Academia.eduAcademia.edu

Outline

Title
Abstract
References
All Topics
Sociology
Sociology of Knowledge

Paul and Social Memory

Profile image of Rafael RodriguezRafael Rodriguez

2016, Paul in the Greco-Roman World: A Handbook

Abstract

Since the publication of the first edition of Paul in the Greco-Roman World in 2003, biblical scholarship has turned to memory studies-and particularly social and/or collective memory studies-to investigate the texts at the heart of our disciplines. Historical Jesus and Gospels scholarship (my specialty) has seen an explosion of studies employing social memory studies. 1 Pauline studies, however, has not taken significant notice of social memory. Besides essays scattered across multiple journals and edited volumes, I am aware of only one book-length study of Paul and social memory: Benjamin White's Remembering Paul. 2 White focuses his attention on the memory of Paul (that is, Paul as a remembered-or traditioned-figure) in the latesecond century CE. The present essay, in contrast, highlights the function of memory in Paul's letters.

Related papers

Memory, collective memory, orality and the gospels
Dennis Duling

HTS Theological Studies/Teologiese Studies, 2011

The relevance of 'orality' is highlighted in Kelber's works, as well as in oral poetry performance by illiterate Yugoslavian bards, as discussed in studies by Parry, Lord and Havelock. Kelber's challenge of Bultmann's theory of oral tradition in the gospels is also covered. The article concludes with observations and reflections, opting for a position of moderate−to−strong constructionism. 'Bultmann's model is burdened with significant problems stemming from a lack of understanding of orality, gospel narrativity, and, last but not least, memory' (Kelber 2002:63−64). 'Neither of these views ['Presentist' ('Constructionist') or 'Traditionalist'] ... is particularly insightful to understand the complexities of remembering, which is always a fluid negotiation between the desires of the present and the legacies of the past'(Olick 2006:13a). There are many kinds of memories: childhood; physical environment; multiplication tables; what one had for lunch; language; how to ride a bicycle; a traumatic past event. Memory can be affected by age, disease, gender, accident and historical events. It is related to oral traditions, social groups and power relations. Memory has been researched in the fields of neurology, neurobiology, psychology, history, literature, philosophy, political science, law, folklore and religion. Techniques of memorisation have been carefully studied and practised. A specialised area of research is 'collective memory', which is the notion that people remember together with other people and that memory is constructed in, by and for a social group. Collective memory in relation to smaller groups is sometimes called 'social memory', whereas, in relation to whole cultures, it tends to be called 'cultural memory'. Both types of collective memory include 'memory sites' such as works of art, ritual acts, symbols, celebrations, memorials, libraries, writings and much more, all of which reinforce the collective identity of a people. There are also specialists, or 'memory men', who preserve collective memories and specialised acts of commemoration. The amount of disparate research on collective memory is rapidly increasing. A little over a decade ago, memory theorists Jeffrey Olick and Joyce Robbins described such research as a 'nonparadigmatic, transdisciplinary, centerless enterprise', which they labelled 'social memory studies' (Olick & Robbins 1998:106). This article explores individual, social and cultural memory and their importance for the gospels, especially gospel tradition. It is dedicated to my dear friend and colleague Andries van Aarde, with whom I share many fond memories, from conversations about the Gospel of Matthew and the ancient family at context meetings in Portland, Oregon and at the Society of Biblical Literature, to viewing the mighty Niagara Falls and eating Buffalo wings in New York State, to late-night beers at an outdoor plaza in Bonn, Germany, to the experiencing of the beauties of Kruger National Park in South Africa. Memory, mnemotechnique, cognitive psychology, neurology and the memory wars My main interest in this study is collective memory, although some collective memory theorists have cautioned against devaluing individual memory (

View PDFchevron_right
Social Memory Theory and Gospels Research: The First Decade Part One
Chris Keith

2015

In der neutestamentlichen Wissenschaft des englischen Sprachbereichs liegt seit 2005 eine grundlegende Einführung in die social memory theory vor. Seitdem hat die neue Forschungsrichtung ebenso rasch Befürworter wie Gegner efunden. Viele Schlüsselfragen der neutestamentlichen Exegese werden inzwischen unter der Perspektive des sogenannten „memory approach“ diskutiert. Dieser zweiteilige Beitrag befasst sich mit dem status quaestionis nach den ersten zehn Jahren social memory research in der Evangelienforschung. Der erste Teil konzentriert sich auf die Arbeit dreier einschlägiger Theoretiker, deren Beitrag für die Evangelienforschung von besonderer Bedeutung ist: Maurice Halbwachs, Jan Assmann und Barry Schwartz.

