I will now briefly explain how I transitioned from NT chronology to memory science.
I bought the Oxford Classical Dictionary, followed its footnotes on the Hellenistic and early imperial eras, wrote my own chronology of the first century CE, and sought feedback from scholars of the New Testament. I then began to discover (1) that NT scholars generally do not think like historians, and (2) that timelines do not cohere strongly in most people’s minds.
I began to consider that informational overload was at least one impediment to my progress. At about that same time, Anthony LeDonne introduced me to cognitive memory studies. My old desire to write down a comprehensive account of the first century soon gave way to a new goal: how can I convey this information so that it sticks? What do I need to do to write differently so that readers will be able to remember all this chronological detail?
Since then, I did this. Two years later, I also did this. I’m currently working to make this research suitable for publication.
As I have said here before, my basic finding is that some types of information effectively imply their own temporal sequence during acts of constructive remembering. Most prominent among these kinds of “temporal information” are (A) causality, (B) movement & location, and (C) disruption of perceived equilibria. Part of my work involves demonstrating that these informational types also happen to underscore narrative theory about plot, setting, and conflict (respectively).
We have long known that stories enhance memory while distorting reality. My hope is that science can guide us towards more responsible and ethical management of ‘storying’ dynamics.
If anyone is interested in helping me in any way, that would be wonderful.
I will now briefly explain how I transitioned from NT chronology to memory science. I bought the Oxford Classical Dictionary, followed its footnotes on the Hellenistic and early imperial eras, wrote my own chronology of the first century CE, and sought feedback from scholars of the New Testament. I then began to discover (1) that NT scholars generally do not think like historians, and (2) that timelines do not cohere strongly in most people’s minds. I began to consider ... read more
Among NT scholars who treat this as serious (and not silly), I have not seen anyone frame the question as a proper historical inquiry. What expectations did the historical Mary have about her infant son, if any? That is, as opposed to the annual holiday time debate, "Does the Michael English song line up with Luke's Magnificat?" ((NB: In fairness to skeptics, I find it perfectly reasonable for those who accept no miraculous claims to then further assume the historical Mary ... read more
One reason that mysticism has been frowned upon by the church, historically, is that people who get mystical also tend to get kooky, if not down right unstable. That sad trend is well documented. Another reason mysticism has been frowned upon by the church, historically, is that it threatens the clergy/laity arrangement. If each person claims their own profound sense of access to God, then who needs a priest or a preacher? Personally, I have long considered myself a failed ... read more
History may be one thing after another but a literary history is the author's attempt to convey their own vision. The authorial representation should therefore guide scholarly interpretation of the text. Steve Mason's dissertation on the Pharisees in Josephus is a masterclass in narratological interpretation. Previous scholars had taken a single line of Josephus's autobiography (an odd phrasing which seemed to declare Pharisaic affiliation) as evidence for doubting all the ... read more
When critics frame simple stories versus complex reality as a binary choice, authoritarians thrive. So long as it's one or the other, the domineering "reality is what I say it is" leaders can simply assert "the stories we tell are NOT fictions." Polarization is not the result of such conflicts; it is their fertile ground. If I could wipe away that false binary and re-write critical dogma I would tell academia to assert that simple stories often are and can more often be a pathway to ... read more
Please direct your attention to Loren Rosson's extensive reviews of two recent books by Jason Staples. If you can read only one review, the second briefly synopsizes the first. Both books regard Paul's sense of what "Israel" meant in the first century. You can search for other positive reception of Jason's work. I recommend Rosson because he writes clearly and offers perspective illuminating for non-specialists. Go read those reviews to understand why this new work is important. ... read more
Paul of Tarsus once noted that some Corinthian believers longed to see signs and wonders while others longed to hear wisdom through oratory. Ostensibly, Paul's allegations describe two distinct factions: one being a sub-group of predominantly Jewish Corinthians who liked Peter because he spoke in tongues and healed people, and the other being a sub-group of Greek Corinthinans who liked Apollos because of his scriptural knowledge and rhetorical prowess. Still today, as we all painfully ... read more
As Dunn said with orality decades ago, here is another default setting that we need to reset. Even if your hermeneutic of the Gospels considers "ideal readers" or "the authorial audience" instead of reconstructing actual first century readers and hearers, we should not assume that early Jewish/Christian knowledge about their own recent history would equate to a list of key facts. Their word of mouth style of posterity was quite unlike a wiki stub cribbed from an old World Book, and I ... read more
I went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas, taking with me also Titus… But not even Titus, who was with me, being Greek, was compelled to be circumcised. - Galatians 2:1,3 To support his bold claim that circumcision is no longer necessary for gentile Christians, Paul further claims that the saints in Jerusalem had met Titus without requiring him to be circumcised. For the second claim to support the larger claim effectively, Paul must have expected the Galatians (1) to know who Titus ... read more
Remembering cause and effect implies temporal sequence by the logical pattern of "sufficient" causality. When a given bit of mnemonic content declares that event A *caused* situation B, such a memory implies logically that A occurred prior to B. Given that no "cause" is remembered as such without also recalling an associated effect, this type of constructive remembering requires no further effort by the remembering subject; no further recall and no search for additional information. ... read more
Last month I was able to present some of my research to the annual meeting of the International Society for the Study of Narrative, in a hybrid conference format (online and in-person). The title of my presentation was "Causality, Location, and Disruption as Accommodations for Remembering Sequences."In the embedded video below (17:51), you may enjoy my enthusiastic discussion and substantive slideshow. The rest of this blogpost, if you keep scrolling, includes my abstract (285 words) and ... read more
three aspects of my New Testament research that precipitated my research on Time in Memory One: In 2012 and 2013, when I went over the road as a rookie trucker, my wife started reading my Year Books to my daughter. (You can still find them in my archives of 2006 & 2007, from 9 BCE to 14 CE). From hearing about their shared experience, it seemed I had succeeded in making each yearbook readable, but it also seemed I had failed to make the content absorb-able. It drove home to me ... read more
Literary constructedness is not necessarily synonymous with fabricated or fictional, but literary constructedness in purportedly Non-Fiction writing absolutely does convey aspects of the authorial vision for whatever events they are trying to depict. In other words, when authors attempt to tell truths in ways that are biased, creative, or otherwise slanted, the style of the telling becomes part of the tale being told. Therefore, one cannot understand the factual claims of an ... read more
Here's a beautiful quote from Werner Kelber's 2002 article, a quote about which I have thoughts: Bultmann’s model is burdened with significant
problems stemming from a lack of understanding of orality, gospel
narrativity, and, last but not least, memory.
