Category: Historical Methods and Historiography

A broad church. Initially included Historiography in the name. Is “History” too broad and potentially misleading? This category includes discussions of research methods by historians as well as philosophical discussions about both the nature of history and the nature of the writing of history. Includes the problematic methods of biblical scholars. Or should the latter be moved to Biblical Studies as incompatible with the former? (Compare the difference between astronomy and astrology.) Does not include the methods of research and narrating history by ancient authors. See under Ancient Literature.

2011-09-21

15 ways of recovering reliable information about Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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What serious enquirer after the historical Jesus can bypass a title like The Historical Jesus: An Essential Guide by James H. Charlesworth?

Chapter 2 addresses ways of “obtaining reliable information” about Jesus and about two-thirds of this chapter discusses a number of “methodologies” that include our familiar criteria:

  1. Embarrassment
    • deeds and sayings embarrassing to the evangelists would not have been fabricated by them
  2. Dissimilarity
    • teachings unlike environmental Jewish thought and unlike those of his followers probably originated with Jesus
  3. Multiple attestation
    • a saying or deed of Jesus found in two or more independent sources is more probably original to Jesus than something found in just one source
  4. Coherence
    • when a deed or saying of Jesus is virtually identical to one that is shown to be very likely (on the grounds of the other three criteria above) then we may think of it as probably reliable
  5. Historical plausibility (Palestinian Jewish setting)
    • a tradition may be authentic if it reflects the culture and time of Palestine in the early first century.

We know the arguments for these and their logical flaws. But happily Charlesworth is offering readers more than the commonplace and familiar. He adds “ten additional supporting methods” to provide “supporting insight and information” about Jesus: Continue reading “15 ways of recovering reliable information about Jesus”

2011-09-19

What Mark’s Episodes Do For Readers (and the real historiographical question to ask)

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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As with any magic the spell works best when the audience does not know how it is done. On the other hand, understanding the way literary and rhetorical devices play with how we respond to what we read does help remind us that we are reading a creation of the human mind. Even if the words we read are telling a “true story” the words used to convey that information have been chosen to convey a certain meaning or feeling in relation to what we read.

One characteristic of the gospels, particularly the Gospel of Mark, that we sometimes hear is a mark of unsophistication and primitive literary skills, is the episodic nature of the first half of the Gospel — up to the Passion narrative.

Well, this post is an attempt to rescue something of the reputation of that part of the Gospel by pointing out what that episodic structure manages to achieve from a literary perspective. I am not going to argue that episodic writing is a sign of genius. But it did have an honourable history in ancient literature, at least from the time of Homer’s Odyssey (or even the Epic of Gilgamesh), so it must have been doing something right for many readers.

Whitney Shiner has a chapter titled “Creating Plot in Episodic Narratives: The Life of Aesop and the Gospel of Mark” in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. The comparison is helpful but I will confine this post to the comments on Mark. Continue reading “What Mark’s Episodes Do For Readers (and the real historiographical question to ask)”

2011-09-01

Why are the Gospels so believable?

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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kermode1One of my first posts on this blog asked why the Gospel of Mark was not more often interpreted in a way we would normally interpret any other form of literature. I was referring to Frank Kermode’s discussion of the Gospel of Mark in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative. This post explores a more in depth reading of Kermode’s chapter titled “What Precisely Are the Facts?” Here Kermode addresses what it is about the Gospels — the literary devices used in them — that lend them an air of being “true” or believable narratives. When on occasion I encounter even an academic scholar affirming that a Gospel narrative “rings true” or has an “air of historical plausibility” about it I am dismayed at the naïvety of such assertions.

Conscious awareness of the power and functions of rhetorical styles is easily lost on many of us and Kermode goes some way to explaining why. Not everyone has ready access to Kermode’s book, so I allow readers to glance over my shoulder and see the following snippets I have taken from this chapter. I have bolded the main points that I think deserve quick attention. The first point ought, to my mind, be simple enough to take for granted if we stop to reflect that the written word is just another means of human expression and humans are by nature capable of being misread, misunderstood, and — whether for good or ill — skilled in pretence and deception. Were it otherwise there would be no need for court systems and no place for a lot of theatre and not a lot of point in lying.

In practice we may feel that we have no particular difficulty in distinguishing between narratives which claim to be reliable records of fact, and narratives which simply go through the motions of being such a record. But when we think about it, as on occasion we may compel ourselves to, the distinction may grow troublesome. (p. 101) Continue reading “Why are the Gospels so believable?”

