Memories of Jesus, The McIver Book– Part Two

Last updated on: March 13, 2015 at 11:11 pm by Ben Witherington

Memories of Jesus, The McIver Book– Part Two 2015-03-13T23:11:19-04:00 Ben Witherington

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

In an interesting study, Daniel Schacter has identified The Seven Sins of Memory. They are as follows: 1) transience; 2) absent-mindedness; 3) blocking; 4) misattribution; 5) suggestibility; 6) bias, and 7) persistence. By transcience what Schacter means is that most things that we see or hear are quickly forgotten. The glimpse of the cemetery on the right as I am speeding along to the seminary to teach at 7:30 in the morning is not a cherished or preserved memory, it is simply a fleeting piece of data, quickly left behind as the mind hurtles forward to more important things seen or heard.

Yet still, some things, even some trivial things form long lasting data in the brain, for example, I remember my first junior high basketball game in 1966 where I didn’t realize at first I was: 1) either supposed to bring a jock, or 2) just keep wearing my underwear when I donned my basketball shorts, and so I put on the latter without either of the former. Fortunately for me, my mistake dawned on me before I went out on the court wearing nothing but my loose new purple Eagles uniform and an awkward embarrassed smile. In general, the brain sorts out the transient and the significant, but sometimes the insignificant is strange enough or embarrassing enough to be remembered over a very long time. That incident happened to me 45 years ago, and yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I mention this, because probably at most there was a 40 year gap between the events of Jesus’ life and the writing of our earliest Gospel– Mark.

It is interesting that when eyewitnesses have testified in court cases, the surveys show that they tend to be accurate even about details 80% of the time, unless they are deliberately trying to deceive. And the thing about lying is consistency. It is very difficult to maintain consistency of all surrounding facts, ideas, events, timeline once one interjects a lie into the mix. I would suggest this is because reality is truth-biased, or better said, reality has a truth structure to it. It only fully makes sense and consistently so when the truth is told about it.

Unfortunately for us, most memory studies study what are called forgetting curves over very short periods of time, not say the 35-40 year period between the death of Jesus and the writing of the first Gospel. Very little of what is learned about forgetting curves on the very short term basis helps us with the issue of what could have been remembered over so long a period of time.

One of the interesting things scientists have learned about the brain is it has memory subsystems. For example, some people are definitely better at remembering names, or numbers, or dates, than others. Some people are inherently better at math or with words, and so on. Oddly, some people who are excellent at remembering faces are bad with names. Some people are more visual remembers, some more aural.

One of the few studies of memory that deals with enough longevity of memory to be relevant to Gospel studies is discussed by McIver beginning on p. 35ff. It is the Bahrick study of people who learned Spanish in high school or college but then didn’t go on to use it thereafter. The study even extends to 50 years out from the original learning. The study involved a good large sample, 773 persons, of whom 146 were studying Spanish at the time the experiment was run, and the rest had studied Spanish between one and 50 years earlier (a separate control group of 40 people who had never studied Spanish was also used). What this and other studies showed is that in the first 3-6 years the normal forgetting curve, or memory decay happened, but thereafter for the next 20 or more years, what remained of the memory was in ‘permastore’ and could be recalled— for example the phrase ‘Hablo Espanol’ or more appropriate to this time of year ‘Felix Navidad’?? which I learned in Grade 3, is still stuck in my brain, even though I have not really used or spoken Spanish since the third grade (which sadly was back in 1961). Not surprisingly Bahrick discovered that the better the initial learning, the less memory decay affected what was retained. Time references proved to be the weakest aspect of long term memory in such studies of what is called episodic memory. On the other end of the spectrum was memory of things seen like faces, which in many such tests seem to be remembered over very long periods of time without much memory decay. It is interesting then that we have no physical description of Jesus at all— in our four Gospels.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

December 12, 2011

Memories of Jesus--the McIver Book Part One

Next Post

December 14, 2011 Remembering Jesus, the McIver Book--- Part Three

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz