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  • The Role of Memory in the Tradition Represented by the Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles
  • Raymond F. Person Jr. (bio)

Albert Lord described the concept of memory with relation to traditional singers as follows (1981:451):

They remember phrases they have heard from other singers and that they themselves have used many times before. This “remembering,” however, is as unconscious as our use of certain phrases in ordinary speech, and should be distinguished from “memorization.” We have not consciously memorized “please” and “thank you,” for example. We use them by an unconscious “remembering.” At a given stimulus such phrases come to our minds as a learned reflex. So it is with formulas. The weaving of formulaic diction exclusive of the formulas themselves, the exact repetitions, is also but a special extension of the processes of everyday speech, a special extension that embraces sung verse as a means of communication of a special set of ideas appropriate to the epic genre of story-telling.

This description of the process by which oral poets produced epics finds support in the stories of some oral poets themselves. In “Memory in Oral Tradition,” John Miles Foley explored three traditions—those associated with Old English literature (specifically Widsith and Beowulf), Serbo-Croatian epic, and Homer’s Odyssey—for what these oral traditional literatures themselves may contribute to the discussion of memory. Imagining his exploration as an “interview” of the oral poets, Foley concluded as follows (2006:84):

the oral singers tell us at least five things. First, memory in oral tradition is emphatically not a static retrieval mechanism for data. Second, it is very often a kinetic, emergent, creative activity. Third, in many cases it is linked to performance, without which it has no meaning. Fourth, memory typically entails an oral/aural communication requiring an auditor or audience. Fifth, and as a consequence of the first four qualities, memory in oral tradition is phenomenologically distinct from “our memory.”

Thus, rote memorization of traditional epics as a necessary means of oral performance is rejected.1 Rather, oral composition can proceed naturally from a singer’s memory as a creative activity tied to an oral performance before an audience, whose memory has likewise prepared them well for receiving the song. In this way, both the singer and his audience have, on the one hand, internalized the tradition in their collective memory, but, on the other hand, interact with the tradition in the context of an oral performance that re-creates the narrative.

Drawing from the work of both Lord and Foley on memory, I will extend arguments I made in The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles: Scribal Works in an Oral Culture (2010), demonstrating that their understanding of the role of memory in oral traditions provides an excellent lens through which we can view the ancient Israelite tradition as represented in the Deuteronomic History (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, 1–2 Samuel, 1–2 Kings) and the Book of Chronicles (1–2 Chronicles). In the first section I will show how a synchronic reading of these literary works strongly suggests a similar notion of memory behind this tradition —that is, in Lord’s words, a “remembering” not “memorization” (Lord 1981:451). The texts that occur within the narrative of the two works (for example, the law of Moses) are imagined as primarily oral compositions to be used as mnemonic aids for the internalization of the tradition. In the second section I will show how a fuller diachronic understanding of these literary works is facilitated by that same notion of memory, at the level of both the composition of these texts and their transmission. The Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles are best understood as two instantiations of the broader tradition that existed in the interplay of the co-existing parallel texts, none of which could possibly represent the complete fullness of the tradition or the entire collective memory of the people. As such, even the material that is unique in Samuel-Kings and Chronicles can be understood as nevertheless remembering the broader tradition, rather than requiring the reconstruction of necessary theological conflicts between the authors/schools.

The Testimony of the Narrated Texts within the...

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