Social Memory versus Historical Criticism. Social Memory Theory as a Postmodern Tool of New Testament Exegesis
Abstract
The chapter characterizes the state of scholarship in New Testament biblical studies, especially in the quest for the "historical Jesus," when the exclusive paradigm of historical criticism was fading, and the perspective of social memory was coming into play. The emergence of social/collective memory inquiry is related to the development of postmodernism in the field of philosophical discourse, beginning in the field of biblical studies in the 1980s, but it was not until a decade later that wider attention was given to analyses of the Gospels.
The areas of orality and memory in relation to groups and cultural frameworks of the time are explored, as well as notions of the author, new criticism, new historicism, and close reading. On the other hand, the fields of psychology and neurology are omitted.
The discussion includes the field of hermeneutics and conceptual apparatus, adapted from the time of F. D.
E. Schleiermacher and J.
M. Chladenius to H.-G.
Gadamer. The presuppositions of the investigation of social memory are contrasted with the methodology of the school of the history of form and the school of the history of redaction, and the era of historical criticism is far from over; only historical criticism has lost its monopoly on the interpretation of historical events and records of early Christian communities in the early Christian era.