 Thank you very much for being here tonight. I'm honored to be delivering this inaugural lecture as the first ever professor of New Testament and early Christianity at St. Mary's University College. When people find out that I'm a professor they often express surprise in light of my age, my lack of gray hair. I in fact once had a cab driver in Mainz who refused to let me in his cab because of this. The cab had been reserved for Professor Chris Keith and he thought I was a student. I had to tap on his window and tell him politely but firmly, he's been Professor Keith. It was 5 a.m. as well as really absurd what student is up catching a cab at 5 a.m. but he then felt terrible and explained to me that I was a young a professor and literally drove me up onto the sidewalk outside the train station. All I can say is that I too am surprised and I can cite the happy set of circumstances that led to my appointment. Although I should add that I failed to check the fine print of my contract from St. Mary's which I signed in June of 2012 and apparently said at the bottom your first year in post will be absolutely nothing like what you expected to be when you're signing this contract. It's cathartic isn't it? I'm thoroughly aware, thoroughly conscious of what a special honor it is to occupy this chair how lucky I am to carry that honor. In this slide I hope you'll permit me a personal moment here before we get to the academic part of this lecture. It's only right for me to thank those who have supported me through the successes and failures alike my wife and children. That's them and that's not London. My wife Erin is here with me tonight as smart and beautiful as ever. If you're wondering how someone that looks like me ended up with someone that looks like her all I can say is get in line. If you figure that one out you let me know because we could bottle it and sell it to a lot of other ugly guys who want to marry women out of their league. You know what I'm talking about Dr. Naylor don't you? We're the lucky ones. This lecture is on memory and Erin I remember when I could not decide whether I want to be a businessman a lawyer or a minister. You sat me down insisted that I go into an academic teaching of the Bible which has been an interesting combination of all those other professions and on many days more detached from reality than any of them. Thank you. My children aren't here tonight and since no one's playing Angry Birds Star Wars on their iPhones I can tell you that my five-year-old son Jace would be bored out of his mind and since no one here is jumping on the bed I can tell you that my two-year-old daughter Hannah would be equally bored but that's not to say that they're not interested in the topic I'm going to address tonight. In fact Hannah was kind enough to offer criticisms on initial draft of the lecture. The words themselves managed to get jumbled around due to computer magic but you'll see that she thought my argument was circular here in a number of areas. She had particular problems with the shallow footnotes and told me that much of what I thought was original in my work was in fact derivative of it underappreciated 19th century Siberian New Testament scholar. In general she said she had trouble identifying a coherent thesis. She's a tough critic. I hope the point of the lecture isn't quite as unclear as Hannah thought and so I proceed to the serious stuff. In a footnote in his 1971 myth of Christian origins Robert Wilkins cited French sociologist Maurice Havlox the social frameworks of memory the collective memory and the legendary topography of the Gospels in the Holy Land. To my knowledge his citation is the very first interaction between scholars of the New Testament and what has become known as social memory theory. It would be another 21 years before Havlox's seminal social frameworks of memory or sections of it appeared in English. Despite several short applications and essays it would be yet another 12 years beyond that before Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher formed the mapping memory consultation of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2004. A year later English speaking New Testament scholarship received a formal introduction to the theory in Kirk and Thatcher's 2005 Simeo volume memory tradition and text. In that volume Kirk and Thatcher could still rightly claim it is surprising that social memory theory has as yet made no significant impact on biblical studies. These words are true no longer however in a relatively short amount of time social memory theory has exploded on the gospel scholarship and biblical studies generally. Gospel scholars are now approaching standard issues in terms of this so-called memory approach and publishing sustained treatments including those stemming from graduate doctoral and postdoctoral research. Clearly many scholars agree with the assessment of Alan Kirk who says quote, the work of memory theorists on the social and cultural dimensions of memory and experimental psychologists on its cognitive operations makes it possible to rethink basic questions about the formation of the gospel tradition and the forces driving its development. In quote, not all scholars share this sentiment however. Foster has recently argued that memory theory is a quote unquote dead end in historical Jesus studies and offers no significant advance beyond form criticism. He questions the understanding of New Testament scholars who use memory theory and grouping applications of orality studies which he likewise sees as a dead end and memory studies together claims that neither group of New Testament scholars seems to know the field that they are importing. I quote, those who apply the respective forms of theory described here do not appear to be cognizant of the fact that within the disciplines from which those theories are imported the forms used as a breakthrough in New Testament studies are seen as being outmoded and largely flawed. In quote Foster's major criticism of the memory approach concerns overconfident this is a quotation overconfident application of such approaches to the historical Jesus question in quote that affirm the gospel tradition is reliable. Other criticisms have likewise been voiced. I'm later in this lecture going to argue that such critiques though accurate and some important respects misrepresent the full breadth of applications of memory theory to the gospels and thus are not without irony. I'll argue further that this entire usage of social memory theory is illegitimate since the theory as theory neither affirms nor denies the reliability of the gospel tradition. But these and other critiques are important since they signal a certain maturation of social memory theories presence in New Testament studies and raise the question of its contribution to the discipline. As we close the first decade of this interdisciplinary conversation then we're in a position to assess the contributions of social memory theory to gospel scholarship as well as its limitations. I therefore offer this lecture part one of which will present the methodological foundations of social memory theory part two of which will then assess current applications of social memory theory in four areas of Jesus studies. Overall, I argue that although social memory theory has suffered abuse by