Vorkosigan

On Theology Web Layman was kind enough to let me know of an article on the NTGateway entitled Prophecy Historicized or History Scripturized? Reflections on the Origin of the Crucifixion Narrative by Mark Goodacre. Goodacre criticizes Crossan's analysis of the interpretative possibilities in the Passion Narrative as being a false dichotomy. I am going to discuss this article in this post because it contains some common problems I want to address in my commentary on Mark. I would have replied on at TWeb, but I have discovered that some of my posts have had sections deleted. Therefore I will no longer be posting at TWeb.

Let me preface my remarks by saying that Mark Goodacre is one of my favorite NT authors. He is both logical and sensible, yet also creative and innovative. I always enjoy whatever he writes. However, this piece is not up to his usual standards in at least two different ways.

Goodacre begins by noting that the problem posed by the Passion Narrative has traditionally be seen in dichotomous terms. He cites Hoskyns and Davey:

• "Did Jesus set his passion in the context of Old Testament scripture? And did an intention of fulfilment condition his words and actions? If this be so, the evangelists are merely drawing out the implications of his passion and emphasizing them clearly in their narratives. Or does the initiative lie rather with the church, in which case it must be supposed that the evangelists . . . attached a peculiar significance to the death of the Lord, and placed in his mouth words that sanctioned their procedure?

Goodacre then writes:

• This conundrum has been at the heart of discussions of the Passion Narrative for some time, not least because of Martin Dibelius’s stress on the formative role played in the Passion Narrative by the Scriptures. For there is consensus that the Passion Narratives in all the Gospels are full of echoes, allusions and direct quotations of passages in the Hebrew Bible. And there is consensus that the narrative has some historical core. But the consensus breaks down over the question of the size of that historical core, and the disagreement is focused on the role played by the Scriptures within the Passion Narrative.

An excellent summary of the state of the consensus. Goodacre next turns to Crossan, who insists upon the following interpretation in a famous passage in The Birth of Christianity:

• "The individual units, general sequences, and overall frames of the passion-resurrection stories are so linked to prophetic fulfillment that the removal of such fulfillment leaves nothing but the barest facts, almost as in Josephus, Tacitus or the Apostles’ Creed. By individual units I mean such items as these: the lots cast and garments divided from Psalm 22.18; the darkness at noon from Amos 8.9; the gall and vinegar drink from Psalm 69.21. By general sequences I mean such items as these: the Mount of Olives situation from 2 Samuel 15-17; the trial collaboration from Psalm 2; the abuse description from the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16. By overall frames I mean the narrative genre of innocence vindicated, righteousness redeemed and virtue rewarded. In other words, on all three narrative levels - surface, intermediate and deep - biblical models and scriptural precedents have controlled the story to the point that without them nothing is left but the brutal fact of crucifixion itself."

After gently identifying Crossan's rhetorical skill as an important basis for the persuasive power of this paragraph (a point I stress in my review of Crossan's The Historical Jesus, Goodacre then goes on to point out that while "prophecy historicized" does certainly have productive power, it cannot account for everything:

• I will attempt to draw attention to these while explaining why "prophecy historicized" is not adequate in itself to explain the origins of the Passion Narrative.

He then identifies the problem he is going to attack:

• A greater difficulty with Crossan’s presentation of alternatives is the degree of polarisation....The reader is presented with a choice: is it history or is it prophecy? Did it happen or is it fictional? The contrast between the two views presented is simply too stark.

Goodacre then presents his alternative:

• The multiple echoes of Biblical themes and the varied allusions to Scriptural precedent are plausibly explained on the hypothesis that from the beginning there was an intimate interaction between historical event and Scriptural reflection. Events generated Scriptural reflection, which in turn influenced the way the events were remembered and retold. To follow Crossan and to coin a fresh term, it might be said that not only was prophecy historicized, but also history was scripturized. .

He then offers, as an example, the verse in which Mark has three women watching. While it is true, he argues, that part of that verse is apparently derived from Psalm 38 of the LXX (based on affinities between the Greek), not all of it can be.

• What we have here is an element with a strong claim to be historical getting expressed in language derived from the psalms. It is not as if the women’s witness has been created on the basis of Psalm 38.11, which does not refer solely to women, let alone to those particular named women. Rather, the traditional element gets retold in the light of the Scriptural passage that was thought to be fulfilled.

