Historical Sources

2024-09-28

Are Historical Sources “Innocent Until Proven Guilty”?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

In a recent post I praised Douglas Campbell for drawing attention to the laziness (if not “dishonesty”) of rebutting an argument with the blanket “I am not persuaded” line. In this post I come to blame him for rejecting a genuinely critical reading of source material. It is with the very essence of critical reading that he objects:

Descartes suggested, in a classic argument widely influential in the modern period, that everything is in effect guilty until proved innocent. The result was, rather famously, the reduction of all certain knowledge to the conviction that his mental processes at least guaranteed his existence. In other words, he used radical doubt as a fundamental method. Everything must be doubted until it can be demonstrated indubitably to be true. (16)

Now Descartes’ method (shorn of the extremism with which Campbell presents it) does serve well enough in everyday life and especially in the legalistic professions and scientific research enterprises. But it is possible to take issue with it on a philosophical level, as demonstrated by Wittgenstein. But is there not a valid comparison here? We know that Newtonian physics “fails” at the subatomic particle level; but we do not reject the fundamentals of Newtonian physics when taking care climbing ladders or driving a car.

Campbell wrote — and note the pejorative language in which he couches Descartes’ scepticism:

But the Cartesian method has struggled to get anywhere significant and has, moreover, been subjected to ferocious critique, not least from Wittgenstein, who pointed out (characteristically indirectly) that the use of language implies participation in a broader linguistic community, which is in turn difficult to detach from a complex broader reality that cannot be doubted in the first instance without lapsing into utter incoherence. So Descartes’s key initial claims are in fact delusional. Unfortunately, however, the critical method, which played such a significant role in the rise of the modern university, has had a long dalliance with Cartesianism, so the latter tends to live on, haunting the corridors of the academy like a restless shade. It allowed figures like Kant to reject tradition out of hand and to argue from simpler and more certain first principles, although Kant too struggled to develop his principles with the certainty and extension that he really sought. It is not a completely crass oversimplification to suggest, then, that many modern Pauline scholars, shaped in part by the traditions at work in the modern university, seem to assume, at least at times, that the “critical” assessment of evidence simply involves the application of doubt in a generic way, ultimately in the manner of Descartes. It is a posture of comprehensive skepticism. One must be unconvinced until one is convinced of something’s probity on certain grounds. But I would suggest that when practiced in this generic and universal manner, this is an invalid and self-defeating methodology and a false understanding of criticism.’ (16)

Campbell had faulted as “posturing” the “I am not persuaded” rejoinder as a substitute for critical engagement. He faults Cartesian scepticism with the same label — “posturing”.

I doubt that I would be excused from jury service if I tried to opt out by explaining that Wittgenstein tells me that my particular semantic world may not be capable of deliberating in a truly objective manner the information conveyed to me as it is coded in semantic variations other than mine. Newtonian physics is still valid, its quantum companion notwithstanding.

Campbell then proceeds to justify another misguided “howler”:

We will rely on slender snippets of evidence in what follows, because that is all that we have — occasional and fragmentary remains of conversations that took place millennia ago. But we do have evidence, and it will not do to dismiss parts of the following reconstruction with a generic claim that “this is insufficient” or “there is still not enough evidence.” If this is the evidence that we have and it explains the data in the best existing fashion, then the correct scientific conclusion must be to endorse it and not to complain that we need more data that unfortunately does not exist. (18)

That may sound like a correct scientific approach but it is not. A scientific hypothesis must rely on multiple datasets. A single experiment is never sufficient. An experiment, a survey, must of necessity be repeated in different places with different samples to be sure of the results. The medical profession will not rely on a single survey of data to recommend a particular program to treat a physical condition.

The scientific method does not build on “slender snippets of evidence” if there is no other choice. If the evidence is inadequate to answer a particular question, or on which to base a certain line of inquiry, then it is the question and the line of inquiry that must be changed.

I frequently encounter the following kinds of statements in by biblical scholars in their works relating to early Christianity or Judaism:

We historians confront a supposed event in the past, as in some text or object, as though to “try it in court,” in order to reach a verdict to establish the truth of the matter. And the principles we can best employ are those used in the practice of law:

(1) The accused is presumed (not judged) innocent unless proven guilty.
(2) The preponderance of the evidence (anything over 50%) is decisive.
(3) The verdict rendered is considered proven beyond reasonable doubt (not absolute).

(Dever 140f — Old Testament scholar arguing against fundamentalist readings of the Bible)

and arguing the case for accepting the overall integrity of the canonical text of New Testament writings…

As in a court of law, the evidence deserves to be judged innocent of being an interpolation until proven guilty. This proof must be able to stand up before the jury of scholarship, which must decide whether “guilt” has been established beyond a reasonable doubt. If there is reasonable doubt about the extraneousness of the accused data then it should not remain any longer under a cloud of suspicion. In that case the verdict must be acquittal in order to protect the innocent. If scholarship does not follow such a “rule of law,” serious injustice will be done to much innocent data.

(Wisse 170)

Sometimes the biblical scholar will cite a (“nonbiblical”) historian for support:

Unless there is good reason for believing otherwise, one will assume that a given detail in the work of a particular historian is factual. This method places the burden of proof squarely on the person who would doubt the reliability of a given portion of the text. The alternative is to presume the text unreliable unless convincing evidence can be brought forward in support of it. While many critical scholars of the Gospels adopt this latter method, it is wholly unjustified by the normal canons of historiography. Scholars who would consistently implement such a method when studying other ancient historical writings would find the corroborative data so insufficient that the vast majority of accepted history would have to be jettisoned.29 In the words of the historian G. J. Renier:

We may find . . . an event is known to us solely through an authority based entirely upon the statements of witnesses who are no longer available. Most of the works of Livy, the first books of the history of the Franks by Gregory of Tours, belong to this category. Since there is no other way of knowing the story they tell us, we must provisionally accept their version. This brings us back full sail to accepted history as the starting point of all historical investigation.30

30. Renier, History, pp.90–91.

(Blomberg 304)

Although Blomberg cites a 1982 reprint of the classical historian’s (Renier’s) work, the original publication date stands at 1950. That is important for a reason I will explain.

But first, note the muddled metaphor in the above quotations. In a court of law it is not the witness who is “presumed innocent until proven guilty” but the one charged with a crime. Witnesses are cross examined to test their claims. Though the witness swears an oath to tell the truth their testimony is never accepted at face value. Their claims must be tested. Yet the above comparisons of the historical method confuse witnesses (sources) with the person who is on trial and seeking to prove his innocence.

In response to Dever above: In a court of law it is the one accused and on trial who is presumed innocent: it is the claims of the witnesses, the sources — not the accused — that must be tested.

In response to Wisse above: It is not the “evidence” that “deserves to be judged innocent”. It is the evidence that is tested for authenticity, relevance and reliability to determine the guilt or innocence of the one on trial.

Finally, in response to Blomberg: The Renier method of accepting the testimony of Livy for believing in the historicity of events for which there is no other evidence may have been par for the course among classicists in 1950, but by 1983 that naive approach was well and truly debunked by a series of lectures delivered by the classicist historian Moses Finley:

For reasons that are rooted in our intellectual history, ancient historians are often seduced into [accepting as historically factual] statements in the literary or documentary sources … unless they can be disproved (to the satisfaction of the individual historian). This proposition derives from the privileged position of Greek and Latin, and it is especially unacceptable for the early periods of both Greek and Roman history…

(Finley 21)

Renier referred to Livy as an example of a historian whose word he felt he had no choice but to follow. Finley pointed out the cruel truth, however:

Yet a Livy or a Plutarch cheerfully repeated pages upon pages of earlier accounts over which they neither had nor sought any control. . . .

Where did they find their information? No matter how many older statements we can either document or posit – irrespective of possible reliability – we eventually reach a void. But ancient writers, like historians ever since, could not tolerate a void, and they filled it in one way or another, ultimately by pure invention.

The ability of the ancients to invent and their capacity to believe are persistently underestimated. How else could they have filled the blatant gaps in their knowledge once erudite antiquarians had observed that centuries had elapsed between the destruction of Troy and the ‘foundation’ of Rome, other than by inventing an Alban king-list to bridge the gap? Or how could they contest an existing account other than by offering an alternative, for example, to provide ideological support for, or hostility to, a particular ethnic group, such as Etruscans or Sabines, who played a major role in early Roman history? No wonder that, even in the hopelessly fragmentary state of the surviving material on early Rome, there is a bewildering variety of versions, a variety that continued to increase and multiply as late as the early Principate. Presumably no one today believes the Alban king-list to be anything but a fiction, but any suggestion that there is insufficient ground to give credence to the Roman king-list is greeted with outraged cries of ‘hyper-criticism’ …. (8f)

There was a time — it is long past — when classicists would reconstruct ancient history from their Greek and Latin sources as naively as many biblical scholars continue today to reconstruct the origins of Judaism and Christianity from the texts in the Bible. Finley added:

I suspect that Ogilvie’s slip [naive readings of ancient historians] reflects , no doubt unconsciously, the widespread sentiment that any thing written in Greek or Latin is somehow privileged, exempt from the normal canons of evaluation. (10)

Classicists have long since moved on. Perhaps it’s time for more biblical scholars to follow them.

