15.6. Conclusion
Nearly all scholars agree that Jesus was a teacher with disciples. In light of ancient pedagogic practices, what implications should this consensus have for the gospel tradition? Various considerations support the probability that the disciples and those who heard them would have preserved and transmitted more than sufficient, reliable memories about Jesus to fill early sources such as Mark and Q, most likely with plenty left over. This observation does not mean that no one misremembered what he heard. But it does suggest that, in general, we should at least expect a fairly reliable overall picture of Jesus in the Gospels.
As suggested in chapter 14, telling the stories about Jesus over and over again would eventually produce patterns for recitation. The disciples would presumably omit less useful elements, focus on useful ones, and offer their interpretations. Such patterning, however, would not automatically render unreliable the pieces of information that such accounts contained. Emphasizing or possibly even adding some details for storytelling purposes should not have changed the core elements of those accounts.
Even though some echoes of Jesus’s original figures of speech appear to show up in the Gospels, no one expected retellings to preserve wording verbatim. Variation appears in our Gospels, but as noted in chapter 12, paraphrase was a standard practice, even in elite rhetorical training.1 What is significant in the Jesus tradition, however, is the preservation of much of its original substance, including persistent themes, stories, the substance of climactic key sayings, and the like.2
Whom would someone consult if seeking to produce an authoritative work? Even if we ignore Jesus’s own disciples holding key leadership positions in the church (Gal 1:18–19; 2:9; cf. 1 Cor 15:5–7), the plain preponderance of evidence from antiquity demonstrates that ancients did regularly prefer eyewitnesses. Failing the eyewitnesses themselves, they would appeal to material that they believed came from the eyewitnesses. They thus sought information from sources as close to the eyewitnesses as possible.
15.1a. Evangelists Would Heed Eyewitnesses
In antiquity someone seeking to produce an authoritative work, rather than simply to recount stories to a neighbor, would generally seek to consult the same sorts of sources we do, especially eyewitnesses.3 This was the historical and biographic practice everywhere favored in antiquity.4 Whenever possible, ancient historians and biographers drew on recent oral memory from eyewitnesses.5 This historiographic practice appears at least as early as Herodotus,6 and the Jewish historian Josephus shares the same ideal.7 (See further ch. 9.)
One would not expect the Evangelists, who chose the biographic medium and obviously valued Jesus’s example and teachings, to treat their material more cavalierly than their contemporaries treated less essential material. They must have at least believed that their material cohered in basic substance and spirit with the testimony of the witnesses present at the events they depict. Indeed, Luke explicitly claims that his material goes back to eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2).8
The most authoritative voices in the church—leaders such as elders—presumably would have the greatest contact with the earliest and most prominent leaders, who had personally known Jesus (cf. Acts 6:6; 14:23; 15:6). Given the time frame, even some or most of the Evangelists may have had direct contacts with eyewitnesses.
There are reasons why second-century Christians viewed the Gospels as memoirs of the apostles.9 Gospel tradition spread widely in the earliest church, but those with the most direct experience would typically have the fullest and generally clearest memories, and those in leadership, appointed by Jesus as his apostles and in some sense successors, would command the greatest respect. While many besides the eyewitnesses would be recounting stories about Jesus, the eyewitnesses’ claims would surely be the authoritative standard and be deemed the most authoritative source for others.
Most scholars today doubt that any eyewitnesses directly composed the Gospels; the minority of scholars who demur (including myself) admit at most one or two exceptions, and not always in the sense of full authorship. (Probably a majority of Johannine scholars, including myself, do view the beloved disciple, the main source behind the Fourth Gospel, as an eyewitness personally acquainted with Jesus.10 This Gospel diverges from the Synoptics in numerous respects, but see ch. 13.) Yet, even church tradition does not attribute all the Gospels to eyewitnesses; in the late second and early third century, some Christians deemed Matthew and John’s authority more persuasive than that of Mark or Luke because of the reputed apostolic authorship of the former two.11
Arguing for apostolic authorship of any of the Gospels would require a major study of its own, would not persuade most scholars, and is outside the scope and point of this book. To my knowledge, no one claims that Mark, widely regarded as the first of the Gospels, comes from an eyewitness. (A number of scholars do at least believe that Mark was from Judea.)12
What matters more here is whether the information on which the Evangelists depend ultimately goes back to eyewitnesses. Like other questions in ancient history, this one cannot be demonstrated with any mathematical sort of certainty. Historical inquiry looks for the preponderance of evidence. In this case, however, the evidence already surveyed supports the likelihood that works composed as soon after the events as the Gospels ordinarily would depend especially on material that the Evangelists believed went back to the eyewitnesses, and that they had good reason to believe that it did.
Writing in the early second century, Papias (admittedly an imperfect source) was probably beyond most living memory of Jesus’s ministry, but he was within living memory of Mark’s Gospel.13 Papias claims that Mark got his information from Peter.14 (Other ancient sources repeat this claim.)15 Papias concedes that Mark did not “closely follow” (παρακολουθέω, parakoloutheō) the Lord himself. Papias might frame this observation in contrast to Luke, who followed (parakoloutheō) matters from the first (Luke 1:3),16 very possibly indicating some personal participation (see ch. 8). Instead, Mark “followed” Peter and learned his stories that had been shaped by presentation.17 On this view, Mark accurately preserves Peter’s living voice (Papias, frag. 7.3–4) but lacks suitable arrangement.
Given Peter’s prominence in the 50s (1 Cor 1:12; 3:22; Gal 1:18; 2:9–14), his role as Jesus’s follower (1 Cor 9:5; 15:5), and the usual dating of Mark, the belief that Mark knew and would have reported what he knew of Peter’s teaching is not unreasonable.18 Certainly Mark reports many memorable scenes to which Peter would have been privy (Mark 1:16, 29, 36; 3:16; 5:37; 8:29–33; 9:2, 5; 10:28; 11:21; 13:3; 14:29–31, 33–37, 54, 66–72).19
Had Papias wished to invent a fictitious connection with Peter, he could have simply attributed the Gospel of Mark directly to him,20 since narrators who participated in narratives sometimes did depict themselves in the third person.21 He did not do so, yet he identifies an author, which suggests that he believed the author of this Gospel to be already known. That author’s dependence on Peter’s testimony may also be known.22 By contrast, Papias seems displeased with Mark’s arrangement, so his temptation may otherwise have been to downplay rather than to emphasize apostolic associations.23 If Mark did work with Peter (cf. perhaps 1 Pet 5:13), he probably heard Peter recount his favorite stories more than once as Peter addressed various gatherings.
Although Eric Eve notes that Petrine influence on Mark is not proven, he adds that “the preaching of such an authoritative figure who was known to have been an eyewitness to the earthly Jesus is likely to have been given considerable weight,” which could also explain “the apparently ready acceptance of Mark’s Gospel” by Matthew and Luke.24
Richard Bauckham has developed the thesis of eyewitnesses particularly extensively. Some of his detractors have misrepresented his thesis as claiming more than it does (Bauckham nowhere implied verbatim recall).25 Others, such as Eric Eve, more reasonably point out that Bauckham has not demonstrated that everything in the Gospels derives from the eyewitnesses or that they must have recalled everything accurately.26 Nevertheless, Eve concedes that Bauckham shows that what appears in the Gospels could derive from fairly accurate eyewitness testimony,27 and that Bauckham has raised valuable questions: “It is completely fair to point out that the tradition was more likely to have been transmitted and controlled by certain individuals such as authorized teachers rather than simply passed round an anonymous collective, and it is entirely reasonable to suggest that recognized eyewitnesses were likely to have had a continuing role in this process for as long as they were around.”28
Such possibilities do not render moot the question of social memory. Even if Mark has his material directly from Peter (a connection the likelihood of which some of my readers may find less plausible than I), Peter’s retellings were shaped in, and at least in most of the passion narrative must have depended on, the larger community.29 That is, whether the steps between eyewitnesses and the Evangelists were many or few, both questions about psychological (ch. 14) and social (ch. 16; also 15.2 below) memory remain relevant when considering the historical roots and subsequent shaping of the memory of Jesus in the early Christian movement.
15.1c. How Accurate Is Eyewitness Memory?
Does it even matter whether the gospel tradition depended on eyewitnesses? Eyewitness memory is not always accurate, and its accuracy varies depending on the kind of matters witnessed (see also ch. 14).
For example, on September 22, 1993, I confronted a burglar who had broken into my apartment; even immediately after the confrontation, however, I could not recall much about his face or what color clothes he was wearing. My attention was focused instead on the situation (and the self-evident fact that the burglar had broken into my apartment with his knife).30 Still, if you ask me how he broke in, what he drank, what he left behind or various other details surrounding the incident, I can recount those details clearly and accurately today, though I have only rarely had occasion to recall or retell the story.31
Eyewitnesses are crucial yet fallible. Evidence suggests that “erroneous eyewitness testimony is the leading cause of wrongful conviction”;32 often witnesses are pressed to remember details that their memories never captured to begin with. Yet this standard differs from normal recall,33 and even in such forensic contexts witnesses sometimes do better. In one study, eyewitnesses had a good gist memory of a crime and were also 80 percent correct on details—despite extraordinarily stringent measuring criteria: “height and age estimates had to be within plus or minus 2 (inches/years), weight within 5 pounds, and no leeway was given for the number of shots fired.”34
I find this study astonishing, perhaps because I rarely can estimate such parameters so closely even when a person is in front of me. Even if we deem this study an outlier with unusually perceptive witnesses, it graphically illustrates that people often do remember the gist and at least some details of a striking incident. A more important qualification in the use of such studies, however, is that the difficult, quantitative forensic standard is not the norm for most memory, where salience is most relevant.35
Discerning which details in the minority of divergent testimony is correct usually requires weighing independent testimonies.36 We cannot weigh the gospel traditions in quite this way today. (Multiple attestation in different independent sources, such as Mark and Q, is valuable, but discerning independent oral traditions before them is next to impossible.)37 Nevertheless, the early Christian communities may have already undertaken this process of evaluation in the lifetime of the first witnesses,38 and in any case, the bulk of material would likely remain dependable. Some eyewitnesses probably remained alive at least into the later decades of the first century, though of course the larger number of survivors clustered earlier.39 Those who outlive others often do increase in relative prominence.
Surely most of the Jesus movement recognized that Jesus’s immediate disciples, who also led the church (see, e.g., 1 Cor 9:5; Gal 2:9), were more authoritative as sources than were others.40 Paul’s letters show that these disciples remained in leadership positions and remained respected in the churches of the Diaspora into the mid-50s.41 Evidence from Josephus suggests that Jesus’s brother James remained in prominent leadership in Jerusalem itself until roughly 60.42 Luke-Acts offers no reason to doubt that these figures continued to command respect in the Diaspora, even after their decease, into Luke’s own day (cf. also Rev 21:14). Those who, unlike myself, view Acts as a second-century synthesis of Pauline and Jerusalem strands should recognize that, on their view, the apostles retained respect into the second century.
15.2. The Collective Memory of Eyewitnesses
The eyewitnesses would not testify exclusively independently of one another; their memories, and especially those of Jesus’s closest disciples, would interact and would be pooled in the community’s shared memory alongside the continuing teaching of the surviving apostles.
15.2a. Experiments and Experiences
As noted in the previous chapter on memory studies, communal memory is susceptible to false memories from any strong-willed or persuasive member of the group. On the whole, however, it tends to be more stable than individual memory.43
While the core of spaced rehearsed learning and prominent personal experiences can persist in a student’s or witness’s psychological memory for years, what about word that is circulated secondhand? Although witnesses remained in key positions of leadership in the early Christian movement into the 50s of the first century (Gal 1:18–19; 2:9; cf. 1 Cor 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5), stories about Jesus ultimately circulated widely. Could wide circulation become wild circulation?
For quick testing, laboratory experiments often use a single chain of transmission, which of course quickly skews “traditions,” since any fallible link can introduce significant change.44 Yet cultural memory expert David Rubin notes that this setting differs starkly from the real life settings in which oral transmission occurs.45 “The changes that occur when a passage is transmitted from person to person are much greater in psychology experiments than they are in oral tradition.”46 Oral tradition provides far more overlearning and spaced practice than is possible in typical experiments.47 For example, “A favorite song can be sung hundreds of times.”48
Oral tradition is specifically designed to counter the frailties of memory such as those suggested in laboratory studies.49 Oral tradition typically depends on various cues as well as constraints such as rhythm.50 Together, meaning, imagery, and sound provide constraints “that cue recall and limit choices,”51 providing stability in oral tradition.52
NT scholar Bart Ehrman has sometimes compared oral transmission with the so-called telephone game, which seeks to replicate in a very compressed time frame generations of chain transmission.53 Yet the comparison is problematic for the gospel tradition, which involved net (group) rather than chain (a single line of) transmission.54
Communities, including groups of disciples, more often practice “net” transmission, because their memories belonged to the entire group to start with.55 Ancient disciples sometimes joined together to compile memories of their teachers’ teachings.56 The collective memory of Jesus’s disciples would not even need to await his departure; it would start already as the disciples conversed among themselves during Jesus’s ministry.57
Moreover, Jesus’s disciples presumably taught publicly, to many people, rather than entrusting their message only to isolated individuals or (like later gnostics) passing on alleged secret teachings. Those hearers who did misunderstand a story would surely correct it if they subsequently heard Jesus’s disciples, who doubled as the community’s leaders, or from those whom they in turn commissioned or recognized.58
Several memory theorists have thus explictly challenged Ehrman’s “telephone game” approach to the gospel tradition. Barry Schwartz, for example, on whose expertise Ehrman elsewhere draws,59 counters his telephone game illustration by appealing to the way reports can grow exponentially,60 the probability of multiple original versions, and network theory.61 Alan Kirk cites Ehrman’s “telephone game” analogy as a major example of a flawed understanding of memory on the part of some outdated NT scholarship.62 More generally, one introduction to Gospels research complains that the telephone game analogy “limps badly.”63
Even regarding the reliability of chain (individual) transmission, cultures vary. Kenneth Bailey, a NT scholar with four decades of experience in the Middle East, recounts observing the telephone game played with Middle Eastern students, who, “to the amazement and dismay of the western guest,” transmitted the story “almost intact.”64
Content also matters; experiences of events significant to us differ from the typically trivial and less relevant material transmitted in the telephone game. Communities preserve their stories that relate to community identity in a manner starkly different from mere rumor transmission; it is rumor transmission that resembles the telephone game.65
15.2c. Strengths and Weaknesses of Collective Memory
Individual memory and collective memory always interact.66 Indeed, reminiscing, or sharing memories together, often acquires narrative patterns even within a family setting, as children and parents interact.67 When a group of witnesses confers, a confident but erroneous witness can introduce error into the group’s collective memory.68 On the one hand, this means that interviewing witnesses as a group provides less information than interviewing them individually.69 Pooling individual memories provides more than simply relying on the group.70 On the other hand, however, the group still provides more information than an isolated individual would. The aggregate of information from all the individual witnesses far exceeds the information from simply a single witness.71 For one example of this principle, I was able to confirm and supplement the story of my wife’s war experience through interviews with her family members.72
When groups share important memories, these memories quickly assume a standardized story form. Thus, for example, within days after refugees fled the 1972 genocide in Burundi, their narrative world became increasingly formalized and didactic, their experiences being arranged into “moral ordering stories.”73
Communal memory is common in older Middle Eastern culture74 and would have been relevant for Jesus’s movement: Jesus did not normally instruct disciples one-on-one, but as a group (cf., e.g., Mark 3:14; 4:10), and he also taught large crowds (e.g., Mark 3:9; 4:1; and throughout).75 According to our earliest NT writer, some key events included at least five hundred followers who were witnesses (1 Cor 15:6–7). The Twelve (1 Cor 15:5), of course, were among those closest to Jesus during his ministry and functioned as the most authoritative witnesses (Mark 3:14–16; Acts 1:21–22).76
As already noted, the collective memory of Jesus’s disciples started already as the disciples conversed among themselves during Jesus’s ministry.77 Furthermore, if Jesus ever sent disciples to extend his mission during his ministry, “there must have been agreement between Jesus and these disciples on the message they should preach and the life-style they should follow.”78 Even afterward, important traditions were usually delivered or “performed” in group settings.79
Given the numbers in Jesus’s early movement, probably at least a few had exceptional memories (though not likely on the extraordinary level of their contemporary Seneca the Elder, who claims that he could at one time repeat back in sequence 2,000 just-learned names). But even if none of them had exceptional memories, the sum total of all their memories together could fill gaps in individual memories.