Note that this is assumptive; it assumes the presence of history, which is what Goodacre must prove.

Goodacre then goes on to elevate this assumptive approach to the status of a program. He reviews the elements of Mark 15:21-30:

• 15:21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23 Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh [Psalm 69.22] but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. [Psalm 22.19] 15:25 It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26 The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 27 They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. [Isaiah 53.12] 29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads [Psalm 22.8; Psalm 109.25] and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 come down from the cross and save yourself! [Psalm 22.9]

and then remarks:

• ...But what is striking here are the number of important elements that clearly cannot have been derived from the Hebrew Bible, the man who carried Jesus’ cross, Simon of Cyrene; the place of Jesus’ crucifixion, Golgotha; the time of Jesus’ crucifixion, the third hour; the written charge against him, “King of the Jewsâ€?. Now this kind of mixture is precisely what we would expect if, as I propose, the earliest Passion Narrative was told with both tradition and the Scriptures in mind. Certain events were simply not conducive to getting retold in the light of the Scriptures - there was nothing in the Hebrew Bible about Simon of Cyrene, Golgotha, the third hour or the titulus.

He adds.

• It may be that this material also turns out to be unhistorical, but - if so - its lack of historicity is clearly not explained by prophecy historicized. Substantial amounts of traditional material are left unaccounted for on Crossan’s model.

This strikes the reader as a strong point. Clearly Goodacre's construction of Crossan's model does not support the conclusions that Crossan draws. The problem is that Goodacre's construction of Crossan is a reductive strawman, as we'll see in a moment. Goodacre then moves on to use a common criterion, the (hopeless) embarrassment criterion, as an indicator of historicity:

• Second, Jesus’ cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (15.34) is regularly, rightly taken to be historical on the grounds that it causes the kind of embarrassment that makes it most unlikely to have been invented. It has been, one might say, something of an embarrassment throughout Christian history, and it is already so in the Gospels, for it is omitted by Luke; and in Mark the bystanders fail to understand it (15.35-6). Now the passage of course quotes Psalm 22.1(2) and the thing that is so interesting about this example is that here, where the evidence for historicity is strong, the scriptural allusion is also at its most blatant. In the light of this phenomenon, the historian cannot help thinking that the presence of scriptural quotation or allusion need not be an indicator of the lack of historicity. One suspects that there is an event, Jesus’ cry of dereliction on the cross, that has been selected by the earliest tradents because of its connection with the psalm; it has been interpreted in the light of that psalm and, along with other elements in the crucifixion narrative, it has been couched in the language of the Biblical psalm, but for all this, the cry of dereliction is still historical.

Unfortunately this suffers from at least two problems. First, if the passage is fiction than embarrassment cannot apply (first it must be demonstrated, not assumed, that history underlies this passage). Second, two criteria often used in NT studies clash here, one positive (embarrassment), the other negative (production from scripture). Goodacre, like every other NT scholar, cannot offer any way to resolve this clash, except to take refuge in subjectivity. This problem is rife in NT historical studies and it has not received the attention it deserves. Inevitably, any methodology that deploys positive criteria and negative criteria together will founder on any of several pericopes in Mark.

Goodacre then argues against both Koester and Crossan that the independent witness of Paul (1 Cor) establishes a remembered Passion tradition.

• It might be added that if the still largely unknown theses of Goulder and Trocmé on the Passion as liturgy are taken seriously, memory, tradition and scriptural reflection might well have combined from the earliest times in the repeated celebrations of that Passover at (or sometime near) which Jesus was crucified.

It should also be added that one could just as well reason in the other direction: namely, that the tradition is the result of the liturgy. Paul does not mention even a single detail of Jesus' crucifixion. The oral tradition, as Goodacre and other historicist scholars envision it, is amazingly supple, fitting whatever argument is being made. In Paul it provides us with a liturgy and a tradition without details, while in Mark we get a historicized version that is highly selective. For example, it reports Simon of Cyrene and his two sons for one verse, but is does not know the name of the centurion who identified Jeus or the name of Jesus' father. It knows who Pilate was but forgot the High Priest's name, although he served as long as Pilate did. It remembers that Jesus was executed in Golgotha but fails to specify whether he was nailed or tied. It knows that he carried his cross out of the city but cannot say by which of the handful of public ways he went out. It knows that three women watched but is silent on the fate of the other eleven disciples. It knows that there were two trials but cannot name even one legal charge. The oral tradition, which handily accounts for anything, is so useful that if it did not exist, it would have to be invented.

