Memory theory and HJ (re)construction

[ficino]

I've begun Dale C. Allison's Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History.

Allison proposes a "big picture" method of investigation, rooted in the conviction that individual and collective memory of the overall significance of a striking event is more reliable than memories of details about it. Allison has come to his new investigational paradigm after abandoning the Criteria of Authenticity on various grounds.

{See my summary of his reasons: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1178&p=26222#p26222}

Allison attacks the method that he calls "proceeding by subtraction" (p. 14). In the old, "subtraction" method, the scholar/s would sort through the gospels, throw out lots of stuff deemed to be inauthentic, and have left a residue deemed authentic. The Jesus Seminar, of which he was (is?) a member, did this. Voting out many units of text, they ended up affirming that "a handful of parables and a small collection of aphorisms" were authentic. The result, says Allison, goes against the thrust of the entire tradition and against the overall tenor of the gospel story. The synoptic tradition does not depict Jesus as a secular sage. It depicts him as promoting an eschatological vision as well. If it's as wrong as the Jesus Seminar thought, the tradition is "mnemonically defective in a massive way, so much so that we probably cannot justify using it to investigate the pre-Easter period, in which case we cannot persuade ourselves that Jesus was a secular sage uninterested in eschatology. Here skepticism skewers itself."

On the big themes, says Allison, memory is likely to have been more reliable. He compares the historical Socrates; we may not have Socrates' individual sayings, but the overall thrust of the surviving dialogues show a core of philosophical interests.

Allison says he's not making pronouncements about what units in the gospels are reliable. Instead, he's making a point about method: "... the historian should heed before all else the general impressions that our primary sources produce. We should trust first, if we are to trust at all, what is most likely to be trustworthy." We must begin by looking at the general impressions conveyed by the gospels rather than focus on the tradition histories of individual pericopes. We should put our hope, he says, in the big story. "For if those sources do not in large measure rightly typify Jesus' actions ... then what hope is there?"

So far I am thinking that Allison's investigation all proceeds from the ASSUMPTION that the gospels constitute the record of collective memory, however much reshaped by faulty recollection, rhetorical strategies, later theological concerns, etc.

Anyone more expert than I care to jump in at this point with a comment?

cordially, f

[outhouse]

Maybe similar to the laws/rules of hearsay, and how it can be admitted and is found more reliable under certain exemptions such as "excited utterance"

[ficino]

An aside, which I don't mean as a derailment of my own thread! I put it here rather than start a new thread.

William Lane Craig says this about Allison's skepticism about our ability to establish the historicity of the Resurrection.

"Allison forced me, as no one else has, to re-think the evidence for Jesus' resurrection afresh. Indeed, I've never seen a more persuasive case for scepticism about the historicity of Jesus' resurrection than Allison's presentation of the arguments. He's far more persuasive than Crossan, Lüdemann, Goulder, and the rest who actually deny the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. That Allison should, despite his sceptical arguments, finally affirm the facts of Jesus' burial, empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection and hold that the resurrection hypothesis is as viable an explanation as any other rival hypothesis, depending upon the worldview one brings to the investigation, is testimony to the strength of the historical case for Jesus' resurrection."

Read more: http://www.reasonablefaith.org/dale-all ... z3N82Mzo7a

(It is not clear to me what work of Allison's is the object of Craig's review.)

I post Craig's comments here because I am reminded of David Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Hume puts arguments for natural theology in the mouth of Cleanthes, and puts devastating criticisms in the mouth of Philo. But at the end of the work, Hume has Philo retract all his objections and affirm that reason shows the truths of natural theology. It is thought that Hume was pulling his punches out of fear of exciting a hostile response, since churchmen still dominated the learned world. Hume even left instructions for the manuscript not to be printed until after his death.

I wonder what Allison, paid a salary at Princeton Theol. Seminary, believes in his heart of hearts.

[outhouse]

William Lane Craig says

Nothing useful.


And his perversion of Dales work, means little with respect to Dales work.

[Blood]

William Lane Craig says this about Allison's skepticism about our ability to establish the historicity of the Resurrection.

