The Psychology of Memory and the Study of the Gospels

2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 136-155
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Eyewitness Testimony ◽  
Event Memory ◽  
Personal Event ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Special Category

New Testament scholars who have some acquaintance with the cognitive psychology of memory have tended to conclude that memory is generally unreliable. Research in cognitive psychology does not support that view. These New Testament scholars have been misled especially by failure to distinguish different types of memory, by relying heavily on study of eyewitness testimony in court (a special category from which it is not legitimate to draw broader conclusions), and by misunderstanding the deliberate focus on the failures of memory in much of the research (which is not because failures are common but because failures are interesting). For research in this field to be useful in the study of the Gospels, we need to distinguish personal event memory from other types and to specify the conditions under which this type of memory tends to be either accurate or misleading.

Commentary on Morgan-Miller's “An Exploratory Study of Different Types of Violence Presented in Early Christian and Islamic Historical Documents”

2002 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 571-574 ◽  
Author(s):  
Walter R. Schumm
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Exploratory Study ◽  
Historical Documents ◽  
Short Supply ◽  
Early Christian ◽  
Contemporary World ◽  
Moral Transformation ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The New Testament

Oversights are observed in Morgan-Miller's previous 2002 report on themes of violence in the New Testament and the Qur'an. While both the New Testament and the Qur'an seem to suggest some type of moral transformation in the life of Jesus, it is not clear to what extent such a transformation remains normative in the lives of ordinary believers or even continues to be expected. However, Jesus seemed to expect that his followers would forsake violence against their enemies, a lesson that seems in short supply throughout the contemporary world.

scholarly journals Databases for Specialized Audiences: An Exploration of Online Access to the Nontextual Features of Greek New Testament Manuscripts

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marina Toumpouri
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Medieval Manuscripts ◽  
Preservation Condition ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Greek New Testament ◽  
Temporal And Spatial ◽  
Object Of Study ◽  
Physical Features ◽  
Interface Organization ◽  
Different Levels

AbstractSince the beginning of the century, the digitization of medieval manuscripts has been a major concern of institutions in the possession of such material. This has led to the massive production of digital surrogates for online display. Preservation condition and temporal and spatial limitations are no longer restrictions for accessing these objects, making them easily available to a potentially larger public than before. The databases created for hosting the surrogates are designed for different categories of audience, with various standards in mind and different levels of technical sophistication. Although primarily accessed for the texts they bear, the digital surrogates of manuscripts are also the object of study of a specialized group of users interested in their physical features. This review will discuss whether databases that comprise digital surrogates of Greek New Testament manuscripts built by different types of institutions are efficient in addressing the needs of this admittedly small audience. I examine questions of content, interface, organization, and rationales behind the choices of their creators.

The Ethnic-Civic Dichotomy and the Explanation of National Self-Understanding

2012 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 65-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cyril Jayet
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Causal Mechanism ◽  
Prototype Model ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Alternative Models ◽  
Causal Mechanisms ◽  
Different Types

AbstractIn his paper Ethnicity as Cognition (2006), Rogers Brubaker held that cognitive psychology can enrich the understanding of the practices of categorisation that underpins ethnicity, nationhood and race. I shall argue that the philosophical debate concerning the different types of explanation in social sciences – the explanations based on reasons and the explanations based on causal mechanisms – can throw some light on this issue. To analyse beliefs requires use of both approaches. It can be shown with the classical opposition between an ethnic and a civic conception of national belonging which derives from a reason-based approach. The causal mechanism approach underlying cognitive psychology can offer alternative models accounting for national self-understanding, notably the prototype model of categorisation. I confront empirically these two theories – the ethnic civic dichotomy and the prototype model – using the issp data from 2003 and evidence the advantages and shortcomings of each theory.

Rhetoric and New Testament Studies

2014 ◽  
pp. 648-660
Author(s):  
Stanley E. Porter
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
New Testament ◽  
Rhetorical Criticism ◽  
Text Linguistics ◽  
Ancient Rhetoric ◽  
New Rhetoric ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The New Testament ◽  
New Testament Studies ◽  
Important Form

Rhetorical criticism has emerged since the mid-1970s as an important form of criticism of the New Testament. This chapter offers a critical summary and assessment of such research. There are several different types of rhetorical criticism, but the major form practiced in New Testament studies is based upon utilizing the categories of ancient rhetoric as an interpretive tool. The chapter criticizes this approach for failing to assess accurately the ancient context of the New Testament. Then a number of positive ways that rhetoric in various forms—analysis of style, the New Rhetoric, discourse analysis, text linguistics, and socio-rhetorical criticism—can be used in New Testament studies are proposed.