Preserving a teacher’s message is not simply a modern interest. Disciples of an ancient teacher sometimes would gather after the teacher’s death and weave together their memories of his teachings.80 Jesus’s disciples discussed Jesus’s words among themselves during Jesus’s ministry (Mark 8:16; 9:10) and surely discussed them even more afterward.
15.2d. Collective Memory and the Overall Portrait of Jesus
The memory frailties mentioned in the previous chapter are more relevant for details than for any overall thrust of Jesus’s ministry, such as his teaching in parables, healing the sick, or the like. As noted, suggestibility mostly confuses memory when the suggestions are plausible, that is, when they are coherent with veridical memories. This observation suggests that even false collective memories among tradents are likely consistent with the overall gist of Jesus’s ministry.81
McIver thus concurs with C. H. Dodd’s observation of the “consistent . . . coherent, and . . . distinctive” character of the Synoptic tradition of Jesus’s sayings, which reflect behind them “the thought of a single, unique teacher.”82
In fact, it is highly improbable that the overall portrait of Jesus in the Gospels’ narratives diverges significantly from the general character of Jesus experienced by the disciples, whatever the omissions and adaptations. Barry Schwartz points to collective memories sometimes providing a composite portrait that can outweigh the limitations of individual testimony. He offers examples of the slave narratives compiled in interviews seven decades after the Civil War83 and Katsuichi Honda’s 1999 interviews concerning the 1937–38 genocidal Rape of Nanjing.84 Historiography cannot say much about the past apart from testimony.85
Although collective memory occasionally includes some completely forged accounts, such fabrications normally “are quite rare.”86 (Such forged accounts today, though not in antiquity,87 sometimes include unintentionally fabricated accounts due to “recovered memories.”)88 More frequently, collective memories merely reshape existing tradition to fit present concerns. Thus, McIver suggests, “if there was nonauthentic Jesus tradition circulating in the collective memory of his early followers, then it must have had considerable congruence with what he actually did and said. . . . The process of wholesale fabrication of the Jesus traditions envisaged by Dibelius and Bultmann is highly unlikely.”89
15.3. The Sage and His Disciples
Although such evidence merely encourages us to expect the preservation of events and the general tenor or themes of a figure’s views, in Jesus’s case there is also important reason to consider the preservation of more specific teachings.90 Almost all scholars agree that whatever else Jesus was, he was a teacher with disciples.91 But against the popular nineteenth-century Romanticist approach of a folk tradition without content, Jesus’s role as a teacher implies that he did communicate content.92
This generally agreed datum adds a particularly relevant though usually neglected dimension to this discussion. Whereas the ancient Mediterranean value of memory cultivation suggests the possibility of mnemonic capabilities greater than average in the modern West (see ch. 16), it is the specific role of Jesus’s disciples as disciples that invites us to expect that they passed on the gist or substance of what they learned from Jesus. With regard to the biographies of sages, observations about human memory in general are less relevant than the specific memory practices expected for disciples.
This point would have been obvious to ancient audiences: Jesus’s disciples, as disciples, would be expected to learn and pass on his teaching. When the second-century critic Celsus challenges the Christian story, he does not deny that Jesus had disciples but seeks to discredit them by contending that they were disreputable sailors and tax collectors93—what today we call an ad hominem argument, which we ordinarily do not apply to other biographies of the period, whatever our religious dispositions.94 Learning the teaching of a master is inherent in the role of disciples. Continuity of message between Jesus and his movement was thus hard for ancient critics to challenge, although those who called Jesus a sorcerer had little incentive to treat his successors more charitably.95
Not only do virtually all scholars agree that Jesus was a teacher with disciples; virtually all scholars also agree that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians and Galatians. These undisputed letters in turn attest that some of Jesus’s closest disciples remained in the most respected leadership roles in Jesus’s continuing movement, along with Jesus’s brothers. They still held these positions within just a few years of when Mark (and possibly others, see Luke 1:1) wrote their Gospels (Gal 1:17–19; 2:1–2, 7–10; cf. 1 Cor 1:12; 3:22; 9:5; 15:5–7). They were probably in leadership when Q was produced, possibly even under the supervision of one or more of them.
Ancient hearers, in contrast to most modern ones, would recognize that these facts have clear implications for the character of the gospel tradition: normally disciples in this period accurately represented the spirit of their teachers’ message, as well as many of the teachers’ anecdotes and teachings.
Confidence about teaching methods “is possible,” McIver notes, “because both the content and pedagogical method showed remarkable uniformity over the entire period of the Roman Empire.”96 Disciples were normally adherents of a school97 or, at the beginning, its founder; they passed on teachings.98 Thus, for example, Theophrastus became a great philosopher by imitating his teacher Aristotle and passing on his life and teaching.99 Likewise, as already mentioned, historians normally consulted eyewitnesses when they were available.
By definition, teachers passed on their teachings to others. At elementary levels, learning might be simply from the standard curriculum, but a sage expected his disciples to learn his teachings. One familiar term for this practice, παραδίδωμι (paradidōmi),100 was also applicable to passing down a founder’s teachings101 or practices,102 passing down traditional practices from ancestors,103 and passing down information in a historian.104 In the disciples’ setting, the cognate noun applies explicitly to Pharisaic traditions that were believed to be passed on meticulously,105 and ultimately the noun and verb apply also to the gospel tradition, beginning already in first-century sources.106
Indeed, as Loveday Alexander points out, in all schools “teaching was passed down from master to pupils, who in turn passed it on to their own pupils”;107 the founder’s teachings often functioned as canonical for their communities.108 Greek schools transmitted sayings attributed to their founders from one generation to the next.109 Often the founders themselves encouraged this practice of transmission.110 Teachers also often left it to their students to publish their teachings;111 if followers were illiterate, of course, they could entrust this dimension of the activity to others. Yet the question of the disciples’ literacy is a red herring in any case, since dictation was the dominant practice for both the well-to-do and the illiterate in any case.112
One older approach113 promoted suspicion of any alleged teachings of Jesus with which his followers agreed. Yet ancient (and modern) followers usually did agree with their teachers. And even if Jesus’s disciples did disagree with him, would they have chosen to misrepresent his views? That is unlikely. A minority of ancient pupils did abandon their teachers’ views, but when they did so, they were normally clear about their disagreements, rather than claiming that the teacher instead would have agreed with them.114 If one argues that Jesus’s disciples would not dare disagree with their former teacher publicly, given his exalted status, one should also recognize that genuine belief in his exalted status would ensure private respect for his teaching even more than would his status as teacher. The disciples surely believed that their representation of Jesus was consistent with what they experienced of him.
Like most disciples of other teachers, whether Jewish115 or gentile,116 most of Jesus’s disciples were probably in their teens, with a few possibly (like perhaps Peter, who was married)117 in their early twenties. At least in modern Western studies, subsequent recollections are most complete concerning exactly this impressionable age range.118 Schwartz even applies this information directly to Jesus’s disciples, noting that “individuals are most likely to remember important events that occur in their late adolescence and early adulthood.”119
As observed in the previous chapter, studies of personal memory demonstrate that personally significant events and emotional experiences reinforce memory.120 These factors are obviously relevant for Jesus’s disciples.121
15.3b. Extraordinary Memory in Antiquity
Feats of extraordinary ancient memory, some of which I survey here, are not intended as representative of ancient memories in general, but they graphically illustrate a culture that valued memory in ways rarely considered in the modern West. Ancient mnemonic skills often astonish readers in our less memory-centered modern Western culture.122 Some reports of ancient memory seem exaggerated,123 but ancient mnemonic practices make even some of the more astonishing feats plausible.124 The elder Seneca complains that in his old age he can no longer perform the feats of his younger days, such as repeating back two thousand names in precise sequence after hearing them once.125 (Even back then, however, repeating back just fifty names after hearing them was considered impressive.)126 After lamenting the decline of his memory,127 Seneca proceeds to recount from memory long sections of more than a hundred declamations that he heard in his youth!128
Seneca is an extreme example, but he was not alone in significant mnemonic prowess; another man could repeat a poem on hearing it once; yet another, after attending an auction all day, repeated every item that was sold, the price for which it was sold, and the person to whom it was sold.129 Such memory skills sometimes surface also in other cultures that value memory. Thus Pandita Ramabai, as a girl in nineteenth-century India, could recite from memory “for an hour or more,” and eventually she “could recite eighteen thousand verses” of Hindu texts.130
One might dismiss all such stories, were not mnemonic feats of this magnitude recorded today. Thus, for example, modern analysts studied two mnemonists, one of whom reportedly memorized π (pi) to 31,811 digits and the other who, though slower, memorized it to 40,000 digits.131 A British mathematician memorized it to a thousand decimal places, complaining that the undertaking would have been a waste of time had it not been so simple.132 A chess master playing multiple simultaneous games must recall each of the various boards in detail, a feat that seems impossible to those focused on other disciplines.133
Jocelyn Penny Small cites examples from The Guinness Book of World Records, emphasizing its requirement for verification: In 1974 a resident of Myanmar “recited 16,000 pages of Buddhist canonical texts.” A Chinese news agency reported that a resident “memorized more than 15,000 telephone numbers.” In 1989 a resident of Texas “memorized a random sequence of thirty separate packs of cards (1,560) that had been all shuffled together on a single sighting with two errors.”134
Comparing the last example to Seneca the Elder’s feat with two thousand names, Small concludes that “memory training works and enables mnemonists to accomplish astounding stunts that lesser souls cannot.” She judiciously adds, “The real question is whether you want to spend the time to learn how to memorize 1560 cards or 2000 names just to show off.”135 Even in antiquity, such skills were not typical, but they do illustrate the high value that ancient Mediterranean culture placed on mnemonic prowess, and how those who value memory most can often train memory for excellence.136
Rhetorical handbooks instructed their readers in “artificial” memory, which could exceed the skills of natural (untrained) memory.137 Artificial memory involved techniques for recalling blocks of data astonishing to us modern, Google-dependent readers.138 Special mnemonic practices appear among Greeks as early as the fifth century BCE,139 and even earlier among Egyptians.140 Less artificially, a first-century professor of Roman rhetoric advised that one could memorize a work one part at a time;141 practice and then quiz oneself,142 and rehearse the lines out loud.143 Increasing literacy increased rather than decreased dependence on memory, because the literate lacked other adequate retrieval systems.144
Orators were supposed to memorize their own speeches145—even though these could run for two or three hours.146 This practice was fundamental to their training.147 Oratorical students could learn by reciting model speeches from memory.148 Moreover, they were required to offer practice speeches “from memory.”149 Particularly impressive was a rhetorician so skillful that he could repeat verbatim even speeches that he had delivered extemporaneously.150 Another orator reportedly could recall word for word every declamation he had ever delivered.151 More commonly, rhetorically sensitive hearers could also recall elements of speeches that they heard, their memories valuably supplementing even written sources.152
None of this is meant to imply that any of Jesus’s first disciples had formal training in rhetoric or mnemotechnics. It is simply to emphasize the extent to which memory can be and often is developed where it is valued, and that the ancient Mediterranean world was one such milieu. Jesus’s disciples belonged to a world that prized memory in a way that is rare in our modern, information-glutted world.153
15.3c. Memory in Ancient Education
In discussing ancient pedagogy, I do not assume that Jesus’s disciples had a standard education (though neither need one simply assume that all were necessarily completely illiterate). My purpose is twofold: first, to continue to highlight the great emphasis on memory in ancient Mediterranean culture and, second, to point to the necessity for memory in all ancient learning, whether formal or informal, literate or illiterate, in Greek elementary schools or for disciples following an itinerant teacher.
Ancient pedagogy without a focus on memory did not exist.154 Thus, for example, the first-century teacher Theon would teach a passage by reading it and having students “try to write it out from memory,” then paraphrase and develop it.155 An “oral component” pervaded “ancient learning.”156 The emphasis does not begin with Greeks; students in New Kingdom Egypt, for example, were reminded, “You should become a book container!”157
Widespread illiteracy and, even for the literate, the relatively rare possession of books brought memory to the fore in ancient pedagogy.158 Because written materials were less accessible, the focus of ancient education was on recall of content, although such recollection was not verbatim memorization in the modern sense.159 The point of ancient education was “mastery of content,”160 without which it would be impossible to access historical and literary allusions.161
Thus a certain Nicoratus may have boasted that he learned all of Homer by heart, but he was hardly alone; more learned people complained that the “stupid” rhapsodes could all do the same, without understanding the true sense of what they were reciting.162 Boys memorized various parts of the Iliad, though apparently most successfully the first two books and the beginnings of other books.163 Greeks deemed memorizing some of Homer quintessential to Greek culture,164 and Homer continued to be memorized into the Middle Ages.165
An emphasis on rote memory pervaded the most basic educational level,166 often tested with drilling.167 The most valued learning skills in children were memory and imitating what was taught.168 Even in a literate environment, oral memorization reinforced learning.169
Higher education, beginning in the mid-teens, did not focus on rote memory,170 but memory remained important, for example, for memorizing model speeches.171 Close attention to texts and reciting them simplified the process of memorizing them.172 Students had to remain attentive not only with texts but also during lectures.173 Those trained in rhetoric could adjust the accounts they remembered, but such adjustments at this stage were normally not supposed to add to or change content in any substantive manner.174
Both attributed and unattributed maxims were memorized and passed on for centuries, even in elementary educational settings.175 Students memorized and copied these maxims “letter by letter.”176 Such maxims did double duty: they not only provided grist for writing, reading, and memory, but they also offered moral principles believed to remain with students for life.177 Like the broader Greco-Roman circulation of maxims, Judean oral training circulated various sorts of wise sayings (proverbs, parables, and the like), rhetorical forms also plainly used by Jesus.178 One widely known pre-Christian sage speaks of those who study the law as preserving wise parables and searching out obscure proverbs or maxims.179
As noted in the previous chapter, such aphorisms, or concise and often witty statements, were normally memorable and initially remembered fairly accurately.180 Like most sages, Jesus probably used some of his sayings in various settings;181 nevertheless, this practice does not likely explain all the variations in context that we find. Such sayings circulated both in collections and independently and could be combined with stories about the teacher in question.182 Sayings could circulate independently,183 but sayings for which context was necessary, such as in brief narratives climaxing in the protagonist’s quip,184 were often transmitted with the gist of the basic story or context that fueled their sense;185 biographers sometimes expressed confidence regarding the incidents in their subject’s life in which a particular saying was given.186 Thus we probably have some sayings of Jesus in the Gospels in their original essential contexts, though others (e.g., Matt 7:13–14//Luke 13:24; Matt 8:11//Luke 13:29) clearly appear in distinct contexts.