Blomberg, Craig L. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels. 2nd edition. Nottingham: IVP Academic, 2007.

Campbell, Douglas A. Framing Paul: An Epistolary Biography. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans Publishing, 2014.

Dever, William G. “Christian Fundamentalism, Faith, and Archaeology.” In Misusing Scripture: What Are Evangelicals Doing with the Bible?, edited by Mark Elliott, Kenneth Atkinson, and Robert Rezetko, 131–52. Routledge, 2023.

Finley, M. I. Ancient History: Evidence and Models. London: Chatto & Windus, 1985. [Chapter 2 was part of a series of J. H. Gray Lectures at the Faculty of Classics of the University of Cambridge]

Wisse, Frederik W. “Textual Limits to Redactional Theory in the Pauline Corpus.” In Gospel Origins & Christian Beginnings : In Honor of James M. Robinson, edited by James E. Goehring, Charles W. Hedrick, and Jack T. Sanders, 167–78. Sonoma, Calif. : Polebridge Press, 1990.

2024-06-11

Can we salvage history from beneath Josiah’s reforms?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

My interest in these posts is in reviewing the basis for some historical fact behind the Biblical narrative of Josiah’s reforms. Other questions about the textual problems in 2 Kings 22-23 and difficulties with identifying in that passage the discovery of the book of Deuteronomy will come later.

So after discussing the evidence of seal images and amulet inscriptions, Christoph Uehlinger (UC) clarifies the question he is addressing:

Within the limits of this article, we may cut down the historical problem to the following question: Does 2 Kings 23 list measures that are most plausibly understood against the background of the political and religious situation of Judah during the latter part of the seventh century BCE than at any other period? (CU, 300 — all bolded highlighting is mine)

UC’s answer to his question:

At least two measures appear to be directed against cult practices or institutions whose introduction in Judah must have been originally connected with the Assyrian expansion and the accompanying reception of Assyro-Aramean traditions of astral cults:

the removal of the horses and chariots of the sun-god

and the suppression of the כמרים priests.

(300 – my formatting)

Horses and Chariots of the Sun God

Assyrian horse associated with temple of Sun God Shamash: Wikimedia Commons

2 Kings 23:11 (NIV)

He removed from the entrance to the temple of the Lord the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun. They were in the court near the room of an official named Nathan-Melek. Josiah then burned the chariots dedicated to the sun.

The Hebrew word for “official” in that text (סָּרִ֔יס — saris) is understood to be an Assyrian civic title, not a local religious or priestly one.

The horses are probably living animals, not crafted statues, given that the Hebrew uses the word for “dedicated” or “ordained” as with priests (v.5) and not the word for “made” that is used in connection with roof top altars that were removed (v.12). Further, they appear to require the care of an official.

The connection between horse and sun-god has no tradition in Palestine itself but is typical of Assyria, especially during the late eighth and early seventh century (the time of Sargon and Sennacherib), when the horse was repeatedly represented as the symbolic animal of the sun-god.

(302)

The Assyrians used horses dedicated to the sun god for divination purposes. But as UC acknowledges, the Assyrians were no longer a presence in Judah at the time of Josiah, having been replaced by the Egyptians. At most, UC can suggest that since Assyria was long gone, the “time was ripe to come back to local [Yahwistic] custom”. He adds that removing cult horses would also have a cost-saving benefit.

“Idolatrous Priests”

2 Kings 23:5 (NIV)

He did away with the idolatrous priests appointed by the kings of Judah to burn incense on the high places of the towns of Judah and on those around Jerusalem—those who burned incense to Baal, to the sun and moon, to the constellations and to all the starry hosts.

The word being translated as “idolatrous priests”, kemarim (כְּמָרִ֗ים), is of Syrian origin and associated with the moon god. Given the rarity of the term in the Hebrew Bible it may be inferred that these priests were no longer present after the exile, and if so . . .

It is therefore scarcely conceivable that their dissolution by King Josiah was only an invention of a post-exilic redactor. (305)

Roof Altars

2 Kings 23:12 (NIV)

He pulled down the altars the kings of Judah had erected on the roof near the upper room of Ahaz, and the altars Manasseh had built in the two courts of the temple of the Lord. He removed them from there, smashed them to pieces and threw the rubble into the Kidron Valley.

Zephaniah 1:5 and Jeremiah 19:13 link roof-top worship to astral deities.

The passages quoted from the books of Zephaniah and Jeremiah, which assume that worship on the roofs continued after Josiah’s reform, therefore do not contradict the historicity of Josiah’s measures, since they remained confined to the temple and, again, affected a specific cult practice, namely sacrifice. (305)

Conclusion — and my response

CU thus suggests that the end of the seventh century “offers the most plausible religious-historical background for the three reform measures discussed above.” That may be so, but are we still not a step away from establishing whether or not any reforms took place at all?

UC underscores the following points:

All three purges (horses/chariots, idolatrous priests, roof altars) relate to “practices that have lost their plausibility in view of the changed political climate with . . . lessened contacts with northern Syria and Assyria.”
All three focus on the Jerusalem Temple.
All three are associated with astral worship.

On the other hand, one may be inclined to think that points 1 and 3 had little relevance by the time of Josiah given that they are more closely associated with Syrian and Assyrian practices and those powers had lost their influence over Judah by Josiah’s time.

UC is seeking a midway between “minimalists” who rely on the archaeological witness to the exclusion of textual narratives that cannot be established as existing until generations later, and “maximalists” who rely on the textual narrative unless it can be proven in error. I am not so sure that a mid-way can be justified. Yes, UC can point to historical data that coheres in varying degrees with the biblical narrative, but by interpreting that data through the biblical narrative — even allowing for modifications to that narrative to make it fit the known historical and archaeological details — is still fundamentally a method that relies on a late text to through which to interpret much earlier data.

But how would/does UC respond to my misgivings? Here are five pertinent passages with my responses.

One:

However, ‘methodological minimalists’ should not take their task too easily. Measures possibly taken under king Josiah in order to redesign the Judahite state cult cannot simply be dismissed because they are not explicitly mentioned as such in primary sources: such a conclusion would proceed from an argumentum e silentio which should be inadmissible for maximalists and minimalists alike. (285f)

“Simply be dismissed because …. not explicitly mentioned” can be taken as a pejorative put-down of the methodology of the “minimalists”. Rather, I don’t see any question of “dismissing” information that is “not explicitly” clear in the sources. Instead of “dismissal” of the “non-explicit” there is an attempt to examine each type of evidence in its own right. One might justifiably prefer to examine primary or archaeological sources independently of any other kind of evidence as the first stage of research. The second stage would be to examine the secondary narrative sources independently as far as possible against their verifiable provenance. In other words, the secondary sources for Josiah should, as far as possible, be studied as primary sources for the time and place from which they originate. Where we cannot be certain about their provenance, it is reasonable to see how the narratives might be explained in the context of the earliest period for which we can establish their existence. If nothing makes sense in that independently confirmed context, then we can test the narratives against earlier and more hypothetical periods of origin.

There is no argumentum e silento. The arguments are attuned to the voices of each type of evidence within its own verifiable context. Nor is this taking a “too easy” route. One might even say that the problems to be solved are doubled since we are grappling with two types of evidence, each on its own terms, instead of rationalizing them into a third source that is of our own making and that means we have to fudge the edges of both sources to make them fit with each other.

Two:

No serious historian should dismiss secondary sources on the sole argument that they cannot be confirmed with utter precision. On the other hand, we must of course endeavor to build only upon such secondary sources that plausibly fit the primary framework based on primary sources. (307)

Again, I wonder if I am right to detect another slight pejorative in the expression “with utter precision”. “Utter precision” might seem to imply that there can be room to fudge our data to make it fit a hypothesis. I don’t see anything wrong with accepting date ranges for known data (astral seal images, the influence of Assyrian cult in Judah, the silver amulets) and working with where they lead – whether stopping short of Josiah’s time or extending either side of it. Let the data speak without trying to refine it more precisely than it is.

When UC calls for using secondary sources “that plausibly fit the primary framework”, I think this and earlier posts have shown that his method is problematic. Rather than take the biblical narrative about Josiah’s cult centralization or purification or renewal, he has not UC actually changed the biblical narrative so that we come to imagine Josiah merely discarding practices that were no longer relevant in his time (e.g. Assyrian astral worship) or even undertaking a cost-saving measure? By reimagining the narrative to “plausibly fit” the primary evidence, has not UC actually replaced the biblical narrative with a new and different account that exists nowhere except in the historian’s imagination? Certainly, we can hypothesize that the author changed the facts before him to create a new narrative of more significant theological import, but why not simply hypothesize that the author drew upon known customs and traditions to create a historical fiction in a manner not very different from historical novelists do today?