"Allison forced me, as no one else has, to re-think the evidence for Jesus' resurrection afresh. Indeed, I've never seen a more persuasive case for scepticism about the historicity of Jesus' resurrection than Allison's presentation of the arguments. He's far more persuasive than Crossan, Lüdemann, Goulder, and the rest who actually deny the historicity of Jesus' resurrection. That Allison should, despite his sceptical arguments, finally affirm the facts of Jesus' burial, empty tomb, post-mortem appearances, and the origin of the disciples' belief in Jesus' resurrection and hold that the resurrection hypothesis is as viable an explanation as any other rival hypothesis, depending upon the worldview one brings to the investigation, is testimony to the strength of the historical case for Jesus' resurrection."

That's just typical apologetics bollocks, the kind that Craig has spent a career repeating. "Naturalist presuppositions" and all that bunk.

As for Allison, "memory theory" seems to be the latest trend inside academia to keep the corpse of Jesus on life support.

[arnoldo]

http://vridar.org/2014/11/30/the-memory ... more-55232

[PhilosopherJay]

Hi All,

Yes, I think it is important that people reconstruct their memories from present understandings. This makes memories very tenuous indeed.
I have been following the Bill Cosby - Rape Myth pretty closely and we see the present reinterpreting the past memory very strongly.
For example: Take the story of one of the early accusers, Barabara Bowman. In 2005, a woman, Andrea Constand accused Cosby of possibly drugging and raping her. She was the first woman to accuse him of this. She said that she had been meeting with Cosby for two years and at one meeting, she asked him for a drug to relieve her stress, she did not remember the events clearly after this, but did remember they engaged in mutual masturbation. (Cosby claims he gave her two tablets of Benadryl, an over-the-counter medication.)
Barbara Bowman followed the first accuser pretty closely in a 2006 article in Philadelphia Magazine. She didn't remember exactly what happened between her and Cosby in 1985 or 1986 at the time of their meeting. It was only after reading about Andrea Constand's account that she realized that the same thing may have happened to her. In 2014, after a comedian charged Bill Cosby with being a rapist, a fact he said he discovered on Google, Bowman wrote in the Washington Post that she was now sure that Cosby had drugged and raped her on multiple occasions and complained that no one had believed her for 30 years. In fact she admitted in 2005 that she did not remember what happened at the time of the meeting with Cosby in 1985 or 1986. She only remembered the possible drugging and raping as an explanation for why she did not remember what happened between her and Cosby in 1985/86. Only in 2005 after hearing of Andrea Constand's accusation against Cosby (in a $150 million lawsuit, Constand filed against Cosby). In 2014, she was definite that she remembered multiple drugging and rapes. Thus a time line of the accusations:
1985/86, According to Bowman she met Bill Cosby, but didn't remember a lot about it.
2005/06, After Bill Cosby was accused of drugging and sexual assault and sued for $150 million dollars, she reconstructed the memory that the same thing happened to her on one occassion and that is why she did not remember a lot about it.
2014/15. After Bill Cosby was declared a rapist in a comedian's video that went viral on the internet, Bowman, in a Washington Post Editorial, was now sure that she had been drugged and raped multiple times by Cosby.

Also, some commentators have noted a comedy routine about "Spanish Fly" that Cosby did on one of his comedy albums. This allegedly shows his interest in drugging women. Cosby has released some 30 albums with about 10 routines and songs on each. Thus, his "Spanish Fly" routine is one of over 300 songs and routines. This accusation ignors the fact that Cosby also did an entire anti-drug album, urging young people not to take drugs. Secondly, the routine makes fun of the idea of "Spanish Fly," allegedly a drug that makes women so horny that they can't control themselves. Basically, he calls it a ridiculous myth, suggesting that every man would use it if it worked that way. "Spanish Fly" was a very popular topic in Playboy magazine in the 1960's when the album came out. Cosby was not suggesting that people should drug women with "Spanish Fly" as his detractors suggest, he was saying "Spanish Fly" does not work, thus making fun of people who drugged women with it with the hopes of having sex.

The first accusers of Cosby in 2005, had to say that he drugged them in order to explain why they did not report the incidents to any authorities at the time they happened, and waited 20 or 30 years to remember it. The "Spanish Fly" routine has been misremembered to support the idea that the drugging actually took place.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

[junego]

Here's link to a pdf of a recent article by Dr. Zeba Crook titled "Matthew, memory theory and the New No Quest" published 11/20/14 in HTS Teologiese Studies/Theological Studies, 70(1), Art. #2716.

http://www.hts.org.za/index.php/HTS/art ... /2716/5202. (warning takes you to download of pdf)

He rejects memory theory as a viable methodology for uncovering historical kernals concerning Jesus. No startling insights, confrontation or "fringe" thinking. He surveys some general research on memory theory and the unreliability of human memory then talks about NT scholars who do and don't think memory theory is a new shiny methodology to discover real Jesus history (my characterization, not his) then applies some of the general research points to certain pericopes in gMatthew, finding that the method cannot sift wheat from chaff.

I was a bit surprised at how casually he says things like "If the New Testament Gospels are artefacts of memory, and they must surely be..." and "The writer of the Gospel of Matthew is, of course, not alone among ancient historians..." without any caveats or nods to the possibility that this document may not be a history or 'Matthew' may not be a historian. Dr. Crook is a purely secular scholar from my understanding.

Guess I'm just so used to Vridar, this board (and its predecessor), and other inputs that (rightly, imo) question the methods, 'evidence' and conclusions of modern NT scholarship that seeing one of those scholars not even acknowledging the possibility scrapes at my mind as I read. Modern scholarship really needs to take these criticisms on board.

[neilgodfrey]

The difference between the evidence for Jesus and the evidence for other persons historians study is that the former is all of one kind and lacks independent corroborating support.

The Socrates analogy

So if the only evidence we had for Socrates were philosophical treatises in which his name appears as a mouthpiece for the authors then we would have no way of determining if Socrates had been historical or not. We could not validly assume he had been historical and proceed to use the "gist" of the treatises to describe him. We would have no way of knowing if we were simply creating a myth and calling it history. It would be like taking the legends of Robin Hood and sussing out from the general tone of those who and what the historical Robin Hood was all about.

Allison does not seem to have thought his method through

The evidence for Jesus is entirely a theological/literary tale without any external controls to link its contents to the real world. Therefore we cannot validly use it to reconstruct a historical Jesus any more than we could use the legends of Robin Hood to reconstruct Robin Hood or any more than we could use the philosophical treatises featuring Socrates to reconstruct the historical Socrates.

The reason for the failure of HJ studies

The reason HJ studies have failed -- that is, the reason they have found so many different kinds of Jesuses -- is because there is no independent evidence for his historical existence. Playing with literary and theological tracts is a free-for-all that can lead us anywhere and to any kind of Jesus -- because we have no evidence in the form of "controls" on this legendary or theological narrative.

The bare minimum requirements for historical enquiry

We do have such controls in the case of Socrates. And for probably every other person historians opt to study. If such controls are missing then historians are left without any foundations for their enquiries so avoid studying those persons.

In the case of Socrates we have, for example, in addition to the philosophical treatises a contemporary play mocking Socrates from a perspective quite different from what we find in Plato.

In the case of Julius Caesar we have in addition to his own writings the writings of his contemporaries referring to him. But more important, those writings are by authors we can reasonably identify and have reason to trust.

In the case of Jesus we have a theological narrative testified by people we do not know who used sources they do not explicitly identify.

A valid way forward

The way to study Jesus is first to study that theological narrative as a narrative -- without any presumptions about historicity of its contents -- and to try to uncover whose interests it served, when, etc.

The social memory approach can give us no more assurance about Jesus than it ever could about Robin Hood.

[outhouse]

that is, the reason they have found so many different kinds of Jesuses -- is because there is no independent evidence for his historical existence

.

-- is because people who were never a witnesses to his life, nor lived near him, yet found importance in the traditions and mythology past down to them, had varied and wide diverse descriptions of what they thought he was.

The reason HJ studies have failed

Red Herring.

Jesus historicity is as strong as it ever has been.