View PDFchevron_right
Memory and Memories in Early Christianity: The Remembered Jesus as a Test Case
Jens Schröter

Memory and memories in early Christianity, ed. S. Butticaz and E. Norelli, WUNT 398, 2018

This article deals with the concept of “memory” and its application to the Jesus tradition. “Memory” is perceived as a category to comprehend the self-perception of a community or society, in difference from individual memory as the capacity to preserve and reproduce events from the past. As a cultural concept, memory describes the way in which a community adopts its past as history and develops a “cultural memory.”

View PDFchevron_right
The Church's Memory of Jesus: A Social Science Analysis of 1 Thessalonians
georgia keightley

Biblical Theology Bulletin, 1987

The coIIective memory theory of Maurice Halbwachs shows that the memory traditions of Jesus recorded in the Second Testament have a function beyond the mere provision of factual information about the historical figure. From this perspective, the memory of Jesus is understood to be constitutive of Christian community and to be normative for the collective self-definition. This essay explores this theory by way of an analysis of 1 Thessalonians. t is basic to the sociology of knowledge that "all human

View PDFchevron_right
Social Memory Theory and Gospels Research: The First Decade Part Two
Chris Keith

Early Christianity 6.4: 517-542, 2015

View PDFchevron_right
Remembering for the Future: Interpreting Paul Today
Diana M Swancutt
View PDFchevron_right
Resurrection Remembered: A Memory Approach to Jesus’ Resurrection in First Corinthians (bibliography and errata)
David J Graieg

Resurrection Remembered: A Memory Approach to Jesus’ Resurrection in First Corinthians, 2024

This monograph is a revision of the doctoral dissertation “Jesus’ Resurrection in Early Christian Memory: The Implications of Memory Theory for Understanding Jesus’ Resurrection in First Corinthians.” It utilises a memory approach to interpret the account of Jesus’ resurrection as recorded in First Corinthians. It argues that Paul remembers Jesus as having been resurrected with a transformed physical body. Furthermore, the centrality of Jesus’ resurrection in Paul’s theology suggests it was a deeply embedded memory of primary importance to the social identity of the early Christian communities. Chapter one develops the need for the study, namely that after surveying the relevant literature, this is the first major study to investigate Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians using a memory approach. Chapter two studies the memories of Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians. It finds that Paul reminds the Corinthians of the centrality of the gospel (cf. 1 Cor 15:1–11), namely that, according to the Scriptures, Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to Cephas, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred, to James, to all the apostles and lastly to Paul himself. Verses 3–5/7 were probably an early creed that Paul received within a few years of Jesus’ crucifixion. Verse 8 records the memory of Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus. This gospel message was the same life-changing news that Paul (and the other apostles) had already preached to the Corinthians (cf. 15:1–2, 11). The remainder of the chapter details how the memory of the risen Jesus influences Christian conduct and eschatology. A word study of ἐγείρω “raised,” indicates that in the context of death, both Jews and Gentiles would have understood this to refer to a bodily resurrection. This interpretation fits with Paul’s explanation of the nature of the resurrection body as incorruptible, glorious, powerful, supernatural, and heavenly—like Christ’s resurrected body (cf. 1 Cor 15:35–49). Chapter three develops the logic for and the methodology of a memory approach and examines some of the implications of a memory approach to Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians. There were about two decades between the events surrounding Jesus’ resurrection and the recording of those events in First Corinthians. The memory of those events was frequently rehearsed, perhaps weekly. The transmission of the oral tradition occurred in various ways, including the overlooked fourth model—“formal uncontrolled.” Consideration is given to an examination of the philosophy and psychology of memory (including past and new research on (1) the constructive nature of memory, (2) presentism and continuism, (3) social memory, (4) transience and forgetting curves, (5) absent-mindedness, (6) blocking, (7) misattribution, (8) persistence, (9) schemata, (10) memory distortion, (11) false memories, (12) suggestibility, (13) the social contagion of memory, (14) hindsight bias, and (15) personal event memory and flashbulb memory). In addition, this is the first New Testament study to consider the insights for a memory approach from the philosophical considerations of (1) forgetting and (2) the theories of remembering and from the psychological studies on (1) memory conformity, (2) memory and age, and (3) the effects of health on memory. This work concludes that a memory approach supports the interpretation that Jesus rose bodily from the dead; and that Paul, and the early Christians, would have vividly remembered the risen Jesus as resurrected with a transformed physical body. For the early Christians, Jesus’ resurrection was unforgettable. [Note these errata have now been incorporated into a corrected printing].

