What makes a writing "Fiction" versus "History"?

[andrewcriddle]

TRYING to return to the original post.

A few ancient works like Leucippe and Clitophon by Achilles Tatius do seem to be fictional in our sense. They are clearly intended to be read as pure invention. However these works seem unusual and marginal in the ancient world.

Andrew Criddle

[Paul the Uncertain]

There was a vibrant theatrical drama tradition. A story about the son of a god walking the earth, and how people react to him, would be a promising theme.

It is uncontroversial that Mark innovated some prose genre. Perhaps in its original form, GMark was a forerunner of what film folk now call a "treatment." Josephus' "Paulina and Mundus" (if not his, then at least the tragicomic sex romp now appears in his Antiquities, right next to the notorious Testimonium) may be another, shorter example of the prose treatment of a theatrical farce, from about the same time as the first gospel.

Whether or not they were intended for actual theatrical use, or otherwise based upon a theatrical performance, it is simply a fact that were you to hand either one, as is, to a competent improvisational troupe, then you could sell tickets to the show next week. GMark actually is performed onstage, often with both commercial and artistic success (most famously by the late Alec McCowen).

[neilgodfrey]

Over on the "This may be interesting" thread, MichaelBG had stated that there *must* be a way to tell from characteristics in the text. To this I replied "Both use the same techniques."

So, I'd like to hear from members what authorities they would propose to support distinction between fiction and historical explanation.

Through the middle ages and early modern period, "history" was considered an art form and taught along with rhetoric. It was Leopold Von Ranke who sought to make it a scientific discipline based on objectivity.

This POV had prevailed for a century or so until postmodernist critics popped its bubble by declaring all narrative based on past facts as interpretations of past events based on the critics' own present understanding of things.

"What thinkest thou, Simon?"

Gotta run ...

DCH

A very respectable answer to the question is found in Dorrit Cohn's The Distinction of Fiction. I have been working on key points in the book for some time now and preparing to write something in relation to certain biblical texts. She is very astute. She takes on postmodernists for even "wilful misreadings" in their claims that there is little, if anything, dividing historical and novelistic narratives. The strength of her work is in focusing on the "borderline cases" that have commonly been used to point to this lack of difference -- Cohn shows that in fact those borderline cases demonstrate the criteria for difference most clearly of all. Criteria relate to authorial omniscience, a narrative point of view from character's perspective*, and inner life of characters, narrator and authorial voice, etc...)

The post I am wanting to start with after the prep is to demonstrate the stark differences between ancient biographies of historical persons and the gospel narratives of Jesus. I have criticised Burridge before for his superficial comparisons that lead him to classify the gospels as ancient "biographies" but drawing upon studies in literary criticism will, I think, more effectively demolish his argument.

As for ancient historical works more generally it helps to know something of what a pre-Enlightenment "historian" was trying to accomplish. Sometimes a historian had no idea what went on at a critical point he wanted to add to his narrative so he made up scenarios that he believed "would have happened", were "plausible", "true to life". Thucydides is believed to have done just this in his description of the Athenian plague -- and to help fill in details he drew upon other works, including Homer, iirc.

Herodotus has been accused of writing mostly fiction, even of having probably never set foot outside Greece, by Detlev Fehling in Herodotus and his 'Sources': Citation, Invention and Narrative Art -- and Fehling has earned some bitter enemies as a reward for his efforts.

A recurring theme in many of my blogposts, sometimes spilling over into other forums, has been the question of how we know if a work is genuinely a "historical work" and not primarily fabrication (i.e. historical fiction, say). (And as with this thread, I find that simply raising the question is a sure way to bring about an early end to discussion.) The criteria I have used are genre, provenance and independent corroboration. I find it interesting that Dorrit Cohn's criteria enrich some of the points I have wondered about and suggested in the past.

I make these points just to indicate that others have addressed this question in some depth and there are clues to establishing the difference between what we think of as history and fiction.

Then again, if someone sets out to deliberately deceive and they know all the tricks then it may be impossible to know they are doing so. If there were criteria that could readily expose deliberate deception we would not need court trials, judges, cross-examination, lie detectors, etc....