After further review, Goodacre gives his conclusion:

• We are left with the chicken and egg question, or, we might say, the scripture and event question. Which came first? Historical event or biblical precedent? Crossan’s answer is clear: “In the beginning was passion prophecy, not passion narrativeâ€?. But what if Paul gives us the best clue by placing tradition right alongside the scriptures, seeing one interacting with the other, uniting event with precedent. If history and scripture were from the first in conversation with one another, perhaps the best answer to the question is to say, with a celebration of its ambiguity and an investment in its dual meaning, In the beginning was the Word.

Many of Goodacre's finest qualities, his sensibility, his willingness to interact with the works of those who disagree with him, and his playful and intelligent sense of humor, are on display here. And yet one cannot help but notice that Goodacre has erected two different strawman versions of Crossan's argument, and has nowhere addressed the real issues.

Goodacre's first strawman version of Crossan is easily identified. Let's return to Crossan's famous remark for a moment:

• "The individual units, general sequences, and overall frames of the passion-resurrection stories are so linked to prophetic fulfillment that the removal of such fulfillment leaves nothing but the barest facts, almost as in Josephus, Tacitus or the Apostles’ Creed.

Note that Crossan names three levels (individual units, general sequences, and overall frames) at which we can see prophecy busily being historicized. Goodacre has only dealt with one, the individual units, and he has done that in a restricted way that fails to interact with the idea fully.

To understand what the latter criticism means, let's return to the passage from Amos that underlines 15:33:

v33: Compare to Amos 8:9

• "In that day," declares the Sovereign LORD , "I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight. (NIV)

One of Mark's hypertextual tricks is to refer you to a passage that is freighted with additional meaning for the story he is writing. Amos 8:9 takes us naturally to Amos 8:10

• 10 I will turn your religious feasts into mourning and all your singing into weeping. I will make all of you wear sackcloth and shave your heads. I will make that time like mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.(NIV)

Here we have a microcosm of the Crucifixion. A feast day (Passover) has become a day of mourning for an only son.

The first failure of Goodacre to grapple fully with what Theissen and Merz termed "the productive power of Scripture" is to fail to recognize that Mark's use of Scripture is not limited to the verse at hand, but ranges all over the texts that he refers to. The narrative is produced even by passages that are not cited directly. For example, as Helms has argued, the entire Crucifixion is controlled at the overall frame level by Daniel 6, which as far as I know is nowhere cited in it.

The second problem Goodacre fails to recognize is that the productive power of scripture controls more than just the verse in question in Mark. Consider again Amos 8:9. Darkness occurs at noon. The intermediate unit, to use Crossan's terminology, is a general understanding around the Mediterranean that when heroes died there were portents, generally darkness, in the sky (see Gundry's Mark for many examples). With this in mind, the author of Mark located a passage in Amos that fit his needs perfectly, and gave a specific time. Once it is understood that the darkness is invented out of Amos, it is easy to see why Jesus is crucified at the third hour: since darkness appears at noon, Jesus ipso facto must be killed in the morning. Any time given by the writer of Mark could be seized upon by Goodacre and regarded as a possible fact. Had th author of Mark reported that Jesus had been crucified at the first hour, Goodacre could claim possible authenticity. Had the author said Jesus had merely been excuted "in the morning" Goodacre could point to that. The reality is that a morning execution, regardless of time, is fallout from Amos 8:9. Goodacre has failed to acknowledge the way scripture controls not merely the verse of reference, but other nearby verses as well.

