Cultural Memory and the Bible - 17 views

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  #1 Michael Hemenway on 14 Feb 10

   

  Cultural Memory, also known as collective memory or social memory, refers to the ways in which a group of people selectively remember their shared past. The relationship between the past, history, memory and meaning is central to cultural memory studies. Sites of cultural memory can occur in many forms, such as texts, monuments, and rituals. How and what a community chooses to remember and forget about their past can offer a great deal of insight into their self understanding. Cultural memory shares some theoretical similarities with reception history.
  
  Gospel studies have utilized cultural memory theories to explore the diverse appropriation of jesus traditions in the gospels (see http://bit.ly/9RX5BW ). Comparing and contrasting the memory of the Sinai event in Exodus and Deuteronomy is another example of cultural memory theory applied to the biblical text (see Smith, The Memoirs of God, 140ff - http://bit.ly/bY25kK ).
  
  Representative Scholars (Jan Assmann, Mark S. Smith, Tom Thatcher, Yosef Yerushalmi)

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Cultural Memory, also known as collective memory or social memory, refers to the ways in which a group of people selectively remember their shared past. The relationship between the past, history, memory and meaning is central to cultural memory studies. Sites of cultural memory can occur in many forms, such as texts, monuments, and rituals. How and what a community chooses to remember and forget about their past can offer a great deal of insight into their self understanding. Cultural memory shares some theoretical similarities with reception history. <br /> <br /> Gospel studies have utilized cultural memory theories to explore the diverse appropriation of jesus traditions in the gospels (see <a href="http://bit.ly/9RX5BW" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/9RX5BW</a> ). Comparing and contrasting the memory of the Sinai event in Exodus and Deuteronomy is another example of cultural memory theory applied to the biblical text (see Smith, The Memoirs of God, 140ff - <a href="http://bit.ly/bY25kK" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">http://bit.ly/bY25kK</a> ). <br /> <br /> Representative Scholars (Jan Assmann, Mark S. Smith, Tom Thatcher, Yosef Yerushalmi)</div>

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  #2 Sterling Field on 15 Feb 10

   

  Michael,
  
  Would this also be an idea that was applied by the early tribes all over the world (Indian, Celts, Anglo Saxon etc) that did not write their history but passed it down in rituals and in tales? I like your synopsis on Cultural memory, very to the point.
  
  Would I also be correct in assuming that certain books in the Bible would fall into this category as they were written many years after the death of Christ or many years after the relevant event? I realize that there is much chronicling of history in this time, but were there not also those who did much of the same as the tribes listed above? Passing down stories and history through words, allegory and story telling?

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Michael, <br /> <br /> Would this also be an idea that was applied by the early tribes all over the world (Indian, Celts, Anglo Saxon etc) that did not write their history but passed it down in rituals and in tales? I like your synopsis on Cultural memory, very to the point. <br /> <br /> Would I also be correct in assuming that certain books in the Bible would fall into this category as they were written many years after the death of Christ or many years after the relevant event? I realize that there is much chronicling of history in this time, but were there not also those who did much of the same as the tribes listed above? Passing down stories and history through words, allegory and story telling?</div>

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  #3 traci_shahan on 15 Feb 10

   

  Michael, This has been helpful especially since I had no idea what this meant. But I think the concept is key to understanding scripture attenuated through memory and culture banks. This discipline deepens my belief that the Bible in not the inerrant word of God, rather is filled with stories of human-divine interaction. And some of those memories are riddled with errors.

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Michael, This has been helpful especially since I had no idea what this meant. But I think the concept is key to understanding scripture attenuated through memory and culture banks. This discipline deepens my belief that the Bible in not the inerrant word of God, rather is filled with stories of human-divine interaction. And some of those memories are riddled with errors.</div>

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  #5 Michael Hemenway on 17 Feb 10

   

  Sterling, you are absolutely right. cultural memory theory is indebted to oral tradition studies and this is how cultural memory initially came to be applied to the biblical text as a means of understanding the divergent uses of jesus traditions in the gospels.
  
  many of the writings in the bible involve cultural memory, in fact, depending on how we use the term memory, all of it could be considered as such. The gospels are a major site of cultural memory in the Bible, but so is Acts and much of the Hebrew Bible commonly known as the historical books. Cultural Memory theory might not make much of a distinction between chronicles of time and the oral tradition of the tribes you describe.

   

  <div class="cArrow"> </div><div class="cContentInner">Sterling, you are absolutely right. cultural memory theory is indebted to oral tradition studies and this is how cultural memory initially came to be applied to the biblical text as a means of understanding the divergent uses of jesus traditions in the gospels. <br /> <br /> many of the writings in the bible involve cultural memory, in fact, depending on how we use the term memory, all of it could be considered as such. The gospels are a major site of cultural memory in the Bible, but so is Acts and much of the Hebrew Bible commonly known as the historical books. Cultural Memory theory might not make much of a distinction between chronicles of time and the oral tradition of the tribes you describe.</div>

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