Added later
* I said something about "narrative from a character's perspective" -- Cohn brings that down to the micro level of sentence structures that sound so natural as we read them that we never notice anything artificial about them until we have them pointed out and we take time to stop and think about them. For example: A past tense with an adverb that indicates a future action -- "His plane left tomorrow". Makes perfect sense as we read about the character and the pressures upon him etc. The past tense is from the authorial perspective but the tomorrow is a future indicative: the author has shifted gears and given the reader the author's perspective. That's not history; it's fiction, if you like. The narrative's reference is to the world and people created by the author; it is not referenced to the real external world. It's not how a historian or biographer would express it. I'm reminded of Mark 14:1 -- "After two days was the passover". But that's the English translation and I need more information about the Greek (Ἦν) to know if it is a genuine parallel example.

Cohn's criteria aren't all so subtle as this one, by the way.

[iskander]

Over on the "This may be interesting" thread, MichaelBG had stated that there *must* be a way to tell from characteristics in the text. To this I replied "Both use the same techniques."

So, I'd like to hear from members what authorities they would propose to support distinction between fiction and historical explanation.

Through the middle ages and early modern period, "history" was considered an art form and taught along with rhetoric. It was Leopold Von Ranke who sought to make it a scientific discipline based on objectivity.

This POV had prevailed for a century or so until postmodernist critics popped its bubble by declaring all narrative based on past facts as interpretations of past events based on the critics' own present understanding of things.

"What thinkest thou, Simon?"

Gotta run ...

DCH

In Mark Jesus speaks and behaves as a Jewish heretic . It should be possible to find some evidence for this.
For example:

EXPLANATIONS (continued):
...
6:
Now let us consider the rabbinic attitude to the inclusion of the Ten Commandments in the daily liturgy. The Talmud of Eretz-Israel contains the following statement:
Both Rav Mattanah and Rabbi Shemu'el bar-Naĥman say that logically we should recite the Ten Commandments [liturgically] every day; why do we not do so? - [to refute] the claims of heretics that these alone were given to Moses at Sinai [Berakhot 9b].


The heretics referred to in this text are presumably the early Christians of the first century CE. So we have here an extraordinary statement to the effect that a logical Jewish liturgy was changed in order to combat heretical (and possibly missionary) claims. This statement of the Yerushalmi is also echoed by the Bavli [Berakhot 12a] -

Rav Yehudah quotes Shemu'el as saying that they wanted to recite them also outside the Bet Mikdash, but they had already been abolished because of the claims of heretics

The Bavli goes on to record sporadic attempts to re-institute the reading of the Ten Commandments as a part of the Reading of the Shema, but these attempts were all quashed 'because they had already been abolished because of the claims of heretics'. The Talmud of Eretz-Israel admits that the Ten Commandments 'contain the essence of the Shema'.

http://www.bmv.org.il/shiurim/tamid/tam05.html

[neilgodfrey]

In Mark Jesus speaks and behaves as a Jewish heretic . It should be possible to find some evidence for this.
For example:

Unfortunately even if we were certain of external evidence establishing that Jesus was considered by certain quarters "a Jewish heretic" in his own day that detail alone would not be able to settle the question of whether the overall narrative told about him in the gospels is "historical" or "fictional".

[iskander]

In Mark Jesus speaks and behaves as a Jewish heretic . It should be possible to find some evidence for this.
For example:

Unfortunately even if we were certain of external evidence establishing that Jesus was considered by certain quarters "a Jewish heretic" in his own day that detail alone would not be able to settle the question of whether the overall narrative told about him in the gospels is "historical" or "fictional".

Any religious narrative about a heretic contains fiction because gods and their instructions are fiction to the unbeliever. For the unbeliever the " overall narrative" would be fiction. However, the group of people that live through the times described in the narrative is not fiction.


Jan Hus was burnt at the stake after having been sentenced as a heretic by the Council of Constance for some 'fictional' disagreement with the religious authority which was defending God !!!. Was Jesus one like Jan Hus?

[John T]

Over on the "This may be interesting" thread, MichaelBG had stated that there *must* be a way to tell from characteristics in the text. To this I replied "Both use the same techniques."

So, I'd like to hear from members what authorities they would propose to support distinction between fiction and historical explanation.

Through the middle ages and early modern period, "history" was considered an art form and taught along with rhetoric. It was Leopold Von Ranke who sought to make it a scientific discipline based on objectivity.

This POV had prevailed for a century or so until postmodernist critics popped its bubble by declaring all narrative based on past facts as interpretations of past events based on the critics' own present understanding of things.

"What thinkest thou, Simon?"

