From Bart Ehram’s post Help! My Views of Memory – … I find it disheartening when readers think that once the Gospels are shown to have discrepancies, implausibilities, and historical mistakes that we should just get rid of them and move on to other things. I find that disheartening because the Gospels are so much more than historical sources. They are memories of early Christians about the one they considered to be the most important person ever to walk the planet. Yes, these memories are all distorted, when seen from the perspective of historical reality. But that doesn’t rob them of their value. It simply makes them memories. All memories are distorted.
Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne).- Below are links to his posts with excerpts from his 2017 book,
- https://ehrmanblog.org/do-people-in-oral-cultures-have-better-memories/
- https://ehrmanblog.org/how-do-we-know-about-oral-cultures-by-starting-where-youd-never-suspect/
- https://ehrmanblog.org/when-is-the-same-memory-tradition-story-not-actually-the-same/
- https://ehrmanblog.org/proof-that-historical-narratives-not-just-myths-constantly-change-in-oral-cultures/
Did the Early Christians Forget Jesus? – Lecture by Bart D. Ehrman
57:48 minute video at BAS Library: Scholars of memory – from such fields as psychology, sociology, and anthropology – have long known that we not only forget things (all the time), we also misremember them or even invent them in our heads. How does that apply to the memories of Jesus among his early followers before the Gospels were written? Did the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ life sometimes forget what he said and did? Did they misremember? And when they told stories about him, did the people who heard the stories – and the people to whom those people told the stories, and the people to whom those other people told the stories – alter the memories? Did they sometimes, or often, invent false memories?
Conclusions he cited related to memories:
- Gist Memories
- Details
- Forgetting
- Mis-remembering
- Inventing
- Remembering the past in light of the present
- Relevance? e.g. the death of Jesus as he sees it in the following lists.
Gist Memories of Jesus’ Death that Bart believes are historically right; i.e. actually happened.
- Journey to Jerusalem at Passover
- Temple Protest
- The following week
- Fear of an uprising
- Cooperation of Judas
- Final Meal
- Arrest
- Custody
- Trial
- Convection
- Crucifixion
Memories he thinks did not happen:
- the triumphal entry – The crowd acclaimed him as the arriving king. Does not think it could have happened as the soldiers were there to prevent any uprising and if someone claimed to be the king they would have arrested him quickly. But, Jesus was there for a week without issue.
- The temple incident – Something happened but Mark says he shut down the entire operation of a facility. The plaza is approximately 480 x 300m (about the size of six football fields) per https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-second-temple One person could not do that. It was a memory of those who opposed such institutions.
- His arrest and a follower with a sword – The problem is if one or more were armed and chopping off the ear of someone in the arresting party then why were they not also arrested?
- His declaration as innocent – Line up the gospels chronologically and note the changes in the memories.
- In Mark – Pilot and the Jewish Authorities (JA) agreed he is to be crucified.
- In Matthew – Pilot does not want to do it but the JAs insist and Pilot washes his hands
- In Luke – Pilot declares Jesus innocent three times.
- In John – Pilot declares Jesus innocent three times and then hands him over to them, referring to the Chief Priest and scribes, and they have to kill him. John really makes the Jews at fault. Some translations say he was handed over to the soldiers but that is not what the text says.
- In the Gospel of Peter – Pilot does not order his death as the Jewish King Herod ordered his death.
- In Christian memories presented in later writings, Pilot becomes increasingly exonerated to the point of him being deemed a saint in one belief.
- Barabbas – A murderer and insurrectionist.
- There are no records of Pilot releasing a prisoner during the Passover Feast.
- There are no records outside the gospels of a Governor releasing a prisoner because the people want him to. Romans crucified insurrectionists. Pilot would not have offered to release an insurrectionist, a terrorist, who likely killed a Roman soldier during his capture.
- Barabbas is Bar Abba; i.e. son of his father. The Jewish crowd is given a choice of which son of God they want. They choose the insurrectionist showing how terrible the writer believes they are.