Three:

The minimalist approach becomes extremely maximalist when it approaches the sources with inappropriate expectations, just to drop them as soon as they do not respond to gross questions. . . . We can know so little about the past, that we should endeavor to interpret adequately what little we have. (307)

There is an implicit circularity here, I think. Yes, we “know so little about the past”. And by all means we certainly “should endeavor to interpret what little we have.” It is not valid to see how we can make disparate sources from variable provenances throw light on each other until we first establish a valid argument that they are related in the way tradition and orthodoxy have led us to believe they are related. If we make invalid assumptions about the genre and provenance of our written sources we will almost certainly not be advancing genuine historical knowledge if we try to relate them to the real history behind their surface narratives. We would be in gross error if we found ourselves using Walter Scott’s novels to reconstruct medieval England, or Geoffrey of Monmouth’s saga to reconstruct a historical King Arthur. But this returns me to my response to point #One above.

Four:

Nothing remains for exegetes interested in historical research but to take note of the new methodological hierarchy which implies the necessary subordination of non-archaeological, secondary documentation, including the biblical texts, to primary data. (308)

Yes and no. Certainly there is a hierarchy of sources about any given time and place in the past. Primary sources, those produced in the time in question, surely take precedence. That does not mean we accept them uncritically because we know kings like to stretch the truth when making public boasts. But sources that derive from a later time need to be assessed according to what their authors could have known and what they wanted their audiences to read and believe. Those things may not cohere with the realities of the past. If those later sources can, however, demonstrate that they themselves are drawing upon “primary sources” since lost to us, then we are indeed fortunate in having more witnesses about the past to help us in our research.

But what is not allowed, in my view, is using a hierarchy such as the following:

Exhaust all we can from primary sources
Finding that we still lack much desired information, turn to secondary sources
Use secondary sources to fill in the gaps.

No, valid historical research is not that simple. Here is a valid approach:

Exhaust all we can from primary sources
Finding that we still lack much desired information, turn to secondary sources to see if they contain evidence of further primary sources otherwise lost to us, (or see if they contain information that is evidently reliant upon lost primary sources otherwise lost to us)
Use the data from primary sources evident in the secondary sources.

Five:

In the interest both of historical and theological research, we should therefore neither overstrain this link with historicist or biblicist naiveté, nor simply leap over the gap with dismissively minimalist assumptions. (308)

I hope my above responses have demonstrated that a valid “minimalist” approach is not “dismissive” of any justifiable source material.

Next post, I’ll consider another argument to explain the existence of the Josiah reform narrative in 2 Kings 22-23.

Uehlinger, Christoph. “Was There a Cult Reform under King Josiah? The Case for a Well-Grounded Minimum” In Good Kings and Bad Kings: The Kingdom of Judah in the Seventh Century BCE, edited by Lester L. Grabbe, 279–316. London: T&T Clark, 2007. https://www.academia.edu/19958547/Was_There_A_Cult_Reform_under_King_Josiah_The_Case_for_a_Well_Grounded_Minimum_2005_

2023-08-31

Gospel and Historical Jesus Criticism — Method and Consistency

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Some critics have portrayed me as being like a moth fluttering to the nearest flame, as one who is always attracted to the latest most radical viewpoint, and therefore my views cannot be taken seriously. What those critics generally fail to recognize, however, is the consistency of my readings of the sources and the fact that my approach is for most part taken for granted among scholars who specialize in other fields of historical research.

Let me explain.

The historians of ancient Rome have their text sources: Tacitus, Suetonius, etc. Those historians have been trained to read those texts in a critical manner: What is the bias of the author? How could the author have known the details we are reading? etc.

At first glance, it appears that critics of the Gospels follow the same approach, and at a certain superficial level they do: What is the theological bias of the author of this gospel? What are the implied or likely sources for this or that episode or saying?

But there is a fundamental difference too often overlooked in the literature of New Testament scholarship that changes everything.

Before I explain that fundamental difference, let me narrate how I came to discern the great chasm between historical inquiry into “secular” ancient history and “biblical” history.

It was some years ago when I suppose I was still feeling somewhat raw from having discovered how wrong “about everything” I had once been in a religion that I had left behind. I had learned many lessons from my experience of having been so wrong — think of “In Praise of Failure” of my previous two posts — and had become hyper-sensitive about repeating mistakes and falling into a new set of misdirections. So when I encountered Earl Doherty’s case for Jesus being non-historical my instinctive reaction was extreme caution and scepticism. Was this just another idea that had no basis, was entirely ad hoc, a fancy for hobbyists?

I dedicated a lot of time to trying to work through exactly how we know anything at all “for a fact” about the ancient past. I read widely but found that most historians seemed to take for granted certain data that they read in their sources. They had their reasons for rejecting this or that detail, but I rarely found a clear explanation of how they came to conclude that, for instance, Julius Caesar really was assassinated, or that there really was a Great Fire in Rome in the time of Nero. That Julius Caesar and Nero really existed was evident enough from material evidence – coins and monuments. But what about Socrates? The historians seemed to have an abundance of data but I searched without much success to find a clear explanation for why they seemed to take certain information for granted (e.g. the existence of Socrates).

It took some time but I eventually came to identify the foundations of their knowledge.

The existence for Socrates, for whom we have no surviving physical monuments, was accepted for essentially the same reason they accepted the historicity of Julius Caesar: the evidence of one source was corroborated independently by another contemporary source. Even literary sources could corroborate one another. Historians focussed on areas for which they had sources whose provenance they could reasonably understand and trust, and that were demonstrated to be of the kind that had good grounds for conveying largely reliable information. Such sources are on the whole independently corroborated. Such understanding is the bread and butter of historians and many do seem to take it for granted so that it “goes without saying”.

But not every detail in those sources is taken for granted as historical, of course. Take the case of the plague of Athens during the Peloponnesian War. That there was a plague would seem to be corroborated by the fact that our main source for it — Thucydides — we know from other information was evidently an eyewitness and in a position to know and record the fact. It does not follow that every detail Thucydides wrote was historical, however. We also have fictional dramatic works describing plagues and since we see these closely mirrored in Thucydides’ description of the Athenian plague, it is reasonable to conclude that Thucydides drew upon those fictional sources to dramatize his otherwise historical narrative.

Can a historian sift historical information from the Gospels in the same way he or she does from Thucydides? The answer is a resounding No. That is because we have no contemporary or reliable information about the identity of their authors. We don’t even have any independent evidence to help us decide when they were written — except that they had to be some time before the middle or late second century because that’s when we find them discussed by Church Fathers. Moreover, and here is a point I find commonly misunderstood, they do not even evince core characteristics of other historical writings of the time: they do not even seek to give readers explicit or implicit reasonable grounds for trusting them. Yes, the Gospels of Luke and John do point to “eyewitnesses” but they do so in such vague and cryptic terms that doubts inevitably arise among readers who are familiar with similar yet more detailed and testable claims by other historians. The authors hide their identities, or leave readers guessing about their ability to trust them. The Gospel of Matthew plays with the word “mathete” in a way that leads readers of the Greek text to suspect the author is indeed a certain Matthew, but who that Matthew was we have no idea; Luke in his second volume (Acts) slips into “we” as if he himself is an eyewitness reporter, but again it is all very vague and cryptic. We don’t know who this supposed eyewitness is. And the final word must be that the Gospels are clearly theological narratives advocating belief in a miracle story. Anyone familiar with the historical writings of the era cannot fail to notice the stark differences.

I have spoken of independent corroboration. Independent corroboration has to come from contemporaries or from persons who have access to information contemporary with the composition of the texts being studied. A document that appears decades after the source text can do no more than tell us what someone believed (or wanted others to believe) in their own time. One of the reasons historians reject the claim that Martin Luther committed suicide lies in the fact that it first appeared only “twenty years” after his death.

We have no independent evidence to pin down a date for the creation of the Gospels. We may surmise from internal evidence (e.g. the prediction of the destruction of the Temple) that a work was composed around the time of its destruction but that is essentially nothing more than speculation.

Our extant evidence compels us to keep the following factors in mind when reading the Gospels as historical sources:

We do not know who wrote them or the circumstances in which they were written;
We do not know when they were written (short of somewhere between the early first century and the mid to late second century);
We do not know what sources were used for their narratives and sayings (short of some episodes and speeches being clear adaptations of Old Testament writings).

New Testament scholars long relied upon what they called “criteria of authenticity” to try to establish strong probabilities for the historical veracity of certain details but that method is alien to the methods used by other historians. Example:

If an episode points to a negative act by a Church hero such as Peter’s denial of Jesus, it is likely to be true – “the criterion of embarrassment”.