Gotta run ...

DCH

Before I offer a solution, I think we should look at the crux of the problem a little more closely.

“News is the first draft of history. It is immediate and takes place in real time. Legends takes longer to develop and are sometimes based on myth…” Legend and Lies, FOX history series

Herodotus is considered the father of history but Cicero proved he was a father of lies.

All too often when politics is part of the news, it is written with a bias (read lie). For example, the constant none stop lies by the New York Times against President Trump. Recently, NYT lied about the low attendance to the White House Super Bowl celebration. NYT selected a photo as evidence to support their lie because their gullible readers believe pictures don’t lie. Still, they did it knowing how easily it would be for real new sources to expose the lie but they didn’t care because once the lie is out, liberals who want to believe it over the truth will, forever. Another example is the hoax of global warming. Corrupt political hacks (e.g. Algore) used fake science to promote a hoax. It has been over a decade since the perpetrators of the global warming hoax have been exposed but the liberals still believe it.

Religion is no different. People believe what they want to believe and real science and sound logic be damned.

Yet, the totality of the evidence and logic supports a historical Jesus.

Over time and distance, news about Jesus turned into legends and myths. But that does not mean Jesus did not exist. Much like the legends and myths of Davy Crockett claiming he rode an alligator up the Niagara Falls, obviously, it is a myth but that is not proof that Crockett did not exist or died fighting at the Alamo.

What do I consider the best methods for scholars to use when determining fact over fiction when it comes to a historical Jesus?
I will go over them again if anyone is interested.

Sincerely,

John T

[TedM]

The best that we can hope for is that they writers believed that what they passed on reflected the past

I suspect that writers who are writing stuff they think reflects the past DO WRITE DIFFERENTLY than writers who are writing stuff that they KNOW does NOT reflect the past, but are trying to make it appear that it does. As such, the gospel of Mark should show such differences from the other gospels IF in fact GMark was the latter, and the other 3 are the former.

The reason I BELIEVE they would be different is 'common sense', 'intuition', 'logic' or some combination of these - that simply recognizes the fact that people behave differently when their motivations are different. They may TRY to behave exactly the same and the more clever ones can perhaps get away with it, but the fact remains that their THOUGHT PROCESS is DIFFERENT. This should in theory make their results subject to testing that helps reveal their true motives.

Do I have those tests, or good examples? NO.

[DCHindley]

The best that we can hope for is that they writers believed that what they passed on reflected the past

I suspect that writers who are writing stuff they think reflects the past DO WRITE DIFFERENTLY than writers who are writing stuff that they KNOW does NOT reflect the past, but are trying to make it appear that it does. As such, the gospel of Mark should show such differences from the other gospels IF in fact GMark was the latter, and the other 3 are the former.

The reason I BELIEVE they would be different is 'common sense', 'intuition', 'logic' or some combination of these - that simply recognizes the fact that people behave differently when their motivations are different. They may TRY to behave exactly the same and the more clever ones can perhaps get away with it, but the fact remains that their THOUGHT PROCESS is DIFFERENT. This should in theory make their results subject to testing that helps reveal their true motives.

Do I have those tests, or good examples? NO.

What I think you are talking about is what White calls "ideological implication." However, all writing reflects the ideology of the writer. Hand in hand. Now it is fair that folks differ in their opinions about the ideology expressed.

K. Marx, for instance, interprets historical evidence using his socio-economic theories. We can differ over their value for interpretation, or how they were used, out of context, by the various parties that fought for the socialist cause(s) in the Russian Revolution (1917+). Marx himself was an expert at classical economics, but he thought he could improve on it by taking the implications of market forces to their extremes and thus predict the future, a utopian communist world state. You don't have to agree with Marx to find value in his book Capital, which is why I own a set.

M. Rostovtzeff sees ancients applying capitalistic principals as if everyone in all periods have always done so, but borrowed the terminology of Marx to describe how Rome fell apart. They were not capitalistic enough. He wrote in 1926 after the Communists had won control of all Russia from the control of the "White Russians" and the western armies that had intervened, forcing him to seek exile in Sweden, the UK and finally the USA. Besides English, he wrote later editions in German and Italian. The English edition was finally revised in by P. M. Fraser in 1957, incorporating Rostovtzeff's ideas from the German and Italian editions. Fraser was well aware that much of his terminology was anachronistic, but he examined things in minute detail, making the book a valuable reference work, which is why I own a set.

