Scripture and Memory

by Fritz West

The history of the three-year lectionaries tells a tale of an evolving hermeneutic. Originating in the Roman Lectionary, this hermeneutic was developed in subsequent denominational and ecumenical versions. An amalgam of the historical hermeneutics of the two western traditions, it uses both the memory of the Church to interpret the Bible and the Bible to structure the memory of the Church. After an examination of the hermeneutic, West lays out the memory patterns of the two most widely used versions of this lectionary: the Roman Lectionary and the Revised Common Lectionary. A knowledge of these memory patterns can help preachers create sermons in keeping with the lectionary's interpretative intent, because a Church's memory plays a large part in the interpretation of Scripture, and a lectionary text is interpreted before it is preached. Scripture and Memory moves from the general to the particular. It develops a hermeneutic of the liturgical reading of Scripture which it then applies t