Such methods have long been dismissed as logically fallacious by other historians and are finally being acknowledged as flawed by New Testament scholars. In the case of the above example, it is reasonable to imagine the embarrassing story is created to encourage other followers that know that God can forgive and rehabilitate those who are weak and fall.

Some New Testament scholars have turned away from the criteria of embarrassment and have turned to “memory theory” instead. But again, we are in the realm of circularity: we begin with the assumption that there is a historical event that has spawned the Gospel narrative, but we believe that there is a historical event at the start because we we can see “how it has been modified” by various interests before reaching the Gospel author.

We can hypothesize how Gospel stories originated, that they came to the authors by means of oral traditions, but hypotheses can never be more than hypotheses unless we can find indisputable evidence that lifts them beyond that status.

My approach to reading the Gospels is through the acknowledgement of these realities. This perspective is grounded in the all but taken for granted approach of historians who undertake research into other times and places. As long as certain questions about the source documents remain open those documents cannot be read or used in the same way as sources for which those questions are definitively answered.

This is not hyper-scepticism or straining to be some sort of contrarian. It is acknowledgment of the realities about our sources.

2021-09-05

How to Read Historical Evidence (and any other information) Critically

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

no claim is above the requirement of justification

Anyone who reads widely about how historians work and how we can know anything about the past — as well as how to critically analyse news and media reports and any information at all — will likely at some point come across an interesting perspective in an article by Peter Kosso, Observation of the Past. I describe it as “interesting” because Kosso compares how we (should) read scientific instruments with how we (should) read our sources of information.

Here are some key points from that article.

There are three ways that knowledge of history is said to differ from our knowledge of the natural sciences:

History is largely the study of unique objects and singular events. Thus history cannot make generalizations about principles seen in nature. (Historians who once did try to find laws in history were called positivists but they are a rare species now.)
Historical subjects of inquiry cannot be manipulated to test hypotheses as can those of the natural sciences.
The third point is one that Kosso criticizes in his article: it is the common view that since historical events “are dead and gone, they are not amenable to observation.” Historians are like the jury at a criminal trial: they can listen to the testimony of witnesses but they can never see the crime itself.

But, argues Kosso, that third statement is misleading. The pastness of the phenomena that historians study is “not an epistemically significant factor in the process of our observation.”

Thus, “No Egyptologist has ever seen Ramses,” but particle physicists routinely observe the telltale tracks of electrons.

But here is the deep flaw in that analogy according to Kosso:

it is based on a mismatch between the objects of theoretical interest in history, for example Ramses, and the evidence, the tracks, for objects of theoretical interest in physics. (p. 23 – highlighting is mine in all quotations)

What would be a more accurate comparison? Either a comparison between studies of Ramses himself and studies of electrons themselves; or, a comparison between the evidence we have for Ramses (textual, archaeological) and the evidence we have for electrons (the tracks in a bubble chamber).

The interesting comparative analysis then is of the link, in each case, between the objects of interest and their image as shown in the evidential objects. (p. 23)

We come now to the quotation with which we opened this post,

no claim is above the requirement of justification (p. 26)

The scientist who proposes a description or theory on the basis of what the instruments have indicated about something — via electron microscopic image, seismic waves, ultrasonic image — that is invisible to the human eye will not, every time he or she speaks, explain how each point is justified by a particular reading of a particular program with known conditions, etc, but that background information is vital nonetheless and the scientist as a professional will always be able to produce whenever questioned about it.

Scientific observation, in other words, is observation, all things considered. It depends on an understanding of how the image was formed, that is, how the information got from the object of an observation report to the reporter. Only then is it reasonable to accept the report as reliable. (p. 27)

For a claim to be justified among scientists they must understand the principles by which a bubble chamber, a seismometer, a particle accelerator, a radio telescope detect information and how that information is interpreted. Much of the data collected is indirectly derived from the objects and recorded in what, to the untrained eye, look like meaningless lines and splotches. And before that end product of lines and splotches, there will have been earlier stages in the transmission of information involving various unfocussed images and electrical pulses that are in themselves unrecognizable as information. So what counts as information at the end of the process must include an understanding of how that data was derived.

Kosso refers us to Maxwell’s continuum of our increasing indirectness of observation of the natural world: personal spectacles are necessary for some of us simply to see a tree or house in focus; microscopes and telescopes distort the “natural” image for us to gain more insight into an object; then we have other instruments that register different kinds of waves beyond the light spectrum. Similarly, Kosso notes,

Historical observing involves a continuum of observability similar to Maxwell’s continuum. In the historical case there is an increasing indirectness in the observation of an event due to its distance in the past and the amount of mediation of information. (p. 30)

As scientific data is filtered through a range of indirect processes that observers must understand in order to best evaluate the results of their instruments, so historians have similar challenges with the interpretation of their data:

Atkinson, citing David Hume, suggests (and subsequently opposes) that “Statements about the past are claimed necessarily to diminish in credibility as time goes on. First observation, then memory, then first-, second-, third-hand testimony, and so on to the point of complete incredibility.” This scale of credibility of information will have more epistemological significance if it is sensitive not simply to how many stages are involved in the transmission of information but to the nature of those stages and their reliability for conveying information accurately. Thus one’s own memory may be no more credible than the testimony of an eyewitness, especially a witness with independent credentials as a competent, reliable, and even expert observer. This testimony is little different from a newspaper account by a reporter on the scene, which is in turn similar to an historical account, such as Thucydides’ description of the Peloponnesian wars, where the witnessing and faithful recording of the events are independently accountable. The point is that objects of historical interest, like objects of scientific interest, fill out a tight spectrum in terms of indirectness in the process of observation. Rather than drawing a dubious dichotomy in this spectrum it is epistemologically more enlightening to analyze the various kinds of stages in the indirectness and their potential threat to the conveyance of information. (pp. 30-31)

So if we follow the comparison with Maxwell’s continuum of observability in the sciences (from eye-glasses to Hadron colliders) we find that we have a continuum of degrees of clarity in the traces of historical events. The question to ask is not, “Can we observe Ramses?” but

Ask instead, Is this information of the event and does it come to us through interaction with the event? How is the information transmitted? Is there a reliable, independent account of the flow of information? (p. 31)

That’s worth highlighting again:

Is this information of the event and does it come to us through interaction with the event? How is the information transmitted? Is there a reliable, independent account of the flow of information?

In detail, that means the following for the historian and anyone interested in researching history:

Historical studies, no less than the sciences, are able to deal with these questions of information and accountability and are therefore able to analyze and use observation reports as do the sciences. In the case of written information from the past, the historical record, accounting claims are a standard part of the case for credibility of the evidence.

One ought to know, for starters, whether the information from the past has been intentionally passed on by the author, as in explicit chronicles or histories, or is unintended information which has been teased out of documents of the times by our reading between the lines and noting presuppositions or implications of the text. Attending to this unintended evidence in texts, looking “not for what their authors wanted to say, but for the unarticulated assumptions they carry with them,” not only increases the informational content but makes it more difficult for the authors to deceive or mislead. The background understanding of the intent behind textual evidence, in other words, helps account for the reliability of the information by describing aspects of the process by which the information was conveyed. The advice of M. I. Finley for assessing the credibility of textual evidence, “The first questions to be asked of any written source are, why was it written, why was it published?” initiates the process of accounting . . . (pp. 31-32, my formatting)

There are other questions to ask, too. What were the circumstances of the interaction between the event how the information came to us: how did the author know about the event? what has happened to the text in the hands of editors and copyists since it was composed? what do we know about the author, his status, his interests?

Whence Objectivity?

And don’t look for or complain about the lack of “objective accounts”. But do look for independent verification or “external controls”.

The objectivity of evidence is secured not by using foundational, indubitable observational claims, for there are none.

Objectivity comes with the prevention of circularity in the accounting whereby a claim of evidence contributes to its own verification. If an author describes things which can be evidenced in alternative ways, as Pausanius writes of monuments and topography which can be seen in the archaeological record, there is this independent check on his credibility in general. References to one author by another, as Dionysius of Halicarnassus describes the historical method of Thucydides, and coincidence of an author’s account with inscriptional reports, where the dating and authenticity of the inscription can be verified by independent means, both contribute to the assessment of the credibility of the textual information from the past. The reports from past historians, like the observation reports in science, must come with independent accounting claims if they are to be responsibly accepted as evidence. (p. 32)

What we read, then, in Josephus or Herodotus is not a focused image of the past. No. What we get is an “information-bearing signal” of something in the past that has begun with certain events, and been conveyed through various interactions that lead to us. That is Kosso speaking, but I would add a further point to be aware of: sometimes a signal can appear to be about a past event but is in fact a false signal. The historian must attempt to establish if what he or she is observing is “a false-positive”. It took a long time before historians came to understand that the accounts of the Trojan War and the Worldwide Flood were myths.

