I had a rather startling realization perhaps two months ago.
I am a mythicist, though I doubt this means what first comes to mind. Not in the sense that Carrier or Price or Turton are, but in the sense that Thomas Thompson is. The distinction is important, but more on this below.
To start at the beginning I was once among the more loquacious defenders of the historicity of Jesus on the interwebs. What I lacked in eloquence I compensated for with tenacity. Constantly frustrated by my inability to make people see what I saw, I had only an academic appreciation that my opponents in these debates had exactly the same frustration.
This same shallow appreciation colors many of the current debates on the matter. It defines McGrath's polemic. It created Neil Godfrey's imagined dichotomy of "charity" and "suspicion" I'm putting the final touches on a subsequent post on these two in particular. McGrath needs to define "good historian" as something more than "guy who agrees with me," and Neil--or better yet everyone--needs to stop using the term "hermeneutics." They keep using that word, it does not mean what they think it does. I have, in fact, never seem the term "hermeneutics" used productively outside of a philosophy text.
This shallow appreciation produces what Doherty calls "colorful language" and I call "shameless rhetoric." It produces the shortcomings of Ehrman's latest book. What it doesn't do is produce fruitful dialogue. And it defined my own approach. And then I read Hayden White and Keith Jenkins.
Anyone who reads White and doesn't walk away reassessing the practice of history has either missed the point or committed themselves to willful ignorance. But this is almost a non sequitur. The huge majority of historians will never trouble themselves with questions of theory generally, much less answer White's challenge. This is shameful, and results in histories that are nothing more than a house of cards.
Anyone who has seriously engaged fundamental theory in any topic can no doubt attest to the epistemological quagmire one can end up in. Theory begins to handcuff rather than inform one's work. This was the situation I found myself in for most of the last two years. Which was unfortunate, since I only need theory because I love history, and I was losing the latter to the former.
Finally, I acknowledged that a truly unassailable historiography was an impossibility. This is almost a tautology, but knowing it is one thing, keeping it in mind without being crippled by it quite another.
I am ill-equipped to develop a historiography from the ground up, so instead opted to copy the smart people. Or at least to use them as scaffolding high above the ground I would otherwise start at.
"Smart people," in this context, are historians with a method informed by theory, that is more easily defended than attacked. A methodology that is conservative, minimizes value judgments, and restricts truth claims to only that which survives such a highly critical approach.
This is a short list of smart people. In Biblical studies, so far as I had read to that point, they were all named Thomas Thompson (I've since added a couple more, most notably Lemche, though not many).
This actually isn't entirely accurate. There were other people who did smart things (Liverani springs readily to mind), but none who were quite as consistent in their "smart people"ness as Thompson.
It's important to note that Thompson's isn't the only possible "smart people" historiography, and indeed I differ from him in several respects, in some instances I'm more forgiving, in others (believe it or not!) I am even less charitable. But much like Thomas Verenna, Thomas Thompson has influenced my historiography more than anyone else.
Also to clarify, lest someone get offended, "smart people" is wholly tongue in cheek.
This bit of background is important for two reasons: First, in understanding any large change of position such as this, the background to it is important in assessing the motives and understanding the thought process. It is as important to know why I reject another paradigm as it is to understand my reasons for adopting a new one.
Secondly, and equally importantly at least to me, is selfish pride. I have no desire to be confused with the crusading secular. Insofar as epistemology can ever be distinct from ideology, I am no ideologue. Nor is this a decision reached rashly and without careful consideration of the methodology employed. Probably more than any other historical conclusion I've ever espoused, this follows from method, and in no way preceded it.
I'll have more to say on the historiography I employ in subsequent posts, though I make no promises on when that will be delivered. I have three children with a combined age of 9, after all, which severely limits my "wax philosophical on history" time.
Now, on with the important part.
First and foremost it is paramount to understand the difference between history and the past. The two terms are often used interchangeably, but in fact describe different things.
Real people existed in a real past. They did real things. They lived in real places, had real friends, real rulers, real armies. But that is gone.
History is created in the present. The emphasis is on the word "created." Contrary to the popular axiom, evidence never speaks for itself. It needs to be interpreted, and any history is a creation every bit--and probably more--as much as it is a discovery.
The aim of the historian is to create a history that closely approximates the real past. The understanding is that it is only an approximation, and all conclusions are provisional. For this to be meaningful, we need to have rules. Functional rules. Readers may remember my post some time ago lamenting the lack of rules in NT studies. If there is any conviction I firmly hold, it is that proceeding in such a fashion is unacceptable, and that anyone who thinks otherwise has no interest in meaningful history.