2011-08-16

How modern historians use myths as historical sources – or, Can Hobsbawm recover the historical Robin Hood?

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by Neil Godfrey

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http://www.stockholmnews.com/upload/image/robin hood wiki.jpg

Can criteria used by New Testament scholars to uncover the historical Jesus (i.e., it is probably true if it is embarrassing, multiply attested, etc etc.) also be used on early ballads to see if we can know anything “probable” about the historical Robin Hood? Some people have “entertained reasonable doubts” about Robin Hood’s historicity, but at least one New Testament scholar has argued that if we can establish the probability of a deed or saying of Jesus Christ then it follows that he did exist. And we must not forget that “even fabricated material may provide a true sense of the gist of what Jesus Christ [ergo Robin Hood?] was about, however inauthentic it may be as far as the specific details are concerned” (from Dr McGrath’s review of Dr Dale C. Allison).

There is one modern historian who has much to learn from these pioneering advances in historiography made by historical Jesus scholarship, though since he is 94 years old now he had better hurry. Eric Hobsbawm has himself pioneered the historical study of social banditry (bandits who are accepted and honoured by societies as heroes) and, like the New Testament scholars, has made abundant use of mythical or legendary material. Unfortunately he never seems to have attended the same conferences as  Jesus historians and so has missed out on the methods they have pioneered:

  1. the rigorous application of precisely articulated criteria to dig beneath the surface of unprovenanced mythical tales to discover the probable historical nuggets at the root of them all
  2. the use of even fabricated material, however inauthentic its specific details, in order to arrive at the true historical “gist” of the historical person at the centre of the narrative. (See NT Scholars are Pioneers for details)

Here is what Eric Hobsbawm has explained about his use of mythical or legendary material across the three different editions of one of his more famous works, Bandits. His bandit and bandit myth subjects ranged from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries.

A rather tricky historical source: Continue reading “How modern historians use myths as historical sources – or, Can Hobsbawm recover the historical Robin Hood?”

2011-08-15

The fallacy at the heart of historical Jesus scholarship

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Scholars, Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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I post the following in good faith after having attempted multiple times to elicit advice from a New Testament scholar on its accuracy.

Historical Jesus scholarship is unlike other historical studies in the following way:

Historical Jesus scholars (or “historians”)  set about applying a set of criteria (embarrassment, double dissimilarity, coherence, etc) to the Gospels for the purpose to trying to find what is factual (or “very probably factual”) about anything that Jesus actually did.

This is different from what other historians do since other historians, as far as I am aware, are much luckier. They have public records and eye-witness and contemporary accounts and documents of verifiable provenance to work with. They have sufficient data to be able to interpret to give them assurance that they have a body of “historical facts” to work with. No historian can get away with suggesting Hitler or Napoleon or Julius Caesar did not become leaders and wage wars and institute major political reforms and a host of other things that are known facts about them. I am not saying we know everything there is to know about them, or that some things we think we know may not be apocryphal, but I am saying that we have clearly verifiable substantial numbers of facts about their lives to enable historians to study them. History is not about simply recording known facts, but about explaining, interpreting, and narrating those known facts.

In the cases of ancient figures lacking a body of verifiable facts in the historical record, historians do not bother to address their lives as matters of historical inquiry at all. Their names may appear in the history of ideas, but that is quite a different matter. If it wasn’t Hillel who really did say something, it is the fact that the ideas are attributed to someone or some group that is significant, not the specific historicity per se of the name.

Historical Jesus scholars, on the other hand, do not work like this. They have no commonly agreed facts about Jesus. The only datum they seem to agree is a “fact” is that he was crucified. But as I intimated in my previous post, even that “fact” is based on circular reasoning. But scholars seek to understand his personal history (“the real Jesus”, the “historical Jesus”) by trying to FIND some facts about his life by means of criteriology. Continue reading “The fallacy at the heart of historical Jesus scholarship”

2011-08-14

Another way to study Christian origins

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by Neil Godfrey

Filed under: Biblical Studies, Historical Methods and Historiography, New Testament
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Updated 5 hours after posting to expand Schweitzer quote.
Sibyl reading the book of history
Sibyl reading the book of history: Image via Wikipedia

The approach I like to take is one I learned from the way historians (certainly many of them at any rate) investigate other topics, whether in modern, medieval or ancient times.

I have used the example of Alexander the Great before, so for convenience I use it again here. It’s a safe bet to say that the existence and conquering career of Alexander is a “fact of history”. We have primary evidence from his own time still surviving (e.g. coins) and testifying to his place in history. We have much other evidence for major cultural, economic and political changes throughout the Middle East that are most cogently explained as the result of his conquests. So when we read secondary sources about him we have supporting knowledge that assures us that these sources are about someone real. We might call this sort of supporting knowledge “external controls” that we can bring to our reading of the secondary sources.

