(13 votes, average: 4.69 out of 5)
Loading...(Recall: this post came from the past, when I was working on my book about Jesus and Memory, badly titled Jesus Before the Gospels. I had forgotten about the post till just now!)
As I indicated in my previous post, I have long been interested in memory for both personal and professional reasons. On the personal level, I have known people very close to me who have experienced serious memory problems, for example through strokes. Depending on what part of the brain is affected, different memory functions are damaged. For example, someone may remember perfectly well what happened in an event 20 years ago, but forget a conversation they just had. I have often wondered why and how that is..
And then there was my own memory. For some things I have a terrific memory. And for lots of things I have an absolutely terrible memory. I especially have a terrible “episodic” memory (as psychologists call it), a memory for things that happen in your life and you experience. Let me give an example.
About three years ago
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Your podcast with Megan Lewis (Misquoting Jesus with Bart Ehman) is very enjoyable. Often, when taking questions toward the end, I find it astounding that you can remember all that you do!
Thanks! I’m amazed at what I forget….
are you gonna do a post or wriTe something on how you have changed thinking on Biblical material since your 1st Great Courses came ouT?
U once wrote that the new editions [textbooks] were minor revisions of that past book for the publisher to earn money.
correct me if I remember incorrecTly.
A very close relative told me that I remembered the event incorrectly with no correction to how he remembered the event[s].
I don’t argue as my uncle introduced me to U & Dr Levine
Intersting idea. Yes, I’ve changed my mind on a number of things over the years. Research will sometimes do that to you….
Good topic! On a related note, I was sure I remembered seeing and hearing the ‘live’ stories regarding Mahātmā Gandhi when he was doing his excessive fasting to obtain concessions on various issues. I have visual memories of the TV and newspaper reporting and that I was likely in Jr. High or a freshman in H.S. at that time. Well, Gandhi died before I was born – so these memories were passively embedded/transplanted (and I never did any special projects/reports on Gandhi.) I probably have other transplanted memories are well that are anachronisms from some visual/feeling/emotion that stuck with me.
I never realized how deceptive memory can be until some years ago when I was talking with sister about some things that happened when we were young and discovered that our recollections were wildly different. At first I thought she must have been joking, so completely different were our memories, but no, we were both being completely truthful about what we ‘remembered.’ We both had clear and vivid recollections of the events, but at least one of us, and quite possibly both, were wrong. So I became a bit of a memory skeptic.
So, what was your conclusion about the bias or lack thereof of NT historians/scholars? Are they accurately representing facts, or are they just ‘going with the flow’ so to speak?
It depends which scholars we mean. I don’t think anyone can be without bias (and be human); but I also don’t think our historical conclusions have to be based on our biases.
I learned that one’s memory is selective and can only contain so much.Therefore,”useless “memories are routinely erased.They can of course also be erased or repressed by (genuine) trauma.
I don’t remember a ton of things I need to deal with that don’t interest me.But I can lead an orchestra in hours and hours of memorised music,without scores,being totally responsible in real time for every bar of music in front of my peer musicians and thousands in the audience.
I assume that is one powerful reason why you forget all kinds of things.It is well known that highly talented people( geniuses)have a powerful focus and are extremely distracted from tasks whilst their fertile and creative minds are engaged.They are one track mind people,whose mental life is so ordained for maximal professional performance.Albert Einstein was known to put his shoes in the fridge.
The case of Jesus seems to depend on how his followers dealt with horrendous trauma and shattered hopes.Everything was re-interpreted as if they had witnessed,an upside down reality.I learned that Crossan,for example,sees Jesus’ Passion as a pastiche of after the fact stories.The entire Christian narrative is apologetic.I believe that the memory transformations were based on a serious need for emotional defense.
Yeah, different minds work differently. I have to listen to Beethoven’s fifth about 100 times before I can remember, without prompting, how the second movement begins. You on the other hand….
Yeah, different minds work differently. I have to listen to Beethoven’s fifth about 100 times before I can remember, without prompting, how the second movement begins. You on the other hand….
I was wondering if you’re dropping the thread on Morton Smith and the Secret Gospel of Mark. Seems like you’ve left off in the middle of the story and I’m curious to hear your thoughts on why the Secret Gospel either is or isn’t genuine.
I plan to come back to it. I decided to give it a rest because I sensed some readers were getting rather bored with it already. The problem is that picking up the thread will be hard. Ah, the problems in life we face….