Looking again at his list:

• 15:21 A certain man from Cyrene, Simon, the father of Alexander and Rufus, was passing by on his way in from the country, and they forced him to carry the cross. 22 They brought Jesus to the place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). 23 Then they offered him wine mixed with myrrh [Psalm 69.22] but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him. Dividing up his clothes, they cast lots to see what each would get. [Psalm 22.19] 15:25 It was the third hour when they crucified him. 26 The written notice of the charge against him read: THE KING OF THE JEWS. 27 They crucified two robbers with him, one on his right and one on his left. [Isaiah 53.12] 29 Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads [Psalm 22.8; Psalm 109.25] and saying, “So! You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, 30 come down from the cross and save yourself! [Psalm 22.9]

One could note that the verses identified by Goodacre are simply those that are driven by considerations of the narrative. Somehow Jesus has to gotten from Jerusalem to the execution site, which must be outside the city as specified by law. No matter what method is used (Jesus could have been transported in a cage, or dragged headfirst by the hair, or strolled strong and confident) Goodacre could make the claim that history was being scripturalized, when in fact we are simply looking at the needs of the narrative driving the creation of detail. Note how bare 15:24 is: "And they crucified him." The writer's need is so basic he does not even bother to give any details; merely noting that the crucified him. Verse 26 contains the famous detail, long argued to be historical, that Jesus was crucified as "King of the Jews." As Vernon Robbins noted several years ago, Mark 15 is an ironic study of Kingship that incorporates both scriptural and general Near Eastern motifs. In other words, Mark's narrative goals easily account for this feature (under any of several interpretations).

Goodacre is correct to note that prophecy historicized does not account for all of the writer's creative acts, but by the same token, it is important to note that Crossan does not claim that it does, and that showing that some parts of the narrative remain unaccounted for under one rubric does not mean that they cannot be explained as fiction in another way.

This brings us to the question of certain details, for example, the three women in v40, or Simon of Cyrene and his sons in v21. These do not give the prima facie appearance of being produced in response to any narrative need or OT productivity (though Dennis MacDonald has pointed to a parallel between the three women in Jesus and the three women who attend the death of Hector in the Illiad, and Goodacre himself notes that translation is tricky). Goodacre remarks:

• It is rare in the New Testament, and just as rare in antiquity generally, for characters to be identified by means of their children.

Although Simon is not actually identified by his children, but by the appellation "of Cyrene." The writer of Mark apparently wants to imply to the reader that Alexander and Rufus are people they should know, according to many exegetes. There are a number of ways to view Simon of Cyrene and his putative sons, and in many of them historicity is not required or supported. It should be noted that in a narrative where almost everything can be shown to be fiction at several different levels, the presence of details whose origin is unknown does not in the least imply that they were historical. Rather, that strongly implies that there is nothing historical about them at all. Historicity of detail is an assumption not supported by the text, but instead is an a priori that is brought to the text by the exegete searching for support for his belief that there is history down there somewhere. What is necessary to magick such details into reality is the presence of a reliable outside vector, and that the gospels do not offer. Where there is no outside vector, the exegete must remain silent, for any conclusion is simply speculation.

In sum, Goodacre's paper suffers from the same problems he imputes to Crossan, as well as ideas about how historical criteria are to be employed that have not been sufficiently thought out. I hope that his next iteration of this paper will take these into account.

Vorkosigan

spin

Just as a memory from another life,

I have argued that the original writer(s) of Mark finished at the end of ch.13 with the admonition to "watch" (from grhgorew), which I take to be a reference to the name of the movement at the time of this writing, nazarenes, keepers or watchers. When the oral tradition which makes up the passionplay which seems to start with Gethsemane, came into his/their hands it was glued on with the story of the last supper.

If you look at the passionplay it is chock-a-block with triplets of information,

• three disciples with Jesus in Gethsemane,
• three times he returns to find them sleeping,
• high priest speaks three times,
• Peter denies three times,
• Pilate asks the crowd three questions,
• three people crucified,
• three hours given during the day,
• Jesus is insulted three times on the cross,
• even three women were watching from afar,

and perhaps others.

There is nothing like this in the rest of Mark, suggesting that it was from another source from the rest of the text, and the use of triplets like this is a well-attested tool of oral traditions.

If I'm correct, then one should expect different types of material and sourcing regarding the two different parts of the gospel as we have it today.


spin

Vorkosigan

That's an interesting interpretation. But then are all the passion predictions in Mark 8 and 10 (perhaps 2 as well) interpolations by the next editor?

