This series spawned out of my recent several-part series analysis of the biblical exodus. Here I argue that along with the objectively historical, legend and myth constitute significant portions of Old Testament texts, especially ones describing Moses, the Hebrew exodus, the conquests under Joshua, the reign of King David, among others. Commentary is made on the methodological approaches used by historians to learn about the ancient past while we also explore recent research on the reliability of memory and oral traditions.

In Part 3, I continue discussing the reliability of memory and oral traditions, especially because the ancient Hebrews and Jews preserved their traditions orally, handing them down generationally, for many centuries before they reached their crystallized form in the canonical biblical books we have today.

See Part 1: Introduction to Historical Method
See Part 2: Oral Tradition, Memory Distortion, and General Ned Ludd
See Part 4: Selectivity and Memory Distortion (Forthcoming)

Memory Distortion

The primary cause for deliberate memory distortion is the desire of groups to perceive themselves in a positive light (Baumeister and Hastings 1997, 277; Crook 2013, 64).

This may manifest in the selective omission of disagreeable facts, outright invention of false memories, exaggeration, embellishment, blaming the enemy (i.e., making one’s own misdeeds appear to be a reaction rather than an unprovoked attack), and so on (Baumeister and Hastings 1997, 277–290). False and/or distorted memories may also arise from a lie intended to flatter, the desire to avoid punishment, gain rewards, protect loved ones, or due to unconscious processes (e.g., a false belief that arises from a chain of inferential or reconstructive processes that are neither planned nor even accessible to awareness) (Ceci 1995, 91).

Citing the Puritans of New England who decided to remain in the colonies of Massachusetts Bay, Connecticut, and Rhode Island instead of returning back home to England, historian Michael Kämmen observes that distortion can intrude very quickly: “[M]emories can readily, with scant embarrassment or challenge, be quietly repressed within a generation and replaced by alternate explanations” (1995, 331). These distorted memories might become the memories of subsequent generations, which gives relevance to “post-event misinformation,” another manifestation of memory distortion (Schacter, Guerin, and St Jacques 2011). Here erroneous information is passed on following the initial encoding of an event, subsequently increasing endorsement of that information. Evidence also shows that social conformity influences and sustains this kind of distortion (Edelson et al. 2011).

Although deliberate distortion is less common than facts being deleted, altered, reinterpreted, or exaggerated during an oral tradition process (Baumeister and Hastings 1997, 282), this does not solve the challenge for the historian. According to Zeba Crook, “This puts the historian in a difficult position: how is one to distinguish real memories from manufactured memories when those who hold both ‘memories’ might not be able to recognize the difference between them?” (2013, 66). One cannot know “where veracity ends and distortion begins” (Kämmen 1995, 341).

The Biblical Sources and Distanciation

The biblical texts contain many legends and myths (Ewald 1883; Kittel 1908; Miller 2011, 81; Enns 2014, 2015), and in light of the aforementioned research on oral traditions and memory, they should be read with caution if one’s approach is a purely objectivist historical interpretation and/or reconstruction.

For the purposes of this discussion, legend and objective historical fact are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Many figures richly embellished by legend also clearly have a historical core to them. Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 BCE) and the Holy Roman emperor Charlemagne (d. 814 CE) are both adorned with legends, although both existed historically. The stories about Jesus of Nazareth (BCE 4/6–30/33 CE) in the Christian New Testament and Islam’s founder, Muhammad (c. 570–632 CE), in the Hadith and Sira literature are often legendary and embellished, although no doubt many still contain historical fact.

Citing the primary biblical sources for Moses, the exodus, and conquests led by Joshua, these are chronologically removed by many generations. The operative term here being “many”. If distortion in some instances may occur within a single generation, roughly forty or so years, as the case of Ned Ludd showed in Part 2, how might it affect an oral tradition that is handed down through ten, fifteen, or twenty generations? As an event or person recedes further and further into history, the intensity of a memory may become weakened and distorted as time goes by, which Michael Schudson calls “distanciation” (1995, 346–364).

