Structuring Early Christian Memory: Jesus in Tradition, Performance and Text

Description

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

Rafael Rodriguez is Professor of New Testament at Johnson University, USA.

"As he himself describes it, Rodriguez feels around the edges of the gap between traditional text-based scholarship on the gospels and the increasing recognition that oral and performance dimensions are crucially important for understanding how the gospels came to be and their original reception and impact. He does not aspire to fill in the gap, but to delineate the shape of what is missing in order to understand how modern interpretation of the written texts might have gone astray. His topics are Jesus tradition in memory and performance, contemporary research into historical Jesus and the gospels, a framework for apprehending early Christian traditions, and the healings and exorcisms of Jesus in the sayings tradition." -Eithne O'Leyne, BOOK NEWS, Inc. "This volume contends that oral performances installed the Jesus tradition in early Christian collective memory and became vital parts of the traditional milieus in which Jesus' earliest followers lived, and that Jesus in early Christian memory provides the thread of continuity that binds oral performances to each other and to the written Gospels. It first discusses the Jesus tradition in memory and performance, and contemporary 'historical Jesus' and Gospels research. Next it develops a framework for apprehending early Christian traditions with regard first to memory, reputation, and history, and then to performance, structure, meaning, and text. Then it focuses on Jesus' healings and exorcisms in the sayings traditions: 'what you hear and see'--echoes of restoration in Jesus' healings; 'today this Scripture'--reading and referencing Israelite tradition; and 'no city of house divided against itself'--exorcism as Israelite religion. Rodriquez concludes that the synthesis of social memory theory and oral-traditional approaches to ancient texts has the potential to illuminate and relate stable and dynamic aspects of Jesus' reputation across the Easter-event." -New Testament Abstracts, Vol. 54 In this revision of his doctoral thesis, Rafael Rodriguez applies social memory theory and oral performance theory to gospel traditions representing Jesus as an exorcist and healer. This is a profoundly ambitious and highly technical work, calling for nothing short of a paradigm shift in gospels research. - Daniel Frayer-Griggs, University of Durham, UK -- Daniel Frayer-Griggs This study is a welcome addition to historical Jesus studies and provides a fresh perspective that deserves careful attention. -- Journal for the Study of The New Testament, Volume 33 Number 5 Reviewed in the Church Times. 'In this revised Sheffield doctoral thesis, Rodriguez seeks to overcome certain polarizations which he claims have marked modern study of the Jesus tradition: textuality vs. orality, inauthenticity vs. authenticity, past vs. present. To do so, he develops a frameork utilizing the theory of social memory and recent work in oral traditionas away of examining the construction of Jesus' reputation and the way the tradition about him was repeatedly performed both before and after the gospels were written.' David Lincicum, Mansfield College, Oxford -- David Lincicum * Theological Book Review *