Reviewed by: Memory and the Jesus Tradition by Alan Kirk Ernest Van Eck alan kirk, Memory and the Jesus Tradition (Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 2; London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2018). Pp. xiii + 297. $128. Alan Kirk’s book consists of thirteen essays, twelve previously published between 2001 and 2016, with an added introduction. The twelve chapters are grouped together in four parts, Formation of the Jesus Tradition, Memory and Manuscript, Memory and Historical Jesus Research, and Memory in Second-Century Gospel Writing. In the added introduction (“Memory and Method: Towards a New History of the Tradition”), K. states the aim of the collection, namely, to “flesh out precisely how memory provides the basis for a comprehensive, unified account of the history of the Jesus tradition” (p. 8). In what follows, K. sticks to this aim, arguing that memory theory should replace the form-critical paradigms that are being used to investigate the historical Jesus tradition. Only memory theory, K. argues, is able to account for the origins and history of the Jesus tradition. In part 1, K. introduces “Social and Cultural Memory” (chap. 2), linking the social aspect of memory with the identity of groups memorizing events. In chap. 3 (“Memory Theory: Cultural and Cognitive Approaches to the Gospel Tradition”), K. elaborates on the main argument of the previous chapter, arguing that a tradition’s autonomy is the fact that it is the artefact of memory. Tradition in itself is a memory system (the product of memory forces), material remembered and retold for the sake of identity formation. As such, memory is always cultural memory. Chapter 4 (“The Memory–Tradition Nexus in the Synoptic Tradition: Memory, Media and Symbolic Representation”) reiterates K.’s point of view: the memory approach, although it incorporates some elements of form criticism, breaks radically [End Page 169] from this approach by seeing memory as the primary factor in the origins and history of the Jesus tradition. Part 1 is then rounded off with a discussion of the role of the cognitive aspects of memory (“The Formation of the Synoptic Tradition: Cognitive and Cultural Approaches to an Old Problem”). Here K., in short, argues that the Synoptic tradition is a cultural artefact that emerged at the interface of the cognitive and cultural operations of memory. Part 2 consists of three chapters. Chapter 6 (“Memory and Manuscript: Gerhardsson Revisited”) assesses Birger Gerhardsson’s Memory and Manuscript: Oral Tradition and Written Transmission in Rabbinic Judaism and Early Christianity [ASNU 22; Lund: Gleerup, 1961]), concluding that, for Gerhardsson, memory equals memorization, with the function of maintaining the closeness of correspondence between the gospel tradition and memories of Jesus. In chap. 7 (“Manuscript Tradition as a Tertium Quid: Orality and Memory in Scribal Practice”), K. focuses on scribal practices in early Christianity. Building on the work of Vernon K. Robbins, David C. Parker, and Bart D. Ehrman, K. sees scribes as tradents, not copyists, of texts. The role of early Christian scribes, K. argues, was that of “active manuscript tradition” (p. 136). Scribes did not simply copy traditions; they also produced traditions and therefore must be seen as the continuation of cultural memory that produced and shaped traditions. The final chapter of part 2 (“Memory, Scribal Media and the Synoptic Problem”) has as its focus source criticism. In assessing the ability of the Two-Document, Farrer-Goulder, and Griesbach hypotheses to explain the transmission of the Jesus tradition. K. comes to the conclusion that these hypotheses are to one extent or another predicated upon inadequate understandings of ancient media realities, especially the instrumental role of memory in corresponding literary practices. Part 3 looks more closely at historical Jesus research. In chap. 9 (“The Memory of Violence and the Death of Jesus in Q”), K. challenges the claim—the dogma in Q scholarship—that Q has no interest in Jesus’s death, and chap. 10 (“Memory Theory and Jesus Research”) is an abbreviated repetition of part 1 of the book. Chapter 11 (“Cognition, Commemoration and Tradition: Memory and the Historiography of Jesus Research”) attends to memory distortion. Memory, K. argues, distorts only if it is seen as total recall. Memory, rather than trying to remember on...