Some memories of sayings could be quite significant. Verbatim memory requires rehearsal of the material, but in nearly universal ancient pedagogical practice, students did regularly rehearse such sayings, so Jesus as a teacher presumably expected his disciples to do likewise.187 This is not to imply that all of Jesus’s aphorisms would be remembered, but rather to imply that those that were remembered were probably remembered quite accurately. Noting psychological studies, McIver emphasizes, “Once in long-term memory, aphorisms would usually be remembered accurately or—and this is the important point—not at all.”188 Jesus’s reported aphorisms tend to be memorable: concise and vivid.189 Not surprisingly, then, the Evangelists tend to report aphorisms with something closer to verbatim agreement than found in parables.190 Genre does make a difference here; historians’ rare appeal to verbatim quotes generally consisted of short lines,191 but teachings often appear in biographies of sages.192
Jesus’s teachings in the tradition are predesigned “for easy remembering,” as Dunn notes. “Prominent features are various kinds of parallelism, alliteration, assonance and paronomasia,” as cataloged by a host of modern scholars.193 Dunn notes the difference between this and random long-term recall of facts: “What is envisaged is not a casual recall across several decades of something once heard and little thought about since. . . . What is in view is a deliberate instruction intended to be retained for its value in discipleship.”194
Prominent as sayings were in ancient education, students also carefully learned historical examples.195 Although teachers often emphasized learning their teachings, students studied and emulated teachers’ behavior as well.196 Not surprisingly, then, they also transmitted it.197 Both Greek198 and Jewish199 disciples sought to imitate their teachers, and later Jewish disciples even cited earlier rabbis’ behavior as legal precedent.200
Teachers expected disciples to develop their memories to learn teachings. All schools of philosophy emphasized memory, though not all to an equal degree,201 and they offered their various theories about it.202 Some schools emphasized memorizing texts; others, the teacher’s words.203 Among Jesus’s disciples, the teacher’s words would necessarily be the focus (all the more if the disciples were illiterate, as some scholars contend).
This practice would have implications for a disciple’s memoirs about a former teacher. Thus Lucian’s Demonax contains fifty-two anecdotes about his teacher Demonax; one commentator observes that “Lucian may have written the series of anecdotes from memory, given the ancient practice of memorizing anecdotes and sayings.”204
All our sources indicate that Jewish families, of whatever social class, brought up their children with knowledge of Jewish law and customs.205 Apologetically underlining Jewish virtue, Philo declares that Jews are trained from the beginning to carry in their very souls the images of the commandments.206 Jewish sources teach much about disciples learning from their teachers well before the period of the rabbis.207 But although rabbinic sources postdate the Gospels, they provide the fullest concrete examples of Jewish education, and these examples comport with virtually all the other ancient Mediterranean evidence.208
Some scholars209 have underlined the rabbis’ emphasis on the careful transmission of tradition.210 It does not seem probable, prima facie, that the later rabbinic method simply arose ex nihilo after 70 CE.211 Rabbis believed that they continued much earlier discipleship practices, a belief probably relevant at least for then-recent generations.212
Few scholars today would dispute that “elaborations” and “innovations” also occurred.213 But while early studies sometimes drew criticism by overplaying the analogy between Jesus’s disciples and those of later rabbis,214 subsequent refinement has allowed scholars today to build on the early studies’ central point.215 Even some former critics of the early studies now find some value in the approach.216 Although the earliest studies did compare Jesus’s disciples too closely with more formal ancient schools,217 it may be noteworthy that outsiders did compare churches, like synagogues,218 with schools,219 a comparison that became fairly common in the second century.220
For the purpose of argument, however, I set aside here rabbinic evidence, since some critics dispute any post-70 evidence even for post-70 Gospels. Well before 70, Pharisees were known for passing on their oral traditions.221 More generally, Judeans and Galileans were known for instructing boys meticulously in the law,222 probably especially orally and presumably therefore requiring the boys to develop skills in oral memory.223 Many Jews as early as the period of 2 Maccabees apparently liked to memorize details of Jewish history.224 Diaspora Jews valued memory practices; one Hellenistic Jewish tradition allegorically interpreted cud-chewing as memory rehearsal.225 Teachers retained a central role in various pre-Christian Jewish circles.226
If one chooses to dismiss all such reports about Jewish memory as mere propaganda, one should be clear about what one is doing. One is discarding virtually all extant evidence and then complaining that no evidence supports the only position for which we have any substantial evidence at all—namely, that disciples in this period did normally seek to remember their teacher’s message. Those who became teachers themselves and remained within the same school of thought were expected to pass on the teaching of their school. This was true whether the sages were philosophers or Jewish teachers of wisdom.
Although those who heard the disciples would not all be disciples themselves, they would likely value what they learned. Because weekly synagogue meetings included learning the Torah,227 many gentiles viewed Jews as a “nation of philosophers.”228 Synagogue liturgy eventually included recitation;229 while that full practice is debated for this period,230 it is clear that Jewish people regularly recited the Decalogue, Shema,231 and many psalms and hymns.232
Early Christians highlighted the teaching role, which suggests that they, like synagogue communities, also cared about propagating content.233 This interest persisted; Irenaeus in the late second century integrates faith with the classical Greco-Roman curriculum,234 and in the fourth century Christians trained in the same schools as pagans.235 According to the fourth-century rule of Pachomius, ideally everyone in the monastery should “know by heart at least the Psalter and the New Testament.”236 Memorizing the entire Psalter might take two or three years, “though gifted individuals could manage it in six months.”237 If a novice entering a monastery was illiterate, he had to listen “to the teacher reading aloud Biblical texts until he memorized them.”238 Presumably in view of the shortage of manuscripts, a later Coptic bishop required prospective deacons to memorize or transcribe at least one Gospel.239
Many medieval European thinkers likewise knew large sections of Scripture by heart.240 In the twelfth century, for example, Hugh of St. Victor prescribed memorization of psalms—as well as of his seventy some folio pages of introduction to biblical history.241 The skill of memorizing texts has persisted into living memory of our own times in the West.242 Performance critics note how oral performers often memorize verbatim passages or books of the Bible.243 These are texts rather than purely oral traditions (i.e., more like Mark than like whatever oral accounts that informed him), but these cases do illustrate possibilities for human memory that our generation does not always imagine.
Ancient thinkers widely recognized the value of repetition for hearers’ memory.244 Even advanced students often rehearsed what they had learned;245 this practice could include repeatedly testing oneself.246 Studies show that repetition establishes the main points both in personal memory247 and in oral tradition,248 while also condensing them and conforming them more to an overarching schema249 and modifying the memory by its association with the new contexts.250
Lucian portrays a philosophic student as rehearsing each of the points of the previous day’s lectures in his mind.251 Pythagoreans, who also employed repetition to reinforce memorization,252 offer a particularly vivid, though presumably extreme, illustration of learning a school’s teachings.253 Disciples reportedly could not get out of bed in the morning until they had recited the previous day’s learning!254 The sources that have survived indicate that Jewish disciples also learned by repetition.255
This pervasive pedagogic pattern presumably would hold for Jesus’s disciples as well, since, again, they were disciples.256 Jesus may have supervised his disciples in disseminating his teachings at times even during his ministry;257 in any case, they certainly propagated his message afterward. Presumably, adherents of Jesus’s movement would call on them to recount stories about him over and over again. Communicating his acts and teachings over and over would have shaped and reinforced their memories of it.258 (Even today, professors who teach a course repeatedly can often recount much of its content from memory.)
Studies show that spaced practice (with intervals for rest) significantly aids retention and recall,259 with long-term effects demonstrated after even eight years.260 That the disciples were with Jesus for an extended period of time (perhaps a year or more) naturally would have made them quite familiar with his character and teaching.
15.3f. Taking Note of Note-Taking
It is far from certain that any of Jesus’s disciples took notes during his ministry, but ancient practice at least allows the possibility.261 Note-taking as a memory aid262 was common among those with sufficient literacy to employ it. In the northern Mediterranean sphere, some hearers of speeches took notes to capture the gist of the speeches,263 sometimes even during school declamations.264
Disciples of advanced Greek teachers, both in philosophy and rhetoric, often took notes during their teachers’ lectures.265 As early as five centuries before the era of Jesus’s disciples, such notes were sometimes published,266 a practice that continued in the period in which the Gospels were published.267
Especially in urban academic settings, however, note-taking prevailed. These settings differ from Jesus’s typically rural Galilean teaching venue. Moreover, some Jewish pedagogy highlighted orality more than did most Greek pedagogy.268 Nevertheless, some contend that even some Jewish disciples took rudimentary notes for use as initial mnemonic devices to recall larger blocs of material.269 Mnemonic devices appear earlier in Egypt and apparently in the OT and Dead Sea Scrolls.270 The potential use of rudimentary notes is compatible with models of predominantly oral transmission.271
Some scholars suggest that at least one of Jesus’s followers, a tax-collector (Mark 2:14), should have had the skills to take such notes,272 at least if we may infer anything from ancient tax records.273 This is not to assume that ordinary tax collectors could compose literary works such as our Gospels. But note-taking, like scrawling names on voting shards, was a far more elementary exercise than literary composition.274
Whether or not any disciples took notes when Jesus was teaching them, many ancient students who could take notes did so, which does reinforce my more general point that ancient pupils valued the preservation of their masters’ teachings.
15.3g. So What about Jesus and His Disciples?
If Jesus was a sage with disciples, we might reasonably expect that his disciples paid attention to his teachings. If Jesus’s disciples were not learning his teaching, why would we even envision them as disciples in the first place?275 Indeed, given the pervasive practice of memory in learning everywhere else, Jesus might have had to explicitly warn his disciples against memorization if he expected his disciples not to learn his teachings!276 And if they inherited his role as leaders in his movement, what would they have been teaching his movement more than his teaching? This conclusion would be all the more true if they were, as some argue, uneducated apart from what they learned from Jesus.
Memory was crucial to every form of education we know in antiquity, including purely oral instruction. To suppose that Jesus would not have instructed disciples to remember his teachings, contrary to the basic role expected for disciples, is to make Jesus’s pedagogy completely idiosyncratic in antiquity. It is also to reject virtually all the hard evidence available and to construct the opposite picture based on the silence that remains277—unfortunately a time-honored approach in some circles of NT scholarship.278 To argue that Jesus’s disciples were unlike other disciples from the period of the early empire is to dismiss our normal academic approach of understanding information in its historical context. Some may do so in an attempt to tame the Gospels’ portraits of Jesus, but this recourse makes the disciples culturally idiosyncratic and unintelligible in an attempt to make Jesus less so.
Granted, Plato reshapes Socrates’s dialogues, and John reshapes Jesus’s discourses, but the norm in the early empire (which Plato preceded by more than three centuries) handled teachers’ teachings more conservatively. This is especially the case with individual sayings (aphorisms) and stories, which, unlike lengthy dialogues, dominate the Synoptics.
While Jesus’s disciples were like other disciples in many respects, however, the tradition does highlight a key feature that differentiates them from many kinds of disciples. Their adherence to Jesus was not to one teacher among many, as in the rabbinic movement or among many popular philosophers.279 It is closer to that of disciples of a teacher founding a new school or movement, thus to disciples of Pythagoras or to followers of Qumran’s teacher of righteousness. And whereas some of the teaching of the Qumran community’s founder may have passed into community doctrine anonymously, the gospel tradition regularly credits Jesus and Jesus alone as the source of all authoritative teaching.280
15.4. What about the Witnesses’ Illiteracy?
Some critics dismiss the relevance of all this evidence, contending that it derives mostly from the ranks of the elite. Since barely any nonelite textual evidence survives, however, this argument might be deployed to facilitate the dismissal of all textual evidence, so that critics can then offer arguments from the silence that remains.
Modern Western scholars sometimes assume an elitist posture toward those who lack the opportunities for literary education available to us. Learners can develop needed expertise in other areas. For example, when I have a toilet leak, the plumber’s skills and mechanical knowledge readily trump my humanities PhD. Likewise, I have encountered greater biblical content literacy among many high school students in some parts of Africa than among some North American seminary graduates (I except here the studious ones, of course).
More to the point of illiteracy proper, some prominent examples of skill in oral composition are illiterate.281 Although illiterate bards may fail in precise verbatim recall, in many societies they can recite large selections of tradition.282 In the third century BCE, Herodas’s Didaskalos depicts a widowed grandmother as illiterate, yet “at least able to recite speeches from tragedy.”283 This description could reflect Herodas’s comic poetic license, but the humor might reflect an incongruity of real life.284
A key objection raised to Jesus’s disciples being the source of gospel tradition is that they were illiterate and low-class, hence they could not have taken notes.285 Some scholars argue against much literacy in Judea and Galilee,286 though others have been more optimistic.287 Generalities about most Galileans being illiterate aside, few would argue that Jesus’s disciples had “professional” training respected by the scribes; their teacher was Jesus, who did not belong to the elite (John 7:15; Acts 4:13).288
15.4a. Was Everyone in the Movement’s First Generation Illiterate?
Regardless of general literacy, I noted above that tax collectors, relevant to at least one follower during Jesus’s ministry (Mark 2:14), could take basic notes; Papias, writing in the early second century, thinks that the tax collector provided material followed by other disciples.289 None of my arguments depend on note-taking or on disciples being literate, though I allow above for the possibility of at least some basic notes.
More important, one might expect some in the rapidly growing Jerusalem church to be able to make notes even in the earliest years,290 if such notes were a matter of interest. Literacy was more common in urban areas;291 even in impoverished Egypt, most metropolites (citizens of Greek-speaking nome capitals), in contrast to typical rural agriculturalists, could read and write.292 Some followers able to write, who heard the apostles recount Jesus’s life and teachings, may well have taken notes. Even an average literacy as low as 3 percent would yield some literate persons, even if the Jesus movement included only several hundred persons.293 Teachers often left the matter of publication to their followers.294 If Jesus’s immediate disciples could not write, some of their followers surely could.295
Indeed, we know of even an outsider to the movement in the first century—Josephus—who preserved some information about Jesus;296 Paul did not write at the level of Josephus, but he was certainly literate and converted probably within at the most just a few years after Jesus’s death (1 Cor 15:8),297 and it is most improbable that he alone was literate.298 Even if only 1 percent of the new apostolic movement in Judea was literate, that would have provided plenty of recorders had anyone wished to write accounts about Jesus at that time.299
15.4b. Did They Need to Be Literate to Pass On Information?
But the disciples’ literacy is a moot point in any case. Apart from what rhetoricians called artificial memory, which uses elaborate mnemonic devices, memory practices noted among ancient disciples apply to disciples in general, not exclusively to the literate. Not all disciples of sages came from the ranks of the educated.300 Lucian complains that not only many disciples but even their teachers were uneducated members of the working class.301 Greek schools varied among themselves whether to emphasize oral memory or learning texts.302 Literacy is not necessary to pass on the substance of what one learns orally. Nor do all the memory feats mentioned earlier, such as those of Seneca the Elder, require an intermediate step of writing (though Seneca was nothing if not literate).
Whether literate or illiterate, disciples by definition were supposed to learn their teachers’ teachings, whether in writing or orally. Even later rabbis emphasized oral more than written transmission of their legal traditions,303 although their emphasis on the Torah involved a relatively fixed text.304 Perhaps most significantly, if one appeals to lack of literacy in Galilee to contend for the disciples’ illiteracy, one should reckon with the corollary that follows from the same ancient evidence: Jewish disciples especially learned orally.305 If Jesus’s disciples learned orally, their literacy is strictly irrelevant.