So with this distinction in mind, there are two questions we must ask on the historicity of Jesus. Does the genesis of Christianity (the past) require a Jesus behind it? And; Do our sources require an historical figure behind them (history)?
Ideally we should have considerable overlap between these questions--they should almost be redundant. If we ask if the Age of Augustus requires an historical Augustus, this question is functionally identical to asking if our evidence requires it, because our evidence is inextricably linked to to the time and place in question. The less overlap between our evidence and the past--the less our evidence can be anchored in known reality--the less meaningful our questions become.
We can only ask questions of what survives--we can only question our sources. If they do not overlap the known reality, then any question we ask of them is meaningless. Without such an anchor monuments are just buildings, texts just stories.
So is there any overlap between our evidence of Jesus and the birth of Christianity?
The simple reality is that there is not. Not unless we put it there. The gap is too large, the sources too unprovenanced, their creation too devoid of known context.
I'll note in the interest of candor that there is one possible exception to this: Gal.1.19. I have not read any interpretation of this passage that makes more sense to me than the plain reading of the text. Because of this, and this alone, I am still somewhat tentative. But it is nowhere near enough.
This remove means that we can't ask questions of the past. We can't know about the genesis of Christianity (which is where I diverge from the people mentioned in my opening sentences. I do not think the evidence required for an assessment of the birth of the movement--mythicist or historicist--exists). But perhaps there is still a requirement in our evidence for someone behind the stories. Even if we can't firmly link him to the birth of Christianity, surely it is at least a plausible speculation to link such an individual without a context to it? And the authorship of Mark, for example, can unequivocally be linked with the authorship of Mark. So do we require a real person for him?
Alas, even this tentative speculation cannot be allowed. The answer to the second question is a resounding no. That isn't my voice, but the voice of a century's worth of scholarship, during which every event described in the New Testament has been reasonably argued to be unhistorical by one scholar or another. To be sure, arguments for inclusion have been raised as well. This simply reflects historiographical assumptions. Criteria of inclusion assume positive results. Criteria of exclusion assume negative ones. Let them clash.
But remember what the smart people do: Methodology is conservative, value judgments eliminated, conclusions restricted only to what survives this. A real person is not required, not demanded, not even vaguely necessary to explain what survives. It is perfectly coherent without one, and this is what the methodology I described demands.
So, to get back to the start, I am agnostic on whether or not a real Jesus lived in the past. But I am a mythicist in so far as our evidence supports. There is no good reason to believe there is a a man behind the story. There is just a story.
Monday, April 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
History and Historical Fiction
There is little to no qualitative difference between history and historical fiction, at least according to Hayden White:
This should be qualified somewhat, but can be stated perhaps even more simply: History is written to persaude, historical fiction is written to entertain. All else is form following function.
Lester Grabbe cites this passage in his Ancient Israel,(**) and follows this with several pages of discussion of postmodern criticism of historiography. Despite a too sympathetic nod to Evans' In Defense of History (1997), the discussion is at least reasonable.
It is perhaps worth noting that both the discussion and the sympathetic nod are symptomatic of a problem in history generally: Historians do not care about epistemology. Evans' book was well received by practising historians, who need any port in a storm to avoid the elephant in the room, but panned by philosophers of history. See, for example, Easthope's disgust with the volume, available online.
Grabbe himself notes this shortcoming:
After (not surprisingly) rejecting the postmodern paradigm (and, it should be noted, paying particular attention to the problem of subjectivity), Grabbe moves on to discussing some basic principles of historical inquiry. Most of his tenets are not only reasonable, but quite good, and I might have more to say about them in a later post. His sixth principle, however, should probably be split into two. Lest I rob it of context, I'll cite it in its entirety, with the point I think the separation should be made set off in red:
Looking at the red portion, did you spot the problem? If you were thinking in terms of theory you may have. If you were more interested in just getting on with "doing history," you almost certainly did not.
I checked several reviews of Grabbe's book. Nobody mentions what is, to me, an obvious oversight. One which makes it clear that, despite his citation of both, Grabbe actually doesn't understand the criticisms of White or Jenkins as pertains to subjectivity. More importantly, despite explicitly criticizing his peers, Grabbe too only gives a cursory look at theory.
To explain, we'll take a look elsewhere for a moment. Imagine I gave you a paper with such a radically feminist view that we would, today, consider it flagrant revisionism. Then imagine I told you that this paper had been very well received in peer-review, despite what seem to be obvious problems.
