Ted Hoffman

TH: Spin is making the following points:

1. We lack the tools that allow us to place the gospels into their contexts.
He clarifies that these tools include archaeological finds, epigraphy, coins and whatever else is preserved from the times we are analysing. These, spin argues, provide a contextualization for texts. You disagree and say the texts have been analyzed for hundreds of years. Everybody knows this. But hundreds of years of study is not evidence of tools. If you know the tools, list them. Now.

And as you do that, please point out (a) archaeological finds (b) epigraphic evidence (c) coins and (d) whatever else is preserved from the times we are analysing that can be used to contextualize the gospels. I have spent considerable time on this subject and I am well aware of the issues involved. You exude a lot of confidence but I suspect that it is not buoyed by anything substantive. I will be happy to be shown I am wrong.

2. We dont know why the gospels were written. spin clarifies that "We don't know whether they were written as representative of events thought to have happened, as teaching materials, as religious tracts of their time, as fiction, as combinations of these and other possibilities"

You say that Luke wrote while trying to be historical. But we know Luke copied Mark. Dont you agree with Crossan and others that we should focus on the earliest stratum? If Luke wrote while trying to be fictional, would that make Mark fictional? The answer is that you would first need to know what Mark is. So what is Mark? An allegory? Liturgical material? Good literature for entertainment?
By the way, how do you resolve the problem with Luke's census date?

Since more than a century ago when Hermann Gunkel showed that the Bible belonged to world literature and was not an isolated document enjoying a provincial interpretation, studies on the content (inventio), structure (dispositio) and style (elocutio) of the gospels have shown us more and more that these documents are literarure and are to be studied as such. It is because of this that NT scholars have struggled, albeit unsuccessfully, to develop a methodology to help them separate the corn from the crap while struggling to prevent the intrusion of the bias coming from their theological commitments.

Are you telling us that you have a method for analyzing these texts? That is basically what spin is asking. Where is your methodological apparatus?

For useful ideas on this subject spanning form, literary, rhetorical and redaction criticism, I invite you to look at Gunkel H., Legends of Genesis, 88-122, Trible P., Rhetorical Criticism, Context, Method and the Book of Jonah, 1994, Muilenberg J., Form Criticism and Beyond, Upensky B., A Poetics of Composition: The Structure of the Artistic Text and Typology of a Compositional Form, 1973, Scholes and Kellog, Nature of Narrative, Culpepper, Anatomy of Fourth Gospel, 169-75 and Rhoads, Michie, Mark as Story. Paul Duke, Irony in the Fourth Gospel, Elizabeth Struthers Malbon, Narrative Space and Mythic Meaning in Mark, 1986. Even Dennis Mc Donald's The Homeric Epics and the Gospel of Mark would be relevant.

Solitary Man

A pariah. As expected, spin refuted nothing of which I said. No remarks on Luke. Just insults. That's what spin is made of.

Ubi erravi?

spin

Sorry, Ted Hoffman, but don't expect a response. If he wanted to understand what I said he would have read it the first time I said it.


spin

Solitary Man

Thank you Mr. Hoffman for the non-insulting reply.

This is quite simply untrue. We have plenty of archaeological (which includes epigraphic and numismatic finds) pertaining to Herod, Pontius Pilatus, and the surrounding environment which the story depicts. Most importantly, we have references to these stories that place them in a very particular frame. If spin would care to rebuke the early church fathers, he may do so, but their statements themselves contextualize the texts.

What are the "tools" for studying Josephus? For Philo? For Tacitus? The tools don't differ. I don't know why you'd mandate that we'd treat the gospels differently than any other ancient literature.

All the archaeological finds in the world won't convince you that something exists if you handwave them away. If you are so well aware of the finds etc..., then surely I don't need to go over them with you! What's proper is discussing how they relate to the gospels.

We don't know anything. We don't know why Josephus wrote what he wrote - for all we know, he could be lying through his teeth. Perhaps the whole story is a sham. How would you know otherwise? What are all our sources for who Josephus was?

We can, however, take the texts at face value, like all historians do with ancient texts, unless there's evidence to the contrary. Your odium for the text does not except it from historical rules. The compositional clues within the text tell you what it is. There's no divine hand telling us that the Satyricon has to be satire - it's not an extrinsic property of the universe. Instead, we look to clues and compare it with other documents. This has been done already for all the gospels. I started with Luke.

You must separate the ways that sources are utilized. Vergil used Catullus, in one sense, but that doesn't mean that he was writing love lyrics. However, often this is a clue. What it is a clue for, in more standard terms, what it is evidence for is to be determined by the context. Vergil used a Catullan idea of foedus between lovers to elucidate the sort of bond that Dido thought she had with Aeneas. Vergil maintained his epic poem throughout. Horace, on the other hand, quoted Lucilius' "ibam forte via sacra..." and in thus doing so was showing that he too was writing saturae.

So what is going on here? Well, in Luke, the Markan story was fitted to the Josephan structure. This clearly shows that Luke thinks of Mark as history. Whether Mark is history can be debated, but it does mean that Luke should be treated as an historiographer. Not unlike the Historia Augusta, which is written like a history, yet contains largely legendary sources.


