Transcript Ancient_Eyewitness_Memory

 Ancient Memory Capability
 The Nature of Ancient Education
 Chreia Defined
 Chreia in the Gospels
 Conclusion
 “The texts depicting the extraordinary capability of
certain persons to recall detailed information are
revealing. The sophist of Elis, says Plato, was able to
repeat fifty names after hearing them only once (Hi.
Maior 285e)….
 …And Pliny the Elder brings together an anthology of
memory stories, asserting that Cyrus knew the names
of all the men in his army, that Lucius Scipio knew the
names of all the Roman people, that Cineas repeated
the names of all the senators and knights of Rome
within a day of arriving there,…
 …that Mithridates addressed his subjects in twenty-
two different languages, that Charmadas recited by
heart any book in the libraries (Hist. Nat. VII 24:8889). Pliny evidently knew also of other such stories.”—
Samuel Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story:
The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral
History, 162-163.
 “Memory was the foundation of all knowledge in a
world that could not rely on easily consulted books,
tables of contents and indexes, library catalogues, and
electronic search tools…
 …Exercises of mental gymnastics practiced at every
level of education aimed at strengthening the
student’s natural capacity for retention to levels
unheard of in the modern world….
 Higher education was particularly concerned with
developing a student’s ‘artificial’ memory, thus not
only improving his ability to memorize content word
for word but also strengthening his capacity to build
rapid and effective systems for learning.”—Raffaella
Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in
Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2001), 166.
Plato Reports:
 “The masters take pains accordingly, and the children,
when they have learnt their letters and are getting to
understand the written word as before they did only
the spoken, are furnished with works of good poets to
read as they sit in class, and are made to learn them by
heart (ἐκμανθάνειν).”—Plato, Protagoras, 325e.
Quintilian
 Quintilian, a first century C.E. Roman rhetor.
 He led a famous school in Rome that emphasized the
importance of students memorizing lots of
information.
Quintilian Writes:
 “The memory will thus be more efficiently exercised in
mastering what is another's than what is their own;
and those who shall have been practiced in this more
difficult kind of labor will fix in their minds, without
trouble, what they themselves have composed, as
being more familiar to them; they will also accustom
themselves to the best compositions, and they will
always have in their memory something which they
may imitate and will, even without being aware,
reproduce that fashion of style which they have deeply
impressed upon their minds.”—Quintilian, Institutes
of Oratory 2.7.3.
Quintilian Also Writes:
 “It is the power of memory that brings before us those
multitudes of precedents, laws, judgments, sayings,
and facts of which an orator should always have an
abundance and which he should always be ready to
produce. Accordingly, memory is called, not without
reason, the treasury of eloquence.”
Ancient Memorization Aids
 Archaeologists have discovered wax tablets, papyri, and
ostraca containing portions of books.
Raffaella Cribiore Explains:
 “Students used these models not only to
practice reading and writing whole
words, but also to memorize their
contents.”—Raffaella Cribiore,
Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education
in Hellenistic and Roman Egypt
(Princeton and Oxford: Princeton
University Press, 2001), 134.
Memorization Among Ancient Jews
Hebrew Bible
Proverbs 7:1-3:

“My child, keep my words and store up my
commandments with you; keep my commandments
and live, keep my teachings as the apple of your eye;
bind them on your fingers, write them on the tablet
of your heart.”
Inter-testamental Period
The Apocalypse of Baruch Says:
 “Listen, Baruch, to this word and write down in the
memory of your heart all that you shall learn”—2
Baruch 50:1
Richard Bauckham Notes:
 “In a Jewish context Scripture would certainly be
memorized verbatim, but other written narratives, like
the Biblical Antiquities of Pseudo-Philo, might well be
memorized for oral performance in a synagogue, with
the degree of performative variation normally
expected in such cases.”—Richard Bauckham, Jesus
and the Eyewitnesses, 281.
Chreia
Chreia
 “A chreia is a brief statement or action that is aptly
attributed to some person or something analogous to a
person.”—Theon (first century C.E.)
 It was generally short as well as easy to memorize.
Chreia Was An Element in Education
 “Chreiai, for instance, were already a part of previous
educational stages: novices memorized and copied
them and used them to practice reading and writing.”
—Raffaella Cribiore, Gymnastics of the Mind, 224.
Chreia in the Gospels?
 Jesus could have formulated His sayings as a series of
chreia to make His teachings easier for the disciples to
remember.
 “It has frequently been observed that Jesus’ teaching in
its typically Synoptic forms has many features that
facilitate remembering.”—Richard Bauckham, Jesus
and the Eyewitnesses, 282.
Conclusion
 Jesus’s disciples and their associates lived in an oral
culture in which many Greeks, Romans, and Jews
possessed powerful memories.
 Many of Jesus’s are worded in ways to make them easy
to remember.
Conclusion
 The Gospel authors could have taken notes during
Jesus’s sermons using wax tablets, scrap papyri,
ostraca, or small books (2 Timothy 4:13).
 All of these possibilities remove the necessity of
postulating the existence of hypothetical sources such
as Q, M, and L.
Resources
 Gymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in Hellenistic
and Roman Egypt (2001), by Raffaella Cribiore
 Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006), by Richard
Bauckham