Verbatim memory is stronger in societies where literacy exists, but gist memory, more relevant to most of the Jesus tradition, can flourish with or without literacy.306 Even were we referring to verbatim memory, however, ancient Mediterranean society was a society where literacy existed. Orality and literacy coexisted in much of the Mediterranean world.307 The condition is for literacy to exist as a control, not necessarily for all tradents to be literate.308
But let us assume for a moment that all Jesus’s disciples, even (astonishingly) the tax collector, were illiterate. In such a case, when they taught, they would need to rely all the more on what they had learned from Jesus. Of course, as already noted, since most authors of all social classes dictated their work orally, objections to the disciples’ ability to write is a red herring anyway.309
15.4c. Memory among Nonelites: General Considerations
Not only elites but a significant proportion of people in some other oral societies can recall extensive amounts of shared tradition.310 Illiterate and minimally literate people normally recall themes and gist, not exact wording; still, their cultural-memory specialists can recount epics that astound modern Westerners.311
Variation is standard fare in oral performance; just as a good preacher or professor today may take account of implicit audience feedback in presenting his or her sermon or lecture, so oral performers adapt their presentations for their audiences.312 Oral performers typically display originality not by “making up new stories” but by contextualizing them for their current audience.313
This usual practice of variation suggests that even the eyewitnesses of Jesus’s ministry would have retold the same stories in varying ways; the Evangelists, therefore, had little reason to strive for verbatim reproduction. Not surprisingly, then, some scholars suggest that this practice in most renditions of oral tradition helps explain some of the range of differences in the Gospels, a variation that in specific traditions nevertheless leaves the essential gist.314 Still, many of these variations may also reflect the ancient rhetorical practice of paraphrase315 and literary use of gist memory in adapting sources.316
Yet most Synoptic accounts actually diverge from one another far less than one encounters in many oral traditions and in many cases of ancient literary dependence.317 Their conspicuous similarity may reflect their respect for the authoritative status of their material, their lesser rhetorical interest in paraphrase, and most relevantly here, their brief chronological distance from their material. Again, the period of exclusively oral transmission between Jesus’s execution and the first of the circulated Gospels cannot be more than about four decades, that is, well within living memory.
15.4d. Memory among Nonelites: Ancient Reports
Regarding ancient memory, however, we need not settle for generalized analogies regarding various cultures’ oral traditions today. Naturally, most extant evidence from antiquity comes from elites, since elites circulated texts (other than business documents, graffiti, and occasional letters) most widely. Nevertheless, some concrete evidence also confirms that nonelites valued memory.
For example, probably allowing for some performance variation, many bards could recite from memory the entire Iliad and Odyssey, even though the educated often looked down on them as lacking critical skills.318 (Songs were used even for children’s learning, but only the most highly educated used mnemotechnics.)319 Some persons today who are illiterate in Arabic memorize the Qur’an,320 which makes plausible even the ancient claim that one ancient people knew the Iliad from memory, even though they no longer spoke good Greek.321
Ordinary people in antiquity informally passed on stories and songs that they believed to be ancient.322 Ancient researchers trusted local oral traditions sufficiently that they often depended on them, even when they were centuries old,323 which illustrates the expectation that those interested in memories (such as localities to whom they mattered) preserved them. Dependence on such centuries-old cases was probably sometimes ill-advised,324 but we must keep in mind that all the canonical Gospels, by contrast, were likely composed within a maximum of six and a half decades after the events they narrate.325 Yet the Gospels, too, may be like islands in a wider sea of oral tradition.326
Jewish people also informally passed on various stories.327 Most relevantly, Jewish boys necessarily developed memory skills; whether or not they could read and (still more rarely) write, Jewish boys learned to recite Torah.328 Those who were not literate therefore learned Torah orally.329 Ordinary Galileans who passed on stories with family or neighbors probably had memory skills more developed than those of their highly literate modern Western critics.330 Like Jesus’s disciples, ordinary Judean and Galilean boys lacked any “professional” training, but they were brought up to know and obey their ancestral laws, which they would also teach to their own children.331 Other illiterate persons would naturally learn stories about Jesus that they heard repeatedly.332
What sort of memories would predominate among eyewitnesses? Apart from teachings, eyewitnesses would remember special occasions they had experienced.
15.5. What Should Genuine Memories Look Like?
Science often tests hypotheses by making predictions based on them and observing the outcomes. After a thorough survey of the results of memory studies, Robert McIver offers some basic predictions of what form the gospel traditions would take “if they are derived from eyewitness memories.”333 Based on his earlier, detailed treatment of eyewitness memory, he concludes that any tradition originally promulgated by eyewitnesses should heavily reflect episodic memory.334 As David Rubin also observes, autobiographic memory normally assumes a narrative form from the start.335
Although some elements of learning from Jesus presumably drew on semantic memory, which is the primary sort of memory tested in older research, the sort most relevant to Jesus’s disciples would be personal-event memory. People are more apt to recall personal experiences than experiences that they have simply heard about.336 Presumably the disciples would have remembered quite a number of these. (Personally, I would expect them to have paid some attention to particularly dramatic incidents such as putative restorations from blindness and death, at least until these sorts of experiences became too common to recall distinct incidents!)
I quote here McIver’s list of predictions for tradition shaped by eyewitnesses:
Long-term oral traditions are often linear rather than episodic,338 but that is not the case for personal memories. Unlike some OT traditions, the Gospels stem from the period of oral history (living memory), rather than extended oral tradition. Episodic memory, therefore, is their appropriate form.
Although episodic form is certainly not limited to true stories,339 as McIver acknowledges, it is appropriate to them. This form is not limited to and thus does not prove eyewitness foundations,340 but it undercuts a traditional argument against them. McIver thus concludes that, contrary to the assumptions of many earlier form critics, the mostly episodic form of Synoptic passages (pericopes) outside the passion narrative is consistent with accounts deriving from witnesses.341 Memory studies lead us to expect witnesses to remember extraordinary events surrounding Jesus, such as unusual miracles, more than precisely worded sayings.342 Disciples might also recall some events in connection with special locations.343
But would the eyewitnesses’ episodic memory also be passed on in episodic format? Not necessarily, but on average, most episodes in living-memory biographies more likely reflect accounts of episodes than not: episodes remain episodes more easily than disconnected material or a longer story becomes episodes. Episodes can fit naturally into the ancient rhetorical form of chreiai. A chreia is a saying with a meaningful context. While chreiai could equally reflect either genuinely veridical experiences or fabricated ones, the overall description is certainly suitable for the sort of material that would be more readily remembered.344 (The length and form of ancient chreiai did, however, vary considerably.)345 Elementary students regularly copied, memorized, and eventually developed chreiai as part of their practice in reading and writing.346
According to one quite disputed understanding of Papias, Peter “used to give his teachings in the form of chreiai.”347 Whether or not Papias had this rhetorical sense in view, chreiai often appear in ancient biographic sources,348 although those closest in time to the authors tend to be more reliable than earlier ones. The combination of such narratives with anecdotes, teaching material (esp. in accounts of sages), and an extended account of the protagonist’s end was common in ancient biography in general.349 It fits the episodic character of most Synoptic narratives.350
As noted in the previous chapter, the central eyewitnesses might well remember nearly half of their most significant experiences with Jesus for decades thereafter.351 McIver reasons that we should not expect the disciples to remember all details precisely, but the gist of witnessed episodes that they did recall would be mostly accurate, and they would likely also accurately recall many random details.352 That we cannot reconstruct every detail of the Jesus tradition in the Synoptics no more undermines its general portrait of Jesus than does the imperfection of language emphasized by deconstructionists render all communication useless.353
Eyewitness testimony is mostly reliable, especially in gist and more often than not even in the key details that it does preserve.354 Our default approach, then, should be to assume, when we lack evidence to the contrary, that biographic anecdotes from living memory more likely represent real events, rather than that they do not.355 This observation would normally hold true for biographies of then-recent figures from the early empire.
Of course, one could argue that the disciples deliberately falsified Jesus’s teaching. But again, this would make them unlike nearly all other disciples from this period. This accusation would refer, not to the sort of “fictionalizing” or adaptation characteristic of ancient storytelling or biographies (chs. 2, 11), but to outright lying and conspiracy.356
But if their report was a conspiracy this widespread, we might expect persecutions357 to produce some renunciations, and detractors to cite such recantations, for which any evidence is lacking. Nor, among apologetic problems of early Christians, do we find them needing to defend themselves against charges of witnesses’ renunciations. Why would any critic assume something so out of the ordinary, specifically for Jesus’s disciples and not for most others?358 Perhaps one might feel compelling religious objections to Jesus more than to other ancient teachers, but such objections do not methodologically justify such an idiosyncratic view of his earliest followers. Other critics may simply be skeptical of all oral history; this approach is at least methodologically consistent, although I and many oral historians (see ch. 16) would demur from it.
Jesus’s disciples would not have remembered everything that Jesus said, nor would they have recalled his teachings in a form close to verbatim, apart from many of his aphorisms or persistent figures of speech. Nevertheless, by any normal historiographic standards we should expect much of the substance of key teachings to remain.
Ancient Mediterranean culture valued and thus trained memory more than modern Western culture does. Ancient memories could be highly developed, as illustrated in oratory, storytelling, basic education, and advanced education. Most important, disciples, whether literate or not, normally preserved the substance of their masters’ teachings and, where relevant, stories about their behavior.
In light of the foregoing discussion, the most appropriate starting assumption should be that Jesus’s disciples would have learned and transmitted his teachings no less carefully than most other ancient disciples transmitted the wisdom of their mentors.359
To assume that Jesus’s disciples acted completely unlike other disciples with regard to transmitting their teachers’ ideas—despite the comparatively early publication of sources about Jesus—is to value one’s skepticism about Jesus more highly than the concrete comparative evidence. Whereas some scholars may exhibit an unfair canonical bias, scholars who treat the gospel traditions as significantly less reliable than analogous traditions from antiquity reflect either an anticanonical bias or, perhaps more often, inadequate direct knowledge of the analogous ancient sources to make the comparisons.
Unless, of course, most of those who heard these disciples substantially distorted their message. I turn to this question in the next chapter.
1. See, e.g., Theon, Progymnasmata 1.93–171; later, Hermogenes, Method in Forceful Speaking 24.440; Libanius, Anecdote 1.4; 2.3; Maxim 1.2–5; 2.3; 3.2.
2. See the varied discussions in Allison, Constructing Jesus; Bauckham, “Eyewitnesses”; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 325–41 (esp. on gist in 333–34); Redman, “Eyewitnesses”; McIver, “Eyewitnesses.”
3. Pace Kloppenborg, “Memory,” 296.
4. See, e.g., Byrskog, Story, 153–57; Bauckham, “Response,” 237; see ch. 9. If someone wishes to argue that nonextant popular historiography must have differed from extant evidence, they should admit that they are arguing from silence, rather than from the limited evidence that survives. Analogies work from available evidence.
5. E.g., Xenophon, Apology 2; Agesilaus 3.1; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Thucydides 7; Plutarch, Demosthenes 11.1; Arrian, Alexander 1.pref.2–3; 6.11.8; Cornelius Nepos, On Great Generals 23 (Hannibal), 13.3; 25 (Atticus), 13.7; 17.1; cf. Xenophon, Hellenica 6.2.31 (refusing to believe a report until an eyewitness was available); Tacitus, Annals 3.16 (reporting an unlikely account, though not committed to it, because he received it from the previous generation). See also Aune, Environment, 81; Alexander, Preface, 34. Historians today are apt to trust eyewitness knowledge even in otherwise questionable ancient historians (e.g., Brown, Historians, 142, 146; in more recent history, see, e.g., Wigger, Saint, 363).
6. See Meister, “Herodotus,” 267–68; Byrskog, “History,” 279. Cf., e.g., Herodotus, Histories 3.55; Egyptian priests had earlier but not always accurate information in 2.99–101, 109, 111–13, 116, 118–24.
7. See Josephus, Life 357; Against Apion 1.45–49, 56; Jewish War 1.2–3.
8. See discussion in, e.g., Keener, Acts, 1:185–87.
9. See, e.g., Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 103.8; 106.3; comment in ch. 14.
10. See, e.g., Kysar, John, 12; O’Day, “John,” 500; Smith, John (1999), 400; Hengel, Question; Bauckham, Testimony; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 550–51 (listing examples); Keener, John, 1:81–139.
11. But cf. Tertullian. Against Marcion 4.2, 5; Origen in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.25.3–6.
12. Collins, Mark, 2–6; cf. Hengel, “Geography,” 33n19. Diaspora Jews who settled in Jerusalem, which could include John Mark’s relatives (cf. Acts 4:36; Col 4:10), would certainly know Greek (see, e.g., Keener, Acts, 2:1253–59; cf. the example of Paul); funerary inscriptions also show that many of Jerusalem’s elite knew Greek well; most Judean works in Greek, such as Mark, were preserved in the Diaspora. But nothing in my argument depends on Mark being Judean in any case.
13. Although I cannot appeal to consensus or hope to persuade all readers here, I believe that, by standards of external attestation used for other ancient literature, extant reports about the Gospels from within living memory include Mark recording the memories of a leading eyewitness; Matthew recording his own eyewitness memories (though I take this original, Jewish sayings record to be more like Q than our completed Gospel of Matthew, which combined that material with Mark’s narrative); and John’s Gospel being from an eyewitness. I also believe that the current Gospels of Matthew and Luke depend on two of these eyewitness sources, with Luke possibly knowing some oral material later incorporated in the Fourth Gospel, and Luke having been a traveling companion of Paul. We can evade attributing the apostolic fathers’ reports about the Gospels to living memory only by dating the Gospels much earlier than our consensus dating, or by dismissing the truthfulness of the early second-century sources, inasmuch as they do not fit our currently dominant scholarly schema.) Thus, on my reconstruction, our Gospels reflect at least three major, mostly independent witnesses of Jesus. So many surviving sources so close to the figure reported is very rare for ancient literature (although we have instances, such as with Socrates), as others also note (e.g., Puig i Tàrrech, Jesus, 2). I believe that NT scholars typically underestimate the wealth of early material genuinely available to them. (On points such as the passion and resurrection, we may add Paul; if James reflects early material, some of Jesus’s sayings in Matthew also surface there.)
14. Cf. Bockmuehl, Seeing, 186; Thornton, “Justin und Markusevangelium”; Trevijano Etcheverría, “Obra”; discussion in Keener, “Ehrman vs. McIver,” 300–301.
15. E.g., Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1; 3.10.5; Clement of Alexandria fragments (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 2.15; 6.14; comments on 1 Peter in Cassiodorus). Some so construe also Justin, Dialogue with Trypho 106 (see Kruger, Crossroads, 215).
16. Cf. the clear allusion to Luke 1:2 in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.36.1, in a context also discussing Papias (frag., 3.36.2), but the language is Eusebius’s (cf. 3.4.6).
17. Papias, frag., 3.15 (Holmes). Papias applies this verb elsewhere to those who “followed” the apostles (3.4–5). In 3.15 I take the subject of “adapted,” the first “remembered,” and perhaps the second “remembered” (a different term) to be Peter; the reference to memory could, however, be to Mark’s (see Barnett, Finding, 79). Some find internal evidence for oral shaping in Mark; see, e.g., Dewey, “Methods” (brought to my attention by Elia Mesrico Abdi Kasih); Zwiep, “Orality.” Papias’s Mark apparently recalls Peter’s ministry from natural performance settings, not dictation.