What Luke does has no bearing on what Mark actually is.

Not necessarily. If Luke thought Mark was history, then Luke was writing history. Now, that doesn't mean that it actually happened, and here I think there are some queer looks, but history doesn't mean that it actually happened.

I don't "resolve" it. There's nothing to resolve. What is the problem?

Corn from the crap - you do see how this is indicative of your biases. For you see, most ancient documents, and certainly all ancient history, was "literature". Scientific treatises were treated as epic poetry (De Rerum Natura), historical treatises were treated as propaganda for glory (De Bello Gallico/Civile) or for the absolution of blame (De Bello Iudaeorum). The gospels are not different. Just because there's non-factual (or what you called "crap") stuff in there doesn't mean there's no factual stuff therein.

Do you have one for Josephus? Hesiod? Homer? Chronicles? Tacitus? Suetonius? Historia Augusta? Monumentum Ancyranum? Caesar? Cicero? Vergil? Ovid? Lucretius? Catullus? Thoukydides? Plato? Apuleius?

It's the exact same as above. No different.

Thanks for these. A lot of these I've read. Many of these I'd have qualms with.

Have you read Graeco-Roman literature and the New Testament ed. by Aune? Or his The New Testament in Its Literary Environment? How about New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism by Kennedy? What Are the Gospels? A Comparison with Graeco-Roman Biography by R. A. Burridge?

Have you read any of the standard stuff, like Meyers, Neusner, or Mason, for New Testament, Old Testament, and Josephus respectively?

We can go on trading names. I'm sure there's a thorough bibliography somewhere of genre in the New Testament.

Solitary Man

A minute too soon, spin?

spin

It was a sure fire to get you to wax logorrhoeic.


spin

Solitary Man

In the span of one minute? Wow, your school teachers must have praised such an active imagination. Too bad they didn't put a limit to your ego.

Now excuse me, if you're through with your sole talent of insulting people (even if you do it repetitiously and boorishly), I was just getting into what Mr. Hoffman was saying. No need for someone of your pseudo-intellect to get involved anymore.

Toto

I do not want to get in the way of this fight, but I have one point:

This is not, repeat NOT, what historians do with ancient texts. Some time ago Peter Kirby started a thread on whether ancient texts are taken at face value, or presumed true unless proven otherwise, and there is no support for this idea outside of an area that is a bit senstive (cough)*Christian apologetics*(cough).. Since no one here claims to be a Christian apologist, why repeat this discredited claim?

I recall Richard Carrier commenting on the question, but don't have time to search for the quote. Historians treat their sources critically and skeptically. They know that the ancients often did not let the facts get in the way of a good story. Not that things have changed much since then.

Solitary Man

There is confusion on your part, Toto. If we treated all texts skeptically, we'd have nothing left. Critically? Yes. Yes, we much treat them critically. We must not accept what they say as true. Truth is immaterial here. Truth is for philosophy, not modern historical studies of the ancient world. There is always that slight possibility, however insignificant, that the whole world was created Last Thursday.

Moreover, you blatantly ignored the qualifier - unless there is evidence to the contrary. Why are we not skeptical of everything Cicero says? Where's the hard evidence that he freed Tiro? In fact, what hard evidence is there for Tiro at all? He could have been the imaginary helper of Cicero. He could have been a metaphor for what a good slave should be like, and perhaps Cicero paraded that around to show how he was a good master. The first person other than in the collections of Cicero to mention Tiro was Plutarch, who was born nearly a century after Tiro supposedly died. Compare that to Paul, the first person to mention Jesus, who was his contemporary.

You treat the subject as black and white, but this is not so. It's far more complex than you make it out to be. Treat it critically? Yes. But being overly skeptical lands you with nothing.

spin

Yup. Same unanalysed stuff we've had to deal with. He'd have us believing the Satyricon's Encolpius was real person, if he keeps going.

I don't know why he would want us to treat the gospels differently. We can place works such as Tacitus into a historical and cultural context because not just the frills can be related to history, but the central figures and narrative content can be as well. Same goes for Josephus's material from his own times.

Nor will the lack of them convince one that it does.

Obviously he isn't aware.

One can see that archaeology etc., is in fact useful.

One can also take any text at face value. Infancy gospels. Letters of Paul and Seneca. Laodiceans. Abgar. Somehow historians do have tools for dealing with texts.

One gives useless opinions about Luke.

Meaningful analogy. Luke is over 60% Mark. Vergil uses a scrap or two of Catullus.

There is no evidence that the Lucan writer has any better perspective. He is merely subject to the untested quality of his source.

Other than Luke accepts the Marcan content.

Pure folly.

It's an error that detracts from the historical nous of the writer. Another is the reference to Lysanius at the same time as Herod Antipas.

Tools, once again one can see the need for historical methodology. Arbitrary approaches to literature will yield useless results.

All must be contextualized if one wants to extract historical information from them. The first and foremost thing is to place the text in its historical and cultural context. If one cannot do that then the importance of the text will not be able to be fathomed.

And that's correct. It just needs to be applied.


spin