View PDFchevron_right
Jesus’ Resurrection in Early Christian Memory: The Implications of Memory Theory for Understanding Jesus’ Resurrection in First Corinthians
David J Graieg

2022

This doctoral dissertation utilises a memory approach to interpret the account of Jesus’ resurrection as recorded in First Corinthians. The dissertation argues that Paul remembers Jesus as having been resurrected with a transformed physical body. Furthermore, the centrality of Jesus’ resurrection in Paul’s theology suggests it was a deeply embedded memory of primary importance to the social identity of the early Christian communities. Chapter one develops the need for the study, namely that after surveying the relevant literature, this is the first major study to investigate Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians using a memory approach. Chapter two studies Paul’s memories of Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians. It finds that Paul reminds the Corinthians of the centrality of the gospel (cf. 1 Cor 15:1–11), namely that, according to the Scriptures, Christ died, was buried, was raised, and appeared to Cephas, to the Twelve, to more than five hundred, to James, to all the apostles and lastly to Paul himself. Verses 3–5/7 were probably an early creed that Paul received within a decade of Jesus’ crucifixion. Verse 8 records the memory of Paul’s encounter with the risen Jesus. This gospel message was the same life-changing news that Paul (and the other apostles) had already preached to the Corinthians (cf. 15:1–2, 11). The remainder of the chapter details how the memory of the risen Jesus should influence Christian conduct and eschatology. A word study of ἐγείρω “raised,” indicates that in the context of death, both Jews and Gentiles would have understood this to refer to a bodily resurrection. This interpretation fits with Paul’s explanation of the nature of the resurrection body as incorruptible, glorious, powerful, supernatural, and heavenly—like Christ’s resurrected body (cf. 1 Cor 15:35–49). Chapter three develops the logic for and the methodology of a memory approach and examines some of the implications of a memory approach to Paul’s understanding of Jesus’ resurrection in First Corinthians. There were about two decades between the events surrounding Jesus’ resurrection and the recording of those events in First Corinthians. The memory of those events was frequently rehearsed, perhaps weekly. The transmission of the oral tradition occurred in various ways, including the overlooked fourth model—“formal uncontrolled.” Consideration is given to an examination of the philosophy and psychology of memory (including past and new research on (1) the constructive nature of memory, (2) presentism and continuism, (3) social memory, (4) transience and forgetting curves, (5) absent-mindedness, (6) blocking, (7) misattribution, (8) persistence, (9) schemata, (10) memory distortion, (11) false memories, (12) suggestibility, (13) the social contagion of memory, (14) hindsight bias, and (15) personal event memory and flashbulb memory). In addition, this is the first New Testament study to consider the insights for a memory approach from the philosophical considerations of (1) forgetting and (2) the theories of remembering, and from the psychological studies on (1) memory conformity, (2) memory and age, and (3) the effects of health on memory. This dissertation concludes that a memory approach supports the interpretation that Jesus rose bodily from the dead; and that Paul, and the early Christians, would have vividly remembered the risen Jesus as resurrected with a transformed physical body. For the early Christians, Jesus’ resurrection was unforgettable.

View PDFchevron_right
Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text
Rafael Rodriguez

2010

Social memory research has complicated the relationship between past and present because it is a relationship which finds expression in memorial acts such as storytelling and text-production. This relationship has emerged as a dialectic in which "past" and "present" are mutually constitutive and implicating. The resultant complication directly affects the procedures and products of "historical Jesus" research, which depends particularly on the assumption that we can cleanly separate "authentic" from "inauthentic" traditions. In Structuring Early Christian Memory Rafael Rodriguez analyzes the problems that arise from this assumption and proposes a "historical Jesus" program that is more sensitive to the entanglement of past and present.

View PDFchevron_right
St. Thecla: Remembering Paul and Being Remembered Through Paul
Peter-Ben Smit

This paper interprets the Acts of Thecla, as they are part of the non-canonical Acts of Paul (and Thecla) as a piece of literature that seeks to make the Pauline heritage meaningful in a new context and a for a new kind of audience, specifically through a renewed accentuation of his apostleship and his teaching on self-control. By remembering Paul as Thecla’s mentor and subsequent colleague in the apostolic ministry, the Acts of Thecla make the Pauline ministry relevant and accessible for those whose unmasculine bodies would not otherwise have presented them as plausible, or even viable candidates for this “job.” The papers uses the notion of cultural memory to achieve its aim.

