Here’s the link to this article by Bart Ehrman.
June 10, 2023
I’m going to be discussing soon some of the things that appear to be “misremembered” about Jesus in our early sources, but first it’s important to emphasize some of the hugely critical positive things about memory – like, that most of the time we get it basically right. Depending, of course, on what “basically” means!
Here’s how I discuss the matter in Jesus Before the Gospels (HarperOne, 2016).
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Remembering the Gist?
Let me make a point that may not be clear from what I have said so far about the psychology of memory. In stressing the fact – which appears to be a fact – that memories are always constructed and therefore prone to error, even when they are quite vivid, I am not, I am decidedly not, saying that all of our memories are faulty or wrong. Most of the time we remember pretty well, at least in broad outline. Presumably, so too did eyewitnesses to the life of Jesus. As did the person who heard a story from an eyewitness may well have remembered in broad outline he was told. And the person who heard a story from a neighbor whose cousin was married to a man whose father told him a story that he heard from a business associate whose wife once knew someone who was married to an eyewitness. Probably in the latter case – which, as far-fetched as it sounds, may be pretty close to how most people were hearing stories about Jesus – a lot more would have been changed than in the case of an eyewitness telling someone the day after he saw something happen. But my basic point here is that despite the faults of memory, we do obviously remember a lot of things, and the fundamental memories themselves can often be right.
This is a commonplace in the psychological study of memory. We tend to remember the “gist” of an experience pretty well, even if the details get messed up. You may not remember correctly (despite what you think) where, when, with whom, or how you heard about the Challenger explosion, or the results of the O. J. Simpson trial, or even (this is harder to believe, but it appears to be true) the attacks of 9/11. But you do remember that you heard about the events, and you remember that they happened.
As we will see, this is an important point, because there are gist memories of Jesus recorded in the New Testament Gospels that are almost certainly accurate. At the same time, there are a lot of details – and in fact entire episodes – that are almost certainly not accurate. These are “memories” of things that didn’t actually happen. They are distorted memories.
Still, many of the broad outlines that are narrated in the Gospels certainly happen. Much of the gist is correct. One big question, then, is just how broad does a memory have to be in order to be considered a gist memory? Different scholars may have different views about that.
John Dean as a Test Case
A famous example can demonstrate my point. There is a much cited study done of both detailed and gist memories of a person who claimed to have, and was generally conceded to have, a very good memory: John Dean, White House Counsel to Richard Nixon from July 1970 to April 1973.
During the Watergate hearings Dean testified in detail about dozens of specific conversations he had during the White House cover up. In the course of the hearings he was asked how he could possibly remember such things. He claimed to have a good memory in general. But he also indicated that he had used later newspaper clippings about events in the White House to refresh his memory and to place himself back in the context of the events that were described. It was after he publicly described his conversations with Nixon that the White House tapes were discovered. With this new evidence of what was actually said on each occasion, one could look carefully at what Dean had earlier remembered as having been said, to see if he recalled both the gist and the details correctly.
That’s exactly what the previously mentioned Ulric Neisser did, in an intriguing article called “John Dean’s Memory: A Case Study.” Neissser examined two specific conversations that took place in the Oval office, one on September 15, 1972 and the other on March 21, 1973, by comparing the transcript of Dean’s testimony with the actual recording of the conversation. The findings were striking.[1] Even when he was not elevating his own role and position (as he did), Dean got things wrong. Lots of things wrong. Even big things.
