The Birth of Christian History: Memory and Time from Mark to Luke–Acts

Abstract

Eve-Marie Becker explores in Birth of Christian History genres, subgenres, and literary forms in Hellenistic and Roman historiography in order to draw out and compare the processes that shaped the social and cultural memory of the earliest Christian literary culture. This three-chapter volume focuses particularly on the influence of early Roman Imperial historiography on the NT writings beginning with the Gospel (Mark) to the starting point of early Christian history (Luke–Acts).In ch. 1 (pp. 1–33), Becker discusses the interdependent relationship between memory and history writing. She teases out the philosophical constructs that undergird the Roman conception of memory and how the early NT writings demonstrate some similarity to Roman memorial culture. After defining and explaining the differences between counter-memory, visual memory, ritual memory, and exemplary memory in relation to early Christian literature against Roman history writing, Becker elaborates on the purposes that literary memory serves in the Gospels and Acts: (1) a didactic purpose—the involvement of memory in education; (2) an entertainment function—as later apocryphal works supplement perceived historical gaps, such as Acta literature; and (3) an authoritative function—when later Christian Fathers refer back to early Christian literary memory in claiming normative and heretical errors.In ch. 2 (pp. 34–129), Becker looks extensively into how ancient historians explain/interpret the past and how they paraphrase the narrativized past. The Hellenistic and Roman historians—such as Velleius, Sallust, Strabo, Livy, Dio Cassius, and Appian—reference an existing master plan behind the narrative while also claiming their own view. In this sense, historians choose topics and subgenres according to the moral value that they aim to depict; thus, they assert their own moral value on different levels (causality in the narrative, use of rhetorical forms and genre, and interpretation on a metahistorical level) in order to affect their contemporary and future audiences. Becker finds the most prominent comparison in Velleius Paterculus’s catalog of virtues and values in his description of Tiberius’s reign. Becker applies a form of Vellieus’s approach to Mark’s Gospel and discerns literary causal connections and patterns, such as how Mark’s metahistorical interpretation—the “way of the cross”—serves as an overarching moral value in the narrative.In ch. 2, Becker also approaches an understanding of NT historiography from two levels—discussing the theoretical contributions of ancient historians and philosophers (those before and contemporary with Mark and Luke–Acts) while also examining ancient historiography through the ideas and opinions of contemporary scholars and theorists. For example, when discussing “person-centric” historiography, Becker consults the writings of Ivo Bruns (1896) in relation to personhood and concerning the distinction between major characters and minor characters as distinct from biography. She draws out Bruns’s conclusions about direct depiction of characters (e.g., Polybius’s narrative Scipio) and indirect evaluation of characters that lie hidden within the narrative (e.g., Livy on Scipio) which can be traced back to Thucydides. Becker then takes these observations and guidelines for analyzing the manner in which persons act as protagonists in the framework of history writing (judgment by contemporaries, impact on contemporaries, and the person’s attributed speech) and applies it to Mark’s Gospel: where Jesus evokes judgment (Mark 8:27–29) and Jesus’s impact on others is through action and through speeches (1:18–34). From this perspective, Jesus’s personhood is evidence that he is the acting protagonist within a historiographical account.In ch. (pp. 130–53), the abstract concept of time and its relationship to historiography is assessed. Since memory gives access to the perception of time as well as structuring it, time becomes an object of interpretation that gives shape to identity (the “golden age” in Virgil, Ecl. 4.4–10). Becker analyzes the relation between memory, time, and history in considering the earliest Christian shape of history writing, its Hellenistic-Roman setting(s), and its impact on the construction and understanding of “Christian” time. Becker concludes that the motivating factor for Hellenistic and Roman history writing is the conceptualization of time. She holds that this is also true of Mark and Luke–Acts. More specifically, Luke participates in Mark’s conceptualization of time and motion—Mark 1:15 and Luke 21:8—yet perception of time in Luke–Acts differs from Mark: Mark and Luke–Acts are linear and causal, but the Markan concept of narrative temporality is not yet fully defined (p. 137). Mark’s readers are forced to look back to chs. 1–9, whereas Luke gives shape to a narrative that stresses temporal and historical progress toward the apostolic age.Eve-Marie Becker sifts through an extensive amount of research from primary and secondary sources to provide relevant comparative insights on the influence of Roman and Greek historiography on early Christian history writing. The nature of the topic requires an appreciation for theory and abstractions, but the author’s acute ability to gather, collate, and explain nuanced differences of genre and form within an overarching discourse of ancient history engages the reader and contributes to a better understanding of the historiographical approaches of Mark and Luke–Acts.