View PDFchevron_right

References (125)

  1. See Chris Keith, "Social Memory Theory and the Gospels Research: The First Decade (Part One)," Early Christianity 6, no. 3 (forthcoming); idem, "Social Memory Theory and the Gospels Research: The First Decade (Part Two)," Early Christianity 6, no. 4 (forthcoming). For critiques of the rise of memory studies in Jesus research, see Alexander J. M. Wedderburn, Jesus and the Historians, WUNT 269 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), 13-32, as well as the chapter titled "Memory" (pp. 189-223). See also Birger Gerhardsson, "The Secret of the Transmission of the Unwritten Jesus Tradition," NTS 51 (2005): 1-18;
  2. and Paul Foster, "Memory, Orality, and the Fourth Gospel: Three Dead-Ends in Historical Jesus Research," JSHJ 10 (2012): 193-202.
  3. Benjamin L. White, Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014); see also Georgia Masters Keightley, "The Church's Memory of Jesus: A Social Science Analysis of 1 Thessalonians," BTB 17 (1987): 149-56; eadem, "Christian Collective Memory and Paul's Knowledge of Jesus," in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher, SemeiaSt 52 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), 129-50;
  4. Philip F. Esler, "Paul's Contestation of Israel's (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3," BTB 36 (2006): 23-34;
  5. Stephen C. Barton, "Memory and Remembrance in Paul," in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: The Fifth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium, ed. Stephen C. Barton, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Benjamin G. Wold, WUNT 212 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007), 321-39;
  6. Dennis C. Duling, "Social Memory and Commemoration of the Death of 'the Lord': Paul's Response to the Lord's Supper Factions at Corinth," in Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz, ed. Tom Thatcher, SemeiaSt 78 (Atlanta: SBL, 2014), 289-310. See also Peter-Ben Smit, "St. Thecla: Remembering Paul and Being Remembered Through Paul," VC 68 (2014): 551-63 (my thanks to Ben White for bringing Smit's article to my attention).
  7. Barry Schwartz and Howard Schuman ("History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001," ASR 70 [2005]: 183) describe Halbwachs's work as "pioneering" and explain, "Maurice Halbwachs founded the field of collective memory." Michael Thate (Remembrance of Things Past? Albert Schweitzer, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Untidy Jesus of Markan Memory, WUNT 2/351 [Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013], 190) calls him "the 'godfather' of modern critical memory theory," citing Gabriel Moshenska, "Working with Memory in the Archaeology of Modern Conflict," Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20 (2010): 34.
  8. Schwartz and Schuman, "History, Commemoration, and Belief," 183-84; see also Paul Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, trans. Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 120. For a biographical discussion and a survey of Halbwachs's work, see Lewis Coser's Introduction, in Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, trans. Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 1-34.
  9. Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 120.
  10. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 43.
  11. Samuel Byrskog, Story as History-History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History, WUNT 123 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), 255; original in italics. See also Jeffrey K. Olick, "From Collective Memory to the Sociology of Mnemonic Practices and Products," in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, ed. Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning, and Sara B. Young (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010), 151-61.
  12. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 38.
  13. 9 See also Ricoeur, Memory, History, Forgetting, 122.
  14. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, "Introduction: Contested Pasts," in Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory, ed. Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone, Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative (London: Routledge, 2003), 4. Similarly, see Erik Meyer, "Memory and Politics," in Erll, Nünning, and Young, eds., A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies, 176.
  15. Schwartz, Forge of National Memory, 294-95.
  16. Schwartz (Forge of National Memory) regularly refers to "reputational entrepreneurs"; the term comes from Gary Alan Fine, Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), and idem, Sticky Reputations: The Politics of Collective Memory in Midcentury America (New York: Routledge, 2011).
  17. Schwartz, Forge of National Memory, 295. 50 Ibid., 255.
  18. Hodgkin and Radstone, "Introduction," 5.
  19. Olick, "From Collective Memory," 152.
  20. Zoccali, "Children of Abraham," 269.
  21. Joshua W. Jipp, "Rereading the Story of Abraham, Isaac, and 'Us' in Romans 4," JSNT 32 (2009): 238. 70 Ibid., 233.
  22. I follow those who have noted that Romans as a text "explicitly addresses itself only to gentiles and nowhere explicitly encodes a Jewish audience"; see Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 21-33 (p. 30 quoted); see also Runar M. Thorsteinsson, Paul's Interlocutor in Romans 2: Function and Identity in the Context of Ancient Epistolography, ConBNT 40 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003), 87-122;
