What is it about?
This chapter explores how sociological memory studies has been used to help interpret the Hebrew Bible, both as an artefact of memory itself and as a set of texts that contain multiple ways of remembering the same people and events. For my analysis of Isaiah 40-55, I chart a new course to consider how these chapters seek to form correct remembering and forgetting in its audience so that the audience can have the correct interpretation of their exilic experience.
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Why is it important?
This chapter is important because it presents a new methodology taken from sociological memory studies for analyzing how a text like Isaiah 40-55 is functioning to create a transformed way of remembering and forgetting in a group of people who have suffered significant traumas. The methodology illuminates the how this poetic text engages and seeks to reshape incorrect interpretations of suffering and trauma because the remembering and forgetting are incorrect.
Perspectives
I hope that other biblical-theological scholars in particular will find my methodology useful for studying other texts and considering questions of what a text is doing to shape and transform its audience/readers. My methodology affirms that language does things (speech-act theory) and that biblical texts like Isa. 40-55 are not just seeking to win an argument but are seeking to transform a people's way of remembering and forgetting so that they can heal from trauma and have a hopeful future.
Dr. Megan C. Roberts
Prairie Bible Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Sociological Memory Studies: the Dynamics of Memory Framework Formation, July 2025, De Gruyter,
DOI: 10.1163/9789004734111_003.
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