Memory Systems and the Synoptic Gospels

What are Memory Systems and what, 

if anything, do they have to do with 

the Synoptic Gospels? 

Simple peg system for remembering up to ten things in a numbered list.

The title of this article may strike you as strange. What do the Synoptic Gospels have to do with memory systems? More importantly, just what are memory systems?

Suppose that you want to remember a list of ten things in order. Let us suppose that it is a to-do list which must be followed in order. The first thing on your list is to wash the dog. Looking up at the diagram, you see that the item for 'one' is a bun. This particular example is a Rhyming Peg System because the items rhyme with each corresponding number.

So now you need to create an image that will help you to remember the association between washing the dog and a bun. Let us say that you create the image of giving your dog a bath while using a hamburger bun as a sponge which the dog partially eats during the process. 

The second thing on your list is to take your car for an oil change. This is to be combined with the item for 'two' which is a shoe. In this instance you visualize yourself driving your shoe to the garage where it is put on a lift and its oil drained.

The third thing on your list to do is to buy a lamp for your living room. You combine this with tree for 'three' as this is the third thing on your list. Instead of a lamp, you make an image of bringing home a potted tree which lights up its leaves when you pull a string connected to a branch.

In each instance, you try to make a memorable image in order to recall the original information. The system I have shown here is said to have been invented by Henry Herdson (c. 1611–c. 1651?). Still, the origin of the basic principles dates from much earlier. 

According to Wikipedia: "The Rhetorica ad Herennium, formerly attributed to Cicero or Cornificius, but in fact of unknown authorship, sometimes ascribed to an unnamed doctor, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the late 80s BC, and is still used today as a textbook on the structure and uses of rhetoric and persuasion."

The Rhetorica ad Herennium provides the earliest instruction into the creation of memorable imagery:

We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in memory. And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily. 

I want to explore for a moment the mechanism being employed. Some bit of emotionally neutral information is being encoded into a striking image which requires some emotional charge in order to make it memorable. So there is the original information and then there is the bright and striking image wrapped around the original information. The wrapping is not the data, the wrapping is designed to ensure that the internal nugget of information is not forgotten.

With that out of the way, I want to now take a look and see what, if any, relevance this digression into memory systems has on our study of the Synoptic Gospels. Consider the following section from Mark:

They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. Mark 15:17-19

Now let us take a look at the section above from the Rhetorica ad Herennium again with certain key terms highlighted:

And we shall do so if we establish similitudes as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague but active; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we ornament some of them, as with crowns or purple cloaks, so that the similitude may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily. 

Now let us look at the verses from Mark again with the corresponding images highlighted.

They put a purple robe on him, then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on him. And they began to call out to him, “Hail, king of the Jews!” Again and again they struck him on the head with a staff and spit on him. Falling on their knees, they paid homage to him. Mark 15:17-19

I am assuming that being struck repeatedly on the head while wearing a crown of thorns would result in Jesus being covered in blood. Also, the soldiers falling to their knees and paying homage could be seen as comedic, at least from the perspective of the soldiers.

It seems as though the author of Mark had studied The Rhetorica ad Herennium and created this description of the humiliation of Jesus in such a way as to signal to anyone else familiar with The Rhetorica ad Herennium that there is more here than meets the eye. This text is less a description than it is a beacon signaling the existence of a forgotten memory system encrypted into the narrative of the Synoptic Gospels.