Now I ask you to name the decade it was published in.
You would almost certainly guess the late 1960s, or more probably the 1970s. And you would almost certainly be right. This is a fairly flagrant example of what is generally a far subtler problem.
The implication in Grabbe's principle is that peer-review, conducted by reviewers who are "human and subjective," will ultimately create a balance. A sort of levelling off of the blind spots. And it might; for the blind spots of the individual.
But those aren't the only blind spots. There are also collective blind spots. Blind spots borne of context, a context that is extremely likely to be shared by the huge majority of peer reviewers. And those cannot be balanced, cannot be identified, cannot even be seen until that context is gone. That might be a span of a few years, such as our example. It might be a span of decades, even centuries.
We might suggest that a historiography that allows for this--that requires both peer-review and survival of multiple contexts (as demonstrated perhaps by longevity), but this would drop our list of established historical "truths" to somewhere in the neighbourhood of zero, and would suggest that what we produce today cannot be considered right or wrong by anyone reading it now.
Even this optimistic suggestion, in other words, says that Hayden White was at least functionally right after all.
(*)White, H. (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, p82.
(**)Grabbe, L. (2007). Ancient israel. New York: T&T Clark, p27
[H]istorical narratives are verbal fictions, the contents of which are as much invented as found and the forms of which have more in common with their counterparts in literature than they have with those in the sciences(*)
This should be qualified somewhat, but can be stated perhaps even more simply: History is written to persaude, historical fiction is written to entertain. All else is form following function.
Lester Grabbe cites this passage in his Ancient Israel,(**) and follows this with several pages of discussion of postmodern criticism of historiography. Despite a too sympathetic nod to Evans' In Defense of History (1997), the discussion is at least reasonable.
It is perhaps worth noting that both the discussion and the sympathetic nod are symptomatic of a problem in history generally: Historians do not care about epistemology. Evans' book was well received by practising historians, who need any port in a storm to avoid the elephant in the room, but panned by philosophers of history. See, for example, Easthope's disgust with the volume, available online.
Grabbe himself notes this shortcoming:
In the end, however, one can only agree with the observation that 'the majority of professional historians ... as usual, appear to ignore theoretical issues and would prefer to be left undisturbed to get on with their work while no doubt hoping the postmodernist challenge will eventually go away' (Zagorin 1999: 2). This certainly fits the attitudes of most historians I know in my own university who seem to have little interest in the debates on theory. (p28)
After (not surprisingly) rejecting the postmodern paradigm (and, it should be noted, paying particular attention to the problem of subjectivity), Grabbe moves on to discussing some basic principles of historical inquiry. Most of his tenets are not only reasonable, but quite good, and I might have more to say about them in a later post. His sixth principle, however, should probably be split into two. Lest I rob it of context, I'll cite it in its entirety, with the point I think the separation should be made set off in red:
All reconstructions have to be argued for. There can be no default position. You cannot just follow the text unless it can be disproved (sometimes expressed in the nonsensical phrase, 'innocent until proved guilty' - as if the text was a defendant in court; if there is a forensic analogy, the text is a witness whose veracity must be probed and tested). The only valid arguments are historical ones. Ideology, utility, theology, morality, politics, authority - none of these has a place in judging how to reconstruct an event. The only argumentation allowed is that based on historical principles. Naturally, subjectivity is inevitable in the process, and all historians are human and have their weaknesses and blindspots. This is why each must argue for their viewpoint and then subject the result to the judgement of peers, who are also human and subjective.(p36)
Looking at the red portion, did you spot the problem? If you were thinking in terms of theory you may have. If you were more interested in just getting on with "doing history," you almost certainly did not.
I checked several reviews of Grabbe's book. Nobody mentions what is, to me, an obvious oversight. One which makes it clear that, despite his citation of both, Grabbe actually doesn't understand the criticisms of White or Jenkins as pertains to subjectivity. More importantly, despite explicitly criticizing his peers, Grabbe too only gives a cursory look at theory.
To explain, we'll take a look elsewhere for a moment. Imagine I gave you a paper with such a radically feminist view that we would, today, consider it flagrant revisionism. Then imagine I told you that this paper had been very well received in peer-review, despite what seem to be obvious problems.
Now I ask you to name the decade it was published in.
You would almost certainly guess the late 1960s, or more probably the 1970s. And you would almost certainly be right. This is a fairly flagrant example of what is generally a far subtler problem.
