The Use of Memory in the Old Testament Quotations in John’s Gospel
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The variances of the Old Testament quotations in John’s gospel from their source texts have been explained as John’s theological re-appropriation of these sources. However, this paper identifies within these variations what David Carr calls “memory variants,” ultimately showing that John was recalling the ot from memory. Furthermore, the verbatim quotations are usually taken from Psalms, which contain poetic constraints that enhance memory recall. These observations correspond strongly to the fact that the gospel of John, like other ancient documents, was produced in a culture that was predominately oral, wherein the handing on of tradition depended primarily on memorization.
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2
See H.E. Hearons, “The Implications of Orality for Studies of the Biblical Text,” Oral Tradition 19 (2004) for a review of recent studies of memory, orality, and text transmission.
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3
David M. Carr, The Formation of the Hebrew Bible: A New Reconstruction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011) 17.
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4
F.C. Bartlett, Remembering (London: Cambridge University Press, 1932) 84, 93; cf. the summary of Bartlett’s findings in David Carr, Formation, 14.
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7
Carr, Formation, 15; David C. Rubin, Memory in Oral Traditions: The Cognitive Psychology of Epic, Ballads, and Counting-out Rhymes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995) 122.
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14
Birger Gerhardsson, The Origin of the Gospel Traditions (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1977) 22. So also Karel van der Toorn, Scribal Culture and the Making of the Hebrew Bible (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007) 12.
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16
Bartlett, Remembering, 68, 81, 125, 175; Carr, “Torah on the Heart,” 25, 29; Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005) 40-46; Rubin, Memory, passim. Emanuel Tov, Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2012) 126 acknowledges the difficulties in explaining such differences: “one often gropes in the dark when encountering differences in number (singular/plural), the tenses of the verb, pronominal suffixes, prepositions, the article, etc.”.
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23
Barrett, The Gospel, 558; F.F. Bruce, The Gospel of John: Introduction, Exposition, and Notes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983) 377; von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters, 3:315; R.E. Brown, The Gospel (ab 29a; New York: Doubleday, 1970) 953.
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31
Cf. Barrett, The Gospel, 444; Freed, Quotations, 89; A.T. Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel: A Study of John and the Old Testament (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991) 173; Rudolf Schnackenburg, The Gospel according to St John (3 vols.; New York: Crossroad, 1972), 3:26; Westcott, The Gospel, 193.
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44
Barrett, The Gospel, 173; cf. Schnackenburg, The Gospel, 1:291.
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60
Brown, The Gospel, 458; Freed, Quotations, 80; Hanson, The Prophetic Gospel, 164.
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64
Brown, The Gospel, 457; cf. von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters, 3:307.
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65
Bruce, The Gospel, 260; cf. Freed, Quotations, 80, and von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters, 3:307.
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76
Westcott, The Gospel, xiv. cf. Westcott, 123, “The reference is not to any one isolated passage but to the general tenour of such passages.”
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The Use of Memory in the Old Testament Quotations in John’s Gospel
In: Novum TestamentumSearch for other papers by Andrew Montanaro in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
The variances of the Old Testament quotations in John’s gospel from their source texts have been explained as John’s theological re-appropriation of these sources. However, this paper identifies within these variations what David Carr calls “memory variants,” ultimately showing that John was recalling the ot from memory. Furthermore, the verbatim quotations are usually taken from Psalms, which contain poetic constraints that enhance memory recall. These observations correspond strongly to the fact that the gospel of John, like other ancient documents, was produced in a culture that was predominately oral, wherein the handing on of tradition depended primarily on memorization.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 493 | 48 | 6 |
| Full Text Views | 395 | 6 | 1 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 243 | 16 | 3 |
