with Zeba Crook and Kimberly Stratton

All memory is distorted, but some memory is more distorted than others. This goes for individual memory and communal memory alike. Normally, it is impossible to trace the origin of a memory’s distortion and of a distorted member, but this is quite easily done with early Christian memories of Jesus because several versions of his life exist. A close look at the Gospel of Matthew affords us the ability to spot the moment at which eventual communal memories of Jesus were first manufactured.

This session examines how the exodus story was repurposed in the centuries following the disastrous Jewish revolts against Rome (70 and 135 CE) and provided literary responses to that violent episode and the ensuing exile. The appropriation and repurposing of traditional stories about ancient hostilities serves to foster collective unity and solidarity in the present; exodus becomes meaningful for late antique Jews because of how it functions for the community telling the story not because of what it teaches about the biblical past. Rabbinic midrashim (expansions and interpretations) of Exodus operate as resistance literature; they undermine the authority and hegemony of Rome through a hidden discourse of its demise.

Zeba Crook is Professor of Religious Studies at Carleton University, specializing in the study of the social world of the first followers of Jesus of Nazareth. He is the author and editor of a number of books, almost two dozen scholarly articles, and nearly a hundred scholarly book reviews (carleton.ca/~zcrook/Publications).

Kimberly Stratton’s research interrogates the intersection of emergent Judaism and Christianity in the historical context of Greco-Roman antiquity. She trained in early Christian history and rabbinic literature at Columbia University and has been teaching at Carleton University, in the College of the Humanities, since 2001. Her book, Naming the Witch: Magic, Ideology, and Stereotype in the Ancient World (2007) received the F.W. Beare Award from the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in 2008. She has published articles on the topics of ancient magic, gender, and violence in the ancient world.