The implication in Grabbe's principle is that peer-review, conducted by reviewers who are "human and subjective," will ultimately create a balance. A sort of levelling off of the blind spots. And it might; for the blind spots of the individual.
But those aren't the only blind spots. There are also collective blind spots. Blind spots borne of context, a context that is extremely likely to be shared by the huge majority of peer reviewers. And those cannot be balanced, cannot be identified, cannot even be seen until that context is gone. That might be a span of a few years, such as our example. It might be a span of decades, even centuries.
We might suggest that a historiography that allows for this--that requires both peer-review and survival of multiple contexts (as demonstrated perhaps by longevity), but this would drop our list of established historical "truths" to somewhere in the neighbourhood of zero, and would suggest that what we produce today cannot be considered right or wrong by anyone reading it now.
Even this optimistic suggestion, in other words, says that Hayden White was at least functionally right after all.
(*)White, H. (1978). Tropics of Discourse: Essays in cultural criticism. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, p82.
(**)Grabbe, L. (2007). Ancient israel. New York: T&T Clark, p27
Friday, March 12, 2010
And Baby Number 3 Will Be. . .
So, my wife had her 18 week ultrasound today, and we found out that baby number 3 will be another boy!
Saturday, March 06, 2010
McGrath, Godfrey and "Assuming" Historicity.
And on it goes. James McGrath has taken issue with another of Neil Godfrey's posts on the Jesus Myth.
I'll state for the record that I am not persuaded by the mythicist position, and think E P Sanders is probably the greatest living NT scholar. So I have some sympathy with McGrath.
I appreciate James' point (and even more with Steph's in the comments, I have always thought "assumption" such a terrible term here, though it's often used. . .just because people don't outline a full explanation doesn't mean they've "assumed" it). But there is a counterpoint to be scored here as well.
What other characters do we attempt to reconstruct in any detail based solely on texts? Especially texts that are all written "in-group," none of which are autobiographical?
Neil and I would probably disagree on what standard of evidence is required before we move forward, but I would concede (in the spirit of the 1913 Schweitzer he's been citing lately) that we can only move forward provisionally, recognizing the limits of our conjecture.
Even if we agreed there was an historical Romulus, for example, if you started telling me a specific act he did in the founding of Rome, with details about his consciousness while he did it, I'd laugh in your face. It seems preposterous everywhere but here. And even if we let you get away with it, your statement would be a lot more provisional. If someone replied that they doubt Romulus even existed, you would doubtlessly allow for the possibility, and acknowledge that your later conjectures were based on an earlier conjecture: That Romulus was real.
When we deal strictly with textual evidence elsewhere, we recognize the limits of our conjectures. But here we have none (still germane to my post Why Bother?). Not only do we not have to be provisional, we can suggest that all the gospels fundamentally misunderstood Jesus' message, and we know even better than they do what it was. While many critics would disagree with those sorts of efforts, we don't deprive them of dialogue, while virtually anywhere else we wouldn't deem to treat such speculation with a grain of seriousness.
As I pointed out before, we have no rules.
So, to get back to the point, Neil's probably wrong. Or at least should be more provisional in his comments. Sanders' may have assumed historicity. He may not have. He doesn't tell us, so we don't know. Some academics probably do. Some probably don't. But without an explanation we can't be sure what they've done, and can't be sure they've "assumed" anything. Simple decorum and charitability demands that we give them the benefit of the doubt.
But James is wrong too. What we do with texts is a lot different here than everywhere else. Not because we treat them differently--it's often suggested that the biblical historian is engaging in some new species of history. We can flatly reject that. We figure ways to find authentic information from texts the same way any other branch of history does. Sometimes with the same criteria.
But what we don't do is see the limits. We don't recognize the provisional nature. And (as I've said again and again lately), we build on people who also didn't see the provisional nature. The last guy's speculation becomes my fact in a sense we really don't see outside of this branch of historical inquiry.
It's not that we don't see any limits at all, of course, just that the ones we push are too far removed from what our evidence can really state to be of much use. But we still have an outer boundary, beyond which we pay proponents the most serious of insults: We deprive them of a dialogue partner.
Robert Eisenman flatly rejected hard science. Hard science he requested. Now there's an analogue to creationism. But he got dialogue partners. Baigent and Leigh, Barbara Thiering, hell, even Dan Brown. Truly ridiculous, crackpot ideas. That got dialogue partners.
Are we really going to suggest that an Earl Doherty or a Robert Price is so over the edge that even these crackpots are more deserving of engagement than they are? Because if we are, we're wrong. And wholly unjustified.