its supporters and detractors alike, it continues to hold great promise for Jesus studies as the discipline moves steadily beyond modernist conceptions of early Christian transmission of the past. Also to give you a bit of transparency here, I first started working with social memory theory in 2003 and 2004. I wrote a master's thesis in Cincinnati, Ohio on it and then I set it down for some time as I pursued my doctoral work and some other projects and then I eventually came back to it. When I did, I found that the discussion had moved in a couple of directions that I really thought kind of were illegitimate. I very much, it may sound absurd, but I had the sense that I kind of, I had a child that I had set down and then lost and then when I found it again, I saw it in the circus doing something that I'd never planned for it. So we all know how that is, right? So to a certain extent this is an attempt to set things right, to get the discussion back on the tracks of the methodology instead of the distracting discussions that have been happening. The roots of social memory theory reach into numerous philosophical, linguistic, anthropological and sociological fields of research. The significant contributors to critical discourse on memory thus comprise an impressive list of scholars from various time periods and disciplines. Freud, Marx, Levi-Strauss, Nietzsche, Foucault, Derrida, Gadamer, Nora, Récourt, many others. Most important for understanding the current state of gospel scholarship in light of social memory theory are Maurice Hovwax, Jan Osman and Barry Schwartz. Hovwax was the founder of social memory theory while Osman and Schwartz are the leading voices in Germany and the United States, respectively. Maurice Hovwax, which apparently lost a mustache competition with Friedrich Nietzsche, under the influences of philosopher Henri Bergson and sociologist Emile Durkheim, he was the first scholar to develop a sociological approach to memory in his 1925, The Social Frameworks of Memory. He argues consistently against the psychological view of memory as a store and retrieval function that primarily concerns the preservation of the past in an individual's mind. He insists instead that memories are always recalled from and thus structured by the social demands of the president. In other words, memory is not like a filing cabinet where you put past events and then you can go collect them when you want and they're pristine in exact way they happen. For Hovwax, memory is not primarily a past-oriented function of the individual. It is a present-oriented function of the individual in society. Accordingly, he says, quote, there is no point in seeking where memories are preserved in my brain or in some nook of my mind to which I alone have access for they are recalled to me externally and the groups of which I'm a part at any time giving me the means to reconstruct them. Let me put this in less technical terms. Have you ever had a bad breakup? Sorry, have you? Yeah? Good. Does anyone want to tell a story? No? Okay. If you've ever had a bad breakup but you thought it was going to make it before it collapsed, right? Then you have that friend or maybe you are that friend who comes to you and says, why are you with this person? Do you not notice what just happened? Do you not notice how they neglect you, how they did this, that and the other? And while you still have the hope that it's going to work out, what happens? Oh, no! You don't know him or her. You don't see how they talk to me in private. They were just having a bad date. You defend them, you assert how great they are, right? And then it all blows up, right? And then you go back to that friend and all of a sudden you say, why didn't you tell me how awful this person was for me? I would have never tried to make it last. You know, what about when they did this awful thing to me? Or if you are that friend, yeah, I did tell you that, you ignore me. What actually happened never changed? Your present circumstances changed and that changed the way you viewed what happened. And Hoflock was trying to capture the way present social reality changes how you view the past, whether that past really happened or whether it's created. Although sometimes less than clear, Hoflock does not ignore the role of the individual in emphasizing the influence of the group. His point is simply that individuals borrow from society everything that enables conceptualization of the past. Thus the present environment dictates the reconstruction of the past even for the individual. He says, quote, it is in this sense that there exists a collective memory and social frameworks for memory. It is to the degree that our individual thought places itself in these frameworks and participates in this memory that is capable that it is capable of the act of recollection. As this last quotation indicates, Hoflock uses the term social memory and collective memory in overlapping but distinct ways. When he speaks of social memory or the social frameworks of memory, he refers to the impact of present society on the individual. Collective memory instead refers to a shared cultural past to which individuals contribute and upon which they call, but ultimately a past that transcends individual memory. Since collective memory is crucial for informing group identity, it is a past that the group actively manages. In other words, it's an intentional formation of the past. Hoflock's theory is not a flawless system, but his insights concerning the impact of the present on the formation and articulation of memory have proven not only accurate but immensely fertile. They've spawned a discourse of social or collective memory that crosses a plethora of disciplines, topics, and ideological perspectives, and at least three aspects of this work are particularly significant for gospel studies. First is the actual past. To reiterate a point that I just made, collective memory according to Hoflock's is unconcerned with issues relating to the actual past. It is precisely this notion of memory as a preservation function against which Hoflock's rails. This point bears repeating because in colloquial language we often juxtapose memory of the past with invention of the past thereby imbuing memory with a meaning that's akin to historical accuracy. Importing this common understanding of memory to social memory discourse would be a category mistake. Collective memory refers to the representation of the past in the light of the needs of the present with no automatic assumption at the outset about the degree to which that representation may reflect past reality. Second, despite Hoflock's interest in the actual past and its influence upon collective memory has not remained outside the boundaries of social memory research. Several factors are responsible for this, one of which is this second important point. Hoflock's concentration upon the role of the present in memory at the expense of the past led eventually to two schools of social or collective memory theory. One school follows Hoflock's and his emphasis upon the present and thus is thus termed presentism, social constructionism or constructivism. Presentists are primarily concerned with the ways in which present interests exploit the past and exercise their will over it. Conspiracy theorists love this perspective. In contrast