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Loading...I’m going to be discussing soon some of the things that appear to be “misremembered” about Jesus in our early sources, but first it’s important to emphasize some of the hugely critical positive things about memory – like, that most of the time we get it basically right. Depending, of course, on what “basically” means!
Here’s how I discuss the matter in Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016).
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Remembering the Gist?
Let me make a point that may not be clear from what I have said so far about the psychology of memory. In stressing the fact – which appears to be a fact – that memories are always constructed and therefore prone to error, even when they are quite vivid, I am not, I am decidedly not, saying that all of our memories are faulty or wrong. Most of the time we remember pretty well, at least in broad outline. Presumably, so too did eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. As did the person who heard a story from an eyewitness may well have remembered in broad outline he was told. And the person who heard a story from a neighbor whose cousin was married to a man whose father told him a story that he heard from a business associate whose wife once knew someone who was married to an eyewitness. Probably in the latter case – which, as far-fetched as it sounds, may be pretty close to how most people were hearing stories about Jesus – a lot more would have been changed than in the case of an eyewitness telling someone the day after he saw something happen. But my basic point here is that despite the faults of memory, we do obviously remember a lot of things, and the fundamental memories themselves can often be right.
This is a commonplace in the psychological study of memory. We tend to remember the “gist” of an experience pretty well, even if the details get messed up. You may not remember correctly (despite what you think) where, when, with whom, or how you heard about the Challenger explosion, or the results of the O. J. Simpson trial, or even (this is harder to believe, but it appears to be true) the attacks of 9/11. But you do remember that you heard about the events, and you remember that they happened.
As we will see, this is an important point, because there are gist memories of Jesus recorded in the New Testament Gospels that are almost certainly accurate. At the same time, there are a lot of details – and in fact entire episodes – that are almost certainly not accurate. These are “memories” of things that didn’t actually happen. They are distorted memories.
Still, many of the broad outlines that are narrated in the Gospels certainly
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My wife reminded me that Dean was facing jail time which may have influenced his memory. How can you tell where and if there are modifications for political or theological purposes in the Gospels?
Yup, there are all sorts of reasons for people mis-remembering things. Stress doesn’t help, as we all know. The Gospels are evaluated for their biases just like other ancient sources; anything that coincides with the author’s (and his community’s) agenda has to be particularly carefully examined. Are there independent witnesses to support the claims? Are they plausible? Do they coincide with what else we know? Etc….
Is there a list or lists of the things Jesus supposedly said with an indication of whether they probably happened, probably didn’t happen, definitely didn’t happen? I’d like to know what sayings and events scholars believe can most likely be attributed to Jesus.
Also, I’ve never seen a discussion about the role of the story teller in passed on memory. I know I listen to someone who tells an exciting story and don’t even listen to someone who is dull and boring. There’s a saying: “ I never let the truth get in the way of a good story.”
So how have the stories and sayings of Jesus been exaggerated by good story tellers?
There are lots, but they will vary widely depending on which scholar(s) you’re reading. The book The Five Gospels puts the various words of Jesus in different colors depending on whether the committee that assembled the book thought he really said a particular saying, or that it’s pretty close to what he said, or not so much, or definitely not. And in most of their decisions, I disagree! 🙂 My summary you can find in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
There are lots, but they will vary widely depending on which scholar(s) you’re reading. The book The Five Gospels puts the various words of Jesus in different colors depending on whether the committee that assembled the book thought he really said a particular saying, or that it’s pretty close to what he said, or not so much, or definitely not. And in most of their decisions, I disagree! 🙂 My summary you can find in my book Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium.
It is not possible that, like a politician running for office, much of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount consisted of a stock speech, which he delivered on many occasions, not just the one time related by Matthew (or Luke)? Mightn’t he have said the Beatitudes on MANY occasions and, thus, might the oral tradition that was generated around them reflect, with some degree of accuracy, what he actually said in his sermon(s)?
I suppose it’s possible. I don’t know of any evidence it happened though, and there are very good reasons for thinking it didn’t. One is that the Sermon appears in only one of our source, none of the others says a word about it; and a number of the sayings appear in a different form in Luke; most of the sayings don’t show up in Mark; and none in John. Moreover, modern politicians have written texts that they read off teleprompters or possibly more or less have memorized. We don’t know of that kind of thing (well, esp. teleprompters!) happening in antiquity, not just among Jewish teachers but generally. It’s a *very* long sermon and it’s hard ot imagine Jesus memorizing it (on top of all that, there’s no good evidence he could write) So I’d say it’s unlikely.
What you’re saying seems true if we’re talking about a witness who happened to be present at one of Jesus’ sermons. If impressed, they’d probably pass it along in gist form, perhaps paraphrasing a couple highlights, like the mustard seed parable.
But it seems more likely that the sayings from Q, Thomas or others were passed along by disciples who traveled with him and would have heard Jesus say similar things, especially the parables, or certain pithy statements, on multiple occasions. And of course there would have been follow-up discussions held between Jesus & his followers. I can imagine them asking him what did you mean by “x” or “y”?
Moreover, if Jesus sent his disciples out to preach in the towns of Galilee, they’d probably become pretty familiar with the content of his speeches through their own repetition, keeping in mind key phrases that captured what was said. Before sending them out, one can imagine Jesus, like any good rabbi, quizzing his talmudim on what he wanted them to say (I’m sure they would ask, to avoid saying anything misleading) , as well as hearing about how it went afterwards.
Add to that corroboration from independent sources,
Wouldn’t this establish some reliability?
I’d say we could construct lots of possible scenarios about where various sayings came from. But independent sources for a kind of saying are an indicatoin that no one of our sources made it up, so that it’s older in the tradition.
It’s amusing (and amazing?) that you start off this post saying that despite all the things you have said about how memories may be faulty, usually they work well and we DO remember things correctly, at least the gist of them. And then you spend the rest of the post continuing to point out memory weaknesses until “gist” may mean very little. Certainly, in the case of Jesus, it’s what an individual person believes that determines how broad the “gist” that is accepted.