Here's the simple reality: Earl Doherty does very little that a Crossan or a Meier doesn't do. He uses the same criteria. He just attaches different (entirely subjective, the same as everyone else') weight to them. And by tweaking the weight--this criteria has more force than this one--he uses established methods to drive ineluctably to a given conclusion. That is how history is done, biblical or otherwise. And if it's okay for a Crossan or a Meier (as examples who rely heavily on methodological criteria for authenticity), the it's okay for Earl too.
I'll state for the record that I am not persuaded by the mythicist position, and think E P Sanders is probably the greatest living NT scholar. So I have some sympathy with McGrath.
I appreciate James' point (and even more with Steph's in the comments, I have always thought "assumption" such a terrible term here, though it's often used. . .just because people don't outline a full explanation doesn't mean they've "assumed" it). But there is a counterpoint to be scored here as well.
What other characters do we attempt to reconstruct in any detail based solely on texts? Especially texts that are all written "in-group," none of which are autobiographical?
Neil and I would probably disagree on what standard of evidence is required before we move forward, but I would concede (in the spirit of the 1913 Schweitzer he's been citing lately) that we can only move forward provisionally, recognizing the limits of our conjecture.
Even if we agreed there was an historical Romulus, for example, if you started telling me a specific act he did in the founding of Rome, with details about his consciousness while he did it, I'd laugh in your face. It seems preposterous everywhere but here. And even if we let you get away with it, your statement would be a lot more provisional. If someone replied that they doubt Romulus even existed, you would doubtlessly allow for the possibility, and acknowledge that your later conjectures were based on an earlier conjecture: That Romulus was real.
When we deal strictly with textual evidence elsewhere, we recognize the limits of our conjectures. But here we have none (still germane to my post Why Bother?). Not only do we not have to be provisional, we can suggest that all the gospels fundamentally misunderstood Jesus' message, and we know even better than they do what it was. While many critics would disagree with those sorts of efforts, we don't deprive them of dialogue, while virtually anywhere else we wouldn't deem to treat such speculation with a grain of seriousness.
As I pointed out before, we have no rules.
So, to get back to the point, Neil's probably wrong. Or at least should be more provisional in his comments. Sanders' may have assumed historicity. He may not have. He doesn't tell us, so we don't know. Some academics probably do. Some probably don't. But without an explanation we can't be sure what they've done, and can't be sure they've "assumed" anything. Simple decorum and charitability demands that we give them the benefit of the doubt.
But James is wrong too. What we do with texts is a lot different here than everywhere else. Not because we treat them differently--it's often suggested that the biblical historian is engaging in some new species of history. We can flatly reject that. We figure ways to find authentic information from texts the same way any other branch of history does. Sometimes with the same criteria.
But what we don't do is see the limits. We don't recognize the provisional nature. And (as I've said again and again lately), we build on people who also didn't see the provisional nature. The last guy's speculation becomes my fact in a sense we really don't see outside of this branch of historical inquiry.
It's not that we don't see any limits at all, of course, just that the ones we push are too far removed from what our evidence can really state to be of much use. But we still have an outer boundary, beyond which we pay proponents the most serious of insults: We deprive them of a dialogue partner.
Robert Eisenman flatly rejected hard science. Hard science he requested. Now there's an analogue to creationism. But he got dialogue partners. Baigent and Leigh, Barbara Thiering, hell, even Dan Brown. Truly ridiculous, crackpot ideas. That got dialogue partners.
Are we really going to suggest that an Earl Doherty or a Robert Price is so over the edge that even these crackpots are more deserving of engagement than they are? Because if we are, we're wrong. And wholly unjustified.
Here's the simple reality: Earl Doherty does very little that a Crossan or a Meier doesn't do. He uses the same criteria. He just attaches different (entirely subjective, the same as everyone else') weight to them. And by tweaking the weight--this criteria has more force than this one--he uses established methods to drive ineluctably to a given conclusion. That is how history is done, biblical or otherwise. And if it's okay for a Crossan or a Meier (as examples who rely heavily on methodological criteria for authenticity), the it's okay for Earl too.
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Quote of the Day, Ovid
No matter what you're trying to say, someone has said it better. Usually thousands of years ago. So germane to my recent post, Why Bother?, here's a gem from Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3:253-55
As the tale spread, views varied; some believed
Diana’s violence unjust; some praised it,
As proper to her chaste virginity.
Both sides found reason for their point of view.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Why Bother?
