The Role of Memory in the Tradition Represented by the Deuteronomic History and the Book of Chronicles

Albert Lord and John Miles Foley have discussed the role of memory and multiformity in oral traditions. Their work helps us better understand the interplay of the oral and the written within the context of communal memory as well as the role of multiformity within the broader tradition. This essay argues that the multiformity present in the textual traditions of Samuel-Kings/Chronicles points to the existence of a broader tradition behind these texts that existed in the communal memory (both oral and written) of ancient Israel