The problem with studying Christian origins as if Jesus himself were the historical founder of Christianity is that we have no similar controls to support the New Testament narratives. This is why, after discussing the problems with using Josephus and Tacitus as evidence for the historical Jesus, Albert Schweitzer wrote:

In reality, however, these writers [those arguing for the historicity of Jesus against mythicists] are faced with the enormous problem that strictly speaking absolutely nothing can be proved by evidence from the past, but can only be shown to be more or less probable. Moreover, in the case of Jesus, the theoretical reservations are even greater because all the reports about him go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even by raised so high as positive probability. (From page 402 of The Quest of the Historical Jesus, 2001, by Albert Schweitzer.)

So what is the safest way to approach the Gospel narratives about Jesus? Continue reading “Another way to study Christian origins”

New Testament scholars are pioneers in historical methods

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by Neil Godfrey

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New Testament scholars have sometimes been pioneers. The attempt to define criteria of authenticity was in fact an attempt to articulate more precisely and rigorously things that in most other areas of history were determined in much the same way, but with a far greater degree of intuition and instinct. (Dr. James F. McGrath, Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler University, Indianapolis, Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity Among Friends and Enemies . . . )

In the same post, Dr. McGrath explains that the pioneering method of applying more clearly defined criteria of authenticity can be used to hopefully understand the great mystery that started Christianity:

While it is surely true that an attempt to find an uninterpreted Jesus amid the interpretation of the Gospel authors is implausible, it does not follow that criteria of authenticity are useless. What we seek to catch glimpses of are Jesus as he interpreted himself, and Jesus as his disciples interpreted him prior to the changed perspective resulting from Good Friday, and from whatever subsequent experiences and reflections persuaded them that he had been raised from the dead and exalted to God’s right hand.

My earlier post complaining about the absence of known facts about the life of Jesus and the consequent need for historical Jesus scholars to try to find some through criteriology was misguided. It appears that historians who are so backward as to seek explanations for known public facts are “fact fundamentalists” and have much to learn from New Testament pioneers.

. . . . . the issues Allison and others raise are fatal for the historical Jesus enterprise, but are fatal for the misguided and futile quest for certainty that “fact fundamentalists” have brought with them into the discussion. (Jesus and the Criteria of Authenticity . . .)

What is one of the issues raised by Allison according to Dr McGrath that is fatal for “fact fundamentalists”?

Even fabricated material may provide a true sense of the gist of what Jesus was about, however inauthentic it may be as far as the specific details are concerned. (Review of Dale Allison, Constructing Jesus) Continue reading “New Testament scholars are pioneers in historical methods”

2011-08-13

Historians on Jesus

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by Neil Godfrey

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Obviously the fact that people can speak about Jesus as if he had really existed does not mean that he really did exist.

But what if historians (whose careers are in history faculties that have nothing to do with biblical studies) who write about the Roman empire mention Jesus as the founder of the Christian religion. Do they make such a statement on the basis of their independent or even collective scholarly research into whether Jesus really did exist or not? I think we can be confident in answering, No. I think we can further say that, if really pushed, many would say that for the purposes of what they wrote, they would not care if he existed or not. What they are addressing is not the historicity of Jesus, but the historical fact that Christianity had its beginnings in the first century in the Eastern part of the empire. What they are addressing is the fact of the appeal and reasons for the spread of Christianity.

The reason they might phrase an initiating discussion with reference to Jesus himself as the founder of Christianity is because this is the commonly accepted understanding of Christian origins, and it is, at bottom, quite beside the point for their own purposes — which are explaining Christianity’s spread and influence in the empire — whether it turns out that Jesus himself really was or was not the founder of Christianity. Continue reading “Historians on Jesus”

2011-07-25

What is history? What is a historical fact?

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by Neil Godfrey

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Plato and Socrates in a medieval depiction
Image via Wikipedia

In online discussions and posts about “historical method” in connection with the study of Jesus and early Christian history I often encounter confusion about what history really is. New Testament scholar Scot McKnight notes that this confusion begins with many biblical scholars themselves:

In fact, the historiography of historical Jesus scholars is eclectic and often unconscious or uninformed of a specific historiography. (p. 20, Jesus and His Death)

An uninformed view of history is that it is “just one damned thing after another.” But a list of events and dates is really more like a chronicle or almanac. If one’s experience of history stopped in early high school then it is understandable for one to think this sums up what history is all about.