Yeesh. Finish up the movie list later today or tomorrow morning, I'm only two months behind Loren
So, about a month and a half ago I started reading Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique, editted by Nicholas Perrin and the de facto mayor of the Biblical Studies global village, Mark Goodacre. For reasons I'll outline, it took me until yesterday to finish it.
A discussion on historiography on the FRDB interrupted me to re-read Hayden White's MetaHistory, which (in the sort of bizarre lead-ins that can only happen in real-life; and we hope to understand ancient minds?) led me to Statues in Roman Society, which led to The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, which led (by reference) to The Companion to the Roman Army (which led bizarrely, to a couple brief looks at commentaries on Samuel). In the midst of all this, I decided to do something I'd intended to do for awhile, and read the Aeneid through.
Something struck me as I read Vergil's work. The care he took with it is well-known, and often emphasized by the observation that his average pace is roughly three lines a day. The fruits of that careful labour are readily apparent, and the Aeneid is a literary masterpiece by any standard.
But I'm not the intended audience, so more than once I had to check references, consider interpretations offered by scholars of the subject matter. And here's the rub: The most convoluted reading of the Aeneid pales in comparison to the most straightforward reading of the Gospel of Mark.
I am implicitly expected to accept that the Aeneid is less densely nuanced than a work whose greatest literary contribution is slapdash Greek and the abuse of the word kai.
When you look at it, phrased like that, it seems absurd.
The reason for that is simple: It is absurd.
Hervey Cleckley's seminal work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, provides an insight that now seems self-evident but at the time, psychology being what it was, did not. He cites a piece on the attraction of a drum majorette.
The attraction of a drum majorette should be obvious. She's hot, scantily clad and jumping about. But no, the piece contended, the obvious attraction wasn't it. The drum majorette protruded from the band the way an erect penis protruded from the body, and attraction to the drum majorette reflected our repressed homosexuality.
This notion, Cleckley observes, was accepted, cited and built upon uncritically by a number of professionals. That it's ridiculous should be self-evident. A hideously unattractive drum majorette would not be terribly appealing no matter how she protruded.
Cleckely's criticism, of course, is that there was a tendency to accept crap because it sounded good, and sounded like it was in keeping with the received notions of what psychology was. But it had nothing to do with whether or not it was true, nothing to do with whether or not it was critically assessed, and nothing to do with even the most basic test of whether or not it makes obvious sense.
While I would not suggest that Biblical Studies at large has gone as far as the drum majorette, I also wouldn't suggest that there are not a few drum majorette papers out there.
We have no rules. And consequently our interpretations of the texts are as nuanced as we need them to be, and we build them on the last guy, who also made it as nuanced as he needed it to be.
Which brings me back to Questioning Q. Or, more specifically, a paper by Eric Eve contained therein. In "Reconstructing Mark" Eric Eve takes on a test he discussed before online. Can we build Mark from Luke, Matthew and Q? The answer, predictably, is no, and even if one isn't persuaded against Q, surely we should follow the caution in the difference between what Perrin calls "Warranted Q," and "Actual Q." The former is exceedingly unlikely to be the latter.
But he provides a necessarily brief discussion on Matt.16:22-23. He plays by all the "rules," and develops a case from linguistics and Matthean redactive tendencies that we would have to view 16:22-23 as a Matthean invention. The case is solid, and it's easy to see how it could develop into a very full treatment. Even if we ultimately rejected it in an "International Mark Project," I'm hard-pressed to believe that everyone would be convinced of that.
Except the answer, of course, is wrong. Matt.16.22-23//Mk.8.32-33.
So he makes his case, so far as the IQP goes, but the implications go farther than that. Because Eve doesn't do anything that we don't do in virtually every branch of Biblical Studies. We try and find out if this verse or that verse owes itself to the author's redactive tendencies, if it was interpolated, if it is OT symbolism and on and on. Eve has essentially falsified the entire approach we take to the texts.
Falsification isn't inherently that big of a deal. Speculation is a necessity, not a vice, as a Beck quote I posted recently attests. I can't think of a criteria that can't be reversed, that can't be applied in at least one instance to get the wrong answer. It's the nature of the beast that we deal in plausibilities, things like "explanatory power" and "common sense."
But to be falsified so fundamentally that we would, quite realistically, mistake a distinctively Markan theme as a distinctively Matthean verse? That's a problem. That's a very big problem indeed.
So with the combination, Eve's paper and reflections of Virgil, it just seems so futile. I'm severely tempted to pack the NT in. . .maybe I'll switch to the early Romans. I know little enough that the subject still fills me with wonder and excitement at finding something new, not so little that I'm starting from scratch, and not even close to enough that I'm filled with the same sense of frustration.