In sum…

For the historian, then, the text

…. is not a light signal and it is very slow, but neither of these features disqualifies observational information in the case of science, nor should it in the historical case. What counts for observational information in science is that it gets to the observer by interaction with the object and that there is a credible account of the interaction. The same standards can apply in history. (p. 33)

To encapsulate the comparison:

The point is that the data in history, the tokens of written reports of the past, play an evidential role that is similar to the data in science, the images in microscopes, tracks in particle detectors, and the like. Both bear information of less accessible objects of interest and both are amenable to an analysis of the credibility and accuracy of that information in terms of an independent account of the interactions between the object and the final medium of information, an account, that is, of the formation of the image. As long as we understand the formation process, in science or in history, we can be quite liberal in allowing many kinds of signals to carry the information. (p. 33)

And that last sentence applies especially to ancient history where we find historians using all kinds of sources, not just ancient historians but even poets and playwrights to attempt to get a better handle on, say, an inscription unearthed by archaeologists.

And a word here for biblical apologists:

As with empirical evidence in science, the important epistemic standard is independence between the accounting claims and the benefactors of the evidence. (p. 34)

How does a researcher who prays to the resurrected Jesus spoken of in gospels do serious research into “the historical Jesus”? What would we make of an Egyptologist who was known to communicate — privately, of course — with the eternal pharaohs whose spirits had been immortalized in the pyramids?

What is necessary at all times is that the observer, scientist or historian, be able to see that the information has been “transferred by some accountable chain of interaction.”

all informational claims must have some justification (p. 34)

We think of science as being more theory-laden than history but that is an error. Theory, values, … these determine all our observations, our selections of topics of interest. Our background knowledge similarly determines our selection of topics of interest, how we interpret it and how we justify our observations and conclusions.

Kosso is writing about historical inquiry. I think the principles apply to anything we read. “All information claims must have some justification.”

Kosso, Peter. “Observation of the Past.” History and Theory 31, no. 1 (February 1992): 21. https://doi.org/10.2307/2505606.

2020-11-20

Understanding Historical Evidence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Speaking of Steve Mason’s historical inquiry into what we can reconstruct of the origins of the Jewish War from Josephus, here are some quotations I marked as I read his second chapter. I hope to post one more time on this book, sharing some specifics of how he approached Josephus’s writings as historical sources. I began an archive listing key posts on historical methods and the nature of history more generally but Ouch!, I see that I haven’t worked on it since the day I started it! I need another time out but not from illness or injury this time. I’ll be adding this post there before the archive is finished.

Anyway, here are the things Steve Mason has to say about principles of historical research. There’s nothing new here for many of us, but they are points worth keeping in mind and sharing with others who are less familiar with what it’s all about.

Don’t just dive into a historical source and grab hold of whatever statements in it look useful tidbits for telling us what happened. First examine the source, see what sort of writing it is. We can’t merely assume a work that looks like history really is what most of us think a work of history should be. In Mason’s words,

In principle all survivals from the past, material or literary, need first to be understood for what they are if we are to use them to answer other questions. (60)

Don’t dismiss literary analysis of a source as irrelevant to your search for historical information in a source. Literary analysis at some level must come first before one knows how to interpret what one reads. That’s true even at the most basic level: e.g. is our source a diary or a parable?

A problem relevant to this chapter is the notion that those who care about the meaning of texts must be literary types unconcerned with the actual past. (61)

Here are “the most basic principles underlying this inquiry into the Jewish War.” The bolding and sometimes the layout are mine.

1. “Until someone can show otherwise, I am happy believing X. …”

1. Outside the academy, history seems most often to be equated with the past itself or with supposedly authoritative records. (61)

The past no longer exists. We need to interpret sources and with those interpretations re-imagine bits and pieces of the past and continue to revise our imaginations of the past as we learn more.

Each historian uncovers a new angle and offers it as a better key to understanding, but this very activity of constant reimagining means that we are not in a position simply to learn the facts and lessons of history. We are required instead to think, explore, and judge: not to hear what the past is itching to tell us but to investigate for ourselves.

History, then, is the process of methodical inquiry into the human past. (62)

Continue reading “Understanding Historical Evidence”

2020-10-26

Those Sources the Bible Cites

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Here I bring together different scholarly views on the sources cited in the Old Testament books of Kings directing readers to other writings for further information about a particular monarch. I conclude with a new perspective on one of those sources (the chronicles or annals of the kings of Judah) that would actually subvert the biblical narrative it is meant to support. This new interpretation comes from Russell Gmirkin’s chapter, “‘Solomon’ (Shalmaneser III) and the Emergence of Judah as an Independent Kingdom”, in the Thomas L. Thompson festschrift, Biblical Narratives, Archaeology and Historicity.

So the Lord routed them before Israel, killed them with a great slaughter at Gibeon . . . And it happened, as they fled before Israel . . . that the Lord cast down large hailstones from heaven on them . . . . There were more who died from the hailstones than the children of Israel killed with the sword. Then Joshua spoke to the Lord in the day when the Lord delivered up the Amorites before the children of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel: “Sun, stand still over Gibeon; And Moon, in the Valley of Aijalon.”

So the sun stood still, And the moon stopped, Till the people had revenge upon their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and did not hasten to go down for about a whole day. And there has been no day like that, before it or after it, that the Lord heeded the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel. . . .

But these five kings had fled and hidden themselves in a cave at Makkedah. And it was told Joshua, saying, “The five kings have been found hidden in the cave at Makkedah.”

So Joshua said, “Roll large stones against the mouth of the cave, and set men by it to guard them. . . . And afterward Joshua struck them and killed them, and hanged them on five trees . . . . So it was at the time of the going down of the sun that Joshua commanded, and they took them down from the trees, cast them into the cave where they had been hidden, and laid large stones against the cave’s mouth, which remain until this very day.

Joshua 10:10-27

For other references to landmarks that are said to be visible “to this day” see Josh 7:26; 8:28, 29; … Judg 6:24; 15:19; 1 Kgs 8:8; 10:12; 2 Kgs 10:27; 2 Chr 5:9. — Stott, Why Did They Write This Way? p, 55

The Hans Christian Andersen citation

Given that Gmirkin uses “methods allied to those of Thompson, although [his] efforts rely more heavily on documentary sources” (p. 76), let’s open this post with Thompson’s view on particular attempt by a biblical author to “prove the truth” of his account by pointing to external evidence:

In Joshua 10, Jerusalem’s king, Adonizedek, the leader of five Amorite kings, was defeated by Joshua and his army in a running battle. Yahweh killed more enemies than Joshua did by throwing huge stones down on them from heaven. The kings were captured hiding in a cave and executed by Joshua. To endorse this story, the author tells us that five of these large stones are laid at the entrance of the cave ‘to this day’.

The humour of this closing ought not be missed. The author is very aware of the audience’s critical sensibilities. Just as Yahweh is hurling the large stones down from heaven, killing the enemy, the dead are described as having been killed by ‘hailstones’. After all, everyone knows – even the minimalist – that God sends hailstones. And this is where the author traps his listeners! The memorial set up at the cave, five of Yahweh’s stones, is an obvious argument for the story’s historicity. Such an argument is a common folktale motif, quite like the closure of Hans Christian Andersen’s story of ‘the princess and the pea’ with its historicizing details that the pea is still in the museum . . . ‘that is, if someone hasn’t stolen it’.

(Thompson, Mythic Past, 44)

Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

Continue reading “Those Sources the Bible Cites”

2019-10-03

Review part 5: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster (Case for Agnosticism – 2, Sources)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

I discuss here my reading of Chapter 5 of Raphael Lataster’s Questioning the Historicity of Jesus. Here he looks at the problematic nature of the gospels and extra-biblical sources for Jesus.

Lataster discusses how historical Jesus scholars attempt to get around the problem that there are no primary sources for a historical Jesus. This absence leads scholars to focus on

1) the character and limitations of presumed oral traditions that bridge the gap between the gospels and the historical Jesus;

2) memory theory, what we theorize and know about social and individual memories.

Both of these studies do indeed raise awareness of problems for a historian’s access to a historical Jesus and Lataster cites numerous scholars who have contributed to our awareness of these problems. I suggest, however, that much of the discussion is at best a footnote to a debate over whether there was a person of Jesus at the start of Christianity. After all, the problems relate to the reconstruction of such a Jesus. If Christianity had some other origin then memories or oral traditions cannot have any relation to “a historical Jesus”.

