Ancient Memory Capability The Nature of Ancient Education Chreia Defined Chreia in the Gospels...

Ancient Memory CapabilityThe Nature of Ancient EducationChreia DefinedChreia in the GospelsConclusion

“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 24:88-89). 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.

QuintilianQuintilian, 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 AidsArchaeologists 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.

ConclusionJesus’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.

ConclusionThe 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.

ResourcesGymnastics of the Mind: Greek Education in

Hellenistic and Roman Egypt (2001), by Raffaella Cribiore

Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (2006), by Richard Bauckham