  23. A. Andrew Das, Solving the Romans Debate (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007); idem, "The Gentile-Encoded Audience of Romans: The Church Outside the Synagogue," in Reading Paul's Letter to the Romans, ed. Jerry L. Sumney, RBS 73 (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012), 29-46.
  24. Stowers, Rereading of Romans, 227.
  25. Robert Jewett (Romans, Hermeneia [Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007], 308) wrongly reads kata sarka negatively. See Rom 1:3; 9:3, 5 (Garroway, Gentile-Jews, 110-11, helpfully discusses these verses and others like them).
  26. Jonathan M. Hall, Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 25: "[I]t must be the myth of shared descent which ranks paramount among the features that distinguish ethnic from other social groups, and, more often than not, it is proof of descent that will act as a defining criterion of ethnicity."
  27. I am not sure why Edward Adams ("Abraham's Faith and Gentile Disobedience: Textual Links Between Romans 1 and 4," JSNT 65 [1997]: 62) thinks that, "by adding the words κατὰ σάρκα" in Rom 4:1, Paul "signals at the outset that this level of understanding of Abraham is going to be increasingly put into the shade as the argument proceeds." If, as Adams has just claimed, 4:1 carefully introduces Abraham as "the
  28. N. T. Wright ("Paul and the Patriarch: The Role of Abraham in Romans 4," JSNT 35 [2013]: 207-41)
  29. argues Paul has all of Gen 15 in view. Paul, however, has more than Gen 15 in mind; see his quotations of Gen 17:5 (Rom 4:17) and Ps 32:1-2 (Rom 4:6-8). Wright goes on to identify "echoes" of Gen 18 and 22 in Rom 4:13. See also Mark Forman, "The Politics of Promise: Echoes of Isaiah 54 in Romans 4.19-21," JSNT 31 (2009): 301-24.
  30. Jipp, "Rereading," 234.
  31. Ibid., 218; see also pp. 225, 226, as well as Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, NICNT (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 256-57.
  32. Stanley K. Stowers, The Diatribe and Paul's Letter to the Romans, SBLDS 57 (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981), 77; see Rafael Rodríguez, If You Call Yourself a Jew: Reappraising Paul's Letter to the Romans (Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014), 36-37.
  33. See Thorsteinsson, Paul's Interlocutor, 140-45.
  34. Jipp implies that Paul cited Gen 17:5 because his opponents stressed the association of the promise for sperma with circumcision: Paul had to answer for this association and provide an alternate explanation for the promise's fulfillment (see Jipp, "Rereading," 234-35). As we have seen, however, the rhetoric of diatribe does not counter charges but rather instructs pupils.
  35. See Gen 17:7, 13; see also 17:8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 19, 21.
  36. Esler, Philip F. "Paul's Contestation of Israel's (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3." BTB 36 (2006): 23-34.
  37. Fine, Gary Alan. Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
  38. ---Sticky Reputations: The Politics of Collective Memory in Midcentury America. New York: Routledge, 2011.
  39. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  40. Keightley, Georgia Masters. "Christian Collective Memory and Paul's Knowledge of Jesus." Pages 129-50 in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: SBL, 2005.
  41. ---"The Church's Memory of Jesus: A Social Science Analysis of 1 Thessalonians." BTB 17 (1987): 149-56.
  42. Kirk, Alan, and Tom Thatcher, eds. Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: SBL, 2005.
  43. Olick, Jeff rey K. "Collective Memory: The Two Cultures." Sociological Theory 17 (1999): 333-48.
  44. ---"From Collective Memory to the Sociology of Mnemonic Practices and Products." Pages 151-61 in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Edited by Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning, and Sara B. Young. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.
  45. ---"Products, Processes, and Practices: A Non-Reificatory Approach to Collective Memory." BTB 36 (2006): 5-14.
  46. Rodríguez, Rafael. Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text. European Studies on Christian Origins, LNTS 407. London: T&T Clark International, 2010.
  47. Schudson, Michael. "The Present in the Past versus the Past in the Present." Communication 11 (1989): 105-13.
  48. Schwartz, Barry. Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  49. ---Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth- Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
  50. ---"Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington." American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 221-36.
  51. Thatcher, Tom, ed. Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz. SemeiaSt 78. Atlanta: SBL, 2014.
  52. White, Benjamin L. Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests over the Image of the Apostle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  53. Part V. Bibliography
  54. Adams, Edward. "Abraham's Faith and Gentile Disobedience: Textual Links Between Romans 1 and 4." JSNT 65 (1997): 47-66.
  55. Allison, Dale C. Jr. Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010.
  56. Baker, Coleman A. Identity, Memory, and Narrative in Early Christianity: Peter, Paul, and Recategorization in the Book of Acts. Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011.
  57. Barton, Stephen C. "Memory and Remembrance in Paul." Pages 321-39 in Memory in the Bible and Antiquity: The Fifth Durham-Tübingen Research Symposium. Edited by Stephen C. Barton, Loren T. Stuckenbruck, and Benjamin G. Wold. WUNT 212. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2007.
  58. Bauckham, Richard. Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006.
  59. Ben-Yehuda, Nachman. Masada Myth: Collective Memory and Mythmaking in Israel. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995.
  60. Byrskog, Samuel. Story as History-History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History. WUNT 123. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000.
  61. Cohen, Shaye J. D. The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties. HCS 31. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.
  62. Das, A. Andrew. Solving the Romans Debate. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.
  63. ---"The Gentile-Encoded Audience of Romans: The Church Outside the Synagogue." Pages 29-46 in Reading Paul's Letter to the Romans. Edited by Jerry L. Sumney. RBS 73. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2012.
  64. Duling, Dennis C. "Social Memory and Commemoration of the Death of 'the Lord': Paul's Response to the Lord's Supper Factions at Corinth." Pages 289-310 in Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz. Edited by Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 78. Atlanta: SBL, 2014.
  65. Esler, Philip F. Conflict and Identity in Romans. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003.
  66. ---"Paul's Contestation of Israel's (Ethnic) Memory of Abraham in Galatians 3." BTB 36 (2006): 23-34.
  67. Fine, Gary Alan. Difficult Reputations: Collective Memories of the Evil, Inept, and Controversial. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.
  68. ---Sticky Reputations: The Politics of Collective Memory in Midcentury America. New York: Routledge, 2011.
  69. Forman, Mark. "The Politics of Promise: Echoes of Isaiah 54 in Romans 4.19-21." JSNT 31 (2009): 301-24.
  70. Foster, Paul. "Memory, Orality, and the Fourth Gospel: Three Dead-Ends in Historical Jesus Research." JSHJ 10 (2012): 191-227.
  71. Garroway, Joshua D. "The Circumcision of Christ: Romans 15.7-13." JSNT 34 (2012): 303-22.
  72. ---Paul's Gentile-Jews: Neither Jew Nor Gentile, But Both. New York: Palgrave, 2012.
  73. Geertz, Cliff ord. Interpretation of Cultures. New York: Basic, 1973.
  74. Gerhardsson, Birger. "The Secret of the Transmission of the Unwritten Jesus Tradition." NTS 51 (2005): 1-18.
  75. Halbwachs, Maurice. On Collective Memory. Translated by Lewis A. Coser. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  76. Hall, Jonathan M. Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Hobsbawm, Eric. "Introduction: Inventing Traditions." Pages 1-14 in The Invention of Tradition. Edited by Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger. Canto. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
  77. Hodgkin, Katharine, and Susannah Radstone. "Introduction: Contested Pasts." Pages 1-21 in Contested Pasts: The Politics of Memory. Edited by Katharine Hodgkin and Susannah Radstone. Routledge Studies in Memory and Narrative. London: Routledge, 2003.
  78. Jenkins, Richard. Social Identity. Key Ideas. London: Routledge, 1996.
  79. Jewett, Robert. Romans. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.
  80. Jipp, Joshua W. "Rereading the Story of Abraham, Isaac, and 'Us' in Romans 4." JSNT 32 (2009): 217-42.
  81. Johnson Hodge, Caroline E. If Sons, Then Heirs: A Study of Kinship and Ethnicity in the Letters of Paul. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
  82. Keith, Chris. "Social Memory Theory and the Gospels Research: The First Decade (Part One)." Early Christianity 6, no. 3 (forthcoming).
  83. ---"Social Memory Theory and the Gospels Research: The First Decade (Part Two)." Early Christianity 6, no. 4 (forthcoming).
  84. Kirk, Alan. "Social and Cultural Memory." Pages 1-24 in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
  85. Masters Keightley, Georgia. "Christian Collective Memory and Paul's Knowledge of Jesus." Pages 129-50 in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
  86. ---"The Church's Memory of Jesus: A Social Science Analysis of 1 Thessalonians." BTB 17 (1987): 149-56.
  87. McFarland, Orrey. "Whose Abraham, Which Promise? Genesis 15.6 in Philo's De Virtutibus and Romans 4." JSNT 35 (2012): 107-29.
  88. Meyer, Erik. "Memory and Politics." Pages 173-80 in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Edited by Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning, and Sara B. Young. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010. Moo, Douglas J. The Epistle to the Romans. NICNT. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996.
  89. Moshenska, Gabriel. "Working with Memory in the Archaeology of Modern Conflict." Cambridge Archaeological Journal 20 (2010): 33-48.
  90. Murray, Michele. Playing a Jewish Game: Gentile Christian Judaizing in the First and Second Centuries CE. Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2004.
  91. Nanos, Mark D., and Magnus Zetterholm, eds. Paul Within Judaism: Restoring the First- Century Context to the Apostle. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2015.
  92. Olick, Jeff rey K. "Collective Memory: The Two Cultures." Sociological Theory 17 (1999): 333-48.