scholars who affirm the continuity perspective or the essentialist position associated with Barry Schwartz to whom we'll get in a minute place equal emphasis upon the past asserting that Hoflock's near single-minded focus upon the present neglected the ways in which the past and past interpretations of the past can constitute or contribute to the social frameworks of the present. That is, although not denying Hoflock's insights concerning the socially constructed nature of memory they argue that the relationship between the past and the present memory is not a one-way street but rather a more complex phenomenon of mutual influence. Third, Hoflock himself saw early Christianity as a prime example of collective memory. He has an entire chapter in social frameworks of memory on religious collective memory. His second major work was on the topography of the gospels in the holy lands. It's a fascinating study on how in various historical periods when crusaders came to the holy land they found holy sites anew and that the sites you know were moving but various periods of crusaders had moved the topography of the holy lands. And furthermore Hoflock's makes ample usage of Ernst Rennan's Life of Jesus and even claims quote the gospels already represent a memory or collection of memories held in common by a group. Hoflock's work on collective memory had a major influence on Egyptologists Jan Osman's development of a theory of cultural memory. In a number of publications over more than 25 years Osman addressed a weakness he perceived in Hoflock's namely that Hoflock's never implied his insights into group memory at the cultural level in a sustained way. Along with his wife literary theorist Alida Osman, Osman's impact in German-speaking memory scholarship has been substantial. Only recently have English translations of their most important works appeared. Osman's cultural memory theory operates within the ambit of Hoflock's collective memory but extends far beyond it. For the living group's collective memory Osman coins the term communicative memory. In contrast cultural memory, cultural agadachness refers to memorial practices that go beyond living memory and cross generations. He says quote with cultural memory the depths of time open up in quote. In this sense cultural memory is communicative memory stretched vertically across generations instead of horizontally across individuals and what communication is for communicative memory tradition is for cultural memory. The cultural texts that constitute the tradition whether oral or written serve as quote the cement or connective backbone of a society that ensures its identity and coherence through the sequence of generations. So for Hoflock's collective memory is how you and all of your friends think about the car wreck that you were just in. For Osman cultural memory refers to how I as a Kentucky, a Kentuckian identify with other Kentuckians from 100-200 years ago. Very simplistic but that's kind of what it is. Like Hoflock's collective memory cultural memory is not concerned with the actual past and the discipline of history in the sense of verification of historical claims. Osman instead describes his investigation of cultural memory as a Nemo history and claims unlike history proper Nemo history is concerned not with the past as such but only the past as it is remembered. It surveys the story lines of tradition the webs of intertextuality the diachronic continuities and discontinuities of reading the past in quote. Memories Memo histories aim is quote not to ascertain the possible truth of traditions but to study these traditions as phenomena of collective memory quote. In addition to important similarities Osman's cultural memory theory is also dissimilar from Hoflock's in several manners relating to the past and the actual past. Osman refers reserves a firm role for the influence of the past upon the construction of collective memory in the present. He says quote the past is not simply received by the present the present is haunted by the past and the past is modeled invented reinvented and reconstructed by the present in quote. Osman thus reveals more complex interchange worth noting is that this does not mean that the influence of the past necessarily derives from the actual past since memories may be false distorted invented or implanted. At the same time the actual past is not entirely irrelevant for Osman's cultural memory theory not because Osman asserts a direct connection between history and memory but rather because he reconceptualizes them as related he says quote Memo history is not the opposite of history but rather is one of its branches or sub-disciplines. Memo history is reception theory applied to history in quote. Osman here reveals an important shift in memory discourse since the Hob walks in the 1920s since this very shift is the fault line at which debates over the usefulness of memory in historical Jesus research are occurring it requires further comment. To state the previous point in perhaps a more succinct way Osman does not so much redefine the relationship between memory and history as much as he redefines the goals and expectations of history in light of memory. Hob walks still worked with a positivist understanding of history as recovery of raw elements of the past much as the form critics in Germany understood it at precisely the same historical period. As Osman notes quote the task of historical positivism consists in separating the historical from the mythical elements in memory and distinguishing the elements which retain the past from those which shape the present in quote. Hob walks was interested only in the latter element of this equation the present and thus viewed history proper that is recovery of the retained past as the opposite of collective memory which was thoroughly entwined with current social realities and and so for Hob walks history stands outside reality Osman notes it's a functionless artifact isolated from the bonds and obligations imposed by life in quote. In an intriguing aspect of social memory theories for Schrum's geschichte then Hob walks ironically maintained a positivist understanding of history while simultaneously introducing a theory of the past in the form of collective memory that would contribute to the collapse of that very understanding. Osman's criticism of Hob walks in this regard concerns precisely the antithetical relationship between history and memory that Hob walks maintains moving on. With Osman's cultural memory theory then one takes a decisive step also into media criticism of the ancient world and view the relationship between the oral and the written. Osman places this this issue at the very base of cultural memory theory. He views the technology of writing as the decisive enabling catalyst for transgenerational cultural memory because writing enables an extended situation beyond a transmission context of co presence in other words since Osman is very much interested in how generations hand down the past he saw writing as the writing as the primary means to do that. Ritual an oral tradition require co presence they require everybody to be in the same room or the same bonfire whatever wherever they're doing their transmission but writing allows people to be distanced oral cultures have cultural memory then but these contexts