Rank, Raglan, Freud, a Texas Sharpshooter, and Jesus

[stevencarrwork]

MCGRATH
Its folklorist users show little or no interest in the attempt to do what historians do, namely peeling back layers of myth in search of underlying history, if there is any.

CARR
Is that what historians do? I always wondered what they spend their time on. Turns out they can penetrate layers of myth.

As McGrath is now quoting Otto Rank as an authority, we can take it for granted that McGrath will scoff at anybody who disputes Rank's claim that Jesus scores very highly on the Raglan scale.

[cienfuegos]

MCGRATH
Its folklorist users show little or no interest in the attempt to do what historians do, namely peeling back layers of myth in search of underlying history, if there is any.

CARR
Is that what historians do? I always wondered what they spend their time on. Turns out they can penetrate layers of myth.

As McGrath is now quoting Otto Rank as an authority, we can take it for granted that McGrath will scoff at anybody who disputes Rank's claim that Jesus scores very highly on the Raglan scale.

McGrath's sole purpose is edification of prejudice against mythicism and anyone interested in intellectually pursuing the possibility that Christianity originated with no man named Jesus at its core.

Reading McGrath's posts on Jesus historicism is like watching Fox News. You end up less informed.

[neilgodfrey]

I mean, I have really no idea what Dundes (or others) are referring to when they claim that Jesus returns or goes to his future kingdom upon reaching manhood. Or that Jesus 'reigns' uneventfully for a time. . . . But, really, where do you find a story in the Gospel or anywhere else to back it up? I certainly respect Dundes' authority as a mythologist, but I'm not convinced he was very knowledgeable about the Gospels.

I have finally caught up with the essay by folklorist (= a mythologist??) Alan Dundes and see that he does not claim that "Jesus returns or goes to his future kingdom upon reaching manhood."

Rather, he lists Raglan's point #10 as simply "goes to future kingdom" and that's exactly what he says the "legend" of Jesus claims of him.

It would seem, then, that Dundes is reading Raglan's points in the same manner as I argued for -- that we are mistaken if we take the precise wording of one summary of his points as being literally gospel and inviolable as every jot and tittle. Raglan's point is about the meaning of rituals and he is not trying to insist that at precisely the moment when a boy becomes a man (at 13 years of age back then?) he at that moment "goes to his kingdom." We need to understand the principles that Raglan is raising and referring to. The words are road-signs, not dead-ends. Letter and spirit and all that.

(Compare my reference recently to Hanges' observation that by attempting to be so absolutely precise we end up removing Christianity from any of the normal historical and cultural influences that moved any other historical phenomena and lift Christianity to a unique and incomparable status.)

On Raglan's points about marriage, Dundes also raises the interesting observation that the absence of a marriage in the gospels "provides a significant clue to the particular worldview which produced the various versions of the life of Jesus" (p. 193).

The male dominated society denied a virtuous power to a woman. Instead of marrying the king's daughter, therefore, John the Baptist is beheaded by one.

So Dundes may be allowing for symbolic, ironical or metaphorical matches. -- Another example: Jesus being declared the King of the Jews on the cross in mockery is indeed a fulfilment of Jesus becoming a king.

That reminded me of other observations (by Jo-Ann Brant) that the Gospel of John depicts Jesus' death as a symbolic wedding. His blood is the wedding wine. See Novelistic plot and motifs in the Gospel of John.

[Clive]

Isn't the wedding at Cana a marriage? I have seen very interesting and compelling arguments that it is Jesus's wedding.

And marriages between demi gods and humans have a fascinating pedigree!

[neilgodfrey]

Isn't the wedding at Cana a marriage? I have seen very interesting and compelling arguments that it is Jesus's wedding.

And marriages between demi gods and humans have a fascinating pedigree!

Cana does at least point symbolically to Jesus' "wedding" on the cross. The text itself makes this "clear" (as much as a world of symbolism can be "clear"). The author has no interest in historical (as we understand "historical") messages, only theological or symbolic ones, I think.

[andrewcriddle]

The Dundes essay is IMO deeply problematic. It was initially published as part of The Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, Protocol of the Twentyfifth Colloquy: 12 December 1976. and then republished with very slight updating.