18. With Eve, Behind Gospels, 143.
19. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 509–49 (esp. 510–20), goes further, emphasizing Peter as the Gospel’s first and last disciple named (Mark 1:16; 16:7) and comparing apparent implicit allusions to witnesses in other ancient works, a comparison that merits further exploration.
20. Cf. the later apocryphal Gospel of Peter (Origen, Commentary on Matthew 10:17; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.3, 25; 6.12), usually identified with the manuscript discovered in 1886 that has been given that title (see Gospel of Peter 14.60; cf. 7.26).
21. See, e.g., Xenophon, Anabasis 2.5.41; 3.1.4–6; Thucydides, History 1.1.1; 2.103.2; 5.26.1; Polybius, Histories 31.23.1–31.24.12; 38.19.1; 38.21.1; 38.22.3; Caesar, Civil War, throughout, e.g., 1.1; Gallic Wars, throughout, e.g., 1.7; 2.1; 3.28; 4.13; 5.9; 6.4; 7.17; Campbell, “Narrator”; Jackson, “Conventions”; Keener, John, 105; Keener, “Claims.”
22. Papias seems to depend on information prior to himself from “the Elder”; see France, Mark, 7–8; Bauckham, World, 114–20, 153–64. Cf. 1 Pet 5:13.
23. Cf. Collins, Mark, 4.
24. Eve, Behind Gospels, 143.
25. E.g., Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” although adding helpful insights. Ehrman, Before Gospels, 101, complains that few scholars “have found Bauckham’s case persuasive,” but this verdict depends on what one means by “persuasive” and to which elements of his case one refers. Fairly positive reviews include Anthony Harvey (in the Times Literary Supplement), James Carleton Paget of Cambridge (Journal of Ecclesiastical History), and Gary A. Anderson of Notre Dame (First Things). Like some others who largely have appreciated Bauckham’s work (Dunn, “Eyewitnesses,” 105; Keener, “Review of Bauckham,” 132), Byrskog, “Eyewitnesses,” was largely positive but found least convincing (158–59) Bauckham’s argument that the gospel traditions sometimes specifically identify their witnesses (though cf. now Bauckham’s response, with further evidence, in “Response,” 226–28; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 510–36); for some initial respectful counterarguments, see Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 104–6.
26. Eve, Behind Gospels, 156, 158.
27. Eve, Behind Gospels, 156.
28. Eve, Behind Gospels, 158; cf. 180. As Eve notes, even Patterson, “Review,” 197–98, recognizes the common sense in this approach for some of the gospel tradition, while demurring from Bauckham’s fuller confidence. This is not to suggest, as many scholars do, that the Gospels were originally anonymous; their first recipients presumably knew the authors’ identity (cf. Luke 1:3–4). Ancient works often omitted the author’s name inside the document itself, taking for granted the readers’ knowledge of the author; cf., e.g., historical prefaces that identify their authors only by speaking in the first person singular (Livy 1.pref.; Arrian, Alexander pref.; Tacitus, Annals 1.1; Histories 1.1; Herodian, History 1.1.1–6). The foreign wars attributed to Appian identifies him as the author (pref.15), but his Civil Wars does not; Tacitus, Germania 1 does not name the author, yet the first-person singular in, e.g., Germania 2, 46 implies that he is known. Josephus never names himself as author of the Jewish Antiquities, but his identification of himself there as author of the Jewish War (cf. Campbell, “Narrator,” 400) confirms that Josephus’s audience knew his identity. Among biographical prefaces, Diogenes Laertius does not name himself, nor does Tacitus, Agricola 1–3 (though his first-person singular usage in Agricola 1, 3, and mention of Agricola as his father-in-law in Agricola 2 are plain enough); Suetonius cites the testimony of his father, whom he names (Otho 10) in a biography that does not open by identifying himself (Otho 1). See now Gathercole, “Anonymity.”
29. In empirical studies, commemorated community traditions become so familiar that they restructure individual memory (Kirk, Memory, 224, noting Harris, Paterson, and Kemp, “Recall”).
30. Lack of recall of the face is not uncommon (Hanley and Cohen, “Memory for People,” 108), and the presence of a weapon often distracts attention from the face (McIver, Memory, 11). I do recall the frightened expression on the burglar’s face and the angry tone of my own voice, both the opposite of what one might expect. The duration of exposure to the incident also affects recall (Wright and Loftus, “Eyewitness Memory,” 97).
31. My journal entry for that date can verify these memories.
32. Wright and Loftus, “Eyewitness Memory,” 93.
33. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 355–57; Bauckham, “Psychology of Memory” (noting also that even here a case study may prove more optimistic than laboratory settings; he cites Yuille and Cutshall, “Case Study”); Kirk, Memory, 213–14.
34. McIver, Memory, 12–16, esp. 13–14; McIver, “Eyewitnesses,” 535, 545. One could also cite examples from history; a recent example is archaeological confirmation of eyewitnesses’ timing of an 1838 shipwreck (cf. Price, “Shipwreck”).
35. Kirk, Memory, 214.
36. Confirming material that overlaps; cf. Robinson, “Perspective,” 214.
37. Vansina, Oral Tradition, 159, rejects using the Synoptics themselves for multiple attestation because he views them as interdependent rather than independent. This approach may, however, raise the question of the first sources.
38. McIver, Memory, 16, 186.
39. Cf., e.g., Quadratus, frag. 2 (Holmes; Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 4.3.2). Although estimates are debatable, for the likelihood of a number surviving late, Kirk, “Nexus,” 144, cites Os, Analyses, 57, 83; see also Bockmuehl, Seeing, 178–79; for a fairly small number, see McIver, Memory, 189–209, esp. 208–9.
40. See also Schwartz, “Smoke,” 17.
41. For the identity of Cephas as Peter, see, e.g., Allison, “Peter,” with the strong majority of scholars; pace Ehrman, “Cephas.”
42. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.200.
43. Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 186–87.
44. See, e.g., Bartlett, Remembering, followed by Crossan, Birth, 79–83. But this laboratory research addresses primarily semantic memory, and more recent research highlights how the usual conditions of such earlier research differ from communal memory; see Schwartz, “Smoke,” 24–25; Rubin, Memory, 130–32, 144; Kirk and Thatcher, “Tradition,” 37; Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 822–24. Bartlett’s primary experiments were also with students for whom the material was culturally alien (Horsley, “Patterns,” 64–65; Rosenberg, “Complexity,” 85, noting why folklorists regularly qualify Bartlett’s classic study).
45. Rubin, Memory, 7–8, 133–35.
46. Rubin, Memory, 122.
47. Rubin, Memory, 124, 144, 154–55, 228; on overlearning, see Rubin, Memory, 123–24; on spaced learning, 124–27.
48. Rubin, Memory, 155.
49. Rubin, Memory, 144.
50. Ong, Orality, 22; Rosenberg, “Complexity,” 82–83; Rubin, Memory, 8, 63, 87, 146, 155, 306; Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 829–30 (following, e.g., Rubin, Memory, 90, 101, 293); Kirk, Memory, 75, 87, 105, 195–99; Nikulin, “Introduction,” 8–9 (though Goody, Interface, 98, associates some metrical forms with literate culture); on cuing more generally, see esp. Rubin, Memory, 161–67, 175, 304–5. Such features were noted in the Jesus tradition before modern oral tradition studies; see, e.g., Jeremias, Theology, throughout; Burney, Poetry; on cues, see discussion of Bultmann and Dibelius in Kirk, Memory, 198. Mark lacks rhythm but includes numerous formulas (Wire, “Mark,” 53).
51. Rubin, Memory, 88.
52. Rubin, Memory, 90; see further 90–121. For the role of meaning-making in memory, cf. Zimmermann, “Memory,” 135–36.
53. Ehrman, Introduction, 52–53; cf. Ehrman, Before Gospels, 190–91 on chain transmission. Ehrman’s current work on memory is more sophisticated, and I address it in “Ehrman vs. McIver”; note also the stronger critique in Gundry, “Memories.”
54. See Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 823–24; Kirk, Memory, 189–91. Bockmuehl, Seeing, 180, 184–85, depends on chains of connection in a different sense.
55. Dunn, Perspective, 43, 114–15.
56. E.g., Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.22.524.
57. Dunn, Tradition, 242; cf. Mark 8:16; 9:10, 34; Luke 24:15–17.
58. For at least some delegation in the early Christian community, see, e.g., Acts 6:6; 14:23; 2 Tim 2:2; Tit 1:5; James 5:14; cf. Gal 6:6; 1 Thess 5:12–13; 1 Pet 5:5; 3 John 9.
59. Ehrman, Before Gospels, 5–8.
60. Ehrman himself does recognize such growth; see Before Gospels, 80–81.
61. Schwartz, “Smoke,” 12. On multiple original versions, see also Dunn, Tradition, 56, 281; Aune, “Aphorisms,” 225. No one regarded a speaker’s reuse and adaptation of a basic saying in multiple contexts “as a secondhand version of the first” time he used it (Kelber, “Works,” 236–37). Because verbatim preservation is not expected in oral memory, it is difficult to speak of an “original” version even of the same story (Anderson, “Oral Tradition,” 29; cf. Mournet, “Original,” 263).
62. Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 822; Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 89–101 (particularly devastating on this point, 94–98); Kirk, Memory, 50–51n8, 189.
63. Murphy, Introduction, 22 (fuller discussion on 22–23); brought to my attention by Blomberg, Reliability, 61; cf. Williams, Trust, 77–78.
64. Bailey, “Tradition” (ExpT), 366. In his traditional rural Middle Eastern setting, the main lines of a story can be transmitted intact, even through long chains (Bailey, “Tradition” [Themelios], 7–8).
65. Byrskog, Teacher, 308n2; Rubin, Memory, 130; Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 822–23; Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 93.
66. Rodríguez, Structuring, 42–45, challenging (on 45) Halbwachs’s apparently exclusive emphasis on the social dimension (cf. also Le Donne, Historiographical Jesus, 49). Through his enthusiasm for the social context of all memory, Halbwachs’s work lent itself to the misinterpretation that he excluded any role for individual memory, but he simply emphasized the social context of individual memory (Person and Keith, “Media Studies,” 9; Le Donne, “Presentism,” 307; Hubenthal, “Social Memory”; cf. Kirk, “Collective Memory,” 59; Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” 2). Halbwachs stressed the interpenetration of autobiographical memory and the memory of those who knew such accounts (Esler, “Memory,” 156).
67. Fivush, Haden, and Reese, “Reminiscing,” 341–42, 357–58.
68. See Ehrman, Before Gospels, 76. Still, the more common effect of “social contagion” is positive, by enabling individuals to learn by incorporating new details (McIver, Memory, 70). Wrong confidence can encourage false memories (Barclay, “Autobiographical Remembering,” 121–22), though some argue that confidence correlates with accuracy more often than not (Brewer, “Recollective Memory,” 46; but cf. 49).
69. Ehrman, Before Gospels, 75.
70. McIver, Memory, 70. Cf. Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 186–87.
71. Cf. Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 186–87.
72. Mentioned briefly in Keener and Keener, Impossible Love, 235–36.
73. Kirk, “Nexus,” 148; Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 835, and Kirk, Memory, 81, following Malkki, Purity and Exile, 56, 106, 244.
74. Dunn, Perspective, 45–46.
75. Those skeptical of more specific textual evidence should consider that a teacher without popular influence would probably have posed little threat to the elite.
76. In 1 Cor 15 Paul speaks esp. of witnesses of the resurrection (15:15) because that is his subject and possibly his most controversial point. On the reliability of the tradition about the Twelve, see, e.g., Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 11, 98–101; Meier, “Circle.”
77. Dunn, Tradition, 242; cf. Mark 8:16; 9:10, 34; Luke 24:15–17.
78. Dunn, Tradition, 242; cf. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 284–85, citing Matt 10:40; Mark 9:37; Luke 10:16; John 13:20; and Schürmann, “Anfänge.” On the likelihood of such missions (albeit condensed in the Gospels to one or two), see Bernier, Quest, 62. Teachers typically gave students practice (e.g., Pliny, Letters 2.3.5–6); wonder-working prophets also trained prophet disciples (1 Sam 3:1; 19:20–24; cf. 2 Kings 2:3–18; y. Taʿan. 3:8, §2; Pesiq. Rab. Kah. 24:18).
79. Horsley, “Patterns,” 61–62.
80. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.22.524.
81. McIver, Memory, 154–56.
82. McIver, Memory, 181, quoting Dodd, Founder, 33 (21–22 in the 1971 edition); cf. Dodd, Parables, 1. Distinctive events are more memorable (Brewer, “Recollective Memory,” 50).
83. For a few selections, see Unchained Memories; Taylor, Born a Slave; Bland, Slave Narratives.
84. Schwartz, “Smoke,” 8.
85. See, e.g., Provan, Long, and Longman, History, 47–58, and Schnabel, Jesus in Jerusalem, 7, both following esp. Coady, Testimony (esp. 46–47).
86. McIver, Memory, 157; McIver, “Eyewitnesses,” 545–46.
87. Cf. Bernier, Quest, 66. For different approaches to ancient forged accounts, see Ehrman, Forgery; Baum, “Content.”
88. See Belli and Loftus, “Pliability,” esp. 172–76.
89. McIver, Memory, 157. Dibelius, Tradition, 62, was generally less radical than Bultmann; on Dibelius as a pioneer but lacking in nuance, cf. Thatcher, “Dibelius,” esp. 83.
90. McIver, Memory, 163–82.
91. McIver, Memory, 163. Dunn, Tradition, 237, concedes developing this point inadequately in Remembered. The term for disciples can mean “followers” or “adherents” more generally, but the pervasive picture in the gospel tradition is of Jesus’s pupils (see Wilkins, Discipleship; also Byrskog, Teacher, 221–28).
92. Riesner, “Teacher,” 938.
93. Origen, Against Celsus 1.63, 65.
94. At this point some critics might circle back to miracle claims: Hume (Miracles, 27, 29, 32, 34, 38–39, 43, 52) essentially dismissed claimants of miracles as fools or liars, but this prejudice simply exposes Hume’s hidden religious agenda (see Cramer, “Miracles,” 136–37; cf. Weintraub, “Credibility,” 371). His argument is widely recognized today as circular (see ch. 12; Houston, Miracle; Johnson, Hume; Earman, “Bayes”; Earman, Failure).
95. Cf. John 15:20; Origen, Against Celsus 1.68, 71; esp. Mark 3:22; Matt 10:25.
96. McIver, Memory, 164–65 (cf. also 167–68, 180), citing, e.g., Morgan, Literate Education, 3; Atherton, “Children,” 217. I have addressed this elsewhere in further detail, e.g., in Keener, “Assumptions.”
97. Cf. Wilkins, Discipleship.
98. Emphasis remained on the gist, passing on reminiscences, with both fixity and flexibility, as in Bailey’s Middle East tradition approach; see Alexander, “Memory,” 143.
99. See, e.g., Libanius, Anecdote 4.1. Likewise Isocrates’s teaching multiplied his role (Libanius, Anecdote 3.2).
100. E.g., in Lucian, Alexander 61; Socratics, Letters 20; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.29.621; Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 28.148–49; 32.226; cf. Seneca, To Lucilius 40.3. See further Eve, Behind Gospels, 179; Klauck, “Presence,” 61–62; Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 120; van der Horst, “Cornutus,” 168–69; Metzger, “Considerations,” 17–18n84; BDAG.
