The conversation about Doctor Who and the Jesus tradition is spreading. Judy Redman, and Mark Goodacre are both involved on their respective blogs.
The idea is to find a scenario in which people get to hear/see something once, as they might on TV, and then check recall in various scenarios: if they don’t discuss the episode, if they do discuss it and whether they do so frequently or infrequently, if they pass the information on to someone who missed the episode, etc.
The aim is to find as similar a scenario to that envisaged in the case of early Christianity, in which words were spoken by Jesus and remembered and passed on orally before being written down. That’s why it would be crucial to stipulate that those participating n the experiment not DVR or download the episode and re-watch it.
Such an experiment might tell us important things about memory. That we need to look to TV for something comparable to Jesus in terms of the devotion of people in our time and their interest in remembering and interpreting what was said, is also perhaps worth reflecting on!
In the mean time, I’d be interested to hear from Lost fans who have only seen episodes once. If at some point you go back and watch an episode again, please leave comment here about the accuracy of your recall!
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