Delivering from Memory

The Effect of Performance on the Early Christian Audience

Shiell

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781630876722
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

When the New Testament was read publicly, what effect did the performances have on the audience? In Delivering from Memory, William Shiell argues that these performances shaped early Christian paideia among communities of active, engaged listeners. Using Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions, Shiell's groundbreaking study suggests that lectors delivered from memory without memorizing the text verbatim and audiences listened with their memories in a collaborative process with the performer. The text functioned as a starting place for emotion, paraphrase, correction, and instruction. In the process, the performances trained and shaped the character of the reader and the formation of the audience. The lector's performance functioned as a mirror for the audience to examine themselves as children of God. These conventions shaped the ways lectors performed Jesus. Just as the New Testament reflects many titles for Jesus, so the canonical form of the Gospels offers many ways Jesus was performed in the ancient world. By interpreting through the eyes of performance, we join a conversation that has existed since the formative stages of the Christian movement. By performing with the ancient audience, we shape the character of reader and audience through the emotions, rhetorical figures, and memories in the text. We raise new questions about audiences in the ancient world and interpret stories through the ears of performance.

1

A Performance that Mattered

“I have ridden all the way to this city gate here, not on his back, but on my ears.”

~ Apuleius Metamorphoses 1.20–21

In the ancient world, a performance affected an audience. Most performers expected the audience to pay attention and participate in the persuasive process. In philosophical and religious groups, the performer and audience identified with communities around moral figures and followed a common pattern set forth in the speech. Performers used biographies to model exemplary behavior in a community and set forth a pattern of living. By repeatedly meeting together and listening to performances, their lives were shaped by the experience. They expected one another to live up to their standard, and they retold the story to each other and to people outside the group. During the performance, they interrupted the speech with questions and dialogue and debated during and after the speech about the topics. The process bonded them and continued the cycle of early transmission of and response to the stories.

The New Testament reflects the oral/aural nature of this kind of communication. Audiences heard readings of sacred texts (Luke 4: Acts 11:15; 2 Tim 3:14; Rev 1:8). Paul even noted the problem of vocal inflection in the transmission between him and the audience (Gal 4:20). Delivery affected the audiences who heard them. People reacted to public speeches negatively (Acts 7) and positively (Acts 2). Reading (Matt 24:15; Mark 13:14; 1 Tim 4:13; 2 Clem. 19.1); retaining (1 Clem. 35.7–8, 62.3); memorizing (2 Pet 3:1–9; Herm. Vis. 2.1.3–2.2.1); and repeating (2 Tim 3:14) stories and texts became parts of early Christian paideia (Heb 12:5–11; Eph 6:4; 2 Tim 2:25, 3:16; Acts 7:22; 22:3; 1 Cor 14:20; 18:3; 1 Clem. 56.1–16; Pol. Phil 4.2; Herm. Sim. 6.3.6).

In light of early Christian expectations, what effect does ancient performance have on interpretation? What can be learned about a text’s meanings by paying attention to the way a document was likely performed in its late first and early second century settings?

This book proposes that the Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions of delivery and memory can contribute uniquely to performance and interpretation of New Testament texts through reading or preaching in worship or study in classroom. Early Christian audiences expected to see the texts performed using these conventions of delivery and memory. When reading a text in light of these conventions, a preacher, reader, or teacher can imaginatively recapture these conventions in a similar way, engaging performer and audience in a form of early Christian paideia.

Performance Criticism

An emerging discipline in New Testament studies suggests that we can interpret texts in light of the communication event. Performance criticism of the New Testament shows how public delivery of early Christian writings affects interpretation.1 The text comes alive, an audience is engaged, and they participate in interpreting the document. Several recent monographs and articles explore this concept of contemporary performance as interpretation.2 Preachers and readers speak the word and perform orally, and the delivery affects interpretation and the formation of community no matter which conventions are used.

This project builds on the previous work of rhetorical criticism of the New Testament. Since George Kennedy,3 scholars have shown that the New Testament reflects the Hellenistic rhetorical categories: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Early Christian writers wrote their works to be delivered orally.4

Performance critics study the delivery and reception of Christian writings. Historical events surrounding the early Christian communities affected the listeners in performance.5 Because of relatively low literacy rates (by Western standards), trained lectors performed and recited texts according to the conventions of delivery and memory.6 Others told stories privately and publicly to inform and entertain.7 In turn, audiences responded.

The field of performance criticism from the perspective of ancient rhetoric has already yielded fruitful work. Four are worth noting here because of their importance to this project. Ronald Allen has shown how a preacher can use ancient rhetorical conventions to perform Romans 3 and Mark 13. The Hellenistic diatribe affects a performance of Romans 3. The preacher can demonstrate a dialogue between an imaginary teacher and Paul. Even though silently reading and analyzing the text might reveal the diatribe, a public performance has a certain effect on the speaker’s and the audience’s interpretation.8 For example, in Mark 13:31–34, the speaker uses vocal inflection to change the way a listener understands the widow’s offering.9

Allen’s work suggests that a certain kind of understanding occurs in light of the ancient world’s performance conventions. The earliest audiences have something to say about the way a text can be interpreted by modern listeners. Therefore, the rhetoric of diatribe and the changes in vocal inflection arise not out of the preacher’s preferences but from the world of the first century.

Whitney Shiner shows how Mark builds audience inclusion into the presentation. When a performer uses Greco-Roman rhetorical conventions of gestures, emotions, and memory in performance, an audience experiences delivery in the same way the first performers brought an audience into the story. The Gospel of Mark contains “applause lines,” where audiences could interrupt, cheer, and boo. In performance the Gospel includes the audience through direct address and rhetorical questions.10

My previous work on gestures and vocal inflection indicates how they play significant roles in a lector’s performance of the speeches in Acts. For instance, in Acts 12:17, the NRSV and NIV incorrectly translate the gesture to silence the crowd. In light of Greco-Roman performance conventions, however, the motion is likely a gesture to indicate a defense speech. A trained lector imitates the gestures, facial expression, and emotion in the book of Acts when performing for early Christian audiences.11

Kathy Reiko Maxwell has suggested that Luke and Acts contain gaps for a reader and audience to use in performance. The audience becomes a “fellow-worker” in the performance filling the gaps and participating in the experience.12

This book goes a step further. Here we want to address how the conventions of delivery and memory affect interpretation. Greco-Roman performances can cause us to raise new questions, interpret texts differently, and hear possible meanings in a written document.

The Function of Delivery and Memory

This book takes up the Greco-Roman convention of memory as a significant component for the performer and the audience. Hellenistic rhetorical manuals suggest that the performer or lect...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• Chapter 1: A Performance that Mattered
• Chapter 2: Delivery and Memory in the Ancient World
• Chapter 3: Delivery and Memory in Early Christian Performances
• Chapter 4: Delivering Jesus from Memory
• Chapter 5: Interpreting in Performance
• Bibliography