Josephus

For an annotated list and links to discussions of the Testimonium Flavianum on this blog see Jesus in Josephus: Testimonium Flavianum

The most famous extra-biblical reference to a historical Jesus is the Testimonium Flavianum of Josephus. Lataster’s discussion is a thorough coverage of the weaknesses of attempts to salvage even a smaller core of the surviving sentences, again citing a range of recent scholars who have expressed serious reservations about Josephus ever having said anything at all about our Jesus. I was pleased to see a detailed quotation from a publication by a distinguished professor in the field of linguistics, Paul Hopper. (Interested readers can see the quotation in an older post here.) As for the second passage in the Antiquities of Josephus, one which appears to be an after-thought reference to a Jesus related to a certain James, Lataster highlights Richard Carrier’s argument that the Jesus referred to is Jesus son of Damneus. (See David Fitzgerald Responds for details of the argument.) Carrier’s view makes some sense but I am not entirely sure it resolves all questions and for that reason I prefer Earl Doherty’s original discussion as the more satisfactory. But either way, there are significant problems with the view that Josephus identified James as “the brother of Jesus, the one called Christ”, both in syntax and context. It is important to address both Josephan passages but as Lataster notes,

it is important to realise that even if authentic, these verses do not necessarily confirm the existence of the Historical Jesus.

(Lataster, p. 200)

Josephus is writing decades after the supposed historical Jesus and adds nothing to what is known from other sources, the implication being that there is no reason to suspect that either passage had any source other than Christians, either as Josephus’s late first century source or as later copyists of his work.

Other sources

Lataster’s comprehensive discussions of other ancient sources mentioning or interpreted as alluding to either Jesus or Christ — Tacitus, Pliny, Thallus, Suetonius, Mara bar Serapion, and the Talmud — draw in both scholarly rebuttals and common answers that as far as I am aware have never been countered by anyone attempting to use them as evidence for a historical Jesus. A new point concerning Pliny’s letter about Christians to emperor Trajan is also covered: Enrico Tuccinardi has applied a stylometric analysis that strongly indicates the entire passage is a forgery.

Scholarly “confessions”

As for the canonical gospels, Lataster reminds us of the major obstacles to accepting them as sources for a historical Jesus. They are late documents, at least forty years after the narrated crucifixion, and they are accepted by critical biblical scholars as mythical or theological narratives of Christ, not a historical person. Whatever the form of Jesus behind them — historical or mythical — they are nonhistorical elaborations that have come to hide whatever that original concept was. Lataster buttresses his point with citations from critical biblical scholars. One such noteworthy name is that of the pioneer of the Jesus Seminar, Robert Funk:

As an historian, I do not know for certain that Jesus really existed, that he is anything more than the figment of some overactive imaginations… In my view, there is nothing about Jesus of Nazareth that we can know beyond any possible doubt. In the mortal life we have there are only prob abilities. And the Jesus that scholars have isolated in the ancient gospels, gospels that are bloated with the will to believe, may turn out to be only another image that merely reflects our deepest longings.

(Robert Walter Funk, “Bookshelf: The Resurrection of Jesus,” The Fourth R 8, no. 1 (1995): 9., in Lataster, p. 219)

Given the prevailing near consensus that the Gospel of Mark is the earliest gospel it is reasonable to consider the possibility that all subsequent references to and portrayals of a historical Jesus can go back to that gospel. Lataster cites Bart Ehrman to this effect:

If there had been one source of Christian antiquity that mentioned a historical Jesus (e.g., Mark) and everyone else was based on what that source had to say, then possibly you could argue that this person made Jesus up and everyone else simply took the ball and ran with it.

(Lataster, p. 220, citing Erhman from https://ehrmanblog.org/gospel-evidence-that-jesus-existed, accessed 05/04/2017.)

If it all begins with Mark . . .

Continue reading “Review part 5: Questioning the Historicity of Jesus / Lataster (Case for Agnosticism – 2, Sources)”

2019-02-10

Historians on the Most Basic Laws of Historical Evidence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

The most basic laws of historical evidence are very straightforward.

Professor David Dumville, British medievalist and Celtic scholar, Chair in History & Palaeography in the School of Divinity, History & Philosophy, Professor in History, Palaeography & Celtic, University of Aberdeen.

The most basic laws of historical evidence are very straightforward. History must be written from contemporary sources or with the aid of testimony carried to a later era by an identifiable and acceptable line of transmission. Many texts which present themselves for our consideration as testimony to Anglo-Saxon history are creations remote from that age. Historical writing may be entertaining if an author chooses to cut corners or ignore the rules of evidence when assessing such works—but it will not be worth the paper it is printed on.

Dumville, 55

Professor Dumville’s words conclude a chapter addressing questionable practices and conclusions of a number of medieval historians that echo, at least in my ears, methods in biblical studies.

In the opening paragraph Dumville sets out a warning that no doubt many scholars of “biblical Israel” and Christian origins would enthusiastically offer lip agreement to:

[The historian] must excavate his texts, not in the spirit of a treasure-hunter seeking little more than the thrill of whatever finds may come to hand, but in as measured and scientific a fashion as possible. In the academic discipline of history, as in archaeology, the time for treasure-hunting has now passed. In spite of occasional lapses, methods and standards of criticism are rigorous and well advertized.

Dumville, 43

Excavating texts?

That image of “excavating texts” reminds me of James McGrath’s illustration of the way a historian supposedly reads a text compared with the way of a literary analyst:

There is a significant difference, however. When Dumville speaks of “excavating” texts he makes not a single reference to any “criteria of authenticity” such as “criterion of embarrassment” or “criterion of double dissimilarity”; he makes no reference to “memory theory” as might have at that time been gleaned from Halbwach’s 1980 publication of The Collective Memory. What he means by “excavating” the texts is studying what can and can’t be known about their probable source material and any data (or absence of data) that establishes a clear line of record to the events written about. That is flatly opposed to the assumptions and implications of the diagram above. One cannot reason about the narrative style or presentation of a text in order to apply criteria or memory theory and thereby arrive at a “probable series of historical events”.

What excavating texts means to Dumville is establishing clear evidence of the use of sources that can be traced back to being contemporary with the events of the narrative or document. If the author does not set out the evidence that would enable readers to be assured that his or her story or record were derived ultimately from contemporary sources then the work is completely useless for historians who seek to reconstruct the earlier event.

Comparing hypothetical sources and traditions “behind” biblical texts

What if later narratives agree, though? Won’t that be some indication that they are at least close to accurately representing earlier events? No. Some medieval historians fell into that error (as Dumville would put it) when they concluded from agreements in later sources that those later source agreements indicated that they all used a much earlier set of documents from the very time of the events being studied.

Does anyone else at this point think of the arguments underlying the Q source? Or those that attempt to glimpse earlier memories? What of Bart Ehrman’s plethora of sources that, among others, add M and L to Q?

Contrast Dumville’s view of historians who worked back from agreements in later twelfth century sources to concluding that they were based on a hypothetical (surely actual) ninth century documents:

It was the implication of Pagan’s discussion of the Flores historiarum and Historia Dunelmensis ecclesie that such lists were maintained in ninth-century Northumbria. However, this view must be qualified by the knowledge that the unanimity of the twelfth-century Durham texts is sometimes in shared error or doubtful deduction. Continuity of accurate record is not therefore to be assumed, and any information with such an uncertain pedigree cannot sustain very confident use. (52)

Semantic seductions

Next, note the confusion of terminology, how sometimes the language of “documents” or “records” can so easily (I suggest even unconsciously) elide with sources that technically are not “documents” or “records” at all. (This was a criticism I once made of a discussion by James Crossley and that was the source of his outrage and, it seems at least to me, even some small ongoing obsession to denigrate this blog in subsequent publications. )

Lyon has laid some stress on the date 854 in Northumbrian historical record, observing that it ‘is explicitly mentioned in several documents, so it cannot be lightly rejected’. The first essential point is that it is not mentioned in any document at all, for we have none surviving from early Anglo-Saxon Northumbria. That very absence speaks volumes for the nature of institutional discontinuity in the Anglo-Scandinavian period. The date 854 is mentioned in a number of twelfth-and thirteenth-century literary texts. In discussing a historical subject, we must not lapse into the loose language of the archaeologist who is unaccustomed to written sources: not all written texts are documents; documentary and literary texts have a different status and require somewhat different handling. (52)

What they deride as “minimalism” in OT studies

A contemporary source, even if consisting of but one single coin, must outweigh tomes of written sources that offer no certain derivation from the time of the events they point to:

The instinct displayed by Hugh Pagan in 1969—for the numismatist to dispense with the apparent information of the written sources for much of ninth-century Northumbrian history and rely on evidence derivable directly from coinage—must, I think, command the assent of the historian. Hopeful manipulation of the twelfth-century literature serves little purpose. (53)

We are aware of difficulties and debates over efforts to reconcile various archaeological finds in the region of Palestine with Biblical narratives.

Compare an outsider review of Nazareth archaeology

I was further reminded of René Salm’s analysis of the published archaeological reports of pottery finds around Nazareth and the virulent attacks many have directed against him as a consequence — on the grounds that he is “not an archaeologist”. Dumville is not an archaeologist, either, but that does not render him incapable of reading thoughtfully, commenting on, and disagreeing with conclusions drawn by specialists and many peers who concur with them.

