Any recommendations on reading about the philosophy and methods of historical research, written by someone with no connection to Biblical studies?
I did provide that professor with a number of suggestions (the post included major figures in the field of twentieth-century historiography and readings that would lead to others not discussed in detail in that post), and no doubt he will read them as soon as opportunity permits.
The same biblical scholar in the same public comment demonstrated his eagerness to learn how “history” as practiced by historical Jesus scholars is viewed by historians in nonbiblical areas when he wrote:
I don’t know – I asked a colleague in the history department about methods and the “criteria” used in historical Jesus research, and he basically said that history, once you get beyond the groundwork of trying to date sources, is “an art.”
L’esprit d’escalier. In my earlier post I should have explicitly mentioned religious tolerance instead of subsuming it beneath general human tolerance and acceptance of differences. (Listening to another Late Night Live podcast last night, this one on being Moslem in America, brought this to mind.)
We would never think to publicly denigrate someone who had investigated various faiths and decided to embrace, say, Catholicism or Mormonism.
We love the idea of free speech. Some of us even take it seriously and do actively live by the principle:
I disagree with what you say but will defend to the death your right to say it.
The principle goes back to the Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke who argued that truth will win in the free exchange and airing of ideas.
So why do we find public intellectuals, even some adhering to a religious faiths that boasts of love and tolerance, denigrating those who are persuaded by or even consider plausible the idea that Jesus Christ never historically existed? Some actively incite public ridicule and scorn.
One academic, a doctor of divinity who specializes in christology, is on record as even insisting, repeatedly, that mythicists do not deserve to be heard. It is perhaps instructive that one whose professional speciality is in such a nebulous meaningless area should be the one to practice opposition to the values of the Enlightenment. (It is also instructive that the earliest Christ Myth theorists came out of that same Enlightenment.)
One might fault my previous post on the grounds that the problem Paul was addressing among the churches of the Galatians did not require him to address anything apart from the simple fact of the death and resurrection of Jesus. (Well, I at least faulted it for that reason.) This post attempts to demonstrate that the identical concept of Jesus as nothing more than a death and resurrection figure is found in 1 Thessalonians. This is generally considered the earliest or one of the earliest surviving letters of Paul.
Sometimes one hears the argument that Paul had no need to repeat details about Jesus’ teachings and life since he would have already established that when he first taught his converts face to face. This argument defies natural intuition and common experience: what has become established common experience or knowledge between parties is regularly drawn upon in later conversations for all sorts of reasons. The argument also runs up against Paul’s own explicit statements in this letter that he is consciously repeating things he taught them face to face — and one of these is that the command to love one another came from a source other than that of Jesus!
[Don’tcha just love this Noël Coypel painting of god completely starkers having to rise through the air in full public view, suspense killing everyone as the draft keeps the cloth strategically located, — though an angel has to be sent down to make sure the women at least keep looking at his eyes just in case!’ Reminds me of a kitsch cabaret show I once went to in Thailand (don’t ask), except for the angel.]
I have just had the privilege of listening to an interview with South Africa’s eminent Justice and renowned campaigner for justice in apartheid South Africa, Albie Sachs. I recommend the interview to every one who aspires to a more civil and humane society. He woke up after someone tried to kill him with a bomb and was euphoric that he had only lost an arm. He later met and shook hands with the man who planted that bomb to kill him.
Albie Sachs came from a family that knew the Jew-murdering pogroms in Lithuania. He has always stood against racism and every form of discrimination and marginalization of minorities. I was impressed with his insights even to the positive contributions made by the tiny communist parties in South Africa and elsewhere.
We abhor the mocking of the physically handicapped. We hate racism. We protest against the discrimination against women. We now advocate for respect for gays. We demand rights and respect for all humanity.
But some of our public intellectuals, ironically even those who profess to be both public intellectuals and Christians, are not the least bothered by despising, publicly mocking, marginalizing, denigrating and slandering those who think differently from the way they do.