  93. ---"From Collective Memory to the Sociology of Mnemonic Practices and Products." Pages 151-61 in A Companion to Cultural Memory Studies. Edited by Astrid Erll, Ansgar Nünning, and Sara B. Young. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010.
  94. ---"Products, Processes, and Practices: A Non-Reificatory Approach to Collective Memory." BTB 36 (2006): 5-14.
  95. Ricoeur, Paul. Memory, History, Forgetting. Translated by Kathleen Blamey and David Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
  96. Rodríguez, Rafael. "'According to the Scriptures': Suff ering and the Psalms in the Speeches in Acts." Pages 241-62 in Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz. Edited by Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 78. Atlanta: SBL, 2014.
  97. ---If You Call Yourself a Jew: Reappraising Paul's Letter to the Romans. Eugene, OR: Cascade, 2014.
  98. ---Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance, and Text. European Studies on Christian Origins. LNTS 407. London: T&T Clark International, 2010.
  99. Rosner, Brian S. Paul and the Law: Keeping the Commandments of God. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2013.
  100. Schacter, Daniel L. The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers. Boston: Mariner, 2002.
  101. Schreiner, Thomas R. Romans. BECNT. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998.
  102. Schudson, Michael. "The Present in the Past versus the Past in the Present." Communication 11 (1989): 105-13.
  103. ---Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past. New York: Basic, 1993.
  104. Schuman, Howard, Barry Schwartz, and Hannah d'Arcy. "Elite Revisionists and Popular Beliefs: Christopher Columbus, Hero or Villain?" Public Opinion Quarterly 69 (2005): 2-29.
  105. Schwartz, Barry. Abraham Lincoln and the Forge of National Memory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
  106. ---Abraham Lincoln in the Post-Heroic Era: History and Memory in Late Twentieth- Century America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009.
  107. ---"Christian Origins: Historical Truth and Social Memory." Pages 43-56 in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
  108. ---"Jesus in First-Century Memory-A Response." Pages 249-61 in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity. Edited by Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 52. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005.
  109. ---"Memory as a Cultural System: Abraham Lincoln in World War II." American Sociological Review 61 (1996): 908-27.
  110. ---"Reexamining Conflict and Collective Memory-The Nanking Massacre." Pages 529-63 in The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology. Edited by Jeff rey C. Alexander, Ronald N. Jacobs, and Philip Smith. Oxford Handbooks. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012.
  111. ---"Social Change and Collective Memory: The Democratization of George Washington." American Sociological Review 56 (1991): 221-36.
  112. ---"Where There's Smoke, There's Fire: Memory and History." Pages 7-37 in Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz. Edited by Tom Thatcher. SemeiaSt 78. Atlanta: SBL, 2014.
  113. Schwartz, Barry, and Howard Schuman. "History, Commemoration, and Belief: Abraham Lincoln in American Memory, 1945-2001." ASR 70 (2005): 183-203.
  114. Sechrest, Love L. A Former Jew: Paul and the Dialectics of Race. LNTS 410. London: T&T Clark International, 2010.
  115. Smit, Peter-Ben. "St. Thecla: Remembering Paul and Being Remembered Through Paul." VC 68 (2014): 551-63.
  116. Stowers, Stanley K. The Diatribe and Paul's Letter to the Romans. SBLDS 57. Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1981.
  117. ---A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994.
  118. Thatcher, Tom, ed. Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity: A Conversation with Barry Schwartz. SemeiaSt 78. Atlanta: SBL, 2014.
  119. Thate, Michael J. Remembrance of Things Past? Albert Schweitzer, the Anxiety of Influence, and the Untidy Jesus of Markan Memory. WUNT 2/351. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013.
  120. Thiessen, Matthew. Contesting Conversion: Genealogy, Circumcision, and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Christianity. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.
  121. ---"Paul's So-Called Jew and Lawless Lawkeeping." In The So-Called Jew in Paul's Letter to the Romans. Edited by Rafael Rodríguez and Matthew Thiessen. Minneapolis: Fortress, forthcoming.
  122. Thorsteinsson, Runar M. Paul's Interlocutor in Romans 2: Function and Identity in the Context of Ancient Epistolography. ConBNT 40. Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 2003.
  123. Wedderburn, Alexander J. M. Jesus and the Historians. WUNT 269. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010. White, Benjamin L. Remembering Paul: Ancient and Modern Contests Over the Image of the Apostle. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
  124. Wright, N. T. "Paul and the Patriarch: The Role of Abraham in Romans 4." JSNT 35 (2013): 207-41.
  125. Zoccali, Christopher. "Children of Abraham, the Restoration of Israel and the Eschatological Pilgrimage of the Nations: What Does It Mean for 'In Christ' Identity?" Pages 253-71 in T&T Clark Handbook to Social Identity in the New Testament. Edited by J. Brian Tucker and Coleman A. Baker. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014.

