List of Tables
List of Figures
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Personal and Collective Memory
1. Eyewitness Memory
- Issues Surrounding the Use of Eyewitness Testimony in Gospel Studies
- The Characteristics of Eyewitness Testimony
- Eyewitness Case Study 1: A Foiled Gun Shop Robbery in Burnaby, Vancouver
- Eyewitness Case Study 2: John Dean's Testimony
2. Transience and the Reliability of Long-Term Human Memory
- Seven Frailties of Human Memory
- Long-Term Human Memory and the Gospels
- Forgetting Curves
- Rates of Memory Loss During the First Five Years
- Rates of Loss for Memories up to Fift y Years Old
- Conclusion: Memory Stable aft er the First Five Years
3. Personal Event Memories
- Flashbulb Memories Perhaps Exempt from Transience
- The Reliability of Flashbulb Memories up to Th ree Years Later
- Flashbulb Memories as Personal Event Memories
- The Reliability of Personal Event Memories up to Fift y Years Later
- Conclusions
4. Suggestibility and Bias
- Suggestibility and False Memories
- Hindsight and Other Memory Biases
- Memories as Reconstructions from Various Memory Subsystems
5. Collective Memory
- Elusive Nature and Explanatory Power of Collective Memory
- Experimental Evidence for Collective Memory
- The Influence of the Present on Collective Memory
- Collective Memory in Oral Societies
- Collective Memory Eight Decades after Halbwachs
Part 2: Jesus Traditions as Memory
6. Collective Memory as an Explanation of Gospel Origins
- Collective Memory and Gospel Studies
- Confabulation and formgeschichtliche Explanations of Gospel Origins
- Confabulations in Collective Memories
- Jesus as Teacher, and the Disciples as Preservers of the Jesus Traditions
- Kenneth Bailey's Description of Formal, Controlled Oral Traditions
- Collective Memory in James D. G. Dunn's Jesus Remembered
- Conclusions
7. Eyewitness Memory and the Gospel Traditions
- Characteristics of Written Texts Derived from Eyewitness Traditions
- The Pericope Form and Eyewitness Traditions in the Gospels
- From Eyewitness Memory to Written Gospels
- The Apophthegmata (or Chreiai) as a Case Study of Potential
- Eyewitness Material
8. Memory Frailties and the Gospel Traditions
- Transience and the Gospel Traditions
- Personal Event Memories, the Gospel Traditions, and Transience
- Source Documents and the Frailty of Transience
- Suggestibility and the Gospel Traditions
- Suggestibility and the Possibility of Nonauthentic Jesus Tradition
- Bias and the Gospel Traditions
- Conclusions
9. Collective Memory, Jesus as Teacher, and the Jesus Traditions
- Jesus as a Teacher
- Collective Memories of Jesus' Teachings and the Jesus Traditions
- Gospel Traditions of Jesus' Teaching: Parables
- Gospel Traditions of Jesus' Teaching: Aphorisms
- Jesus as the Origin of the Teachings Traditions
10. Conclusions: Memory, Jesus, and the Gospels
- Appendix A. The Potential Pool of Eyewitnesses at the Time the Gospels Were Written
- First-Century Life Expectancy
- The Potential Pool of Eyewitnesses to the Life and Ministry of Jesus
Works Cited
Index of Ancient Texts and Authors
Index of Modern Authors
Subject Index