I am not a public intellectual but have had the benefit of a good formal education with some wonderful intellectual guides, and opportunities to learn much since. I have never “attacked” (or if I have I have regretted it) Christians or even Christianity or fundamentalists or those who believe in Atlantis or psychic phenomena or UFOs etc, but I have engaged many adherents of these in forthright and civil discussions. They deserve to be heard because they are not inciting hatred and are sincere. I was once a fundamentalist and anti-evolutionist myself, so I am in no position to ridicule anyone for the ideas they hold.
The noble thing about intellectuals like Richard Dawkins and Jerry Coyne and Michael Shermer is their ability to address creationist or intelligent design arguments — and therefore creationists themselves — with respect. They listen to what creationists say. Carefully. And they respond with civility and directness. Where they have found dishonesty, as verified in some cases by court-tested evidence, they have aired this information, too. They show how one can do that without adding unwarranted sneers or name-calling.
Yet some public intellectuals in the field of biblical studies — those who call themselves “Christians” even — have demonstrated the same sorts of ignorance and bigotry against those who challenge their arguments and assumptions as were once commonly directed against the physically handicapped, different races, gays, women. Example, against “Christ myth” arguments.
These public intellectuals also incite public disrespect, even saying that certain people don’t deserve to be listened to because of their different views about an intellectual topic of which they regard themselves the public guardians. This is not how evolutionary scientists defend science against creationists.
Public intellectuals have a responsibility to promote a civil society (meaning civil discourse at all levels) and intellectual integrity. There are too many New Testament scholars who fail dismally in both responsibilities. Even one is too many.
Book 4 — Seaton’s translation of the fourth and final book of the Argonautica. (Ignore the chapter numbering in the title.)
The tricks of verisimilitude
Modern readers are not fooled by into thinking that the tale of the Argonauts and the Golden Fleece is based on historical traditions simply because it happens to contain lines like:
. . . from that time the altar which the heroes raised on the beach to the goddess remains till now, a sight to men of a later day.
From this land, it is said, a king made his way all round through the whole of Europe and Asia, trusting in the might and strength and courage of his people; and countless cities did he found wherever he came, whereof some are still inhabited . . .
And the clammy corpse he hid in the ground where even now those bones lie among the Apsyrtians.
Some set foot on those very islands where the heroes had stayed, and they still dwell there, bearing a name derived from Apsyrtus; and others built a fenced city by the dark deep Illyrian river, where is the tomb of Harmonia and Cadmus, dwelling among the Encheleans; and others live amid the mountains which are called the Thunderers, from the day when the thunders of Zeus, son of Cronos, prevented them from crossing over to the island opposite. Continue reading “Bible and the Argonautica. ch. 6 [Book 4]”
An interesting tidbit appears in a University of Notre Dame thesis by Eric C. Stewart (Gathered around Jesus: An Alternative Spatial Practice in the Gospel of Mark, pp. 261-2) referring to a study that argues Jesus’ voyage to the Gadarenes — where he exorcises the man possessed by Legion — is best read against the Greco-Roman traditions of sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar that were considered the gateways to land of the dead. (I have reformatted the paragraph for easier reading and added hyperlinks to the biblical references.)
Roy Kotansky argues that the story of the Gerasene demoniac is best read against the Greco-Roman traditions of sailing through the Straits of Gibraltar at the edge of the world.837
He first notes that the “other side” in Mark 4:35 has as its antecedent the sea in Mark 3:7.838 This sea is not identified in 3:7 as the Sea of Galilee. Kotansky argues that this sea should be read as the Mediterranean rather than the Sea of Galilee.839 The trip, then, becomes a voyage to the “Other Side,” that is, to the edges of the oikoumene. “Accordingly, all the sea-crossings of both miracle catenae, at least in the mythic imagination, are to be construed as true sea-voyages; their destinations, when recorded, will not tally well with known geographies of the circum-Galilean region.”840
Some of us might be interested in assisting with a survey for a project aimed eventually at publishing a book for those who have “deconverted” and embraced an atheistic/agnostic outlook on life.
