General Description

Studies into the workings of cultural memory have shown that in literate societies cultural identity and renewal are generated primarily by an ongoing process of re-interpreting authoritative texts. Two kinds of text have been distinguished by Assmann in this connection: ‘formative’ texts, which underpin the self-image of a particular community through historical narrative, myth and legend, and ‘normative’ texts such as laws, which offer moral precepts (Assmann 1992). The constant rereading and interpretation of a community’s classic or canonic texts lead to the fiction of a shared past which is the basis of common values, whereas in fact this ‘memory’ is continuously reinterpreted or adapted to meet contemporary circumstances and challenges.

This general theory of cultural memory has been fairly successfully applied to the study of cultures such as ancient Egypt and Judaism and has yielded important insights into the mechanisms of intertextual production of meaning in the most prominent interpretive genre, the commentary (Assmann & Gladigow 1995). Other genres which are also heavily dependent on earlier texts but refer to them in less explicit ways have not been systematically studied from this particular angle. Intertextual studies carried out in the area of comparative literature and literary theory offer useful tools for such research (Broich & Pfister 1985). They also strongly tell in favour of concentrating on the literature of a certain period because the forms and functions of intertextuality as a factor in generating meaning vary over the ages whereas comparable intertextual strategies seem to be applied by works of the most different backgrounds within a given time.

What is lacking, then, is an interdisciplinary research programme concerned with various and typical forms of the intertextual ‘production of meaning’ within different communities of the same period. The philosophical schools of the Imperial era and emerging Christianity (c. 1-300 CE) constitute a promising area for a systematically and historically demarcated research project aimed at investigating the strategies used in ‘processing’ texts. These new movements are comparable insofar as they typically define their identity by falling back on the literature of earlier times and employ the same or similar literary genres when they create their own literature. As yet, there has been no comparative investigation of philosophical and early Christian texts from the Roman Empire with the aim of answering the question which intertextual strategies were used to generate meaning that was felt to be in accordance with the undoubted fundamental texts of the past.

Taking up the distinction between (1) formative and (2) normative texts but choosing genres that have not yet gained much attention in the study of cultural memory, this projects concentrates on: (1) the ‘codification of memory’ in biographical texts concerned with the founders of movements, i.e. the ‘Lives’ (bioi) and ‘Acts’ (praxeis) of philosophers and apostles; and (2) the transmission of doctrines and precepts in philosophical and apostolic letters.
The project is animated by a strong concern with methodological issues, not least because of our conviction that research into ancient philosophy and early Christian theology will benefit at its present stage from a new theoretical reflection upon its aims and methods that will lead to new and/or more precise methods of exegesis.
Further, we believe in taking a distinctly interdisciplinary line of approach. The project therefore involves the confrontation of methods and insights from (1) the historiography of ancient philosophy and (2) the study of Early Christianity, while availing itself of conceptual tools from (3) general cultural and literary theory. The two leaders of the project will work together on studies in which this orientation bears concrete fruit, e.g. the letter of the Stoicizing Syriac Mara bar Sarapion. Comparative studies that build upon the results of the subprojects will also be carried out in cooperation.

This project is innovative in its methodological and interdisciplinary outline, but can also be seen in connection with the Utrecht tradition of research into the history of the reception of ancient philosophical texts (Mansfeld, Algra, Tieleman), the internationally renowned tradition of studying the New Testament within its Hellenistic context inaugurated by the late W.C. van Unnik, as well as recent studies dealing with the forms and functions of intertextuality in early Christian literature (Merz).

References

Assmann, J. (1992), Das kulturelle Gedächtnis (München).
Assmann, J. & B. Gladigow (1995) (Hg.), Text und Kommentar. Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation IV (München), esp. 9-33.
Broich, U. & M. Pfister (1985), Intertextualität. Formen, Funktionen, anglistische Fallstudien (Konzepte der Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 35) (Tübingen).
Mansfeld, J. (1994), Prolegomena. Questions to be settled before the study of an author, or text (Leiden).
Trobisch, D. (1996) Die Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments: Eine Untersuchung zur Entstehung der christlichen Bibel, NTOA 31 (Freiburg, Schweiz: Göttingen).

Webmaster   05 / 03 / 2007