of transmission in so far as they demand simultaneous presence they pale in comparison to written texts which are not restricted they can cross land see and decades so long as the papyrus survives and there's someone who can read the language on the other end thus only in according to Osman only with the emergence of writing does cultural memory take off and allow the horizon of symbolically stored memory to go far beyond the framework of knowledge functionalized as bonding memory. Third like Havwok Osman developed his theory of memory in light of and upon biblical text he viewed ancient israel as an example par excellence of the workings of cultural memory and begins his uh cultural memory and early civilization with a discussion of the Pentateuch. His writings are replete with discussions of Old Testament Hebrew Bible texts and traditions. Osman also interacts with the work of New Testament scholar Gerg Tyson and like Havwoks treats the Jesus tradition as cultural memory. Over roughly the same period of time that Osman was shepherding the legacy of Havwoks in Germany sociologist Barry Schwartz has been performing the same task in the United States. As the leading voice of the continuity perspective on collective memory Schwartz has advocated in a number of publications that although the past is malleable its malleability knows limits. Although he often sounds like Havwoks Schwartz argues consistently that Havwoks's and presentous emphasis on the all-powerful present presents a quote one-sided perspective. For Schwartz quote, to conceive of memory as a mirror of reality is to conceive of fiction. For if independently of historical evidence are changing understanding of the past uniquely parallels changes in our society then the only relevant reality would be the present and the very concept of collective memory would be meaningless. To conceive the meaning of the past as fixed and steady is likewise meaningless since any event must appear differently as perceptual circumstances change in quote. Importantly then Schwartz's position is not the opposite of the presentist position that would be historical positivism. It's a modification of it that accounts for the fact that in Michael Shudson's words quote the past is in some respects and under some conditions highly resistant to efforts to make it over in quote. Schwartz thus consistently steers a middle course in insisting on continuity between the past and the present. He says quote in most cases we find the past to be neither totally precarious nor immutable but a stable image upon which new elements are intermittently superimposed in quote. Just to give you a an extreme example that appears in the literature quite often is death. If you are remembering the death of a loved one there's only so much you can hermeneutically do with that memory because there is the reality in the present that that loved one is no longer there. So there there are limits to which you can remake the past in the image of the present. That's an extreme example but there are a lot others. The one I'll often use is 9-11 which of course in the U.S. and abroad is still heavily debated. You can have a lot of versions of the past about what happened there but it is constrained by the fact that the Twin Towers are no longer there. Whatever your version of that story is it has to it has to reflect the fact that they're not there anymore. So the past knows limits and that's what these scholars are observing. Schwartz's relevance for New Testament studies is great as is indicated by the fact that a Simea volume dedicated to his work is forthcoming from New Testament scholars. Furthermore he has worked to become intimately familiar with New Testament studies. He presented papers at the annual meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature in 2003 and 2010 as well as the 2012 Jesus Conference in Dayton, Ohio. Schwartz has also published several contributions to New Testament scholarship as a sociologist. I want to highlight two aspects of his work very briefly. First and most important, consistent with the continuity perspective and contrary to the perspective of Hoblocks. Schwartz reserves a role for the past in his theory of collective memory as I've already stated. But we have to be careful here. As was the case with Osman also the idea that the past pressures the present does not lead directly to the further idea that this pressure comes from what really happened. According to Schwartz quote, stable images of the past are not always demonstratively true images. Sometimes false ideas are transferred across generations and accepted as if they were true. In quote, the impact of the past in the first instance simply refers to the inertia of past interpretation upon present conception. On the other hand for Schwartz the actual past remains one possible source for the inertia of the past among others. He says quote, sometimes individuals experience something they cannot forget in quote. That is sometimes what really happened leads to or at least restrains present conception of the past. Second, Schwartz thus joins the ranks of Hoblocks and Osman as foundational social memory theorists who have applied social memory theory to the New Testament related fields. He explicitly addresses the Gospels in this regard quote. The job of social memory scholarship is to assess what we know. Assembling documents like the Gospels, estimating their meanings in relations to the culture of which their authors were a part and drawing conclusions. From the social memory standpoint then our objective study is not the authenticity of the Gospels. It is rather the Gospels as sources of information about the popular beliefs of early Christianity in quote. Therefore although Schwartz is careful to preserve a role for the past his general assessment is that the goal of social memory inquiry affirms what Osman also said. In the first instance it is not about discovering the actual past but understanding why the tradition developed in the manners that it did. Before moving on a few summarizing points are necessary. First, that social memory discourse is relevant for and applicable to New Testament studies is beyond question. In addition to the fact that the aforementioned major figures discussed the traditions of ancient Israel early Christianity one could also cite studies of Jewish history from a social memory perspective outside biblical studies. The bible and its worlds form a cornerstone of the discourse regardless of whether biblical specialists contribute to it. We might as well contribute to it. Second is the issue of jargon. It should be clear social memory collective memory and cultural memory do not technically refer to the same phenomenon. Add to these terms further nuanced jargon such as autobiographical memory individual memory historical memory communicative memory and a host of others not named here but appearing in the literature not named here in the lecture itself but named here on the slide hot memory cold memory normative memory formative memory counter memory connective memory cognitive memory inscribed memory embodied memory contrapresent memory and one has a recipe for serious confusion and some of you who aren't interested in this discussion might be thinking why in the world would anyone spend so much time delineating