Imprints, Voiceprints, and Footprints of Memory: Collected Essays of Werner H. Kelber

532 Pages·2013·6.801 MB·English

by  Werner H. Kelber

IMPRINTS, VOICEPRINTS,
AND FOOTPRINTS OF MEMORY
Resources for Biblical Study
Tom Th atcher, New Testament Editor
Number 74
IMPRINTS, VOICEPRINTS,
AND FOOTPRINTS OF MEMORY
COLLECTED ESSAYS OF WERNER H. KELBER
by
Werner H. Kelber

Society of Biblical Literature
Atlanta
Copyright © 2013 by the Society of Biblical Literature
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by
means of any information storage or retrieval system, except as may be expressly permit-
ted by the 1976 Copyright Act or in writing from the publisher. Requests for permission
should be addressed in writing to the Rights and Permissions Offi ce, Society of Biblical
Literature, 825 Houston Mill Road, Atlanta, GA 30329 USA.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Kelber, Werner H., author.
Imprints, voiceprints, and footprints of memory / Werner H. Kelber.
p. cm. — (Resources for biblical study ; number 74)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN ISBN 978-1-58983-892-5 (paper binding : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-58983-
893-2 (electronic format) — ISBN 978-1-58983-894-9 (hardcover binding : alk.
paper)
1. Bible. New Testament—Criticism, interpretation, etc. I. Title. II. Series: Resources
for biblical study ; no. 74.
BS2361.3.K45 2013
225.6—dc23 2013022942
Printed on acid-free, recycled paper conforming to
ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R1997) and ISO 9706:1994
standards for paper permanence.
In Memoriam
John Miles Foley
1947–2012
Curator’s Professor of Classical Studies and English
W. H. Byler Distinguished Chair in the Humanities, University of Missouri
Founder of the journal Oral Tradition
Founding Director of the Center for Studies in Oral Tradition
Founding Director of the Center for eResearch
Recipient of grants and awards from the ACLS, the Guggenheim Founda-
tion, the NEH, the Fulbright Program, and the Mellon Foundation.
At home in the ancient Greek, the Anglo-Saxon, and the Serbo-Croatian
epics, Foley was the world’s foremost authority in comparative oral tradi-
tions.
In his own words, he was “vitally interested in the oldest and the newest of
humankind’s communicative technologies, Oral Tradition and the Inter-
net, and especially in their unexpected similarities.”

Contents
Foreword .........................................................................................................xiii
Acknowledgments ........................................................................................xvii
Abbreviations ...................................................................................................xx
Introduction .......................................................................................................1
1. Apostolic Tradition and the Form of the Gospel (1985) .....................11
1. Evolutionary versus Revolutionary Genesis of Mark 11
2. Easter’s Alleged Key to Mark and the Neglect of Narrative 16
3. Toward a Narrative Discipleship 22
4. Th e Parabolic Pattern of Discipleship 26
5. Th e Narrative Withholding of Easter 29
6. Th e Form of Gospel versus Apostolic Tradition 30
2. Interpretation of Narrative and Narrative as Interpretation:
Hermeneutical Refl ections on the Gospels (1987) ..............................33
7. Th e Narrative Impulse 34
8. Narrative Gospel as Corrective to the Sayings Gospel 37
9. Th e Gospel as “Mirror” and “Window” 43
10. Narrative Present as Displacement of the Past 53
3. Narrative and Disclosure: Mechanisms of Concealing,
Revealing, and Reveiling (1988) .............................................................55
11. Narrative Alliances with Secrecy and Disclosure 56
12. Esoteric Secrecy in Mark and Tradition 58
13. Functions of Secrecy 60
14. Secrecy at Media Transits 61
15. Implosion of Secrecy Mechanisms 65
16. Readers/Hearers as Insiders 70
17. Insiders as Outsiders 73
-vii-
viii CONTENTS
4. In the Beginning Were the Words: Th e Apotheosis and
Narrative Displacement of the Logos (1990) ........................................75
18. Th e Equiprimordiality of Sayings 77
19. Arche-Logos and Arche-Writing 81
20. Th e Clustering Management and the Dialogue Genre:
Th e Issue of Presence 84
21. Th e Johannine Sayings Tradition 89
22. Onto-theology and the Eclipse of Presence 92
23. Th e Logoi and the Privileging of the Logos 97
24. Th e Logocentric Circle 99
5. Jesus and Tradition: Words in Time, Words in Space (1994) ...........103
25. Th e Power of Print: Linearization of Tradition
and Reifi cation of Texts 104
26. Jesus the Speaker Delivered unto Print 108
27. Jesus the Speaker of Aphoristic Sayings and
Parabolic Stories 114
28. Tradition: Stratifi cation versus Biosphere 119
29. Ancient Media Sensibilities 130
6. Language, Memory, and Sense Perception in the Religious and
Technological Culture of Antiquity and the Middle Ages (1995)....133
30. Homage to Parry and Lord 134
31. Th e Emotive and Magical Powers of Speech 135
32. Th e Memory Tradition 141
33. Paul and the Ethos of Rhetoric 143
34. From Rhetorical Pragmatism to a Th eology of
Signifi cation 146
35. Medieval Scribality and Latinity 152
36. St. Th omas’s Model of Cognition and Ockham’s
Via Moderna 158
37. Shift ing Roles of Language, Memory, and Sense
Perception 165
7. Th e Oral and the Written Gospel: Fourteen Years Aft erward
(1997) ......................................................................................................167
38. Th e Oral and the Written Gospel in the Context of a
Growing Discourse 168
39. Th e Central Th eses of Th e Oral and the Written Gospel 169
CONTENTS ix
40. Th e Life of the Tradition 170
41. Th e Issue of the Great Divide 174
42. Tradition’s Scribal, Oral, and Memorial Dynamics 176
43. Th e Homeric Debate 178
44. Can Texts Silence Voices? 180
45. Th e Gospel’s Narrative Logic 182
8. Memory’s Desire or the Ordeal of Remembering:
Judaism and Christianity (2000–2001) ...............................................187
46. Matthew as Source of Demonizing Recollections 188
47. Medieval Clash of Cultural Memories: Th e Barcelona
Disputation 192
48. Remembering Night: Coping with Memory 199
49. Memorial Confl ict over Auschwitz 207
50. Mnemohistory: Broadening the Concept of History 214
9. Geschichte als Kommunikationsgeschichte: Überlegungen
zur Medienwissenschaft (2004) ............................................................217
51. Wegbereiter der modernen Kommunikationsforschung 218
52. Das Paradigma der Kommunikationsgeschichte 221
53. Intermedialität 225
54. Literaturgeschichte vis-à-vis Kommunikationsgeschichte 227
55. Von Augustinischer zu Th omitischer Hermeneutik 229
56. Die scholastische Methode im Medienkontext:
Peter Abälard 231
57. Luther und die technisierte Druckbibel 233
10. On the History of the Quest, or: the Reduction of Polyvalency
to Single Sense (2004) ............................................................................237
58. On the History of Questing 238
59. Medieval Plural Senses of the Bible 241
60. Medieval Devolution of the Many Senses to the
Literal Sense 246
61. Th e Quest’s Reliance on the Single, Historical Sense
versus the Plural, Oral Proclamation 249
62. Text Criticism and the Living Text of the Gospels 252
63. Th e Th eological Challenge to the Modern Quest:
Martin Kähler and Luke Timothy Johnson 256