What psychology and cognitive neuroscience know about the communicative function of memory

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
David C. Rubin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Cognitive Neuroscience ◽  
Event Memory ◽  
Communicative Function ◽  
Target Article

AbstractMahr & Csibra (M&C) include interesting ideas about the nature of memory from outside of the field of cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience. However, the target article's inaccurate claims about those fields limit its usefulness. I briefly review the most serious omissions and distortions of the literature by the target article, including its misrepresentation of event memory, and offer suggestions for forwarding the goal of understanding the communicative function of memory.

The General and the Particular in Memory

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-51
Author(s):  
Richard Bauckham
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Psychology ◽  
Basic Principle ◽  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Historical Jesus ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Better Than

Dale Allison’s book Constructing Jesus begins by describing how memory often leads us astray. As a basic principle for the quest of the historical Jesus, he claims that the general is remembered better than the particular. This article argues that Allison has misunderstood the results of research on memory in cognitive psychology. There is no reason to think that specific events are remembered less well than generalities. Allison fails to distinguish different types of memory and fails to discuss what sorts of events are remembered well. There is strong evidence that memories of “exceptional” events (characterized by uniqueness, importance, emotionality and frequent rehearsal) are especially well retained. The exorcism stories in the Gospels are briefly discussed as an example.

Analysing a Biblical Text: Some Important Linguistic Distinctions

1979 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vern S. Poythress
Keyword(s):  
New Testament ◽  
Biblical Text ◽  
Biblical Scholarship ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The New Testament

Sometimes exegetes differ from one another not so much because they have seen different data but because they are in fact looking for different types of ‘meaning’. For this reason, it is useful to classify different types of analysis of a text, and different types of ‘meaning’ resulting from such analysis.The need for such classification has increased with the progress of biblical scholarship. Biblical exegetes and theologians have long had to deal with questions like ‘What is the meaning of this word of Scripture?’ and ‘What is the meaning of this verse, paragraph, section, or book?’ The intrinsic difficulties of recovering meaning from dead languages and sometimes unfamiliar cultural settings are often challenge enough. But, as increasing refinement and exactitude are sought, another kind of difficulty can arise, namely a difficulty with kinds of ‘meaning’. Is it indeed true that there is always only one meaning which is the meaning of a text? Is this the case even in poetic passages that may suggest or allude to new perspectives and comparisons without explicitly teaching them?1 Moreover, supposing that someone has arrived at ‘the meaning’ of a text, how is he to communicate this to someone else? In a commentary? In a sermon? In a form like Kittel's Theological Dictionary of the New Testament? Or perhaps even in the form of a painting or a new social and political organisation?

The extinction time of a general birth and death process with catastrophes

1986 ◽  
Vol 23 (04) ◽  
pp. 851-858 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. J. Brockwell
Keyword(s):  
Laplace Transform ◽  
Size Distribution ◽  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Death Process ◽  
Extinction Time ◽  
Birth And Death Process ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Laplace Transform ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient

The Laplace transform of the extinction time is determined for a general birth and death process with arbitrary catastrophe rate and catastrophe size distribution. It is assumed only that the birth rates satisfyλ0= 0,λj> 0 for eachj> 0, and. Necessary and sufficient conditions for certain extinction of the population are derived. The results are applied to the linear birth and death process (λj=jλ, µj=jμ) with catastrophes of several different types.

Differentiating between different forms of moral obligations

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rajen A. Anderson ◽  
Benjamin C. Ruisch ◽  
David A. Pizarro
Keyword(s):  
Moral Character ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Different Types

Abstract We argue that Tomasello's account overlooks important psychological distinctions between how humans judge different types of moral obligations, such as prescriptive obligations (i.e., what one should do) and proscriptive obligations (i.e., what one should not do). Specifically, evaluating these different types of obligations rests on different psychological inputs and has distinct downstream consequences for judgments of moral character.

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