Memory

Abstract

It was because Birger Gerhardsson was concerned for a history of the gospel tradition grounded in historically attested cultural practices that he came to assign to memory the crucial operational role in the origins and transmission of tradition. In so doing, moreover, he anticipated important contemporary developments in the humanities and social sciences, where memory has become a dominant research paradigm.1 This is all the more remarkable given that Memory and Manuscript appeared at a time when gospel scholarship, dominated by form criticism, was devoid of interest in memory. Gerhardsson indicted the form critics and their followers, sometimes to the point of exasperation, for their failure to ground their history of the gospel tradition adequately in historical and cultural realities.2 In fact, the form critics' lack of interest in positioning their model for tradition plausibly in ancient milieus and the peculiar absence of memory from their model for the tradition were closely connected. Opposing eschatological to historical consciousness, Rudolf Bultmann held that orientation to the past arose in the early Christian communities only secondarily, as a consequence of the exhaustion of eschatological enthusiasm. Therefore, he argued, this reorientation and with it conscious traditioning activities were not significant factors in the formative period of the gospel traditions.3 Given this scenario, Bultmann and many of his contemporaries could be persuaded that the gospel tradition was largely the reflection of the present, enthusiastic life of the eschatological communities. They could assume, moreover, that the Umwelt could not offer many points of contact with early Christian traditioning activities and that the gospel tradition had to be approached as virtually sui generis, as Kleinliteratur, by definition lacking significant analogies in ancient cultural practices. This helps account not just for the striking absence of the factor of memory from their theorizing on the formation of the tradition, but also for the curious insouciance in the face of challenges like Gerhardsson's to give historical and cultural justification for their views.4 Gerhardsson's recognition that memory, that is, orientation to a normative past, and correspondingly the cultivation of tradition are constitutive of viable communities is now axiomatic in studies on the social and cultural aspects of memory. By the same token, Gerhardsson's original working conception of memory may itself be critically reassessed in the light of contemporary advances in research. In what follows we will work through Gerhardsson's understanding of the operations of memory and identify its limitations but show how memory in its cultural, social, and cognitive dimensions is indeed the crucial factor in the formation and transmission of tradition. We will give particular attention to what has been a primary focus of Gerhardsson's work, namely, the nexus of memory with the origins of tradition. © 2009 by Baylor University Press. All Rights Reserved.