between these things all I can say is we're just trying to have a career here. Third although the relationship between the actual past and commemoration of the past that is under under the modernist conceptions history and memory is important to each of these scholars it's important in varying ways the actual past is important to Hofwax as the antithesis of collective memory. Osman sees cultural memory and memo history as related to but distinct from interest in historical truth. Schwartz displays the most affinity for seeing historical interest as adjacent to collective memory. If we use then Pierre Nora who who is widely considered the true era of Hofwax as the mouthpiece for Hofwax the following quotations reveal differing understandings of the relationship between history and memory in these scholars works. Memory and history far from being synonymous or thus in many respects opposed memo history is not the opposite of history but rather is one of its branches collective memory is based on two sources of belief about the past history and commemoration. I'll give you a teaser here for where I'm going anyone who says collective memory theory is X and doesn't define what they mean by that in terms of the methodology is is doing his or her readers a disservice because it's not any one thing in particular there's a great variety of opinion in light of these differences though what these scholars hold in common is worth underscoring all or agree that social approaches to memory are primarily interested in the development of the tradition not historical accuracy when and where social memory theory is interested in historical accuracy that is the continuity perspective is interested in so far as the past could have contributed to the development of social frameworks that enable formation of memory in the present equally important then is that although social memory theory is not primarily interested in inquiries into historical truth it is not irrelevant for such inquiries either one might say instead that social memory theory is the first port of call historians must reckon first with the con complex relationship between the past and the present in any commemorative activity asking further questions about the possibility of the actual past contribution is a separate and subsequent stage of investigating those complexities in this sense social memory theory is not so much a historiographical method as it is a theory of social construction of the past that enables responsible historiography now from the method to modern applications of it in gospel studies the impact of social memory theory on gospel's research has masked a stunningly diverse appropriation of the method in new testament scholarship in its related fields more broadly scholars have applied social memory theory to topics such as paul and pauline literature the epistle to the hebrus the dead sea scrolls the gospel of thomas the gospel of peter the diddak the apostolic fathers mulito of sardis the tomb of james the brother of jesus trajan's column later christian pegan conflict and even egyptian magical papyri nevertheless it's undeniable that social memory theory's most demonstrable inroads into new testament scholarship reside in jesus studies i'll here address four specific issues in gospel studies that relate to the relationship between the past and the present and the formation of the gospels number one the transmission of the oral jesus tradition number two criteria of authenticity number three the new historiography and number four the historical reliability of the jesus tradition so the transmission of the oral gospel tradition informed criticism although not receiving the kind of attention that social memory theory has received in historical jesus studies the most matured area of application of social memory theory and gospels research concerns the transmission of the oral jesus tradition led by huron horsley kelber kirk and thatcher many scholars have found social memory theories descriptions of the dynamic relationship between the present and the past a useful framework for conceptualizing the transmission of the oral jesus tradition rodriguez has written a full monograph on the topic and eve has also employed the memory approach in his overview of the scholarly discussion since the formation and transmission of the oral jesus tradition was the focus of form criticism it is little surprised that many applications of social memory theory in this area have engaged form criticism and its lingering effects in gospel scholarship many assessments of form criticism in this regard have been critical in light of its near total emphasis upon this uh in light of its near total emphasis upon the zitsenleben der kurka whether we take by that the hellenistic or palestinian church over the zitsenleben yesu gospel scholars as well as social memory theorists outside biblical states have identified form criticism as a thoroughly present as perspective although he's merely repeating the earlier opinion of boltman winter's assessment of the controversy narrative serves as a clear example of this present as tendency he says quote all the marking controversies without exception reflect disputes between the apostolic church and its social environment and are devoid of roots in the circumstances of life in jesus and quote just in case uh you've uh i managed with my sweet southern drawl to lull you to sleep the point of that statement there all the marking controversy narratives in other words what winter is saying is that every time you look in the gospels which i know we all do every time you look in the gospels you see jesus arguing with one of the scribal leaders of his day that is all a product of later christianity which was at the time arguing with jewish leadership in in the late first century that in winter statement is it is devoid of roots in the circumstances in the life of jesus as i mentioned just a minute ago this is a thoroughly present as perspective the present reality of the gospel authors is read entirely into their version of the past there's no remainder of the past there they're just making this up from the continuity perspective of social memory theory the failure to consider seriously the ways in which the past could have contributed to early christian's presence is a severe oversight for the early christian communities were not theologizing castles in the sky detached from all socio-historical circumstances in other words that fails to answer a very legitimate question of well why were those controversies going on in the late first century previous typologies provide categories for the present and thus structure or restrain the interpretive freedom of the present to an extent as groups assimilate the noblem to the known in some instances such as the scripted violence of a crucifixion the past presses itself more forcibly upon the present even while the present scrambles to find typological frames with which to master the shattering of group identity the past does not always pressure pressure the present in this manner but examples such as this point to a much more complex interaction between the present and the past another area in which scholars have been critical of form criticism is its treatment of the shift between oral and written tradition although this shift and