So, about a month and a half ago I started reading Questioning Q: A Multidimensional Critique, editted by Nicholas Perrin and the de facto mayor of the Biblical Studies global village, Mark Goodacre. For reasons I'll outline, it took me until yesterday to finish it.
A discussion on historiography on the FRDB interrupted me to re-read Hayden White's MetaHistory, which (in the sort of bizarre lead-ins that can only happen in real-life; and we hope to understand ancient minds?) led me to Statues in Roman Society, which led to The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, which led (by reference) to The Companion to the Roman Army (which led bizarrely, to a couple brief looks at commentaries on Samuel). In the midst of all this, I decided to do something I'd intended to do for awhile, and read the Aeneid through.
Something struck me as I read Vergil's work. The care he took with it is well-known, and often emphasized by the observation that his average pace is roughly three lines a day. The fruits of that careful labour are readily apparent, and the Aeneid is a literary masterpiece by any standard.
But I'm not the intended audience, so more than once I had to check references, consider interpretations offered by scholars of the subject matter. And here's the rub: The most convoluted reading of the Aeneid pales in comparison to the most straightforward reading of the Gospel of Mark.
I am implicitly expected to accept that the Aeneid is less densely nuanced than a work whose greatest literary contribution is slapdash Greek and the abuse of the word kai.
When you look at it, phrased like that, it seems absurd.
The reason for that is simple: It is absurd.
Hervey Cleckley's seminal work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity, provides an insight that now seems self-evident but at the time, psychology being what it was, did not. He cites a piece on the attraction of a drum majorette.
The attraction of a drum majorette should be obvious. She's hot, scantily clad and jumping about. But no, the piece contended, the obvious attraction wasn't it. The drum majorette protruded from the band the way an erect penis protruded from the body, and attraction to the drum majorette reflected our repressed homosexuality.
This notion, Cleckley observes, was accepted, cited and built upon uncritically by a number of professionals. That it's ridiculous should be self-evident. A hideously unattractive drum majorette would not be terribly appealing no matter how she protruded.
Cleckely's criticism, of course, is that there was a tendency to accept crap because it sounded good, and sounded like it was in keeping with the received notions of what psychology was. But it had nothing to do with whether or not it was true, nothing to do with whether or not it was critically assessed, and nothing to do with even the most basic test of whether or not it makes obvious sense.
While I would not suggest that Biblical Studies at large has gone as far as the drum majorette, I also wouldn't suggest that there are not a few drum majorette papers out there.
We have no rules. And consequently our interpretations of the texts are as nuanced as we need them to be, and we build them on the last guy, who also made it as nuanced as he needed it to be.
Which brings me back to Questioning Q. Or, more specifically, a paper by Eric Eve contained therein. In "Reconstructing Mark" Eric Eve takes on a test he discussed before online. Can we build Mark from Luke, Matthew and Q? The answer, predictably, is no, and even if one isn't persuaded against Q, surely we should follow the caution in the difference between what Perrin calls "Warranted Q," and "Actual Q." The former is exceedingly unlikely to be the latter.
But he provides a necessarily brief discussion on Matt.16:22-23. He plays by all the "rules," and develops a case from linguistics and Matthean redactive tendencies that we would have to view 16:22-23 as a Matthean invention. The case is solid, and it's easy to see how it could develop into a very full treatment. Even if we ultimately rejected it in an "International Mark Project," I'm hard-pressed to believe that everyone would be convinced of that.
Except the answer, of course, is wrong. Matt.16.22-23//Mk.8.32-33.
So he makes his case, so far as the IQP goes, but the implications go farther than that. Because Eve doesn't do anything that we don't do in virtually every branch of Biblical Studies. We try and find out if this verse or that verse owes itself to the author's redactive tendencies, if it was interpolated, if it is OT symbolism and on and on. Eve has essentially falsified the entire approach we take to the texts.
Falsification isn't inherently that big of a deal. Speculation is a necessity, not a vice, as a Beck quote I posted recently attests. I can't think of a criteria that can't be reversed, that can't be applied in at least one instance to get the wrong answer. It's the nature of the beast that we deal in plausibilities, things like "explanatory power" and "common sense."
But to be falsified so fundamentally that we would, quite realistically, mistake a distinctively Markan theme as a distinctively Matthean verse? That's a problem. That's a very big problem indeed.
