Cognitive Science and the New Testament A New Approach to Early Christian Research

Finally, the influence of memory reached beyond the oral transmission and
composition of texts. Selective processes could effect the circulation of texts
and the formation of the canon. On the one hand, oral transmission did not
stop after a text was written down. In addition to the continuation of the
original transmission process, written texts could be cited from memory and
initiate a phase ofsecondary orality(Uro, 2011c; Ong & Hartley, 2012, pp. 11,
133 – 4). Stories and sayings that were more easily spreading in illiterate or
semiliterate Christian circles could influence the fate of the documents. On the
other hand, all readers form memories of the texts and their memories are
subject to selective processes. Thus the reception of early Christian literature

Source consulted

visually

Source cited from

memory

Source read by slave

S: visual processing

S: working memory

S: speech production

A: speech processing

Text dictated to slave

A: speech production

S: speech pocessing

S: working memory

S: sensory-motor system

Text written by author

A: language production

A: sensory-motor system

A: visual processing

A: language processing

A: long-term memory

A: serial recall

Composition in

memory

A: working memory

(A: episodic memory)

(A: semantic memory)

Figure 4.1.Ancient literary composition as distributed cognition (“A”and“S”indi-
cate author’s and slave’s cognitive processes, respectively).

Memory and Transmission 85