101. Lucian, Alexander 61; Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 28.148. Sometimes Jewish teachers cited only what they believed to be the tradition’s original source (m. ʿEd. 8:7; ʾAbot 1:1; cf. 1 Cor 11:23).
102. Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 28.149.
103. Thucydides, History 1.85.1.
104. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.10.
105. See Matt 15:2; Mark 7:3, 5; Gal 1:14; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13.297, 408.
106. Luke 1:2; 1 Cor 11:23; 15:3; 2 Thess 2:15; cf. Acts 16:4; Papias, frag. 3.7–8, 11, 14; 20.1; 21.1; perhaps Diogn. 11.1, 6; 1 Clem. 7.2.
107. Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 112. For Epicureans, Riesner, Lehrer, 441–42, cites Cicero, On the Ends of Good and Evil 2.20; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.12, 139–54; Culpepper, School, 109.
108. Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 112–13; Sedley, “Debate,” 149.
109. Culpepper, School, 193; Alexander, “Memory,” 141; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 7.10.1; Socrates, Letters 20.
110. See Diogenes Laertius, Lives 10.1.12; Culpepper, School, 50.
111. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 129.
112. See, e.g., Cicero, Letters to Atticus 14.21; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.18; Suetonius, Vergil 22; Galen, Grief 83; P.Tebt. 104.40; P.Lond. 1164h.30; P.Oxy. 269.17–18; 1636.45–46; cf. further Stambaugh and Balch, Environment, 40; Harvey, Listening, 54n129; Richards, Letter Writing, 64–80, 143.
113. Namely, the negative use of the criterion of dissimilarity; see critiques in, e.g., Borg, Conflict, 20–23; Sanders, Jesus and Judaism, 16, 145; Sanders, “Know,” 60n12; Wright, People, 106; Meier, Marginal Jew, 1:173; Brown, Death, 19; Theissen and Merz, Guide, 11, 115; Theissen and Winter, Quest (drawing on Winter’s dissertation on that criterion); Ehrman, Prophet, 92 (cautiously); Holmén, “Doubts”; Holmén, Covenant Thinking, 20–31 (esp. 29–30); Tuckett, “Sources and Methods,” 133; Dunn, Perspective, 57–78, esp. 58; Levine, “Introduction,” 10–11; Kazen, “Imagery,” 87; Broadhead, “Priests,” 125; Neufeld, Recovering Jesus, 46; Deines, Acts of God, 60; Puig i Tàrrech, Jesus, 58–59; Keith, Scribal Elite, 79. Stein, Messiah, 48, compares what would happen if we applied it to Luther, accepting only what differed from both “sixteenth-century Roman Catholicism and Lutheranism.” Cf. also Wright, Victory, 339n88: “One might equally suggest that Martin Luther wrote the Letter to the Galatians.”
114. See, e.g., Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 8.15.ext.1; Seneca, To Lucilius 108.17, 20, 22; 110.14, 20; Musonius Rufus 1, 36.6–7; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 7.22; for disagreeing with the dominant view of one’s school, see, e.g., Seneca, To Lucilius 117.6; toward founders of a school, e.g., Reydams-Schils, “Authority.” For respect for teachers, see, e.g., ʾAbot R. Nathan 1A; 25A; Sipra Shemini Mekhilta deMiluim 99.5.6; Fronto, To Verus 2.3; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 5.38. One pupil reportedly did omit some of his teacher’s sayings, doing so because they were rhetorically inappropriate (Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.29.621).
115. See, e.g., Josephus, Life 10; m. ʾAbot 5:21; ʾAbot R. Nat. 23A; Safrai, “Education,” 953; discussion in Keener, Acts, 3:3210–12; cf. 2:1387, 1447–49.
116. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 2.2.3; Lucian, Career 1; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.7; Eunapius, Lives 493; Hock, “Paul and Education,” 204; Hock, “Curriculum,” 23; Heath, Hermogenes, 11–12; Stowers, Letter Writing, 32; Kaster, “Grammaticus”; Beck and Thomas, “Education,” 508; Cicero in Stamps, “Children,” 198; cf. Pliny, Letters 5.8.8; Marrou, History, 82–83; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 70; Keener, “Rhetoric,” 337. Although some continued study long afterward (Seneca, To Lucilius 108.5; Porphyry, Life of Plotinus 3; Eunapius, Lives 461) or even commenced studies later (b. Pesaḥ 49b; satire in Lucian, Hermotimus 2, 13), advanced education most often began in the teens.
117. Mark 1:30; later rabbis, at least, valued marrying around eighteen to twenty (m. ʾAbot 5:21, 32).
118. Rubin, “Introduction,” 13; Fitzgerald, “Meanings,” 372–74; also McIver, Memory, 85–86, citing Schuman and Scott, “Generations.” In the West, most of us experience more unique events in young adulthood, whereas until bereavement and decline in health, older life often follows more predictable patterns.
119. Schwartz, “Smoke,” 17.
120. With, e.g., Rubin, “Introduction,” 3; Christianson and Safer, “Emotional Events,” 219, 237–38; Pillemer et al., “Memories of College,” 336.
121. Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 341–46; cf. Allison, Constructing Jesus, 9n46; Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 183–84; Elliott, Feelings, 44–45; though cf. limitations in Woodman, Rhetoric, 18–22; Allison, Constructing Jesus, 7n40.
122. Small, Wax Tablets, 126–31, cites examples from Vitruvius 7.intro.6–7; Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.2; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.24.88; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.51; Plutarch, Themistocles 5.4.
123. E.g., Valerius Maximus, Memorable Doings and Sayings 8.7.ext.16; Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.24.88.
124. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 143; Kennedy, Art of Rhetoric, 123–25; Small, “Memory,” 204; more extensively, Blum, Mnemoteknik.
125. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.2. Was his current gist memory exaggerating the accuracy of his earlier verbatim memory?
126. Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.11.495.
127. Lowering expectations was a standard rhetorical ploy; see, e.g., Isocrates, Panathenaicus 3; Lysias, Orations 2.1, §190; 12.3, §120; 19.1–2, §152; Isaeus, Astyphilus 35; Aristarchus 1; Cicero, In Defense of Quinctius 1.1–4; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 1.9; 12.16; 32.39; 46.7; 47.1, 8; Pliny, Letters 8.3.3; Tacitus, Histories 4.73; Josephus, Against Apion 1.27; see esp. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 4.1.8–9, 11.
128. Seneca, Controversiae, throughout (presumably just the gist).
129. Seneca, Controversiae 1.pref.19. For exceptional memory, see also Suetonius, Grammarians 23.
130. Noll and Nystrom, Clouds, 127, 129. Further on Ramabai, cf. also Burgess, “Pandita Ramabai”; Arles, “Study”; Arles, “Appraisal”; Frykenberg, Christianity in India, 382–410.
131. Small, Wax Tablets, 110–12.
132. Small, Wax Tablets, 111; cf. 114.
133. Pointed out by Alfeyev, Beginning, 67.
134. Small, Wax Tablets, 128, citing McFarlin, Book of Records, 16.
135. Small, Wax Tablets, 129.
136. On the importance and nature of memory in antiquity, see also Byrskog, Story, 160–65; on ancient theories of memory, see, e.g., Farrell, “Phenomenology”; Bloch, Aristotle on Memory; Sorabji, Aristotle on Memory; Thatcher, “Theories”; Gibbons, “Plato”; for the wax tablet conception, see Brickle, “Wax Tablet.”
137. Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.16.28–40.
138. Cf. Cicero, On the Orator 2.351 (and Olbricht, “Delivery and Memory,” 163); Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.22.35; Byrskog, Story, 82–83, 110–11, 163–65; Walde, “Mnemonics”; Gaines, “Handbooks,” 167; Galinsky, “Introduction,” 17; see esp. Small, Wax Tablets, 81–94; Small, “Memory,” 196.
139. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 98; Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 98; Small, Wax Tablets, 82–86, citing Cicero, On the Orator 2.351–354; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.16; Nikulin, “Memory,” 36, 74. See also Hippias in Plato, Lesser Hippias 368d2–7; Xenophon, Symposium 4.62, both cited in Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 66; cf. Marrou, History, 55.
140. Riesner, Lehrer, 195.
141. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.27.
142. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.34–35. On the value of spaced practice, see, e.g., Rubin, Memory, 124–27.
143. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.33; as noted in Small, “Memory,” 202–3. Cf. other sorts of mental exercises in Sorabji, Emotion, 211–27. On Quintilian’s understanding of how children learn, cf. Bloomer, “Quintilian.”
144. Small, Wax Tablets, 83.
145. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.1–51; see further Kennedy, Art of Rhetoric, 403; Satterthwaite, “Acts,” 344; cf. Aeschines, Embassy 48, 112; Olbricht, “Delivery,” 159, 163.
146. E.g., Cicero, Brutus 93.324; Tacitus, Dialogue on Oratory 38.
147. On memorization in oratory, see also Marrou, History, 55, 199, 286; Nikulin, “Memory,” 72–78; e.g., Aeschines, Embassy 48, 112; Eunapius, Lives 502. Memorizing speeches goes back as early as Gorgias (Riesner, Lehrer, 441, citing Aristotle, Sophistical Refutations 183b–184a; cf. also Vatri, “Writing,” 770–71, following Heath, Menander, 266–67).
148. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.19.
149. Watson, “Education,” 310.
150. Pliny, Letters 2.3.3 (meaning “verbatim” by ancient standards).
151. Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.18.
152. Lucian, Peregrinus 3; Eunapius, Lives 494. Some apparently circulated orators’ speeches without the orators’ knowledge (Botha, “Publishing,” 347, on Philostratus Vit. soph. 579–80).
153. On the centrality of memory in antiquity, see, e.g., Rhoads, “Events,” 173; Rhoads, “Performance Criticism,” 285; Boomershine, “Performance,” 290; Galinsky, “Introduction,” 17.
154. For memory in ancient education, Riesner, Lehrer, 442–43, cites, e.g., Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.28–40, esp. 3.39; Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.1; 11.2.27–11.35.40; Cicero, On the Orator 1.157a; Epictetus, Encheiridion 49.3; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 523; Longinus, De memoria 202.21–203.3; 204.21–23; Plotinus, Enneades 4.6.3; cf. briefly Riesner, “Preacher,” 203.
155. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric (2), 27.
156. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 181.
157. Riesner, Lehrer, 452, citing Brunner, Erziehung, 179, and comparing also Longinus as “living library” (Eunapius, Lives 456). For oral tradition in the OT, see discussion in Rüger, “Tradition.”
158. Small, Wax Tablets, 129; even for the highly literate, see 81, 188.
159. McIver, Memory, 165; Dunn, Tradition, 237. McIver notes that sources from greater Judea remain consistent with this picture (Memory, 166–67).
160. McIver, Memory, 165. For elites, such mastery of content had long been geared toward learning for oral performance (Carr, Writing, 27; cf. 278; Niditch, World).
161. Small, Wax Tablets, 129, 179–81; Derrenbacker, Practices, 46; McIver, Memory, 165.
162. Xenophon, Symposium 3.5–6. For Nicoratus in this passage, see also Riesner, Lehrer, 451; Small, Wax Tablets, 129–30; Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 41–42.
163. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 197; cf. Puig i Tàrrech, Jesus, 20. In contrast to poems that varied more flexibly, the Iliad persisted in a more consistent form because it functioned canonically for Greeks (see Finkelberg, “Cypria”). Various repetition devices aided memory (Harvey, Listening, 45, 56).
164. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 248.
165. Browning, “Homer,” esp. 15–21 (noted in Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 266). Cf. Browning, “Homer,” 15: “always a schoolbook . . . from which generation after generation learned to read with understanding”).
166. See, e.g., Quintilian, Orator’s Education 2.4.15; Plutarch, On the Education of Children 13, Moralia 9E; Musonius Rufus, frag. 51, p. 144.3–7; Diogenes Laertius, Lives 6.2.31; Eunapius, Lives 481; Marrou, History, 154, 279; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 49, 138, 144, 191, 194; Watson, “Education,” 310, 312; Heath, Hermogenes, 11; Moeser, Anecdote, 54; Aune, Dictionary, 143; Eve, Behind Gospels, 39; Keener, “Before Biographies,” 338–41; Kwon, “Reimagining,” 128–37, 293; Boomershine, “Performance,” 290; Gorman, “Education,” 112.
167. Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 198.
168. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 1.1.36; 1.3.1.
169. Carr, Writing, 111–73 (brought to my attention by Ehrensperger, Paul, 119); see esp. 72–73, 106, 128, 181; in a Jewish setting, 160.
170. See Morgan, Literate Education, 208; Epictetus, Discourses 2.19.6–7, in Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 199; for the mid-teens, note 267; the sources in Keener, Acts, 3:3209–10; esp. Josephus, Life 10; Pliny, Letters 5.8.8; Watson, “Education,” 312; Stamps, “Children,” 198.
171. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.1–51; Dio Chrysostom, Orations 18.19; cf. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 200, 231 (citing Theon, Progymnasmata 137.18–21); Morgan, Literate Education, 90.
172. Marrou, History, 166.
173. E.g., Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights 8.3; Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 2.8.578.
174. Cited earlier, see Theon, Progymnasmata 3.224–40; cf. 2.115–23; also Longinus, On the Sublime 11.1; Hermogenes, Invention 2.7.120–21 (cf. 2.1.108–9; 2.7.120–24); Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 7; on fables, cf. Theon, Progymnasmata 4.37–42, 80–82 (Butts).
175. Cf. Musonius Rufus, frag. 51, p. 144.3–7; Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 4. On Maxim, 8–10; Moeser, Anecdote, 54–55. (By the strictest definition, “maxims” might be unattributed; cf. the later Nicolaus of Myra, Progymnasmata 5, On Maxim, 25.) On boys learning these and chreiai, see also Anderson, Glossary, 126–27 (citing Seneca, To Lucilius 33.7). Historians did not reproduce speeches verbatim, but they sometimes reproduced brief sayings thus (see Marincola, “Speeches,” 120).
176. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 167; on learning the maxims, cf. also Morgan, Literate Education, 71; Moeser, Anecdote, 54; Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 167, 170; in Egypt, cf. Doran, “Paideia,” 136.
177. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 1.1.35–36, in Joyal, McDougall, and Yardley, Education, 172; later, cf. Proclus, Poetics 5, K58.6–14.
178. Cf. Pirke Aboth; Vermes, Jesus the Jew, 27.
179. Sir 38:34; 39:2–3, 9.
180. McIver, Memory, 176; more extensively, McIver and Carroll, “Experiments”; McIver and Carroll, “Characteristics.”
181. Frye, “Synoptic Problems,” 291; Aune, “Aphorisms,” 225; Dunn, Tradition, 281. The same may be noted for ancient speakers like Lucian, who gave orations in multiple locations (Harmon, “Introduction”); Dio Chrysostom also reused his own speeches (cf. H. L. Crosby, “Introduction to Discourse 66,” LCL 5:86).
182. See, e.g., Theon, Progymnasmata 4.73–79; cf. 5.388–441.
183. E.g., Seneca, To Lucilius 94.27–28.
184. E.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives 2.72, 6.2.51; Plutarch, Agesilaus 21.4–5.
185. Cf. Hermogenes, Progymnasmata 3. On Chreia, 6–7; Aphthonius, Progymnasmata, 3. On Chreia, 23S, 4R; Nicolaus, Progymnasmata 4. On Chreia, 19–20; 5. On Maxim, 26.