The silver penny’s location, and the name on it, lead to the “obvious” conclusion that it must derive from a certain period well documented in the literary sources.
The physical differences from other coins known to be related to those literary sources therefore raise questions.
“Extraordinary hypotheses” are advanced to explain these physical differences. Why is one coin so different from the others “surely from the same provenance”?
The “minimalist” view: Stripped from the problematic literary sources, the coin is more simply interpreted as evidence that our literary sources are incomplete and that they even fail to inform us of the existence of entire kingdoms.

The other problem of procedure concerns the now famous silver penny—from the Trewhiddle hoard, buried in Cornwall c. 875 x c. 895—bearing the name of a King Earned. Careful study of this coin has allowed the seemingly secure conclusion that it is to be compared with the coinage issued by Æthelwulf of Wessex in the 850s and Berhtwulf of Mercia in the 840s. The only known king of the name is the ruler of Northumbria to whom our twelfth- and thirteenth-century sources attribute a lengthy reign within the period 806-42. This king is well represented by an appropriate coinage. Neither the form nor the style of the Eanred silver penny seems to suit an equation with a Northumbrian king of the first half of the ninth century. Furthermore, G. C. Brooke gave it as his opinion that ‘the style of the coin seems . . . to prove it to be an issue of the Canterbury mint.

To meet this difficulty, extraordinary hypotheses have been advanced. It may not be wholly unfair to suspect that it provided much of the fuel powering Pagan’s radical reassessment of Northumbrian chronology. Alternatively we have been invited to allow the existence of ‘a historically unknown king, who was ruling, possibly in the Midlands, about 850’. (54)

The historian, for all his wish to know more about his research area, is obliged to confess ignorance, that the literary sources available sometimes simply do not justify conclusions we would like to make about our question of interest.

The Historian’s Conclusion

There are no back-up methods to fill in the gaps left by the absence of contemporary sources. There are no appeals to criteria of authenticity in the literary texts. There are no speculative exercises, however “intelligently guessed”, in memory theory. There is only the humble admission of ignorance.

After all, the most basic laws of historical evidence really are very straightforward.

Dumville, David N. 1987. “Textual Archaeology and Northumbrian History Subsequent to Bede.” In Coinage in the Ninth-Century Northumbria: The Tenth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, edited by D. M. Metcalf, 43–55. BAR British Series 180. Oxford: B.A.R.

2018-12-21

Lying Eyewitnesses — Always With Us

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

It ain’t necessarily so, the things that you’re liable to read in Bible, or in Der Spiegel, or in the ancient histories.

Three weeks ago I posted

“Now we know” — how ancient historians worked

There I wrote:

In 1935 the foreign correspondent of a certain English newspaper, finding himself without much material to report, despatched to England stories which supposedly dealt with the build-up to the Abyssinian war but which were in fact derived from an old colonel’s military reminiscences, published several years previously in a book entitled In the country of the Blue Nile. The correspondent’s newspaper was delighted with the reception given to these stories by its readers, and accordingly sent him a series of congratulatory telegrams – whereupon a colleague remarked to him: ‘Well, now we know, it’s entertainment they want!’⁴¹ The colleague had only then come to realize what had been known long ago to Tacitus, to whom the foreign correspondent’s technique would have seemed very familiar.

41 For a full account of this amazing and instructive story see Knightley (1975), 176—7 (whose book should be recommended reading for those who wish to understand how ancient historians worked). The reporter who deceived his newspaper and the public on this occasion assumed (quite rightly) that no one could check his stories on account of the distance involved. The same is even more true of ancient historians (see above, p. 153), who lived in a world where communications were so much more difficult.

Woodman, Tony. 1980. “Self-Imitation and the Substance of History. Tacitus, Annals 1.61-5 and Histories 2.70, 5.14-15.” In Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, edited by David West and Tony Woodman, 155, 235. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press.

I picked up a copy of Phillip Knightleys’ The First Casualty: From the Crimea to Vietnam: The War Correspondent as Hero, Propagandist, and Myth Maker, and the morning after I read the first chapter the following story on the news confronted me:

Der Spiegel reporter Claas Relotius sacked over ‘invented’ stories
German news magazine Der Spiegel has sacked an award-winning staff writer after accusing him of inventing details and quotes in numerous stories.

Claas Relotius “falsified articles on a grand scale and even invented characters”, Der Spiegel said.

Among the articles in question are major features that had been nominated for or won awards, the magazine added.
The Relotius Case Answers to the Most Important Questions
In recent years, DER SPIEGEL published just under 60 articles by reporter and editor Claas Relotius. He has now admitted that, in several instances, he either invented stories or distorted facts.Claas Relotius, a reporter and editor, falsified his articles on a grand scale and even invented characters, deceiving both readers and his colleagues. This has been uncovered as a result of tips, internal research and, ultimately, a comprehensive confession by the editor himself.

Just like Tacitus. And just like the war reporters I have been reading about in Knightley’s book. The newspapers are in business to make money. Their hired reporters know they need to provide stories that assist the money-making goals of their news media. Continue reading “Lying Eyewitnesses — Always With Us”

2018-11-27

Understanding Historical Evidence

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

This post is a presentation of a few of the key points set out by Steve Mason in his 2016 study A History of the Jewish War, AD 66-74. The points are taken from the first part of his second chapter titled Understanding Historical Evidence. I found his explanation a most enjoyable read because it coheres so closely with the explanations of other historians I have posted about here and it offers a strong correction to the way so many historians, especially those in theology departments, have tended to do history.

Most of the post is a paraphrase or quotation of some of Mason’s points except where I have introduced my own voice or given examples relating to Christian origins or the historical Jesus and the uses of the gospels as sources. I have sometimes reformatted Mason’s text and any bolding added in the quotes is my own; italics are original. So let’s start.

–o–

It is mistake to pick up a primary source like Josephus’ War or Plutarch’s Lives or the Gospel of Luke and think we can just “extract raw facts” from them “while ignoring their nature, structures, and themes.” Before we can take anything as a fact we need to understand what, exactly, our sources are and if they are even capable of answering questions we would like to put to them. But too often

Historians are often impatient with theory. We feel that we know what we are doing, and abstract philosophizing can get in the way. We should just get on with the hard work.

(Mason, 61)

Too often historians and their readers think that all that is required is to follow wherever the evidence leads in order to produce an authoritative account of the past. If a historian or philosopher of history starts talking about analysing literary sources as literature before using those sources to elicit facts to tell us what happened in the past some voices will protest that such a procedure is only for the “literary types” and not relevant to the historian. Mason’s warning is worth taking seriously:

In the final months of preparing this book I have heard professional historians express such views as these: History is the past or an authoritative account of it; historians must follow the evidence and avoid speculation; history concerns itself with elite literary texts and neither material evidence or the life of ordinary folk, which are the province of archaeologists; historians are either maximalists or minimalists, realists or postmodernists, left-wingers or conservatives, or they fall in some other two-kinds-of-people scheme. A problem relevant to this chapter is the notion that those who care about the meaning of texts must be literary types unconcerned with the actual past. And these positions are held by historians. If we include more popular ideas about history, including those espoused by political leaders and school boards, the picture becomes bewildering.

(ibid)

Mason cites a reviewer of one his own works to illustrate the point. I can cite a critic of my approach studying the gospels who makes the same point graphically:

(I was surprised to see that even Matthew Ferguson appears to accept that stark division of labour between historical and literary approaches to a source text so I have to suspect that this misleading concept is more prevalent than I would hope and that Mason acknowledges.)

Our job description

A common belief is that history can be discovered by a painstaking effort to sort through sources and extract the facts of the matter from them. Sometimes the sources will be contradictory and then we need to make a judgement about which set of facts to follow. The point that is taken for granted is that the point of the inquiry is to come to know what actually happened. Historians are expected to be able to give an authoritative account of the past. But there is a but: in ancient history the nature of the evidence simply does not allow us to “know” in the way we would like.

Ancient historians must make their peace with uncertainty because that is where the nature of surviving evidence requires us to live much of the time. Our job description is to investigate responsibly, not to know what happened.

(ibid, 63)

Continue reading “Understanding Historical Evidence”

2018-09-03

Here’s How Philosophers Know Socrates Existed

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Neil Godfrey

Lately while filling in gaps in my time by digging out scholarly publications addressing the problem of how much historians can know about “the real Socrates” or let’s say “the historical Socrates” I have become more aware of how many overlaps there are between the portrayals of Socrates and Jesus in their respective sources.

If Jesus is portrayed by some evangelists as a second Moses or Elijah, Socrates is portrayed by some ancient Greeks as an ideal type of Achilles.

If the words imputed to Jesus are found in the supposed writings of Moses and Prophets, words of Socrates are sometimes taken straight from Homer.

If Jesus has become for diverse authors a literary mouthpiece to express a range of views, sometimes contradictory, Socrates is likewise clearly developed as a literary mouthpiece by various authors for a range of viewpoints.

A few brave classicists or historians of ancient times have dared suggest that any recovery of the historical Socrates is completely impossible; the real Socrates has become completely overlaid with myth, with literary artifice, so as to become merely an authoritative name for whatever figure they created to express whatever views they themselves taught.