So with the combination, Eve's paper and reflections of Virgil, it just seems so futile. I'm severely tempted to pack the NT in. . .maybe I'll switch to the early Romans. I know little enough that the subject still fills me with wonder and excitement at finding something new, not so little that I'm starting from scratch, and not even close to enough that I'm filled with the same sense of frustration.
Saturday, January 09, 2010
The One True Best Movies of the Decade List (21-30)
Whew. Too busy lately. My best of decade list won't be done until 2020 at this rate!
Coming into the second half now, and like Loren, I find myself looking at a lot of great movies, even if they're way down here. I mentioned in the comments on the last ten that it was the hardest ten to do, since there are so many great movies that shoud never be associated with the term "bottom half."
21) Inglorious Basterds
Tarantino is just so. . .Tarantio-esque. Nobody has more distinctive dialogue, delivers better soundtracks. The criticisms are probably all true: He does take other film's ideas. He is a movie store geek that got lucky. He also makes great movies, so that's okay by me.
22) Children of Men
Is it Sci-fi? Is it a satire? Is it an action flick? It's all three! A mix that made me think of Kubrick while I watched. Always a fan of long takes (it just seems to give a film a grittier, more realistic feel), I was delighted to see them used even during action sequences.
23) L'Enfant
2005 Palme d'Or winner. They sell their kid. Which is a bad day for everyone. . .maybe. The absence of a soundtrack results in a novel effect, giving the film a verisimillitude it might have otherwise lacked.
24) Palindromes
Loren and I both buck critical consensus by including this in the list. If Solondz doesn't manage to offend you here, you weren't paying close enough attention, as he gives his take on the abortion debate: We're all hypocrites.
25) The Departed
Finally Scorcese gets his Oscar. Not that he hadn't deserved it most of the previous goes (Raging Bull lost? Really?).
26) Synecdoche, New York
Kaufman's movies are always so distinctive, and always so profound. I wasn't as blow away as Ebert in his best of decade list, but I was impressed.
27) The Wackness
Hey, I was a dope peddler in the 90s. I'm allowed to indulge this bit of nostalgia.
28) Mulholland Dr.
Does anybody deliver better plot twists than David Lynch? In a lot of ways this is the archetypal Lynch movie, and if you watched everything else he'd made before this it would almost become predictable.
29) Adaptation
A stronger finish, and this would have made the top 20. Prior to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, neither Gondry nor Kaufman seem to have known how to wrap their stories.
30) Crash
Wow. What an intricate weave of story arcs.
Coming into the second half now, and like Loren, I find myself looking at a lot of great movies, even if they're way down here. I mentioned in the comments on the last ten that it was the hardest ten to do, since there are so many great movies that shoud never be associated with the term "bottom half."
21) Inglorious Basterds
Tarantino is just so. . .Tarantio-esque. Nobody has more distinctive dialogue, delivers better soundtracks. The criticisms are probably all true: He does take other film's ideas. He is a movie store geek that got lucky. He also makes great movies, so that's okay by me.
22) Children of Men
Is it Sci-fi? Is it a satire? Is it an action flick? It's all three! A mix that made me think of Kubrick while I watched. Always a fan of long takes (it just seems to give a film a grittier, more realistic feel), I was delighted to see them used even during action sequences.
23) L'Enfant
2005 Palme d'Or winner. They sell their kid. Which is a bad day for everyone. . .maybe. The absence of a soundtrack results in a novel effect, giving the film a verisimillitude it might have otherwise lacked.
24) Palindromes
Loren and I both buck critical consensus by including this in the list. If Solondz doesn't manage to offend you here, you weren't paying close enough attention, as he gives his take on the abortion debate: We're all hypocrites.
25) The Departed
Finally Scorcese gets his Oscar. Not that he hadn't deserved it most of the previous goes (Raging Bull lost? Really?).
26) Synecdoche, New York
Kaufman's movies are always so distinctive, and always so profound. I wasn't as blow away as Ebert in his best of decade list, but I was impressed.
27) The Wackness
Hey, I was a dope peddler in the 90s. I'm allowed to indulge this bit of nostalgia.
28) Mulholland Dr.
Does anybody deliver better plot twists than David Lynch? In a lot of ways this is the archetypal Lynch movie, and if you watched everything else he'd made before this it would almost become predictable.
29) Adaptation
A stronger finish, and this would have made the top 20. Prior to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, neither Gondry nor Kaufman seem to have known how to wrap their stories.
30) Crash
Wow. What an intricate weave of story arcs.
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