In Jesus before the Gospels, Bart Ehrman cites numerous
psychological studies demonstrating the unreliability of memory. As I read many
of the research articles he cited, it occurred to me that the degree of
reliability (or unreliability) in such memory studies is directly related to
the specificity of the questions asked. The more eyewitness studies deal with
minutia, the more unreliable memory will be seen to be.
For example, consider the case of the Jamar Clark shooting
in Minnesota. Eyewitnesses differed on whether Clark was handcuffed in front,
in back, on one hand or whether he was handcuffed at all. But none of the
eyewitnesses (to my knowledge) disputed the central story: Clark beat up his
girlfriend who called 911. She was treated in an ambulance while he was outside
yelling. The police came and a struggle ensued resulting in Clark being shot
and killed by one of the officers. Eyewitnesses differ on the details but agreed
on the gist of the story.
Similarly, although scholars often delight in pointing out
minor discrepancies in the stories regarding Jesus’ crucifixion, virtually all
Jesus scholars (even the most critical) would acknowledge as historical fact that
Jesus was tried by Jewish authorities and handed over to Pontius Pilate who had
Jesus beaten and crucified. Most, I think, would even affirm that Jesus’ tomb
was later found empty by some women and that early Christians came to believe that
he had risen from the dead!
In the numerous research articles I read on memory,
virtually all of the researchers seemed interested in demonstrating how terribly
unreliable memory is. And yet each of the researchers cited by Ehrman presumably
remembered where and how to eat breakfast, where and how to get to work, who
their coworkers and colleagues were, how to communicate with them, how to
operate their computers and word processing programs, where and when to eat
lunch, how to get home, and the many, many minor cultural conventions necessary
to understand daily interactions and to avoid offending others.
There are thousands and thousands of things we remember
accurately every day, including things from our past. When we start failing to
remember these things we get tested for various forms of dementia! But in spite
of the fact that Ehrman gives two or three statements affirming the reliability
of “gist memory,” the bulk of his book—and the research he cites—focuses on the
times when memory fails leading to the impression that the Gospels are terribly
unreliable (I’ll leave it to those who know him personally to conclude whether
this impression was intentional or not).
Many recent studies on the historical
Jesus have shown that we actually can know quite a bit about Jesus as a person
of history and that we have good reason to believe that the Gospels are quite
reliable.
In future posts I will get down into the weeds of some of the memory studies Ehrman cites in his book.