Rick Dean who embraces an atheist/naturalist worldview after having been a “believer” himself has put up a questionairre on the net and explains its purpose:
Teologye.com is a research tool and will evolve as projects develop and/or are completed. I am currently researching and will be reporting on religious deconversions while focusing on the problems often faced by former believers during the process of “losing one’s faith”.
If, from an initial faith-based perspective, you have experienced a loss of faith or have reached the conclusion that the world around us was formed via natural processes instead of supernatural intervention I would very much like to hear from you.
In a recent post I discussed the ways Reason (or Logos) for the Stoic philosophers had a similar role or function to Christ (also a Logos) in Paul’s letters.
For both the Stoic philosopher and the Pauline Christian, the moment of conversion, when a person became “a new creation”, “in Reason or in Christ” and with “Reason or Christ in” them, and they being “in Reason or in Christ,” was when they were blessed with a “spiritual grasp or full insight” into the very nature and meaning of Reason, or Christ crucified and resurrected. This conversion moment when the neophyte attained a higher wisdom beyond that of “the natural man” also catapulted him or her into a new set of values and shared life and new identity with fellow believers.
Paul’s notion of Jesus Christ was indeed a technical concept about a single act God had performed for the salvation of believers. I use the word “technical” to stress a point, even though there was a strong emotional attachment to this “technical” stunt by God. Continue reading “What did Jesus Christ mean to Paul and his readers?”
Continuing my little series of posts reading the Bible in the context of popular ancient fiction, specifically with the Argonautica.
Book 4 — Seaton’s translation of the fourth and final book of the Argonautica. (Ignore the chapter numbering in the title.) This post covers only the early portions of this book.
Escape adventure and happily disbelieving reunion
Having thrown her lot in with Jason Medea flees her father’s palace under cover of darkness fearing his wrath. As she rushed forth from her home,
the bolts of the doors gave way self-moved, leaping backwards at the swift strains of her magic song. . . . Quickly along the dark track, outside the towers of the spacious city, did she come in fear; nor did any of the warders not her, but she sped on unseen by them.
Peter is not a semi-divine being as Medea is (she is a granddaughter of the sun god Helios and has magic powers) so he needs an angel to help him out when it is his cue to enter this Hellenestic adventure motif of fleeing for his life, past guards unseen, with doors opening of their own accord: Continue reading “Bible and the Argonauts: Chapter 5 (Book 4)”
Continuing my little series of posts reading the Bible with popular ancient fiction in mind, or the other way around, with the Argonautica as the case study.
Book 3 — Seaton’s translation of the third of the four books of the Argonautica. (Ignore the chapter numbering in the title.)
Change of pace in the story flow
Book three of the Argonautica illustrates the one of the distinctive features found in all four gospel narratives, a feature that is found in much other popular literature of the day, too. Here the adventure of Jason and his Argonauts shifts gears. Up till now the story has been a travelogue. One adventure after the other as the heroes move from one place to the next. But with book 3 the pace settles down into a very detailed and lengthy narrative in a single setting, covering a short period of time, and that relates the climax to which the previous itinerary has been leading us.
After Jesus and his disciples experience many mini-adventures as they travel this side and the other side of the lake, to this town and that region, they come to Jerusalem — the place where they have been destined to meet their destiny, to accomplish what has been planned from the beginning. And it is from this point that the gospels settle into a detailed narrative of all that is related to this climactic adventure. It all happens in the one region, and is told in much more detail than the earlier brief episodes.
Scholars have in the past attempted to explain this difference in pace by suggesting the Passion Narrative was originally an independent story that was later extended with the earlier episodes. But a little more familiarity with the popular epics and novels of the day would point to a simpler explanation.
One New Testament scholar has written that Jesus’ real life was lived out just like a real Greek tragedy. Jesus’ travels, works and sayings, all his life, just happened to all follow a sequence and specific eventfulness that had all the appearance, to anyone who was observing, of working out just like a drama on a Greek tragic stage! I will return to this otherwise interesting NT scholar.
