INTRODUCTION

During the second half of the past decade, scholars of early Christianity have started to pay more and more attention to memory as an indispensable locus of scholarly research, especially when it comes to discussion of the form and transmission of early Christian traditions. The reborn interest in the memory as an analytical category is largely fueled by criticism towards traditional historical-critical form criticism. According to the critics, form criticism with its focus on the creative role of communities and their Sitz im Leben, which is directly linked with corresponding forms in tradition, is to be blamed for excluding memory from the analytically useful categories (Kirk & Thatcher 2005b; cf. Tuckett 2009). In the wake of criticizing form criticism, the memory discussion has reassessed—and partly reclaimed—the earlier critique of form criticism by Birger Gerhardsson (1961).

On the other hand, memory systems and their relation to transmission of religious traditions are also central to the field of the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In particular, Harvey Whitehouse's theory of the modes of religiosity that argues for two main modes of religiosity, the doctrinal mode and the imagistic mode, suggests an integral relation between cognitive memory systems and the way in which certain types of practices and beliefs cluster in religious traditions, driving religions towards either the doctrinal or the imagistic mode (e.g., Whitehouse 2004a). Furthermore, the question about relative memorability of different types of religious ideas is important in the CSR in general.