Distanciation, which may induce memory distortion in an oral tradition, is possibly behind some of the internal discrepancies in some New Testament and Old Testament texts. In the former, in the short span of just over one generation, there are already two irreconcilable accounts of the death of Judas Iscariot, the villainous disciple who betrayed his leader into Roman hands (Matt. 27:5-8 vs. Acts 1:18–19). Attempts to harmonize the two descriptions do not work. In Genesis, there are two mutually exclusive descriptions of the age of Abram when Yahweh instructed him to leave his home for “a land that I [Yahweh] am going to show you (12:1). According to Genesis 12:4, he was 75; according to Genesis 12:1, simple math puts him at the tender age of 135.

In the case of the Book of Exodus, written at some point between the ninth and fifth centuries BCE (Livingstone 2006), the historian is dealing with eight generations (at the least) or eighteen generations (at the most) that passed on the traditions. It is rendered nearly impossible for historians to determine with any level of confidence that these traditions reflect the Moses of history or the events they describe pertaining to his adoption as an infant by Pharaoh’s daughter, flight to Midian, call to deliver the Hebrews, leading the Hebrews out of Egypt and through the Sea of Reeds, the wilderness wandering period, or any other story or event ascribed to him. In this case, distanciation may account for some of the tensions in the text, such as the “confused” portrayals of Moses’ involvement in the establishment of the system of courts and judges in Exodus 18:13-27 (Van Seters 1985, 356).

Further, all the primary sources share political, theological, and ideological motivations. The descriptions of the indigenous Canaanite tribes (listed in Genesis 15:19–21) in the books of Genesis, Joshua, and Judges, who inhabited the Promised Land the Hebrews believed Yahweh had promised them through Abraham, are perhaps the strongest case for ideological commitments, assertions, and distortions.

It is of little surprise the biblical writers refer to the Canaanite tribes as detestable and defilers of that land (Lev. 18:24) and as abominations sinning against the Lord (Deut. 20:17-18). Drawing on Baumeister and Hastings, these accusatory descriptions entail heaping blame and accusations on an enemy. The biblical authors viewed the Canaanite tribes as defiling and corruptive, therefore threatening Israel’s own holiness before Yahweh. Such a caricature offered a theological and political rationale for the Hebrew imperialist and genocidal strategies. Even if the slaughter was not comprehensive, the Hebrews would still commit murder and ethnic cleansing because they wanted the land and, in their own justifications, were allegedly provoked to commit violence for this cause.

These events must be seen in the context of the desire of members of a group to perceive itself in a positive light, which may engender distortion in an oral tradition (Crook 2013, 64). The Hebrews, based on what our later Jewish texts assert, believed themselves to be Yahweh’s “treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth” (Deut. 7:6). They considered their being a “holy people unto the LORD thy God” threatened by the tribes of Canaan (Deut. 7:5-6).

There are, however, serious questions about whether or not the Canaanites are depicted fairly in these biblical sources, which has been doubted (Enns 2015). Old Testament scholar Peter Enns observes: “For one thing, giving Canaanites first prize in the ‘worst sinners ever’ contest is a caricature…” (Enns 2014, 65).

The most immediate challenge is that historians are forced to work with these late biblical sources portraying the Canaanite victims of extermination produced by later Jewish writers drawing on oral traditions handed down by the exterminators themselves. If any other group or culture was in this Promised Land during this period, they would also have been caricatured by the biblical writers as the vilest and most morally corrupt people on the face of the earth.

Further questions arose on the basis that the biblical authors indicate a very limited knowledge of the Canaanites, leaving out much of what is mentioned about them in the Ugaritic tablets, the earliest of which date to 2300 BCE. These tablets do not indicate the Canaanite tribes being particularly debauched or cruel, the impressions we receive from the biblical sources and some contemporary religious apologists trying to justify these actions (Craig 2007).

Absent from the Ugaritic tablets are references to child or human sacrifice (DeGuglielmo 1955, 215) and any of the abominations mentioned in Leviticus 18 (Hillers 1985). This is suggestive because a hallmark of a myopic ideology is to allocate little time and effort to understanding one’s ideological opponents, their worldview and beliefs, and then present those same opponents uncharitably and inaccurately to one’s audience. Whereas in most cases this attitude does not necessarily result in outbreaks of extreme violence, it can and does, at least if the reader takes the conquest narratives as objective historical accounts.

