medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
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From: "Hal Cain" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, July 05, 2005 1:55 AM
Subject: Re: [M-R] Mary's virginity
<snip>.
>
> Even to say "writer" begs an initial question, for the earliest texts
> which were worked into the gospels as they were written down may well
> have been oral materials. To assess properly the significance,
> stability and authority of oral texts would require deep experience of
> an oral culture -- something I venture to suggest few of us have. While
> literacy adds hugely to human range -- who of us would wish to be
> without reading and writing? -- it also seems to displace a kind of
> memory that I, for one, can barely imagine but which appears to have
> immense capacity: not a few churchgoers in Reformation times and
> afterwards appear to have been able to come home from church and give an
> extensive account of a sermon which lasted an hour or more.
>
> In a different frame of reference, M.T. Clanchy explores the relation
> between writing and events, and between written and spoken language, in
> _From Memory to Written Record : England 1066-1307_ (E. Arnold/Harvard
> U.P., 1979; 2nd ed. 1993) and impliest that we, after the cultural shift
> to written documents as evidence per se instead of as a sort of
> aide-memoire to the testimony of living experts, regard written texts as
> evidence, to be controverted only by stronger evidence. And doctrines
> of inspiration and revelation, however we apply them to scriptural
> texts, reinforce that kind of attitude.
This relationship is also explored extensively in the classic study of
Birger Gerhardsson, _Memory and manuscript_, and the ensuing flood of
argument and counter-argument that has followed. Though not medieval in
focus, it treats an issue that impacts medieval exegesis.
Stan Metheny
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