Thomas L. Thompson‘s The Historicity of the Patriarchal Narratives: The Quest for the Historical Abraham is recognized as having been the wedge that dislodged the dominance of Albright‘s influence on Old Testament studies. Albright had argued that the Bible was basically true history from the Patriarchs through to the Babylonian captivity. Thompson’s critique went beyond the specific archaeological evidence itself, however. He went to the heart of the way (Albrightian) biblical historians gratuitously assumed that the biblical text was essentially a historical record of Israel. The Bible is first and foremost literature, and it is as literature that it must be first understood. A little basic literary analysis is enough to explain many of the details of the Bible stories.
In a recent post discussing a book by Sheffield scholar David Clines I quoted the same core historical principle:
It is indeed usual for practitioners of biblical literary criticism to insist that the literary must precede the historical, that we must understand the nature of our texts as literary works before we attempt to use them for historical reconstruction. . . . But [in the case study of Nehemiah] the literary and historical have been so closely bound up, historical questions being raised — and sometimes answered — in the very process of asking the literary questions.(From David J. A. Clines, What Does Eve Do to Help? 1990. p. 163)
Continuing here my commentary on the points of literary, thematic, religious and cultural contacts between ancient popular literature and the Bible, with the Argonautica as a case study. [See the other posts in this series.]
From my initial post:
Anyone who treats the Bible too seriously as history needs to take time out to read Jason and the Argonauts, or the Argonautica, composed in the third century BCE by Apollonius of Rhodes. They could also read a lot of other ancient literature, epic poetry, tragic dramas, Hellenistic novellas, to find a more grounded perspective for the Bible as literature, but here I focus on the Argonautica.
Book 2 — this links to Seaton’s translation of the second of the four books of the Argonautica. (The “chapters” in my titles are only for convenience to follow the sequence of posts on the blog and are not part of any formal numbering system.)
The Dual, the Prophecy, the Parting Rocks, and Seeing the Glory of God
The fact of evolution means that humans are not some sort of distinctive “end product” any more than elephant grass or grasshoppers or lichen are “end products”. The fact that we have evolved language makes us no more unique in the grand evolutionary scheme of things than elephants that have evolved trunks. Humans have not been here very long, and given the nature of evolution, there is no reason to assume they will be around forever. Self-conscious life with our level of intelligence may even prove not to be such a good idea in evolutionary terms if it ends up wiping out most other species and even ends up extinct through destroying its own environment or through advanced technological warfare. Or if it does survive, it may find it does so in something no longer human as we understand human — in another species yet again. Evolutionary history surely guarantees it.
Yet most religions as I understand them, at least those big 3 “of the Book”, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, give a special place to humans above all other species. The more enlightened adherents of these religions claim to believe in evolution, but I try not to think too much about how they can do that. If they are thinking that there is nothing really random about the mutations or anything truly natural about the conditions that affect survival, that God somehow did pull a few strings here and there along the way, or started it in a way so that it would turn out just so, then they are no longer evolutionists but closet supernaturalists, creationists, or Intelligent Designers — only trying to be less “in your face” about it.
Or if they say that mankind is made in the image of God then they are declaring evolution has somehow come to an end with us, and they are not evolutionists at all. They are creationists who try to keep the little angels tinkering with things along the way hidden from view. Will Abraham or Jesus be relevant once a new species replaces humans as the dominant one on the planet?
The problem of evil multiplies, too. The unspeakable evil inflicted by some humans on their own kind and other animals is bad enough. But evolution has bred evils of terror and suffering too painful to contemplate among so many species, not only humans. What sort of God is opting to tinker this but not that along the way?
I can understand the need for God. Religion is one of those “human universals” I think humans by nature will always have to live with. Some religions had a hard time adjusting to relocating the Earth to a lower place in the heavens, and today the “religions of the book” are continuing to be challenged by new understandings in genetics and human nature.
If human cultures by nature are destined to always have religion of some kind, a religion that is genuinely compatible with the facts of evolution, and what we know of genetics today, will have to discard any holy book that implies homo sapiens is somehow the ‘end’ (in both the sense of finality and goal) of evolution.