There are lots of tryptiches in Mark. Sky opening three times -- Baptism, Transfiguration (where 3 worthies appear, J, E, and M), and Death. Three disciple calls. Three passion predictions. Etc.

Mark 11:1-6, the entrance and annointing, is a doublet for Mark 14:13-16. 14:27 is taken from Zech 13, which Mark has used back in Mark 1 to portray JBap. This kind of referentiality, where a cite in one part refers to a use in another, is vintage Mark.

Vorkosigan

Ted Hoffman

Great analysis Vork. I wonder if it will be availed to Goodacre? It will be great to read his reaction.

Vorkosigan

Someone tapped my shoulder offlist and drew attention to substantive criticisms on Crosstalk. So Goodacre already modified the paper. They passed along links, very kindly:

1) Goodacre's response to some criticisms made of the paper on Crosstalk (2/5/2, post 8999) here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/crosstalk2/message/8999

2) Goodacre's more recent paper on scripturalization posted on his NT Gateway blog:

http://www.ntgateway.com/weblog/

(See especially the comments about the cry of dereliction near footnote 33).

Ted Hoffman

So, the link in the OP - is it the modified paper?

spin

No, that's the fabric of the text. The passion didn't need to be there.

The triplet forms are memory aids, so they are within a single discourse. The only one that comes to mind outside the passion is the one you mention of the transfiguration.

I don't quite understand what you're saying, if I have delimited the passionplay to begin with Gethsemane (where the triplets start) the stuff before it was written by the person(s) or tradition that wrote the first 13 chaptters, the first part of 14 being a bridge, including the literary doublet you indicate, between the ur-gospel and the passionplay.

Yet, this is an old theory, which I haven't contemplated for many years. I was just reminded of it by the difference in technique indicated in the OP. The passion is very different in style fromthe rest of the gospel.


spin

Vorkosigan

From the new paper, which Goodacre has totally rebuilt and now contains nothing I complained about:

There are only eight verses in the Resurrection account. I disagree strongly, I see the ResAcct as identical to the PN in being controlled at every level by the OT and Markan invention.

v2: Doherty (1999) identifies this with Hosea 6:1-2:

1"Come, let us return to the LORD . He has torn us to pieces but he will heal us; he has injured us but he will bind up our wounds. 2 After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will restore us, that we may live in his presence. (NIV)

and also Jonah, who was three days in belly of the whale.

v3 refers back to 15:46. Karel Hanhart has argued that this is
constructed off of Gen 29:3

When all the flocks were gathered there, the shepherds would roll the stone away from the well's mouth and water the sheep. Then they would return the stone to its place over the mouth of the well. (NIV)

Another scholar has already informed me that he has a paper in progress that will also tie this and other features of the Resurrection narrative to the OT. Ya'll will just have to wait.

v5 This of course recalls the young man of Mark 14. Ludemann sees a possible parallel with 2 Macc 3:26 (2001, p113) but other than the idea of heavenly young men, the two passages do not have anything
in common. However, the young men in 2 Macc 3;26 are saving the Temple from being plundered and destroyed. Plundered and destroyed temples are a theme of Mark's citations ..... (I am holding back the focus of this comment, as it is a new OT parallel I'd like more time to reflect on)

The young man also recalls the young man of Tobit 5:14 who is also an angel. This is a more probable origin for the scene, for Tobit is a story about a problem arising from a burial.

Daniel J. Harrington (1999, p12-3)writes: "In addition to the Hebrew Bible, the author probably drew on the story or motif of 'the grateful dead.' What initially got Tobit into trouble was his zeal in seeing to the burial of fellow Israelites. He first loses all his property (see 1:20) and then is struck blind after having attended to a burial at Pentecost (see 2:7-10). When Tobit is healed and Raphael reveals himself as the angel of God sent to heal him, a major reason was to repay Tobit's willingness to bury the dead (see 12:13)."

