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Archive for the ‘Memory’ Category


The Memory of Ignatius of Antioch

In Frazer MacDiarmid, Ignatius, Jonathon Lookadoo, Memory, Mohr Siebeck, Patristics on January 18, 2024 at 11:44 am

2024.01.01 | Frazer MacDiarmid. The Memory of Ignatius of Antioch: The Martyr as a Locus of Christian Identity, Remembering and Remembered. Wissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zum Neuen Testament 2.581. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2022. Pp. xii + 269. ISBN: 9783161614996.

Review by Jonathon Lookadoo, Presbyterian University and Theological Seminary, Seoul, Republic of Korea

Frazer MacDiarmid employs memory as a hermeneutical lens through which to view Ignatius’s letters from three angles: how Ignatius remembers others, how Ignatius makes provisions for his immediate memory, and how Ignatius was remembered by readers in late antiquity. The monograph began life as an Oxford D.Phil. thesis that was completed in 2021 under the supervision of Mark Edwards. The Memory of Ignatius of Antioch is carefully argued and maintains a consistent focus without getting distracted by the many possible topics on which it could have engaged. Most substantively, MacDiarmid unlocks fresh perspectives on old or overlooked issues in the letters by employing memory as a key to the Ignatian corpus.

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Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory

In Barbara Meyer, Cambridge University Press, Historical Jesus, Jewish Backgrounds, Jonathan Rowlands, Memory, Philosophy on November 10, 2022 at 3:00 pm

2022.11.09 | Barbara U. Meyer. Jesus the Jew in Christian Memory: Theological and Philosophical Explorations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. 

Review by Jonathan Rowlands, St. Mellitus College.

Barbara Meyer’s monograph is concerned with “the theological implications of Jesus’ Jewish identity as well philosophical questions raised by the ongoing presence of Jewishness within Christian ethical and dogmatic discourse” (p. 1). Jesus’ Jewishness, and its pursuant theological and philosophical implications, are apprehended by Meyer through the lens of memory. Memory, she writes, speaks of Jesus’ Jewishness “not [as] a new discovery,” but helps to capture what has been “present but dormant throughout Church history … often suppressed, neglected, and overlooked” (p. 2).

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Memory and the Jesus Tradition

In Alan KIRK, Bloomsbury, Fourfold Gospel, Gospels, Historical Jesus, Memory, Nathan Charles Ridlehoover, Synoptic Gospels on September 20, 2019 at 2:00 pm

9780567680242

2019.9.10 | Alan Kirk. Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 2. London: Bloomsbury, 2018. ISBN 978-0-56-768024-2.

Review by Charles Nathan Ridlehoover.

Alan Kirk is Professor in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at James Madison University. Kirk provides the second installment in the newly minted Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuriesseries with Memory and the Jesus Tradition. The following volume is the culmination of 15 years of research concerning the Jesus tradition and memory. Kirk’s work analyzes how memory traces the Jesus tradition from its inception to its codification. Each essay contained in the book is from previously published work, but ingeniously arranged under four rubrics: Part I: “Formation of the Jesus Tradition,” Part II: “Memory and Manuscript,” Part III: “Memory and Historical Jesus Research,” and Part IV: “Memory in Second-Century Gospel Writing.” Read the rest of this entry »