Others, a majority, appear to respond by claiming that those few scholars have been more foolhardy than courageous and that it is certainly possible, though difficult, to so work with the surviving sources to glimpse something of what Socrates was actually like. Part of this process involves recognizing that the early dialogues of Plato appear to be closer to the historical figure than the later dialogues. When Aristotle adds details that do not come from Plato or Xenophon then it is assumed they have some independent “tradition” or source.

In this post I will do nothing more than quote a few passages from one of the more prominent scholars in the debate over “the Socratic problem” who sets out the grounds for believing that despite all the uncertainties about Socrates that arise from the above problems, we can at least know that behind it all there was a real Socrates all the same. Bolded highlighting is my own, of course.

. . . it is not surprising that some scholars have thrown up their hands and taken “Socrates” to be a mere literary creation by a group of writers at the beginning of the fourth century, the real man, if there ever was one, being lost in the mists of time. However, the “myth” theory is now generally rejected, at least in its extremer forms. The evidence, inadequate though it is, is too widespread to allow such an agnosticism without insisting on a degree of rigour we are unwilling to use elsewhere (an unwillingness sometimes inconsistently used to throw out our knowledge of Socrates in particular: see de Vogel’s review of Gigon in Mnemosyne, 1951).

—

Let us start with the evidence in works written in Socrates’ own lifetime. This has an advantage in that these works are most likely to be first-hand accounts, written from a fresh memory and for an audience familiar with Socrates himself and before any tradition could have arisen of the “Socratic discourse” as a literary genre that could take liberties with history. . . .

The most important single source is the satire by Aristophanes in his comedy the Clouds, produced in 423 and followed by a second edition some years later where the poet tells us (II. 518 If.) that the first edition was not successful and where certain features, notably the debate of the Just and Unjust Arguments and the final burning of Socrates’ school, were either added or radically revised.

How far can a comedian go? Whether Aristophanes’ real target was Socrates himself, the subversive tendencies of the Sophistic movement, the apparent absurdities of Ionian “science,” or just ‘long-haired intellectuals” in general (and the contrasts we find so obvious between these various elements may not have been at all so obvious to their contemporaries), his selection of Socrates as his chief butt must surely mean that Socrates was known to a fairly wide audience, and vaguely associated with the “modem” tendencies.

Continue reading “Here’s How Philosophers Know Socrates Existed”

2018-01-02

Who Depoliticized Early Christianity?

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

Who killed Jesus and why?

With the Roman occupation of Palestine and its tense atmosphere of messianic hopefuls within the first century CE, the horrors of crucifixion were a real and ever present reality for messianic claimants like Jesus. A reality of which Paul and the first Christians would have been all too aware. Simply put, [Richard] Carrier inadvertently depoliticizes early Christianity. (Daniel N. Gullotta 2016, “On Richard Carrier’s Doubts“, Journal for the Study of the Historical Jesus, pp. 332-333, emphasis mine)

Do you know who else depoliticized early Christianity? Early Christians. Paul. The evangelists. The early Church Fathers. In short, everyone.

New Testament authors are clear about why Jesus died and who is responsible. According to “our oldest sources” (to invoke a scholarly term), Jesus had done nothing worthy of punishment. As Hyam Maccoby put it:

According to the Gospels, Jesus was the victim of a frame-up. His aims were purely religious, and in pursuing them, he had fallen foul of the Jewish religious establishment, who, in order to get rid of him, concocted a political charge, and managed to hoodwink the Roman governor, Pilate, into believing it. When Pilate still showed reluctance to execute Jesus, they pressed the political charge until he was left with no option: ‘The Jews kept shouting, “If you let this man go, you are no friend to Caesar; any man who claims to be king is defying Caesar.”’ (John 19.7). (Maccoby 1984, “Who Killed Jesus?” London Review of Books, emphasis mine)

A narrow, precarious path

The story of Jesus’ death, followed by the successful spread of Christianity as related in the gospels and Acts, reminds me of the road across Englewood Dam. The dam, located northwest of Dayton, Ohio, protects the area from flooding by the Stillwater River. A number of dams in the area, all built after the Great Dayton Flood, have a similar design. The levees on either side are enormous, allowing the reservoirs to retain billions of gallons of water.

The first time I drove across the levee, I was struck by how easy it seemed (if not for the guardrails) to veer slightly to the left or the right, tumbling 100 feet down the embankment into the trees. The story of the Passion follows a similarly narrow, but more circuitous path. If Jesus was a rebel, a brigand, then he really was an enemy of Rome. And that just won’t do, will it? However, if Jesus did nothing but teach and heal, then why would Pilate have put him to death? Somehow, Jesus must have provoked someone to cause this chain of events, but who?

According to the New Testament, it was “the Jews.” The Jewish leaders were jealous of his fame, or else they worried the people would believe in him and cause the Romans to come and destroy them. (See John 11:45-53.) And here we see one of the great uses of the hypothesized historical Jesus. A reconstructed Jesus allows NT scholars in the post-Holocaust world to reinterpret verses like these: Continue reading “Who Depoliticized Early Christianity?”

2017-12-28

The Year of the Nativity: Consensus, Harmonization, and Plausibility

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

by Tim Widowfield

Yes, it does seem odd for Vridar to have so many Christmas posts this year. I normally watch the holidays go by and think to myself, “I should have written something about that.”

In any case, I promise this will be my last Christmas post of the year, which should be an easy vow to keep, since it’s already the 28th.

In a previous post, I wrote about the date of the nativity. This time we’ll look at the year of Jesus’ birth. Considering all the ink scholars have spilled over this subject, and all the contortions many of them have gone through to push for specific dates that “work” (even so far as to move the death of Herod to 1 BCE), it’s a wonder there is a consensus. And yet, almost everywhere you look, you’ll find the date range of 6 to 4 BCE.

Only the most diehard apologist would try to harmonize Matthew’s and Luke’s accounts of the nativity. They diverge at nearly every point. Moreover, most critical scholars recognize the birth stories as legends. Both Matthew and Luke contain two momentous events which, had they actually occurred, would have given us a precise date for Jesus’ birth. In Matthew, Herod the Great slaughters all the young children in Bethlehem. In Luke, Augustus calls for “all the world to be taxed.”

Neither of these events happened, and therein lies the problem. They are legendary accounts told for religious, doctrinal reasons. And here’s a good rule of thumb: Once you’ve tossed rotten fruit into the dumpster, don’t climb back in to see if you can find some edible bits. In other words, resist the temptation to find a kernel of truth in fictional accounts, especially when you have absolutely no corroborating external evidence. There’s no shame in saying, “We don’t know, and we may never know.” Continue reading “The Year of the Nativity: Consensus, Harmonization, and Plausibility”

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. . . . .Thank you for your historic effort.

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Editor, An English Edition of Bruno Bauer’s 1843 Christianity Exposed
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https://earlywritings.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=145080#p145080
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Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “A troll is someone who ignores what is being said and continues their own agenda without engaging with the logic…” Dec 21, 03:26
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I am still once more responding, so that you do not think that I am impolite or that I am…” Dec 20, 07:22
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I re-read my earlier reply and can see how you took it as “emotional” — but I can assure you…” Dec 18, 02:43
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “I simply asked you to tell me what it is that you think I misunderstand or what, specifically, I am…” Dec 17, 20:26
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Neil, I have no interest to engage in an emotional discussion. I felt indebted to you, since I read many…” Dec 17, 19:21
Neil Godfrey on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “Why do you ask? What are you trying to argue? I agree and acknowledge that Bayes theorem is a valid…” Dec 16, 09:22
Petr Jancar on The Folly of Bayesian Probability in “Doing History”: “My sentence “I voice several assumptions, testing if we all agree on them:” was meant as a yes/no question; let…” Dec 16, 08:57
Clarke W Owens on Is Everything a Question of Probability?: “Well, the distinction between “public knowledge” and the knowledge of professional researchers is not always crystal clear. For example, western…” Dec 15, 22:34
Neil Godfrey on Is Everything a Question of Probability?: “I spoke of public knowledge but afterwards wondered if I missed your point. You may have been thinking of knowledge…” Dec 15, 22:05

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Horses and Chariots of the Sun God

“Idolatrous Priests”

Roof Altars

Conclusion — and my response

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Whence Objectivity?

In sum…

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1. “Until someone can show otherwise, I am happy believing X. …”

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The Hans Christian Andersen citation

Are they not written in the book of the Chronicles of the Kings of Judah?

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Josephus

Other sources

Scholarly “confessions”

If it all begins with Mark . . .

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Excavating texts?

Comparing hypothetical sources and traditions “behind” biblical texts

Semantic seductions

What they deride as “minimalism” in OT studies

Compare an outsider review of Nazareth archaeology

The Historian’s Conclusion

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Our job description

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Who killed Jesus and why?

A narrow, precarious path

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