for those for those of us who work more broadly in the humanities you'll know that the shift between orality and textuality is a very very core issue played it was very concerned about this it stands it at the very base of deridah's of grammatology this is this is an important issue and memory theorists to deal with this issue including gospel scholars who are in memory theory although the shift served as a crucial threshold between early palestinian christianity and later hellenistic christianity boltman famously regarded the transition between orality and textuality as quote nothing in principle new but only completing what was begun in the oral tradition in other words he saw it as a logical conclusion of orality in 1983 kehlber persuasively argued on the basis of the dynamics of oral tradition that the textualization of marx gospel and for those of you who aren't gospels scholars most scholars take marx gospel is the first written gospel and so is the first narrativized instance of the textualization of jesus tradition kehlber argued that it was not logical evolutionary or organic as boltman had imagined rather and as graham stanton had earlier observed it is a significant alteration to the jesus tradition that requires explanation especially in line the fact that the vast majority of the ancient world was illiterate and didn't need it in a text and probably couldn't read the text anyway why why then put it in a text osmond's concept of cultural memory adds considerable weight to kehlber's and stanton's observations that it's important and it needs an explanation the textualization of tradition is a reconstitution of the identity marking efforts of the tradition that occurs at the crosshairs of communicative and cultural memory it's thus an important step also on the path toward canonization so kehlber alan kirt join adieu and myself we have all drawn upon osmond in this regard applications of memory theory to early christian media transitions have not focused singly on the gospel mark though in his and alan kirt's seminal 2005 semea volume tom thatcher addressed the gospel of john's transition from oral to written tradition thatcher observes that the jahannine authors concept of spirit-enabled memory of jesus that leads into all truth for those of you are familiar with the gospel of john you'll remember this passage about the pericle or the advocate is going to help come and and lead you into all truth well based on that idea why in the world do we need a text as an archive which is how john jahannine scholars typically view the textualization of john thatcher therefore suggests that john's gospel was textualized in order to draw upon the rhetorical value of text as material artifacts in order to seal a particular christology a move he says that would it once preserve his unique vision of jesus frees that vision of perpetually non-negotiable medium and assert the special authority of that vision against competing perspectives and quote finally form criticisms division of the gospel tradition and traditions that reflect the past the zitsum laban yesu or the present the zitsum laban der kerka stand in direct opposition to hob walks and others insights concerning memory formation if all memory is constructed from the perspective of the present there is no tradition or memory that can be extricated from those present social frameworks i'll return to this in just a moment in light of these critical assessments of form criticism one could easily get the impression that scholars employing the memory approach have only been critical of form criticism but this would be incorrect they have also noted important similarities for example samuel birskog has incorporated form criticism focus on particular forms into a memory-based approach being crya as mnemonic devices in narratives ruben zimmermann too has stressed the necessary role of particular forms in traditioning processes from a memory perspective in several publications he focuses upon parables and argues quote that short forms acted as the media of a primarily oral memory culture these appropriations therefore generally stand in the line of osmos cultural memory theory furthermore they demonstrate that contrary to the claims of some critics new testament scholars who have appropriated social memory theory have been neither oblivious to its similarities to form criticism nor solely negative of form criticism the relationship between social memory theory and form criticism also stands at the crux of another important issue in recent gospel studies the criteria of authenticity the criteria of authenticity are no strangers to criticism and i don't think i'm going to repeat all of this in depth the criteria um work as sives or filters for the jesus tradition almost like a um a gold minor panning for gold you sift through the tradition and find the piece that's authentic and reflects the past all right well if social memory theory is correct on this point and i think that it is then the disciplinary power from which these things these criteria have operated for almost a hundred years or at least the the logic that underpins these criteria goes back uh at least to 1521 uh the these uh these are very problematic uh because there is no raw nuggets of the past that exist to be sifted if everything reflects the perspective of the present to one degree or another thus as rafael rodriguez mentions memory does not preserve the past in a way that allows for the separation of historical fact and later interpretation in the south we would say amen or as jesus might say uh today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing uh importantly in light of the new historiography in jesus studies discussed immediately below one should note here that rodriguez does not claim that historians are incapable of making informed decisions about historical fact and later interpretation he only asserts that the tradition itself cannot be divided in this way along these lines several new testament scholars a chorus of new testament scholars have joined in abandoning this traditional method the new historiography the rather simple observation about the inseparable nature of past reality and present interpretation has toppled over a hundred years of method in historical jesus studies the criteria of authenticity because it requires a redefinition of history and memory that does not hold these two concepts in opposition by defining the former as the past that historians must recover from interpretations in the sources and the latter as an interpretation in a source that has to be recovered earlier we saw similar development in the memory theories of hovwalks and osmond in most cases at stake is not whether there is a conceptual heuristic distinction between the actual past and interpretations of it but rather the role of interpretive categories uh in approaching that past and to what approaching the past actually entails applications of these theories to gospel to the gospels collectively represent a new historiography in historical jesus studies that break sharply from the atomistic criteria approach and similar approaches that focus upon isolated sayings or active actions of jesus yent schroeder has consistently led these efforts to construct uh noi testamental ish of vissenchef the insights des historismus it is notable