This article seeks to carry forward recent work on social or cultural memory in relation to the early Christian tradition. It develops the concept of a memorially empowered tradition which operates less as transmission of traditions, and more precisely as a functioning social memory, e.g., as a dynamic driven by the desire to keep Jesus' words alive by making them communicate to the present. Memory understood as a continual process of commemorating activities, intent on remembering the past while simultaneously addressing social identity in the present, is seen as the grand motivating force of tradition.
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