186. Plutarch, Themistocles 11.2.
187. McIver, Memory, 167, 176, 180, 184.
188. McIver, Memory, 176.
189. McIver, Memory, 176.
190. McIver, Memory, 177.
191. Marincola, “Speeches,” 120, citing Tacitus, Annals 14.59.4; 15.67.4.
192. See, e.g., Diogenes Laertius, Lives, throughout.
193. Dunn, Tradition, 238, citing esp. Burney, Poetry; Manson, Teaching; Black, Aramaic Approach; Jeremias, Theology; Riesner, Lehrer, 392–404; see also Riesner, “Preacher,” 201–8, esp. 202–4.
194. Dunn, Tradition, 238. But he prefers to emphasize Jesus’s personal impact on the disciples, which goes beyond anything like simply memorizing multiplication tables (240). Cf. Bird, Gospel, 42.
195. Theon, Progymnasmata 2.5–8.
196. See, e.g., Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 5.21; Liefeld, “Preacher,” 223; Robbins, Teacher, 64; cf. Tieleman, “Orality,” 23, 28.
197. E.g., Philostratus, Lives of the Sophists 1.22.524; Eunapius, Lives 458.
198. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.2.3; Seneca, To Lucilius 108.4.
199. Josephus, Life 11.
200. E.g., t. Pesaḥ. 2:15–16; Sipre Deut. 221.1.1.
201. Alexander, “Memory,” 133, 138.
202. For Platonists, see Nikulin, “Memory,” 44–60; cf. Philo, Immutable 43; Maximus of Tyre, Philosophical Orations 10.6–9; Iamblichus, Soul 2.14, §609; for Peripatetics, Aristotle, Memory; Nikulin, “Memory,” 60–69; for Stoics, more ambiguously, Nikulin, “Memory,” 69–71; cf. Arius Didymus, Epitome 2.7.7b, p. 44.25–26; generally, Sorabji, Emotion, 231–33; Farrell, “Phenomenology.”
203. Culpepper, School, 177. The textual focus dominates primarily in later times; see Blyth, “Cicero,” 71–98.
204. Moeser, Anecdote, 92.
205. See, e.g., Deut 4:10; 6:7; 11:19; 26:5–10; Ps 78:5; Prov 6:20; Riesner, Lehrer, 115–17, 440. Though Riesner’s passages on 117 may address esp. discipline, cf. Hogan, “Musar,” esp. 82, 92–93, 98. LXX translators vary in their approaches to these latter passages, with only some Qumran texts developing a sense of ysr as education in the law; see Pouchelle, Dieu éducateur; Pouchelle, “Kyropaideia.”
206. Philo, Embassy 210.
207. See Byrskog, Teacher, 35–75, 88, esp. Sir 51:23, 29 (Cairo Geniza B; though the OT evidence depends on significant OT scholarship, I do not deem all of it equally compelling); early tradition in m. ʾAbot 1:4. Cf. also early interpretations of OT discipleship in CD 8.20–21; Mek. Pesaḥ. 1.150–53.
208. See comments above and esp. Riesner, Lehrer.
209. Initially, see esp. Gerhardsson, Memory, 122–70; Gerhardsson, Origins, 19–24; Gerhardsson, “Path”; Riesenfeld, Tradition, 14–17; more recently, and more sophisticated, Gerhardsson, Gospel Tradition. Some earlier German form critics had earlier drawn analogies between the gospel tradition and rabbinic tradition (Dibelius, Tradition, 39).
210. E.g., t. Yebam. 3:1; Mek. Pesaḥ. 1.135–36; Sipre Deut. 48.2.6.
211. See Hagner, Matthew, xlix.
212. Mek. Pesaḥ. 1.150–53. Cf. perhaps Prov 3:1; Sir 28:7; esp. Sir 51:23–25 (Riesner, Lehrer, 166–67).
213. Byrskog, Teacher, 160, 397; Alexander, “Orality,” 182; Hezser, “Randomness,” 50–51; see esp. Neusner, Traditions; Instone-Brewer, Traditions; cf. discussion and further sources in Keener, John, 1:185–94.
214. Gerhardsson, Memory, drew the characteristically harsh critique of Smith (“Comparison”). Byrskog, Teacher, 337, rejects Smith’s response as an “old and polemical article,” contradicted by more recent research, esp. Zimmermann, Lehrer. For respectful and helpful nuancing in light of more recent memory research, see Kirk, Memory, 93–113; noting that Gerhardsson has been caricatured, see 94.
215. See esp. Riesner, Lehrer.
216. Kelber, “Work,” 194, contends that Neusner’s earlier critique, based on his literary focus, misunderstood Gerhardsson’s oral one. Neusner has since recognized that Gerhardsson’s work, though overstated, contains valuable elements (Neusner, “Foreword”). Gerhardsson’s work, appreciated by many rabbinics scholars, did recognize both the “conservation” and “mobility” of tradition (Kelber, “Work,” 191–92; more nuanced and appreciative than earlier in Kelber, Gospel, 8–15, 23, 28), though he underestimated the impingement of subsequent social reality on memory, just as earlier form critics overestimated it (Kirk and Thatcher, “Tradition,” 35). Cf. appreciation for much of Gerhardsson’s key thesis and foundational insights, with subsequent refinements, also in, e.g., Kelber, “Works,” 232–34; Talmon, “Tradition,” 123; Meyer, “Consequences,” 440; Person and Keith, “Media Studies,” 12; Kirk, “Collective Memory,” 61; Kirk, Memory, 93–113; Byrskog, “Form Criticism,” 144; Byrskog, “Gerhardsson.”
217. Note the criticism in Smith, “Comparison,” 174.
218. Cf. Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 105.
219. Judge, “Scholastic Community,” 137; Wilken, “Christians,” 107–10; Wilken, “Interpretation”; Aune, Prophecy, 229; Meeks, Moral World, 114; Stowers, “Resemble Philosophy?” 81–102.
220. Schmeller, “Gegenwelten”; Wilken, “Interpretation,” 444–48; Wilken, “Collegia,” 277; Alexander, “IPSE DIXIT,” 107.
221. Mark 7:3, 8–9; Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 13.297, 408. Oral tradition might also inform some apocalyptic literature; cf. Henze, “Composition.”
222. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 4.211; Against Apion 1.60; 2.204; cf. Life 8; Against Apion 2.171–73; m. ʾAbot 6:6. At Qumran, although this is a special case, cf. Carr, Writing, 228–30; suggesting nightly oral recitations there, cf. Horsley, “Mark,” 146 (interpreting 1QS 6.5–8); later, perhaps most relevant to the intelligentsia, cf. m. ʾAbot 5:21.
223. Everyone could learn orally in synagogue contexts (e.g., Josephus, Against Apion 2.173, 175; Philo, Hypothetica 7.12–13; Sanders, Judaism, 199; Gorman, “Education,” 113); boys were also taught to recite Torah (cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.264–65; Life 9–12; m. ʾAbot 5:21; Riesner, “Education élémentaire”; Riesner, Lehrer).
224. 2 Macc 2:25.
225. Let. Aris. 154; Philo, Special Laws 4.107. For the early influence of Hellenistic pedagogical approaches on Judean education, see Clark, “Education”; Doran, “Paideia” (although also noting the reaction after Antiochus’s desecration of the temple, 147–48); cf. Koskenniemi, “Moses.” Even in Wisdom of Solomon, paideia is not restricted to Hellenistic education, though it might be included (see Zurawski, “Paideia”).
226. See Sir 6:34–38; 8:8–9; 51:23 (cf. 50:27); in Sirach and some Qumran scrolls, see, e.g., Goff, “Gardens,” 171–72. Cf. royal instructors in Ps 119:99; Prov 5:13.
227. Philo, Hypothetica 7.12–13; Special Laws 2.62–63; Free 81; Josephus, Against Apion 2.175; Jewish Antiquities 16.43; CIJ 2:333, §1404.
228. Stern, Authors, 1:8–11, 46–50; Gager, Anti-Semitism, 39; cf. Mayer, “Abrahambildes,” 125–26; Satlow, “Philosophers”; Bosch-Veciana, “Filosofia.”
229. Riesner, Lehrer, 139; cf. 440. For cantillation, see 141–42; this reflects a wider practice in old Egyptian, Greek, and Roman schools (Riesner, Lehrer, 196; cf. 448).
230. For evidence that does not suggest a common liturgy, cf. Levine, “Synagogue,” 19–20; Cohen, “Evidence,” 175; for evidence that could favor some common Jewish liturgy, cf. Schiffman, “Scrolls”; Maier, “Kult”; Goodman, State, 86. Qumran’s early institutional prayer (1QS 9.26–10.3; 4Q504; 4Q507–9) appears unusual (Talmon, “Institutionalized Prayer,” 273–74). See discussion in Keener, Acts, 2:1045–46.
231. Riesner, Lehrer, 139. See the second-century-BCE Nash papyrus (e.g., noted in Bright, History, 415; McNamara, Targum, 39).
232. Philo, Special Laws 2.145; Riesner, Lehrer, 140–41. In particular, Levites and priests learned certain songs thoroughly (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.216–18).
233. Dunn, Tradition, 281, noting the prominence of both teaching (Acts 2:42; 13:1; Rom 12:7; 1 Cor 12:28–29; Gal 6:6; Jas 3:1) and tradition (Phil 4:9; Col 2:6–8; 1 Thess 4:1; 2 Thess 3:6). Cf. Manson, “Review of Jeremias”: “The early Church remembered better than it understood”; cited in Gerhardsson, Memory, 129n2; Riesner, Lehrer, 453.
234. See Bingham, “Paideia,” esp. 353.
235. Cribiore, “Compete,” 359, 361–62, 369–72.
236. Marrou, History, 330–31, citing Rule of Pachomius 139–40; for clergy in the fifth through the seventh centuries knowing the psalms, see Marrou, History, 337; cf. Riesner, “Preacher,” 206.
237. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 112.
238. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 177, though noting that most students learned to write before reading.
239. Deissmann, Light, 223; also noted in Riesner, Lehrer, 452, who cites additional examples.
240. Kelber, “History,” 87; cf. Kelber, “Works,” 224–25.
241. Carruthers, Book of Memory, 100.
242. E.g., Alanna Nobbs shares a punishment her mother endured in a 1920s English boarding school: “She had to learn” a hundred lines of Longfellow’s “Hiawatha overnight and recite it to the teacher in the morning” (personal correspondence, August 22, 2018).
243. Boomershine, “Research Unit,” 39; cf. Rhoads, “Events,” 166; Boomershine, “Performance,” 290.
244. Vatri, “Writing,” 759–61, citing, e.g., Aristotle, Rhetoric 1414a4–7; 1419b10–13, 28–32; Rhetorica ad Alexandrum 21.2; 22.4; 32.6; 36.45; 37.7; Anonymous Seguerianus, Art of Political Speech 10.211–13. Cf. also Deut 6:7; Montefusco, “Exercitatio,” 265.
245. See Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 10.5.1; Lucian, Hermotimus 1; Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 29.164–65; 35.256; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.14; 2.30; 3.16; Small, Wax Tablets, 118; cf. Sipre Deut. 48.1.1–4; Goodman, State, 79.
246. Small, Wax Tablets, 118, citing Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.34–35, 44.
247. E.g., Small, Wax Tablets, 117–21; Rubin, Memory, 129; Stock, Gajsar, and Güntürkün, “Neuroscience,” 375, 385.
248. See, e.g., Assmann, Cultural Memory, 3–4, 81; Assmann, “Memory and Culture,” 341; Finnegan, Oral Poetry, 78; Barber and Barber, Severed, 10; Kirk, “Memory Theory,” 823; Eve, Behind Gospels, 92; Rubin, Memory, 72–75, 124–29, 144, 155, 170, 228; Byrskog, Teacher, 397; Mournet, Oral Tradition, 174–79, 190; Schwartz, “Smoke,” 14.
249. Vansina, Oral Tradition, 171; Small, Wax Tablets, 200; Rubin, “Introduction,” 4; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 346–47, 350; Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 189; Schwartz, “Smoke,” 23; Eve, Behind Gospels, 156; Kirk, “Nexus,” 148; Kirk, “Jesus Tradition”; Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 92; Kirk, Memory, 191–93, 216–18; McIver, “Personal Memory,” 54; earlier, cf. Mandler, Stories. For a personal example during the editing of this book (August 25, 2018), at a fortieth-year high school reunion an old friend described my sudden conversion, from an anti-Christian atheism and an unchurched background, in language borrowed from Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus, though (as I explained) my admittedly abrupt experience was much less dramatic than Paul’s.
250. Stock, Gajsar, and Güntürkün, “Neuroscience,” 385.
251. Lucian, Hermotimus 1.
252. Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 31.188.
253. E.g., Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.27; Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 20.94; 29.164; 35.256; Philostratus, Life of Apollonius 1.14, 19; 2.30; 3.16. Although Iamblichus and Philostratus write after our period, Diodorus Siculus (below) writes in the first century BCE.
254. Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 10.5.1; Iamblichus, Pythagorean Life 29.165.
255. See m. ʾAbot 2:8; Sipre Deut. 48.1.1–4; 48.2.6; Goodman, State, 79; Byrskog, Teacher, 136–96, esp. 158–60 (esp. m. ʾAbot 2:8; ʿEd. 1:3; Yad. 4:3; Neg. 9:3; t. Yebam. 3:4; cf. Zlotnick, “Memory,” 229–41.
256. McIver, Memory, 184; Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 341–46; cf. Allison, Constructing Jesus, 9n46.
257. See Bernier, Quest, 62; cf. Dunn, Tradition, 242. Such apprenticeship of disciples was not uncommon.
258. McIver, Memory, 130; see also 167, 176, 180, 184.
259. Small, Wax Tablets, 122; Rubin, Memory, 125–27, 144, 154.
260. Rubin, Memory, 127.
261. See, e.g., Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 136–37; noted appreciatively also by Black, “Kennedy,” 65–66.
262. Cf. Montanari, “Hypomnema”; Small, Wax Tablets, 179; Wright, Reading, 119–20; Odor, “Enchiridion,” 118; cf. Cicero, On the Ends of Good and Evil 3.3.10; 5.5.12; Aulus Gellius, Attic Nights pref.2, 22.
263. Gempf, “Speaking,” 299.
264. Seneca the Elder, Suasoriae 3.2.
265. Cf. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 11.2.2, 25; Seneca, To Lucilius 108.6; Epictetus, Discourses pref.2; Arius Didymus, Epitome 2.7.11k, p. 80.36–82.1; Lucian, Hermotimus 2; see also Votaw, “Biographies,” 53, 56; Lutz, “Musonius,” 7, 10; Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 131; Gempf, “Speaking,” 299; cf. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies 1.15.
266. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 19.
267. Quintilian, Orator’s Education 1.pref.7–8; Epictetus, Discourses 1.pref. For the nature of ancient publication, cf. discussion in Keener, Acts, 1:43–50.
268. See, e.g., Hezser, Literacy, 98.
269. Cf. Gerhardsson, Memory, 160–62; Safrai, “Education,” 966.
270. Riesner, Lehrer, 195–96, for the scrolls citing Slomovic, “Understanding”; cf. oral memory at Qumran in Talmon, “Tradition,” 157–58.
271. Kelber, Gospel, 23.
272. E.g., Gundry, Use, xii; Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 250; cf. Papias, frag. 3.16, although the accuracy and meaning are much disputed.