that recent criticisms of social memory applications in gospel studies fail to engage his work altogether in very general terms schroeder proposes that every approach to the historical jesus behind the gospels has to explain how these writings could have come into being as the earliest descriptions of this person insofar as this approach grounds historical jesus inquiry into in the past as portrayed in our extant sources it is similar to what osmond labeled memo history which also foregrounds the texts and traditions as they stand before historians related directly to this fact schroeder insists that one cannot neatly separate the past and present history and interpretation due to their intertwined and mutually dependent natures and commemorative activity moving to the actual past the role of the actual past in the new historiography is a less than straightforward issue some scholars remain interested in positing a historical reality behind the gospels like social memory theory outside gospel scholarship however applications of the method inside gospel scholarship differ on this naughty epistemological issue ladon for example is more interested in halting historical inquiries at the earliest recoverable mnemonic sphere and finds discussion of a past reality that is separate from its commemorations unhelpful schroeder ellison and i to the contrary agree that scholars can at least offer hypotheses about how things could have been in other words we can take informed guesses this affirmation with but which basically reflects the continuity perspective of schwarz and others requires clear articulation because it's open to misunderstanding by affirming that scholars can theorize a historical jesus behind the gospels this approach does not assume that scholars can access an uninterpreted past reality behind the gospels much less that they can do so by dispensing with the interpretive categories in the gospels these are the assumptions of form criticism the criteria approach and the historical positivism to which they gave expression in stark contrast the new historiography affirms that there is no access to the past apart from the interpretive categories of the sources it is only through the transmutation of formative events in a transmissible tradition artifacts that the past is preserved at all alan kerks says thus in response to wetterburn shirter states quote of course i do not deny that there was a reality to which texts like for example the gospels refer but this of course does not mean that i would presuppose that this reality is accessible independently of the sources the decisive point is that we have access to the past only by critical interpretation of the sources and never independently of them what you are seeing here is the postmodern shift in historiography taking place in jesus studies so similarly ruben zimmermann which provides an eloquent quote which i would like to take as kind of the catchphrase for this entire new shift eskip kind of history insights this texas aber eskip history durch durch daintex and al's text through the text and as text in other words you're not trying to get on the other side of it you're just trying to explain how it came to be and however that may be the impact of the past the new historiography in jesus studies thus reserves a possible role for the actual past in the production of social memory as part and only one part of a larger concern to take seriously the impact of the inertia of the commemorated past upon the formation of memory in the present as noted earlier this approach marks a clear difference with form criticism and is unfortunate the foster overlooks this point in his claim that social memory theories capacity to provide insights amounts to what form criticism has already contributed he says quote reflecting upon what the jesus tradition's past oral or pedagogical function might have been in early believing communities in quote certainly this approach shares with form criticism a concern to understand and explain the jesus tradition in light of its present community functions it would never want to separate it from that unlike form criticism however the new historiography insists that any given present community as well as the jesus tradition it transmits is itself constituted by the received past thus scholarly inquiry does not stop at observing coinciding elements of the jesus tradition and community identity but also as programmatically about how the inherited past places pressure upon and even forms those present frameworks in various ways i think i've covered for the most part this you have interpretive categories so i'd like to move on in my time the historiographical shift toward offering explanations of for the sources in historical jesus studies then should not be interpreted as an automatic affirmation of those sources historical trustworthiness whether by supporters or detractors of social memory theory there's an excellent example that bary schwarz gives he observes that john f kennedy was born in boston this symbolically connects him to the boston tea party and he goes on to say but that doesn't mean that he wasn't born in boston just because it has a symbolic function and this is kind of the same move that people are trying to make in jesus studies by saying just because it serves the current community function doesn't mean that it's worthless when we talk about the past this brings us to social memory theory and the historical reliability of the gospels you may have observed already that this entire lecture is to say that this discussion is the one that we shouldn't be having so appropriately i'm going to end by having it as a previous discussion has already revealed undoubtedly the greatest source of contention between critics and supporters of social memory theory and gospel scholarship has been the employment of theory in arguments for the historical reliability of the gospels bachon bachmuel keener mcgiver and others have appealed to memory studies in arguments for the general historical reliability of the jesus tradition or at least the fact that it stems from eyewitness testimony foster crook and others have countered that memory studies either failed to favor the historical reliability of the gospels or in fact favor the historical unreliability of the gospels they have thus characterized appropriations of social memory theory and gospel scholarship in general as quote assertions that social memory theory validates the historicity of the events it purports to communicate in quote the foregoing discussion should suffice for demonstrating that such portraits of social memory theories presence in gospel scholarship are so narrow as to be caricatures the majority of scholars applying the theory do not use it to those ends and i suggest here that this to and fro over the reliability of memory has obscured social memory theory's genuine contributions to gospel scholarship which we reside in its challenges to prior and particularly form critical tradition models first and perhaps most importantly social memory theory as a theory does not establish the gospels as historically reliable or unreliable it is not the business of theory to do the work of the theorist there seems to be a logic to which both sides of this debate adhere it runs like this if the jesus tradition is