What the reader receives in the biblical sources is a string of narratives crafted to justify and support the ideological agenda of the Jewish authors (narrativization), stories that were likely, at their earliest moments, passed down by Hebrews and subsequently through many generations. It is unverifiable, with regards to any degree of confidence based on historical criteria, if such content in these numerous oral traditions goes back to eyewitnesses of the described events or anything remotely close to that of an eyewitness. Handing down distortion and, in the case of the biblical portrayals of the Canaanites, falsehood becomes likely. William G. Dever, an American archaeologist and theologian, describes one interpretation of the biblical sources with which I concur,

“The biblical writers and editors had some genuine sources, but they did not hesitate to manipulate them. They did this not only with exaggerations and embellishments, but also with additions and even outright inventions, in order to make the stories serve their own ideological agenda. In this regard, they were like most ancient historians. Nevertheless, they still need not be regarded as charlatans, even though their view of history was naive. They, too, thought that they were telling the operative truth —that is, they were simply writing well-intentioned propaganda” (2006, 226).

To cite a Gospel example, Matthew’s invention of the guard at the Jesus’ tomb (27:62-66; 28.:4, 11-15) could be classified as a well-intentioned invention, to use Dever’s words, that had a clear apologetic motive refuting early allegations that the disciples had stolen Jesus’ body from the tomb, hence faking his resurrection (Craig 2024).

Rather, through invention and embellishment, Matthew’s author wanted reassure the Matthean community that Jesus had in fact been raised by God from the dead and out of the tomb, thereby assuring their salvation and enabling a bolder faith. There is also the very unlikely scenario of the brutal Roman governor Pontius Pilate’s release of a prisoner in the place of Jesus to the Jewish crowd vying for the latter’s blood, as described in the canonical gospels. Mostly likely, as many scholars agree, this event is an invention attempting to deflect the blame for Jesus’ death from the Romans to the Jews and to detach and dissociate the Christians (originally a Jewish sect) from the Jews (Grant 1977, 165; Beare 1981, 528-531)

References

Baumeister, Roy F., and Hastings, Stephen. 1997. “Distortions of Collective Memory: How Groups Flatter and Deceive Themselves.” In Collective Memory of Political Events: Social Psychological Perspectives, edited by James W. Pennebaker, Darío Páez, and Bernard Rimé, 277-293. Mahwah, New Jersey, United States: Erlbaum.

Beare, Francis W. 1981. The Gospel according to Matthew. New York City, New York, United States: Harper & Row.

Ceci, Stephen J. 1995. “False Beliefs: Some Developmental and Clinical Considerations.” In Memory Distortion: Haw Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, edited by Daniel Schacter, 91-125. Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States: Harvard University Press.

Craig, William L. 2007. “#16 Slaughter of the Canaanites.” Reasonable Faith. Available.

Craig, William L. 2024. “The Guard at the Tomb.” Reasonable Faith. Available.

Crook, Zeba A. 2013. “Collective Memory Distortion and the Quest for the Historical Jesus.” Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus 11:53-76.

DeGuglielmo, Antonine A. 1995. “Sacrifice in the Ugaritic Texts.” The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 17(2):196–216.

Dever, William G. 2006. Who Were the Early Israelites and Where Did They Come From? Grand Rapids, Michigan, United States: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.

Edelson Micah G., Sharot, Tali., Dolan, Raymond J., and Dudai, Yadin. 2011. “Following the Crowd: Brain Substrates of Long-Term Memory Conformity.” Science 333(6038):108–111.

Grant, Michael. 1977. Jesus: An Historian’s View of the Gospels. London, England, United Kingdom: Weidenfeld and Nicholson.

Hillers, D. 1985. “Analyzing the Abominable: Our Understanding of Canaanite Religion”. The Jewish Quarterly Review 75(3):253-269.

Kämmen, Michael. 1995. “Some Patterns and Meanings of Memory Distortion in American History.” In Memory Distortion: How Minds, Brains, and Societies Reconstruct the Past, edited by Daniel Schacter, 329-345. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Schacter, Daniel L., Guerin, Scott A., and St Jacques Peggy L. 2011. “Memory distortion: an adaptive perspective.” Trends in Cognitive Science. Available.

Van Seters, John. 1985. “Etiology in the Moses Tradition: he Case of Exodus 18.” In Biblical and Other Studies in Memory of S. D. Goitein, edited by Reuben Ahroni, 355–365. Columbus, Ohio, United States: Ohio State University Press.