An Introduction to Social Memory

When asked for a good introduction to Social Memory theory, I generally point folks to the revised edition of Social Memory by Fentress and Wickham. But I am often asked for a more concise treatment. With this in mind, I've posted an excerpt of my Baylor University Press monograph here:

https://www.academia.edu/10198050/History_and_Memory

With your academia.edu account, you can read chapter three of my The Historiographical Jesus: Memory, Typology, and the Son of David. Here I explain some historiographical elements of Social Memory theory. The previous chapter (ch. 2) surveys modern hermeneutical theory in the philosophy of history at large. The following chapter (ch. 4) offers my theoretical adaptation of Social Memory for historical Jesus research. The second half of this book demonstrates my adaptation of Social Memory with a specific method that I call "triangulation" via "memory refraction." I do so by focusing on the exegetical problems presented by the title Son of David in Second Temple Judaism(s). When I completed this book as my dissertation in 2005, it was the first book-length treatment of Social Memory for historical Jesus research.

The chapter linked above was first presented at the Durham-Tübingen symposium in 2004. The papers from that meeting were published in this collection.

-anthony