273. See, e.g., Day and Keyes, Documents, 114; Harris, Literacy, 143; Bagnall, Reading Papyri, 16, 32–33; Cuvigny, “Finds of Papyri,” 43, 48; Johnson and Goodrich, Papyri 3. Judea may have required less tax paperwork than Egypt, but what was done still required some writing (see Hezser, Literacy, 499–500).
274. For commercial literacy, which was insufficient for prose composition but adequate for basic needs, see Thomas, “Writing,” 25–28 (cf. also officials’ literacy versus compositional literacy in 37–41). Other evidence suggests basic literacy without compositional literacy; see esp. Woolf, “Literacy”; Hurtado, “Fixation,” 330–33, 339; Evans, “Graffiti,” 161; Keith, “Literacy,” 207; Longenecker, “Pompeii,” 305; Rhoads, “Performance Criticism,” 283; cf. Milnor, “Literacy”; Morgan, Literate Education, 260–61; illiterates’ contact with literacy in Cribiore, Gymnastics, 163; ability to read familiar texts in Carr, Writing, 4–6.
275. On disciples’ function of sharing Jesus’s life and supporting his preaching, see Riesner, Lehrer, 426, 440; on his expectation of attention and obedience to his teaching, 427, 444–46 (citing, e.g., Matt 8:22//Luke 9:60; Luke 9:44; 11:1).
276. Cf. Riesner, Lehrer, 440.
277. McIver, Memory, 165.
278. Unfortunately, an argument used in some public responses to Keener, “Assumptions.”
279. See Byrskog, Teacher, throughout, esp. 307–8.
280. Byrskog, Teacher, 310. Against this factor providing incentive to invent teachings for Jesus, see our discussion of 1 Cor 7:10–12.
281. Bailey, “Tradition” (Themelios), 7.
282. See, e.g., Lord, Singer; Eve, Behind Gospels, 5; in antiquity, e.g., Xenophon, Symposium 3.6.
283. Cribiore, Gymnastics, 163.
284. Cf. Marrou, History, 241, contending that in old Rome residents learned by heart the Twelve Tables (summarizing the rights and duties of Roman citizens); though note also Livy, History 3.34.2, on “reading” these.
285. Ehrman, Before Gospels, 197.
286. See esp. Hezser, Literacy.
287. Millard, Reading; Millard, “Literacy”; Head, “Note”; Evans, World, 63–88; cf. 1 Enoch 83:2; Porter, “Reconstructing,” 45, citing important essays in Beard, Literacy. Cf. also possible implications of Wright, Reading.
288. See further Keith, Scribal Elite.
289. Papias, frag. 3.16, although this testimony is debated (and I myself doubt that it refers to our completed Gospel of Matthew). Only Matthew’s Gospel informs us that the apostle Matthew was also this tax collector (Matt 9:9; 10:3; contrast Mark 2:14; 3:18); Papias, however, would assume Matt 9:9 correct in this identification. Given Jesus’s reputation, presumably not invented by non-tax-collecting followers, it is likely that multiple tax collectors in fact followed Jesus, even if the calling of one proved particularly prominent (see Mark 2:15–16; Matt 11:19//Luke 7:34; cf. Matt 21:31; Luke 15:1).
290. With Bernier, Quest, 136–37.
291. Curchin, “Literacy”; cf. Dewey, “Event,” 146–47. Social class may be a more specific determining factor; see Keith, “Urbanization.”
292. Lewis, Life, 61–62.
293. A quite minimal estimate (1 Cor 15:6, although this figure probably represents primarily Galileans at the movement’s beginning).
294. Kennedy, “Source Criticism,” 129; Tieleman, “Orality,” 28, 32; cf. Dio Chrysostom, Oration 54.3–4. Students were publishing notes of their teachers’ lectures as early as five centuries before Jesus (Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric, 19), and the practice continued into the early empire (Quintilian, Orator’s Education 1.pref.7–8; Epictetus, Discourses 1.pref.).
295. See Bernier, Quest, 136–37. As Eve observes, in principle early notes could have circumvented the need for four decades of oral transmission, but we cannot know whether there were such notes (Behind Gospels, 14).
296. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.63–64; 20.200.
297. Jewett, Chronology, 99, suggests 34 CE; Riesner, Early Period, 64–74, for 31/32 CE.
298. Cf. Acts 4:36–37; 6:7, 9–10; 15:22–29; 16:37; 18:24 (see Keener, Acts, on these various passages); Rom 16:7, 22–23; 2 Cor 1:19; 1 Thess 1:1; Tit 3:13; 1 Pet 5:12.
299. Cf. Keener, “Plausibility.”
300. Among Greeks, cf., e.g., uneducated farmers in Alciphron, Letters of Farmers 11 (Sitalces to Oenopion, his son), 3.14; 38 (Euthydicus to Philiscus), 3.40, ¶3; among Jewish people, cf. accounts concerning the backgrounds of Hillel and Akiba, e.g., b. Ned. 50a; Pesaḥ. 49b.
301. Lucian, Runaways 12, 14; Philosophies for Sale 11.
302. Culpepper, School, 177; for oral instruction, see, e.g., Hezser, Literacy, 99; cf. Carr, Writing, 28.
303. See, e.g., the purportedly late first-century traditions regarding oral law in Sipra Behuq. pq. 8.269.2.14; Sipre Deut. 306.25.1; 351.1.2–3; probably early material in Sipra Behuq. par. 2.264.1.1; Sipre Deut. 115.1.1–2; 161.1.3; ʾAbot R. Nat. 15A; 29, §§61–62 B.
304. See Eve, Behind Gospels, 40; cf. Sipre Deut. 154.2.1.
305. This could help explain why, apart from Sirach, we have very few writings from Second Temple Jewish sages, compared to many Greek and Roman sources from teachers or their disciples. Most students of later rabbis could read Torah, though that was not their education’s focus, and some may have been unable to write more than their name (Hezser, Literacy, 98).
306. See Kloppenborg, “Memory,” 293–94.
307. See, e.g., Talbert, “Response”; Aune, Dictionary, 325; Gamble, “Literacy,” 646; Byrskog, Story, 107–44; Goldhill, “Anecdote”; Habinek, “Literacy”; in most societies, see Goody, Interface, 78; Rosenberg, “Complexity,” esp. 74, 88. Nearly all current media scholars reject the older Great Divide thesis between orality and literacy; see, e.g., Niditch, “Hebrew Bible,” 6–7; Person and Keith, “Media Studies,” 2, 8, 13; Rodríguez, “Great Divide”; Person, “Goody”; Person, “Havelock”; Eve, “Kelber”; and esp. Foley, Theory; Foley, “Plenitude”; cf. Kirk, Memory, 139–41.
308. Cf. Lord, Singer, 137; Byrskog, Teacher, 324.
309. See, e.g., Cicero, Letters to Atticus 14.21; Richards, Letter Writing, 64–80, 143.
310. Today, it is said that all “true” Dulong can remember their epics, even though recounting them all fully can take several days (Yamamori and Chan, Witnesses, 22).
311. Harvey, Listening, 41; Noll and Nystrom, Clouds, 129.
312. Bazin, “Past,” 70–71; Rosenberg, “Complexity,” 80, 85; cf. Goody, Interface, 81; Anderson, “Oral Tradition,” 19–20.
313. Ong, Orality, 41; cf. the same point on 59, 157. Ong contrasts modern Western ideals of originality in terms of distinct works (23, 131). For audience contextualization in performances today, see Rhoads, “Events,” 18–88. We might also think of how producers and screenwriters adapt stories for different audiences (say, the various versions of Ben Hur, such as the earlier, macho Ben Hur [1959] and the more sensitive recent version [2016]).
314. Dunn, Perspective, 110, 112, 118, 122; Dunn, Tradition, 301. For oral history in NT scholarship, see Byrskog, Story, 33–40; Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 239–68, esp. 252–59.
315. See, e.g., Theon, Progymnasmata 1.93–171.
316. Small, Wax Tablets, 192.
317. For the latter, see Derrenbacker, Practices, 95–96 (citing Downing, “Redaction Criticism 1,” 62 and “Redaction Criticism 2,” 42); Kloppenborg, “Variation”; Licona, Differences, 199 (citing further Downing, “Use,” 529, 531).
318. Xenophon, Symposium 3.6; cf. West, “Rhapsodes”; Boomershine, “Research Unit,” 39. Cf. how later rabbis looked down on Torah copyists (Hezser, “Scribes,” 357–58). Poetry and song involved memorization (Apollodorus, Library 1.3.1; Seneca the Elder, Controversiae 1.pref.2, 19), which is easier than memorizing prose (Ong, Orality, 22, 57; Rubin, Memory, 8, 75–77, 87, 107–8, 155, 227–56; McIver, Memory, 167).
319. Small, Wax Tablets, 123.
320. See section 16.7 below.
321. Dio Chrysostom, Orations 36.9. One need not suppose that all the people knew the entire Iliad by heart, but external sources confirm at least some of Dio’s report (cf. CIG 2.2077 in the Loeb translator’s note).
322. Cf., e.g., Xenophon, Cyropaedia 1.2.1, which he expects to sound plausible, although the Cyropaedia is largely fictitious. For widespread valuing and practice of memory skills in antiquity, not limited to the educated, Kwon, “Reimagining,” 138–39, cites Shiner, “Technology,” 150–56.
323. E.g., Pausanias, Description of Greece 1.23.2. Cf. Philostratus’s possible access to century-old local stories about Apollonius (Bowie, “Portrait,” 142).
324. Cf. Pretzler, “Pausanias and Tradition.”
325. I have addressed elsewhere the dates of Matthew, John, and Luke-Acts, tentatively favoring the majority, median ranges of scholarly opinion, sometimes plus or minus a decade (Keener, Matthew, 42–44; Keener, John, 1:140–42; Keener, Acts, 1:383–401).
326. See McGrath, “Islands,” emphasizing the material’s complex potential relationships.
327. Charlesworth, Pseudepigrapha, 1–3; cf. Bailey, “Oral Tradition.”
328. Cf. Riesner, “Education élémentaire”; Riesner, Lehrer.
329. Kirk, “Memory,” 157–58.
330. Note, e.g., the concession in Redman, “Eyewitnesses,” 192–93; cf. also 179.
331. Cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 4.211; Against Apion 1.60; 2.178, 204, even allowing for some likely hyperbole; see Deut 6:7; 11:19; Ps 78 (LXX 77):4–8. Cf. also Freyne, Galilee, 208.
332. Dunn, Perspective, 119; cf. Byrskog, Story, 110. For learning by repeated hearing, Riesner, Lehrer, 441, cites Plato, Parmenides 126c.
333. McIver, Memory, 123. His exploration “Eyewitness Memory and the Gospel Traditions” appears in McIver, Memory, 123–61.
334. McIver, Memory, 123. He is not claiming that episodic narration is limited to eyewitness memory (see 124–25).
335. Rubin, “Introduction,” 2; cf. Elder, “Narrativity,” 242.
336. With, e.g., Small, Wax Tablets, 194–95, citing Neisser et al., “Earthquake.”
337. McIver, Memory, 124, although he does not limit such features to eyewitness testimony. Cf. also Rubin, “Introduction,” 3; Brewer, “Recollective Memory,” 35–39.
338. E.g., Rubin, Memory, 317.
339. See, e.g., Karla, “Life of Aesop,” 56.
340. Kirk (“Collective Memory,” 62; Kirk, “Ehrman, Bauckham, and Bird,” 106; Kirk, Memory, 54) regards McIver’s results as quite limited, contrasting the results with more salient information preserved in community tradition. He notes that “an ad hoc personal account . . . has little cultural value” (Memory, 85; though communities often do value any memories of leading figures). Traditions restructure individual memory (Kirk, Memory, 224). For discussion of social memory, see esp. ch. 16.
341. McIver, Memory, 125; “Personal Memory,” 55; “Flashbulb Memory,” 135. Nineham’s older assumptions about eyewitness tradition contradict current psychological knowledge (McIver, Memory, 126–27).
342. McIver, Memory, 131, noting esp. Winger, “Word and Deed,” 683, 685.
343. See Brewer, “Recollective Memory,” 52; Wagenaar, “Memory,” 187; for mnemonic association with locations in longer-term tradition, see Rubin, Memory, 39, 47, 51; in Roman mnemonics, Small, Wax Tablets, 98–101, 109–11; Vatri, “Writing,” 751 (noting Rhetorica ad Herennium 3.28–37; Cicero, On the Orator 2.351–54; Marmor Parium 54.70; Quintilian, Institutes 11.2; earlier, Dialexis, frag. 9; Aristotle, Topics 163b28–32; Soul 427b18–20; On Dreams 458b20–22); Thatcher, “Memory Theatre”; for John’s Gospel, Thatcher, “Shape,” 232–34; cf. the “realms of memory” approach (for discussion, see, e.g., Le Donne, Historiographical Jesus, 43–45) in Jantsch, “Jerusalem” (developing the work of Pierre Nora); Nicklas, “Literature,” 97; Nicklas, “Landscapes,” 9–18; Gospel locations in Williams, Trust, 52–63. Some recent research suggests that temporal scaffolding may prove effective like spatial mnemonics (Bouffard et al., “Strategies”). “Time and locale” trigger memories associated with them (Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” 2); for recalling the setting in which one learned something, thereby incorporating it into episodic as well as semantic memory, see, e.g., Hugh of St. Victor in Carruthers, Book of Memory, 100.
344. McIver, Memory, 132. The form is primarily Hellenistic (Aune, “Aphorisms,” 220), but recounters may have enlisted such forms early, given their compatibility with episodic memory. Some ancient historians recognized that self-contained episodes were easier to remember (Vatri, “Writing,” 766, citing Diodorus Siculus, Library of History 16.1.1).
345. Cf. Theon, Progymnasmata 3.22–23, 27–28 (Butts); Robbins, “Chreia,” 3; Mack and Robbins, Patterns, 196–97.
346. Marrou, History, 172–75; Cribiore, Gymnastics, 224.
347. Papias, frag. 3.15 (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.15; Holmes translates, “as needed”). McIver, Memory, 134n10, cites in support of the rhetorical interpretation Bauckham, Eyewitnesses, 203, 214–17. Cf. Byrskog, “Eyewitnesses,” 162–65; Byrskog, “Church.” But contrast now more fully Moessner, “Papian Fragments.”
348. See ch. 5. Next to reading through ancient sources firsthand, by far the most useful resource for this study would be Robbins, Quotes.
349. Burridge, Comparison, 203.
350. See discussion also in, e.g., Hezser, “Verwendung”; Byrskog, “Church”; Byrskog, “Teacher,” 43–44.
351. McIver, Memory, 23, 35–39, 144.
352. McIver, Memory, 147, suggesting “up to 80 percent when measured by very stringent criteria.” The qualification “up to,” of course, is important, given variation in the studies.
353. On the latter point, cf. Vanhoozer, Meaning, 211–12; Keener, Hermeneutics, 86, 333nn50–51.
354. McIver, Memory, 160.
355. McIver, Memory, 186–87.
356. Cf. Schwartz, “Origins,” 50, following Clifford Geertz: “Not everyone is a liar, and one need not know everything in order to know something.”
357. E.g., 1 Cor 4:12; 15:9; 2 Cor 4:9; Gal 1:23; Phil 3:6; Tacitus, Annals 15.44.
358. See earlier comments in this chapter about miracles and the discussion, cited there, in Cramer, “Miracles,” 136–37.
359. Cf. similarly Eddy and Boyd, Legend, 269–306.