For example, the hearing that involved the September 15 conversation occurred nine months later. The contrast between what Dean claimed was said and what really was said was sharp and striking. In Neisser’s words:
Comparison with the transcript shows that hardly a word of Dean’s account is true. Nixon did not say any of the things attributed to him here…. Nor had Dean himself said the things he later describes himself as saying…. His account is plausible but entirely incorrect…. Dean cannot be said to have reported the ‘gist’ of the opening remarks; no count of idea units or comparison of structure would produce a score much above zero.[2]
It should be stressed the Neisser does not think Dean was lying about what happened in the conversation in order to make himself look good: the conversation that really happened and the one he described as happening were both highly incriminating. So why is there a difference between what he said was said and what was really said? Neisser argues that it is all about “filling in the gaps,” the problem I mentioned earlier with respect to F. C. Bartlett. Dean was pulling from different parts of his brain the traces of what had occurred on the occasion and his mind, unconsciously, filled in the gaps. Thus, he “remembered” what was said when he walked into the Oval Office based on the kinds of things that typically were said when he walked into the Oval Office. In fact, whereas they may have been said on other occasions, they weren’t on this one. Or he might have recalled how his conversations with Nixon typically began and thought that that was the case here as well, even though it was not. Moreover, almost certainly, whether intentionally or sub-consciously, he was doing what all of us do a lot of the time: he was inflating his own role in and position in the conversation: “What his testimony really describes is not the September 15 meeting itself but his fantasy of it: the meeting as it should have been, so to speak…. By June, this fantasy had become the way Dean remembered the meeting.”[3]
Neisser sums up his findings like this: “It is clear that Dean’s account of the opening of the September 15 conversation is wrong both as to the words used and their gist. Moreover, cross examination did not reveal his errors as clearly as one might have hoped….. Dean came across as a man who has a good memory for gist with an occasional literal word stuck in, like a raisin in a pudding. He was not such a man.”[4]
And so, whether Dean had a decent gist memory probably depends on how broadly one defines “gist.” He knew he had a conversation with Nixon. He knew what the topics were. Nonetheless, he appears not to have known what was actually said, either by Nixon or himself.
In this instance we are talking about an extraordinarily intelligent and educated man with a fine memory, trying to recall conversations from nine months before. What would happen if we were dealing with more ordinary people with average memories, trying to recall what someone said maybe two years ago? Or twenty? Or forty? Try it for yourself: pick a conversation that you had two years ago with someone – a teacher, a pastor, a boss. Do you remember it word for word? Even if you think you do (sometimes we think we do!) is there any actual evidence that you do? It is important to emphasize what experts have actually learned about memory, and distorted memories. Leading memory expert Elizabeth Loftus and her colleague Katherine Ketcham reflect on this issue: “Are we aware of our mind’s distortions of our past experiences? In most cases, the answer is no. As time goes by and the memories gradually change, we become convinced that we saw or said or did what we remember.”[5]
These comments are dealing with just our own personal memories. What about a report, by someone else, of a conversation that a third person had, written long afterwards? What are the chances that it will be accurate, word for word? Or even better, what about a report written by someone who had heard about the conversation from someone who was friends with a man whose brother’s wife had a cousin who happened to be there – a report written, say, several decades after the fact? Is it likely to record the exact words? In fact, is it likely to remember precisely even the gist? Or the topics?
Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in Matthew chapters 5-7 was recorded about fifty years after he would have delivered the sermon. But can we assume he delivered it? If he did so, did he speak the specific words now found in the Sermon (all three chapters of them) while sitting on a mountain addressing the crowds? On that occasion did he really say, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven,” and “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves,” and “Everyone who hears these words of mind and does them will be like a wise man who built his house on a rock”? Or did he say things sort of like that on the occasion? Or did he say something sort of like that on some other occasion – any occasion at all? Which is the gist and which is the detail?[6]
Or what about episodes from Jesus’ life, recorded, say, forty years later? Was Jesus crucified between two robbers who both mocked him before he died six hours later? Are those details correct? Or is the gist correct? But what is the gist? Is it that Jesus was crucified with two robbers? Is it that Jesus was crucified? Is it that Jesus died?
[1] Ulric Neisser, “John Dean’s Memory: A Case Study,” Cognition 9 (1981) 1-22.
[2] “John Dean’s Memory,” p. 9. Italics his.
[3] “John Dean’s Memory,” p. 10
[4] “John Dean’s Memory,” p. 13.
[5] Elizaeth Loftus and Katherine Ketcham, Witness for the Defense: The Accused, the eyewitness, and the Expert who Puts Memory on Trial (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p. 20.
[6] See my discussion of the sermon on pp. xxx.
The Pencil-Driven Life 