Related papers

Oral Group Memory – Written Fragmented Memory: A Note on Paul and the Jews
Doron Mendels

Journal for the Study of the New Testament

The ‘narratorial vacuum’ of a written text in early Christianity, at the time that Paul wrote his letters, works in his favor when he speaks to Diaspora Jews. In order to attract them, Paul dissociates from historical memories concerning the history of Jesus and its aftermath in Palestine. Paul wants to isolate Diaspora Jews from the history of constant conflicts between Palestinian Jews and the Jesus group. Even the crucifixion, which is practically the only fragmented memory that Paul repeatedly mentions, is ‘purified’ of its Jewish context and role (with the exception of 1 Thessalonians, where he blames the Jews) and is in fact divorced from its historical context.

View PDFchevron_right
Review of Remembering Paul by Benjamin White
Jonathon Lookadoo

2015

View PDFchevron_right
"Intertextuality, Effective History, and Memory: Conceptualizing Paul's Use of Scripture," in Paulinische Schriftrezeption. Grundlagen – Ausprägungen – Wirkungen – Wertungen. FRLANT 268. Edited by Florian Wilk and Markus Öhler. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2017, 9-21.
David Lincicum
View PDFchevron_right
Scripture as the Memory of God's People
brandon spun

All human communities and relationships exist, in part, through a remembered past. The Church is a community radically constituted by memory, particularly the historic and spiritual memory recorded in Scripture. This paper will investigate the ways in which memory constitutes the Church and therefore the life of God's people. It will first examine the general significance of memory within human social and political relations. The paper will then explore the exemplary role of memory within the Christian Church. This will reveal how memory helps to incorporate the whole person into Christ, making membership in the Church both personal and corporate. Part I: Memory & Personal Existence While this inquiry will not directly focus on the nature of personhood, we can state at the outset that to be a person is to be a relational being. 1 It follows that the individual cannot be sufficiently understood when wholly abstracted from a social framework. 2 Human relations potentially include God, our neighbor, our self, and the world. The first two, God and neighbor, are of primary interest, insofar as this paper explores the nature of a social community formed by and oriented toward God. Yet, our relations with God and neighbor depend in part on how we understand ourselves and the world. Part I of this paper will explore how the faculty of memory serves as a foundation for these relations and therefore our social existence.

View PDFchevron_right
Memory, Narrative and Christology in the Synoptic Gospels' seminar group, the SNTS 74 th General Meeting
Risto Uro

The present paper aims at mapping the state of the art of New Testament/early Christian studies at the intersection of two interdisciplinary fields or areas of inquiry, namely ritual studies and social memory studies. 1 As it turns out in the course of my presentation, there has not been much interaction between these fields. Although representatives of the social memory approach in the study of early Christianity, and in the humanities/social sciences more generally, do make references to 'commemorative ceremonies' or 'bodily practices' as sites or instruments of social memory (both concepts aptly theorized by Connerton 1989), with a few exceptions scholars working in the field of memory studies have not been engaged with drawing insights from recent advances in the study of ritual. The main question of my paper is what the emerging new field of ritual studies could offer to the ongoing discussion on memory and early Christian tradition. How could we bring closer these two lines of research? By seeking answers to these questions I touch upon other interdisciplinary fields/approaches as well, such as the cognitive science of religion, a new branch of religious studies, which has advanced several new theories of ritual. 2 My perspective is that of 1 Social memory studies/approach refers here to the vivid interest in memory, over the past three decades or so, in various humanities disciplines including theology/biblical studies and the study of religion (for surveys, see Olick et al.

View PDFchevron_right

Related topics

  • Social and Collective Memory
  • Epistle to the Romans
    • 580 California St., Suite 400
    San Francisco, CA, 94104
    © 2025 Academia. All rights reserved