Who or what is a fact of history?

My introduction to some sort of philosophy of history was E. H. Carr’s What Is History? He startled me as an undergraduate by thinking to ask “What is a historical fact?” I had always taken “historical facts” for granted and it had never crossed my mind that there could be a question about it.

And I think a number of New Testament scholars who think they are doing history when they research and write about the historical Jesus would profit from grappling with the question. Continue reading “What is history? What is a historical fact?”

2011-07-22

Who says, “There is no evidence for the historical Jesus” ?

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by Neil Godfrey

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If you follow the “it is ignorant to say there is no evidence for the HJ” discussion on Debunking Christianity you have already read most of what I post here.

John Loftus kicks things off with his OP in which he says:

I want to put to rest the ignorant claim that “There is no evidence for a historical Jesus.” There most definitely is. It’s called “confirming evidence” or evidence of things we would expect to find if there was a historical Jesus, and it is Legion.

Let’s have done with such an ignorant claim.

The debate is whether there is sufficient evidence.

I responded with an attempt to clarify what I see as a common but fundamental misunderstanding embedded in this comment. I joined the discussion late and wrote:

Beginning with the OP I believe we are confusing two quite distinct concepts: evidence and sources. I think this is one of the factors that leads to so much confusion and talking past one another.

It was once almost uniformly accepted by Old Testament scholars that the OT was “evidence” for a historical united kingdom of David and Solomon.

But a number of scholars beginning not too many decades ago attempted to point out that a mere claim, a mere story, might be a source of information, a claim, about historical events, but it is hardly the same as evidence for them.

These scholars turned to the way historical studies of ancient times were conducted by nonbiblical historians and drew clear distinctions between primary evidence (evidence physically belonging to the period in question: bricks in the ground, graffiti on an original wall, in the case of most ancient history) and secondary evidence: that which is physically subsequent to the events in question. The guiding principle was that primary sources must always take precedence and the secondary must be interpreted through the hard evidence of the primary.

But obviously in the case of Jesus we have no primary evidence, only secondary. Continue reading “Who says, “There is no evidence for the historical Jesus” ?”

2011-07-16

“Pseudo-scholarship” – such comments do not belong in scholarly writing or debate

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by Neil Godfrey

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After discussing fundamentalist approaches to the Bible — whether fundamentalism on the part of Bible believers or fundamentalism on the part of Bible denigrators — Lester Grabbe concludes:

There is no permanent state of purity nor any established chair of righteousness in scholarship. Even if one suspects that a scholarly position or theory is ideologically motivated — whether from biblical fundamentalism or some other ideology — one should evaluate the position on the basis of stated arguments. Trying to second guess motives has become too much of a pastime in the academy. (p. 23 of Ancient Israel: What Do We Know and How Do We Know It?, my emphasis)

Is there anyone out there who has a history of imputing anti-Christian vendettas to mythicists reading this? Does the shoe fit?

Lester Grabbe continues:

It has become common in recent years to introduce personal motives into arguments: ‘so and so takes this position because he/she is/thinks/believes this or that’. Unfortunately, we can always find reasons to say that someone takes a scholarly position because of personal or ideological motives . . . . Such statements have no place in scholarly argument. In fact, there is probably not a one of us who has not taken a position on some issue for personal reasons, even if totally unconscious of this motive. . . . I am very sensitive to arguments or positions that seem to arise from a fundamentalist stance with regard to the Bible. Yet, as John Emerton once remarked from the floor in a conference, we should reply to the specific arguments rather than what we think might be behind them. . . . (p. 24)

Grabbe discusses an article attacking another that dated the Siloam inscription to the Maccabaean period. The attacking article was headlined “Pseudo-Scholarship”. Grabbe says that this article made some relevant and serious points, but the heading of “Pseudo-Scholarship”

served to prejudice the readership from the start. The redating of the Siloam inscription may be wrong — and most so far think it is — but it is not “pseudo-scholarship”, and such ad hominem comments do not belong in scholarly writing or debate. (pp. 24-5)

If Lester Grabbe has a point, and he probably does, then I have to confess guilt on this count, too. Let’s see what happens from now on.

Was Socrates man or myth? Applying historical Jesus criteria to Socrates

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by Neil Godfrey

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Strepsiades and Pheidippides are discussing, S...
A scene including Socrates in Aristophanes’ play The Clouds. Image via Wikipedia

It might be interesting to see how the criteria used for the quest for the historical Jesus might work with another figure of comparable stature in the ancient world. A comparison like this might help us assess their real value as determinants of historicity.