memory and if memory is inherently reliable or unreliable then the jesus tradition is inherently reliable or unreliable the logic is flawed however because quote memory is a process not a thing and it works differently at different points in time in quote stated otherwise memory can be both reliable and unreliable social memory theory is a tool for understanding the process by which groups conceptualize their individual and communal past from the position of the present and importantly historically accurate and historically inaccurate social memories were subject to the same mnemonic processes social memory theory is not therefore in itself a tool that establishes or pronounces memory as historically accurate or inaccurate as we saw earlier this doesn't mean that social memory theory is irrelevant for questions of historical accuracy but it does serve to underscore that the analytical categories of memory and social memory do not function like a wall socket into which one plugs the jesus tradition automatically granting it currency as generally reliable or generally unreliable theorizing historical accuracy is more difficult than stating generalizations of memory this points also why is it it is important to note that the continuity perspective of memory asserts primarily that there's continuity between earlier and later instances of memory not necessarily that there's continuity between the actual past and later instances of memory in terms of historical Jesus research this is why Schroeder has insisted that Jesus historians must account for the interpretations of Jesus that exists in our sources but insisted equally strongly that neither those sources nor any particular theory dictate how a historian must account for them the historian's responsibility is to explain how any given instance of reception of the jesus tradition in the extant sources reflects the pressures of the present and the past even if that instance of reception is an attempt to subvert the ideologies of either source of pressure in some cases the attempt to explain the extant sources leads to a conclusion about the historical jesus and the reliability or unreliability of particular traditions as an example my jesus's literacy which is over there on sale and i encourage you to get it it serves as a fine cup holder i make a conclusion about whether jesus really could read or write but i do this because of trying to account for the interpretations not trying to discount any of them since social memory theory seeks primarily to understand continuity and discontinuity in the formation of collective memory it's most advantageous to historical jesus scholars and instances of multiple particularly conflicting interpretations of jesus from these one can in ladon's words triangulate a possible past reality that could have led to them is then the jesus scholar's responsibility to forward convincing arguments about precisely how a proposed past led to those early christian interpretations i should i should i should stop period but i should stop here just to comment historically these issues where the gospels have contradictions or disagreements over jesus one says he died on you know the synoptic gospels say that jesus died on the day of pass over and the gospel john says jesus died on the day of preparation and none of them say that he died twice and that would be a big theological problem if he did but historically in jesus studies these have kind of been a problem well which one's right which one you know uh certainly the theological context in which i was reared this was a big problem right but from this perspective this is great for the historians these instances where we primarily have an opportunity to actually theorize something uh because we have multiple interpretations and we can ask what led to both the both or all of those interpretations one side effect of this method therefore is that even historically inaccurate jesus traditions are regarded as holding historical value for scholars this point requires nuance however it would be exceedingly easy to confuse affirming that various receptions of jesus are of value to the scholar with affirming their historical accuracy the proceeding discussion is thus clarified that approaching the jesus tradition as historically situated social memory does not predetermine how that tradition is historically situated and thus its historical accuracy therefore and finally although social memory theory does make a definitive contribution to the new historiography and historical jesus studies fanfare and fears of its implications for historical reliability are equally misplaced pronouncements on the historical reliability of the gospels remain as anchored in scholarly argumentation and proposals for plausible historical scenarios as they always have been what is new in the new historiography is not the conclusions that scholars reach but rather how scholars use the extant historical evidence in reaching their conclusions the new historiographers no longer see the jesus tradition as we have it in the gospels as the raw materials with which we start and then must purify down to historically useful data by means of separation from early christian interpretive activity the tradition is now viewed as a finished commemorative product that needs not be dissected so much as accounted for historical jesus research has changed it is at its roots as this new understanding of the jesus tradition has broken away from atomistic form critically inspired approaches to the gospels and historical jesus such as the criteria of authenticity social memory theories contribution to discussions of the historical reliability of the jesus tradition thus occurs at the methodological level not the level of determination it clarifies that those arguments that actually account for the historical evidence however they may account for them are better than arguments that explain only part of the evidence to repeat the main point of the of the conclusion of the earlier section social memory theory is not a replacement for scholarly historiography it is a tool that enables scholars to perform that task responsibly in light of the extent evidence these are not the only areas of application of social memory theory to jesus studies i've chosen these areas because they collectively highlight a particular contribution that social memory theory makes to jesus studies articulation of how modern scholars should approach the past of jesus and his earliest interpreters and how the past of jesus approached his earliest interpreters and modern scholars these core issues always have been and always will be at the center of gospel studies and from this perspective social memory theories contribution to new testament studies does not reside in its innovation rather as its first decade in gospel studies reveal reveals social memory theories contribution to gospel studies resides in its capacity to move standard lines of inquiry away from a historical positivist methodological framework far from being a dead end it is a pathway to the future insisting that the complexities of the past president interaction and commemorative activities of early christians must find expression in a field of scholarship that has previously demonstrated a tendency to simplify them in an unwarranted fashion thank you