabbinic practices, Gerhardsson argues that similar techniques may be predicated more generally of Jewish Palestine in the Second Temple period. Contrary to the way his work has sometimes been caricatured, Gerhardsson develops a reasoned justification for this latter claim, namely, in locating rabbinic techniques in their essentials in the wider context of ancient educational practices: [54.205.179.155] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 07:10 GMT) Memory B 157 [T]he learning by heart of basic texts; the principle that “learning comes before understanding”; the attempt to memorize the teacher’s ipsissima verba; the condensation of material into short, pregnant texts; the use of mnemonic technique . . . the frequent repetition of memorized material . . . [I]n almost every case the basis is provided by . . . popular educational practice.6 In other words, rabbinic memory practice is a plausible analogy for Jesus’ own practice and early Christian cultivation of tradition because it was an expression of educational techniques widespread in the ancient world. Drilled memorization of written works with classic status and their recitation from memory was the major pedagogical feature of Hellenistic education from the elementary level to the advanced rhetorical level.7 Moreover, Gerhardsson argues, there is little evidence of any alternative model for tradition; these were “the ancient...