Social and cultural memory theory examines the ways communities and individuals reconstruct and commemorate their pasts in light of shared experiences and current social realities. Drawing on the methods of this emerging field, this volume both introduces memory theory to biblical scholars and restores the category "memory" to a preeminent position in research on Christian origins. In the process, the volume challenges current approaches to research problems in Christian origins, such as the history of the Gospel traditions, the birth of early Christian literature, ritual and ethics, and the historical Jesus. The essays, taken in aggregate, outline a comprehensive research agenda for examining the beginnings of Christianity and its literature and also propose a fundamentally revised model for the phenomenology of early Christian oral tradition, assess the impact of memory theory upon historical Jesus research, establish connections between memory dynamics and the appearance of written Gospels, and assess the relationship of early Christian commemorative activities with the cultural memory of ancient Judaism. --From publisher's description.

Social and cultural memory theory examines the ways communities and individuals reconstruct and commemorate their pasts in light of shared experiences and current social realities. Drawing on the methods of this emerging field, this volume both introduces memory theory to biblical scholars and restores the category "memory" to a preeminent position in research on Christian origins. In the process, the volume challenges current approaches to research problems in Christian origins, such as the history of the Gospel traditions, the birth of early Christian literature, ritual and ethics, and the historical Jesus. The essays, taken in aggregate, outline a comprehensive research agenda for examining the beginnings of Christianity and its literature and also propose a fundamentally revised model for the phenomenology of early Christian oral tradition, assess the impact of memory theory upon historical Jesus research, establish connections between memory dynamics and the appearance of written Gospels, and assess the relationship of early Christian commemorative activities with the cultural memory of ancient Judaism. Contributors include April D. DeConick, Arthur J. Dewey, Philip F. Esler, Holly Hearon, Richard Horsley, Georgia Masters Keightley, Werner Kelber, Alan Kirk, Barry Schwartz, Tom Thatcher, and Antoinette Clark Wire. "Paperback edition is available from the Society of Biblical Literature (www.sbl-site.org)."

Here in one volume are two of Birger Gerhardsson's much-debated works on the transmission of tradition in Rabbinic Judaism and early Christianity. In Memory and Manuscript (1961), Gerhardsson explores the way in which Jewish rabbis during the first Christian centuries preserved and passed on their sacred tradition, and he shows how early Christianity is better understood in light of how that tradition developed in Rabbinic Judaism. In Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity (1964), Gerhardsson further clarifies the discussion and answers criticism of his earlier book. This Biblical Resource Series combined edition corrects and expands Gerhardsson's original works and includes a new preface by the author and a lengthy new foreword by Jacob Neusner that summarizes these works' importance and subsequent influence.

Rodriguez shows how social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present in New Testament studies.

Long studied by anthropologists, historians, and linguists, oral traditions have provided a wealth of fascinating insights into unique cultural customs that span the history of humankind. In this groundbreaking work, cognitive psychologist David C. Rubin offers for the first time an accessible, comprehensive examination of what such traditions can tell us about the complex inner workings of human memory. Focusing in particular on their three major forms of organization--theme, imagery, and sound pattern--Rubin proposes a model of recall, and uses it to uncover the mechanisms of memory that underlie genres such as counting-out rhymes, ballads, and epics. The book concludes with an engaging discussion of how conversions from oral to written communication modes can predict how cutting-edge computer technologies will affect the conventions of future transmissions. Throughout, Rubin presents the results of important original research as well as new perspectives on classical subjects. Splendidly written and farsighted, Memory in Oral Traditions will be eagerly read by students and researchers in areas as diverse as cognitive psychology, literary studies, classics, and cultural anthropology.

Alan Kirk argues that memory theory, in its social, cultural, and cognitive dimensions, is able to provide a comprehensive account of the origins and history of the Jesus tradition, one capable of displacing the moribund form-critical model. He shows that memory research gives new leverage on a range of classic problems in gospels, historical Jesus, and Christian origins scholarship. This volume brings together 12 essays published between 2001 and 2016, newly revised for this edition and organized under the rubrics of: 'Memory and the Formation of the Jesus Tradition'; 'Memory and Manuscript'; 'Memory and Historical Jesus Research'; and 'Memory in 2nd Century Gospel Writing'. The introductory essay, written for this volume, argues that the old form critical model, in marginalizing memory, abandoned the one factor actually capable of accounting for the origins of the gospel tradition, its manifestation in oral and written media, and its historical trajectory.

"Embedded in modern print culture, biblical scholars have been projecting the assumptions and concepts of print culture onto the texts they interpret. In the ancient world from which those texts originate, however, literacy was confined to only a small number of educated scribes. And, as recent research has shown, even the literate scribes learned texts by repeated recitation, while the nonliterate ordinary people had little if any direct contact with written scrolls. The texts that had taken distinctive form, moreover, were embedded in a broader and deeper cultural repertoire cultivated orally in village communities as well as in scribal circles. Only recently have some scholars struggled to appreciate texts that later became ""biblical"" in their own historical context of oral communication. Exploration of texts in oral performance--whether as scribal teachers' instruction to their protŽgŽs or as prophetic speeches of Jesus of Nazareth or as the performance of a whole Gospel story in a community of Jesus-loyalists--requires interpreters to relinquish their print-cultural assumptions. Widening exploration of texts in oral performance in other fields offers exciting new possibilities for allowing those texts to come alive again in their community contexts as they resonated with the cultural tradition in which they were embedded."