I still think that offering and interpreting the reasons- even as succinct as bullet points-for scholars concluding Morton Smith’s find is a forgery can be a superb learning experience.
It would be a fascinating supplement to know how,precisely,he would have conducted the forgery. Accusing someone of fraud and forgery in archaeology is as serious as doing so in a court of law, as it is done for many other types of law-breaking events.
In court, the crime would be re-created, within existing plausibility at the very least. A proposed recreation of the alleged crime would be mind-boggling.Like a program about Houdini.I believe his feats have been recreated.I would hold that Morton Smith’s alleged crime should be reproduced to as close to identical results as possible.One major tenet of science is
replicability.
I feel Smith deserves the benefit of the doubt, or else, we need to be convinced,with loud and clear arguments,that he indeed forged “ the Secret Gospel”. There is a middle of the road position where we could say that the authenticity ( or the forgery ) can neither be confirmed nor denied,for equally compelling reasons.
BTW, I read Lost Christianities and your exposition on that subject. But it still raises questions.
Yup, I’m going to get tack to it. I wrote a later article that was a bit more hard-hitting on the matter, though I don’t explicitly charge Smith with Forgery in it.
FYI, I’m eagerly waiting the resumption of the Smith thread.
AOK, I’ll get to it!
Bart: I believe you mentioned another memory incident, something about you, a harrowing traffic incident, and the newspaper getting the story wrong? I’ve written a couple of articles about memory, and this anecdote might be a useful addition. If you have written about this, could you give me a pointer to it?
I suppose it’s in keeping with the theme of memory that my memory of this is fuzzy!
My father was a fascinating, frustrating example of what happens to memories as they are retold. I noticed he would edit details of a story each time he told it until he reached a final version. The edits fell into two categories: A) those that made the story “better,” and B) those that reflected what he wished had happened or thought should have happened. As he aged, this occurred in condensed time, like an hour or so. Example: at a memorial church service for my mother, I noticed Dad at one point tearing up. My mother-in-law, Martha, was standing next to him and put her hand on his arm. After the service, I drove Dad ten miles to a luncheon. He retold that story three times on the way. In the first narrative, he pretty much repeated the story as it happened. Version 2, ten minutes later: “I started to tremble and sob; Martha put her arm around me.” Version 3, ten minutes after that: “I was shaking, I couldn’t stand up! Martha had to grab me and hold me!” Thing is, he believed #3 as he told it!
Works like Jesus Before the Gospels are so important to overall personal conclusions about Christianity and everything that entails. NT studies and authors such as yourself, who critically examine Greek snd other ancient language works, give us insight into the surviving written sources. But, with 30+ years between the events and Mark, everything we have seems now subject to being taken with a much larger grain of salt.
What do you think would have been a better title? How about “Misremembering Jesus” to go along with “Misquoting Jesus”?
What do you think would have been a better title? How about “Misremembering Jesus” to go along with “Misquoting jesus”?
I’m not sure. I don’t think I’d want it to look like a spin off. I would have preferred Rocky 2 to be named something else. Maybe something catchy — False Memories and Fabricated Traditions: The History of hte Gospel Tradition. But, I suppose that’d be too controversial. So, I’m not sure, but something with “memory” in the title.
My memory is generally terrible, a real burden that has no doubt diminished my life to some extent. I can’t remember lists so grocery shopping often goes awry. Then there are weird blocks that plague, for some bizarre reason I can almost never recall Harvey Keitel’s name despite him being on of my favorite actors, I can picture his face and tell you movies he’s been in but not his name. I also have a problem with conflating things, which is likely related to having a bad problem with things that are either/or, I can’t make it stick, like Type 1 and Type 2 errors, I can never remember which is which. The mind works [or doesn’t] in mysterious ways. I had a friend that drove me crazy, he had a near eidetic memory, I could give him a date from 15 years before and he could tell me what he did that day, what the weather was like and what day of the week it was.
I remember meeting a girl once 20 years ago. I can still recall her name and other basic information about her! And I only met her once!
I hear you. Sometimes we’re sure we remember scuh things and it turns out we’re wrong! And sometimes that proves embarassing. (One of hte crazy but undisputable finds of psychology is that “certain” memories that we’re sure are right are often wrong….)
Sometimes we have accurate memories.
Having said that, my trip to Greece when I was five is quite blurry.
And we almost *always* think we do!
“When I hear two eye-witness accounts of an accident it makes me wonder about history.”
Yup. But they usually agree at least that there was an accident.