First, there is no such thing as “the original form” in oral speech.
When the charismatic speaker pronounced a saying at one place and
subsequently chose to deliver it elsewhere, neither he nor his hearers could
have understood this ... read more
Reality is vast and chaotic but consciousness is paltry and linear, so the past through remembering becomes ordered and sequenced. We cannot think about time without imposing this narrative mode. We cannot even keep track of time objectively without selective correlation of unrelated but comparable dynamics. In our daily lives we filter out a multitude of churning incoherence and we fixate on anything constant, which allows our minds comfort and stability. How much more do we fail to ... read more
Linguistic theory has not yet accounted for the scope of narrative texts, and may not be able to; at least, so says Frank Ankersmit in his 2012 opus, Meaning, Truth, and Reference in Historical Representation. This theoretical divide has practical problems and I have written about those here before. Today's blog post is simply to sum up the difference by way of an interesting comparison. Way back in the 90's, someone told me a big problem in Physics was that relativity theory dealt ... read more
Today's post is about reading narrative properly when that narrative includes a dubious historical reference. Today's lesson is that figuring out Luke's narrative's temporal setting (aka historical context) requires us to put more weight on that narrative's overall construction of reality, rather than a single detail. Today's key point is that Luke purports and depicts a particular kind of registration event, one which counts heads and affects people living in Galilee, whereas the census ... read more
The following 2,091 words excerpts my erstwhile thesis, in which I discuss the following two points: (1) Hans Frei's excellent analysis of a deeply seated problem with critical readings of biblical narrative, and (2) Hans Frei's regrettable (cough Barthian cough) opposition to all aspects of reading and critical thought which had anything at all to do with factual truth and historical thinking. In my humble opinion, Frei's 1974 analysis of the critical turn is spot on but his ... read more
I don't know how I missed this publication from 2016, but it just leapt to the top of my list.
From the publisher's description:"Ancient biography is now a well-established and popular field of study among classicists as well as many scholars of literature and history more generally. . . . [Biographies] raise complex issues of narrativity and fictionalization. This volume examines a range of ancient texts which are or purport to be biographical and explores how formal narrative categories ... read more
Suppose for the sake of this argument that the book of Acts is a forgery, an elaborate fiction, composed decades after the fact by someone who did not actually travel with Paul of Tarsus, as the narrative claims. Obviously, every claim by the narrator is now immediately suspect, but I daresay the guild has been wrong to prioritize questions about historical accuracy. We have other questions that should be prioritized. Please note, I say "prioritized" because the literary approach should ... read more
How did early Gospel audiences recognize the narrative's temporal setting? The way it differs from one Gospel to another probably reflects something about the time of each Gospel's composition.Luke peppers the opening chapters of his Gospel with explicit historical name dropping and Matthew follows his modified genealogy with a story about Herod to Archelaus but Mark's opening relies entirely on John the Baptist, even narrating John's arrest in the passive voice, with no mention of Antipas. ... read more
As a complement to last month's excerpt (from the might-have-been dissertation) regarding Frank Ankersmit's theory on narrative representation, please enjoy the following 2,200 words surveying Steve Mason's methodology of narrative interpretation. It so happens that Mason's work in this area preceded Ankersmit's by almost thirty years, and yet I offer Mason's exegesis as an illustration of how we may apply Ankersmit's insights. A few quick comments precede the excerpt below.The primary aspect ... read more
Here is another excerpt from the larger project which might eventually have earned me a Ph.D, until I quit the program in March. What follows is approximately 3,000 words surveying the first seven chapters of Ankersmit's 2012 opus. One of many reasons I dropped out is that I cannot stand keeping this to myself any longer. It won't make a huge impact immediately, but I strongly believe it needs to get out of my laptop and onto the internet. Someday, someone important will value this, and explain ... read more
As ancient life stories (bioi), the synoptic Gospels exhibit a narrative structure which is biographical, rather than plot-like. Most of the story content is episodic, arranged more or less into a loosely developmental sequence. Birth stories come at the beginning, death and resurrection bring up the rear, and in between we have the early, middle, and later stages of a public career which goes through its own natural growing pains: Jesus appears after John, Jesus gains a following, Jesus ... read more
Here's a rare post about my personal faith. Feel free to scroll past, if that's not why you're here.A friend on FB was asking: What do you say to yourself when you remind yourself about the gospel? I am so glad she asked. This was my answer: It depends what you mean by the gospel. The standard evangelical version is that Christ died to save us from our sins… But redemption was always just the end of a detour. The good news that Jesus came to preach was about the kingdom of ... read more