It received in the responses to the essay, a good deal of criticism from potentially sympathetic scholars. e.g. a lot of the etymology is mistaken.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

The Dundes essay is IMO deeply problematic. It was initially published as part of The Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, Protocol of the Twentyfifth Colloquy: 12 December 1976. and then republished with very slight updating.

It received in the responses to the essay, a good deal of criticism from potentially sympathetic scholars. e.g. a lot of the etymology is mistaken.

Andrew Criddle

I have not addressed the bulk of the essay -- have only singled out the points I thought relevant to the specific theme being addressed here -- i.e. how to read and interpret Raglan's points. What criticisms are there of that aspect?

[andrewcriddle]

The Dundes essay is IMO deeply problematic. It was initially published as part of The Center for Hermeneutical Studies in Hellenistic and Modern Culture, Protocol of the Twentyfifth Colloquy: 12 December 1976. and then republished with very slight updating.

It received in the responses to the essay, a good deal of criticism from potentially sympathetic scholars. e.g. a lot of the etymology is mistaken.

Andrew Criddle

I have not addressed the bulk of the essay -- have only singled out the points I thought relevant to the specific theme being addressed here -- i.e. how to read and interpret Raglan's points. What criticisms are there of that aspect?

On the specific point of the hero pattern that On reaching manhood he returns or goes to his future Kingdom. the examples given by Raglan are of heroes like Theseus and Oedipus who grow up in exile from their rightful kingdom and as adolescents/young adults return to their father's kingdom.

I don't see the story of Jesus as a good parallel to heroes like Theseus and Oedipus.

IMS what Dundes is suggesting is that Raglan's structure is really a Freudian Oedipal pattern (quite plausible) and he then argues that the story of Jesus also follows a Freudian Oedipal pattern.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

It received in the responses to the essay, a good deal of criticism from potentially sympathetic scholars. e.g. a lot of the etymology is mistaken.

Andrew Criddle

Are you able to point me to where I can read these criticisms?

Thanks again
N

[andrewcriddle]

It received in the responses to the essay, a good deal of criticism from potentially sympathetic scholars. e.g. a lot of the etymology is mistaken.

Andrew Criddle

Are you able to point me to where I can read these criticisms?

Thanks again
N

The hero pattern and the life of Jesus: Protocol of the twentyfifth colloquy, 12 December 1976 seems long out of print. A good university library should have it. (I've read it in Cambridge University Library UK.)

There is some discussion and quotation at http://www.tektonics.org/gk/fdun.doc
e.g. EC Hobbs is quoted as saying in a response to Dundes

Professor Dundes has said that folklore has been perceived to be the enemy. On pages 3 and 4, he says that scholarly theologians want to decide what is folklore so it can be removed from the sacred canon, and this is called “demythologizing.” In fact, this has little resemblance to anything which goes on in twentieth-century Biblical scholarship. That is not the purpose of examining folklore matierals, and demythologizing is not culling out unhistorical materials. At least since the time of Gunkel, folklore has been widely used and treated sympathetically in Old Testament studies, and since World War I in New Testament studies, although perhaps not with as much contact with folklore specialists as you and I would like.
Most of us feel like Professor Rosenmeyer: we in principle like your general hypothesis, that there is a prior pattern imposed unconsciously on the materials. The problem is whether you have identified a pattern that does appear in the materials. It may be that, insofar as the materials really fit, the pattern is one inevitible in any culture, at any time, following just the ordinary principles of how a story has to be told to be interesting. If people are interested in a person, whoever he was, eventually they will start asking about the rest of his story. If he is dead, one will talk about his death; if there is a cult around his grave, one will talk about where he was buried. A story that merely says someone was born, had a marvelous life, and even after death came back, is not very interesting. As in music, painting, and poetry, one needs some resistance to make the resolution interesting. So an interesting tale about anyone--hero, king, religious founder, whoever—will have opposition, threats, danger, etc. That is the raw material of any kind of narrative that interests anybody. You must be saying more than that, that there is a particular arrangement of these things, and that is what we have some difficulty fitting to the first hundred years’ account of Jesus

Hobbs is responding from a relatively conservative position but the respondees covered a very wide range of positions. One specific point IMS is that a sermon attributed to Augustine and used by Dundes about the mystical significance of the crucifixion is pseudo-Augustine and probably rather late.

Andrew Criddle