In Tobit also the blind are healed and demons are driven out.

v5: the young man is sitting on the right side. Jesus has just said in 14:62 that they would see him sitting at the right hand of the Power. Most exegetes see this one as the young man of Mark 14, who flees naked. I believe that he is the Angel Gabriel, who was held to be the young man in the Temple dressed in linen in Ezk 9-10 (and also that the naked man in Mark 14 is derived from Mark's paralleling of Samuel, although I have not yet found the kind of evidence I need to prove it). Carrier pointed out to me that in the Septaugint the linen is not present in the Greek translation. But the link between Gabriel is established folkloricly anyway, so I don't consider that a serious problem for at least the identification of the young man with Gabriel. Mark knew his Jewish traditions, as his use of Isaiah in the Parable of the Tenants shows. In other words, the young man here is one way or another solidly OT.

At the intermediate level the story may relate to Elisha's tomb, where 16:6-8 parallels 2 Kings 13:20-1. In other words, of the eight verses, at least 2,3,5,6,7, &8 are plausibly OT-derived. That beats the PN by a large margin. Additionally, at the highest level, the story completes the frame of Dan 6 established in Mark 15.

The additional verses can be accounted for by the demands of the narrative. Some of the same problems recur here that already cropped up in the PN: narrative requirements. For example, the visit of the women looks like literary invention designed to create witnesses to the Empty Tomb, and the purchase of spices the excuse to get them out there.

Discussing the women in 15:40 --

Goodacre still takes them as historical (whatever than might mean) because that part of the sentence is not from the OT. Strange logic that; any name put in there by the writer could then be treated as historical on those grounds. The writer of Mark has taken traditional (and perhaps historical) figures and re-arranged them for his gospel, just as Tolkien reworked traditional elves and Ariosto's orcs for his epic or Jack Higgins borrowed Churchill and his retinue for The Eagle has Landed. One could on Goodacre's basis argue that the many figures who people Niven and Pournelle's Inferno (based on Dante's work) must be real since they do not occur in the parallels in Dante. The response will be that everyone knows the latter-day Inferno is a fiction by two skilled SF writers. Yes; and it is precisely the historicity of the PN that has to be established prior to any assessment of the characters who people its world. The whole idea of scripturalization is one of those things like Q in which unfounded assumptions have established a whole universe of scholarship. Goodacre should turn his sharp brain from the assumptions that underlie Q to the assumptions that underlie historicity in the PN. They are almost exactly the same.

Goodacre's recounting of timing in Mark is fabulous. I think I may let him marry my daughter...

I felt like Huxley reading The Origin of the Species when I read that paragraph. I think ironically Goodacre has simply supplied even more evidence that Mark's PN is a total fictional construction.

Goodacre then discusses why we should take the death cry of Jesus as real history. The impact of this passage depends largely on the his rhetorical skills, the way they focus the reader on Jesus instead of putting the seen into some comparative perspective....

It's a beautiful concluding thought, but Crossan will probably smile and puncture it by noting that (1) crucifixion was a lingering death and it is unlikely that Jesus simply willed himself to die at a particular moment and (2) death most likely occurred after Jesus lost consciousness first so there was no cry at the end and (3) it is highly unlikely that people being tortured to death remain silent so what's the big deal about a cry when there were probably many? and (4) how did anyone know the cry came at the moment of death anyway? Did they have an EEG on him or what?

No, the whole scene is an invention of the brilliant writer of Mark, who had no idea how or when Jesus died and anyway, as Goodacre himself has just affirmed, is writing a liturgy to be acted out. The death cry then is something one needs in a dramatic presentation so the audience knows that Jesus is dead and that the affair is now going to the next scene. You cannot really hold that on one hand that the fact that it is a dramatic liturgy controls the time frame and then hold on the other hand that the fact that it is a dramatic liturgy has no effect on the content of the story. "Scripturalization" fails because conceptually it is equally valid whether applied to fiction or history; perhaps the writer of Mark scripturalized history; perhaps he simply scripturalized his story.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

No, it's the ur-paper. Goodacre has substantially modified it and responded to a bunch of criticisms. It's a much better paper, but still won't get him where he wants to go. the basic problem is identified in the last sentence of my last post: scripturalization works just as well whether one sees the PN/Resurrection as fiction or history.

Vorkosigan

Yes, that's true. Goodacre's use of Goulder and the other scholars helps explain the differences, though. Did you ever read Jan Sammer's website that explains the PN as in the style of a Roman play? www.nazarenus.com. You don't have to buy his claim that Seneca wrote it in order to see the force of some of his insights.