Multiple Attestation

We have the writings of the philosopher Plato. These dramatize the teaching career, trial and death of Socrates in dialogue form. But was Plato writing about a real person or was Socrates only a literary character he chose through whom to express his own philosophical teachings?

We have the writings of Xenophon. Xenophon was known as a historian but his writings about Socrates are not histories. They portray a very different sort of teacher from the one we read about in Plato.

Both Plato and Xenophon are clearly writing as devoted followers of Socrates, and classicists have often remarked that the teachings they attribute to Socrates are really their own and not those of a real Socrates at all. So we are still have one source type represented by both of these authors, and historicity cannot be settled by appealing to their “multiple attestation” alone.

This reminds us of Schweitzer’s complaint about the nature of the evidence for Jesus:

[A]ll the reports about [Jesus] go back to the one source of tradition, early Christianity itself, and there are no data available in Jewish or Gentile secular history which could be used as controls. Thus the degree of certainty cannot even be raised so high as positive probability. (Schweitzer, Quest, p.402)

But we do have another source that appears to be quite independent of the above pair of Socrates’ disciples. Continue reading “Was Socrates man or myth? Applying historical Jesus criteria to Socrates”

2011-07-04

Demystifying R. Joseph Hoffmann, and the war over Bayes’ theorem

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by Neil Godfrey

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Some academic jargon is nothing more than the modern equivalent of a sorcerer’s mumbo jumbo — designed to awe while hiding the fact that there is really nothing meaningful on offer at all
Updated 5th July to add link to Richard Carrier's post taking Hoffmann to task.

R. Joseph Hoffmann has let a crotchety side to his nature show as he publicly attempts to humiliate a younger scholar who, in exchanges with the aging don, has exposed a dint of mediocrity in his intellect.

The casus belli is, at least on the surface, the place of Bayes’ theorem in historical Jesus studies.

Now Hoffmann’s writing is surely more renowned for its thick overlays of esoteric intellectual jargon and rhetoric than for its content. The reason is pure mathematics. More people can read his posts than can understand them. (Stanislav Andreski wrote that this sort of intellectual jargon as the modern equivalent of earlier efforts to bamboozle the uninitiated and impress the elite: various uses of medieval Latin, witch-doctor mumbo-jumbo, etc.)

But on the positive side, one does get a sense that he is thoroughly enjoying himself as he shows off his verbal wit, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone has a right to enjoy themselves (or “oneself”, as I am sure the don would prefer me say).

But what the hell is he trying to say when he burgeons like a Baroque artist doing abstract?

I’m sure he won’t like any attempt at simplification, but then why would any biblical scholar be bothered with a blog like mine when the guild does not even consider it to be an honest discussion of the Bible and Christian origins anyway.

All Hoffmann means to say is that he thinks: Continue reading “Demystifying R. Joseph Hoffmann, and the war over Bayes’ theorem”

2011-06-21

The fallacy that invalidates historical Jesus studies, conspiracy theories and creationism

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by Neil Godfrey

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“You aren’t allowed to make up your own facts.”

That’s a brilliant piece of wisdom that is lost on many of us from time to time because a certain familiarity with habitual ways of thinking prevents us from seeing that we sometimes really do just make up our own facts — or at least just accept “facts” that others have simply made up for us.

The words come from The Uncensored Bible by Kaltner, McKenzie and Kilpatrick after they have presented an original argument that explains that bizarre episode in Exodus where God is said to meet Moses on his return to Egypt and tries to kill him, following which his wife Zipporah circumcises her infant son, tosses the foreskin at Moses and accuses him of being a bloody husband — after which God leaves him alone. This, at least, is one way the passage is translated for us. But as the authors explain, the original is riddled with so many unlinked pronouns no one can be really sure how to translate the passage, let along make any sense of the story.

A suicidal Moses

The occasion of the opening passage — “You aren’t allowed to make up your own facts” — is the explanation of Pamela Tamarkin Reis. She suggests the confusing phrases are not intended to be understood literally but are idiomatic expressions. They indicated, Reis says, that Moses was contemplating suicide. He had presented himself until this moment as an Egyptian fugitive of high standing, but on his return to Egypt after being called by a voice out of a burning bush, he had to face up to his being a Hebrew and one with a slave people. His wife, Zipporah, mocked him by performing a circumcision on their son in contempt. Continue reading “The fallacy that invalidates historical Jesus studies, conspiracy theories and creationism”