Matthew_Green

Many Christians, especially William Lane Craig and Gary Habermas, have appealed to this authority on Roman social/legal history as an expert on legends and use his arguments to demonstrate to us poor skeptics why we are ungrounded in believing the New Testament events to be legends of any sort. This argument goes like this: Antiquity scholar A. N. Sherwin-White has shown, using Herodotus, that legends should take more than 2 generations to fully over-take core historical facts (to the point of completely shrouding history in legend). Apologists then argue that since there was only 1-2 generations between the events in the gospels and their composition, there was no time for legends to have developed. Ergo, the gospels cannot be legendary or contain legendary embellishments.

I have reason to be skeptical of this argument because there seem to be flaws in how apologists apply this argument to the gospels. A few of the questions that any serious student of ancient history should ask are the following:

1.) There are different types of legends. Assuming apologists have understood Sherwin-White correctly, does this apply to all legends? If not, why not? If so, how so? Does it only apply to some legends? Does it apply to religious legends? Secular legends (famous battles, founding of cities, the death of famous individuals)? Urban legends? Rural legends?

2.) What is the nature of the generations? Are we talking about educated upper-class elites? Are we talking about illiterate common-folk? Are we talking about everyone? Would this apply to all classes of people? Would it apply everywhere? Would it apply to all cultures?

3.) Does it apply to the formation of legends or the survival of legends? Does it mean that no report, narrative, or story may contain legendary embellishments (even if it's slightly embellished)? Does it apply to events shrouded in legends or legendary embellishments (no matter how great) or both?

4.) How would any "core historical facts" be documented in this case? Are these "facts" of history the type that are documented by careful and critical historians like Thucydides, Livy, Herodotus, etc? How do we know of these "facts"? How well-educated and of what class are the people reporting any such "facts"? (Examples Dr. Craig? Dr. Habermas?)

5.) How do we know of any legends? Who is reporting the legends? Are the legends suppose to be embellishing famous and public events witnessed by many or small and private events witnessed by a select few? What is the education level and class of people who are either spreading the legends or exposing them?

6.) How do people sort legend from fact? Who is doing the critical investigations? How are any skeptics interested in de-legendizing history or investigating a report distinguishing facts from legends? What is the methdology or presuppostions involved? How is the skeptical investigation carried out?

7.) Suppose Christians are right about A.N. Sherwin-White and successfully apply his argument to the gospels. Did A.N. Sherwin-White become a Christian? How does he regard the New Testament? Does he believe everything reported in them happened? Does he accept miracles like the Transfiguration or the resurrection of Jesus? What does he believe and why? What criteria has he used? If he is not a Christian and is skeptical, why? Why then should we consider believing if he doesn't? Why trust him to be right about legends and yet consider any skepticism on his part flawed? Suppose he was a Christian before he became an historian- then we would be within our right to ask if his faith affected his research. Did he set out to find an argument against legends? Is he withholding critical information against his readers that does damage or weaken his argument about legends?

This is just the tip of the iceberg for me!

Matthew

Toto

Minimum time necessary for legendary development deals with this issue, if you read past a lot of off-topic sniping on a few side issues.

Peter Kirby

This is the centerpiece of Price's debate, recorded at ChristianOrigins.com. Price attempts to show parallels where there is sooner legendary development.

Does anyone have an exact cite on A. N. Sherwin-White? I recall a title sounding like "Roman Law and Roman Society in the New Testament"...

best,
Peter Kirby

yummyfur

about soon after his death

http://gwpapers.virginia.edu/documents/weems/

So it hardly seems like legendary stories need any time at all.

Toto

A.N. Sherwin-White, Roman Society and Roman Law in the New Testament, Oxford U. Press, 1963, pp. 189-191

S.C.Carlson

I've got this book. I like it a lot, but it cannot be the one which examines the development of legends. There's not a word about that topic.

Toto

Hm, that is the book that is cited everywhere.

I have forgotten now if I looked it up, or read an excerpt, but I think that the reference to legends was just an off hand comment, not a full discussion of how legends develop.

S.C.Carlson

I'm wrong. There's a discussion tucked in on the end on pp. 186-193. This topic really needs a study on the order of Ph.D. dissertation to do it justice, however. He doesn't really cite any prior studies in the same vein, so the question for me is whether anyone followed up on it.

andrewcriddle

Ronald Hutton in the First Chapter of 'Witches Druids and King Arthur' 'How Myths Are Made' discusses this issue.

He gives various references which I have not read.

For the general issue
Goody and Watts 'The Consequences of Literacy' in Goody (ed) 'Literacy in Traditional Societies' CUP 1968
Jan Vansina 'Oral Tradition as History' 2nd ed London 1985 pp 184-200
Joseph C Miller (ed) The African Past Speaks' 1980
David P Henige 'The Chronology of Oral Tradition' OUP 1974

particularly relevant for the Ancient Classical World
Rosalind Thomas 'Oral Tradition and Written Record in Classical Athens' CUP 1989.

According to Hutton there is a general consistent finding that without very special circumstances oral tradition loses any reliability at about 120 years, while by 90 to 100 years there start to be real problems.

(General Current Affairs type knowledge, without special relevance to the community remembering, has an even shorter accurate life but this is probably irrelevant to the memory of its founding events within the Christian community.)

Andrew Criddle

Vorkosigan

Can we pin down A. S-W's remarks further? Is he claiming that forty years is too short for significant legendizing to take place around a historical core, hence making an argument for reliability? Or is he claiming that forty years is too short for sheer invention?