But in 1973, M. I. Finley, influenced by Karl Polanyi and Max Weber, blew apart any notion that modern socio-economics existed in ancient times, but that exchanges and profit motives revolved around the status groups jockeying for power in city states, and that one of the strongest motives for social change was relief from debt obligation and resulting slavery. There may have been a few principals to derive from the multitude of local economies centered around city states, and these really only applied to Greece and Rome, not to the Ancient Near East in general. Wealth was accumulated from aggregation of power over rents and taxes, not from application of economic policy. Local economies just happen when status groups vie for power over one another. His work came out in a second edition in 1985. I don't agree with everything he says, but I own a copy.

But then in 2002 there was an anthology of articles from a wide array of contributors edited by Walter Scheidel and Sitta von Reden that took the debate to new levels, showing that Finley was dead wrong in some areas, but not too far off in others. I don't agree with everything that everybody says, but I own a copy.

It could be argued that Rostovtzeff's reconstruction of ancient economics is heavily indebted to his anti-communist POV. It could also be argued that Finley's reconstruction of ancient economies was heavily influenced by the economics of Polanyi and the sociology of Weber. Same goes for those who contributed to Scheidel & von Reden's book. I can overlook these, and pick out what seems out of place, based on what I have read and think I know about ancient history, applying the same principal advocated by postmodernists, that the past is always interpreted by the critic's present, including my own.

I say we just have to learn to live with this situation. Things still happened in the past, some of which relics tell interesting stories, but not the whole story. No one can know everything that happened, and even if one was actually there, would not know every cause that caused "it" to happen. We'd have to be an all-knowing god to know everything, and most of us (here) aren't sure that such a god exists, at least as a conscious entity.

Well, need to go and take a shower before dinner when the wife gets home from her late day at work.

DCH

[DCHindley]

A very respectable answer to the question is found in Dorrit Cohn's The Distinction of Fiction. I have been working on key points in the book for some time now and preparing to write something in relation to certain biblical texts. She is very astute. She takes on postmodernists for even "wilful misreadings" in their claims that there is little, if anything, dividing historical and novelistic narratives. The strength of her work is in focusing on the "borderline cases" that have commonly been used to point to this lack of difference -- Cohn shows that in fact those borderline cases demonstrate the criteria for difference most clearly of all. Criteria relate to authorial omniscience, a narrative point of view from character's perspective*, and inner life of characters, narrator and authorial voice, etc...)

The post I am wanting to start with after the prep is to demonstrate the stark differences between ancient biographies of historical persons and the gospel narratives of Jesus. I have criticised Burridge before for his superficial comparisons that lead him to classify the gospels as ancient "biographies" but drawing upon studies in literary criticism will, I think, more effectively demolish his argument.

As for ancient historical works more generally it helps to know something of what a pre-Enlightenment "historian" was trying to accomplish. Sometimes a historian had no idea what went on at a critical point he wanted to add to his narrative so he made up scenarios that he believed "would have happened", were "plausible", "true to life". Thucydides is believed to have done just this in his description of the Athenian plague -- and to help fill in details he drew upon other works, including Homer, iirc.

Herodotus has been accused of writing mostly fiction, even of having probably never set foot outside Greece, by Detlev Fehling in Herodotus and his 'Sources': Citation, Invention and Narrative Art -- and Fehling has earned some bitter enemies as a reward for his efforts.

A recurring theme in many of my blogposts, sometimes spilling over into other forums, has been the question of how we know if a work is genuinely a "historical work" and not primarily fabrication (i.e. historical fiction, say). (And as with this thread, I find that simply raising the question is a sure way to bring about an early end to discussion.) The criteria I have used are genre, provenance and independent corroboration. I find it interesting that Dorrit Cohn's criteria enrich some of the points I have wondered about and suggested in the past.

I make these points just to indicate that others have addressed this question in some depth and there are clues to establishing the difference between what we think of as history and fiction.

Then again, if someone sets out to deliberately deceive and they know all the tricks then it may be impossible to know they are doing so. If there were criteria that could readily expose deliberate deception we would not need court trials, judges, cross-examination, lie detectors, etc....

Added later
* I said something about "narrative from a character's perspective" -- Cohn brings that down to the micro level of sentence structures that sound so natural as we read them that we never notice anything artificial about them until we have them pointed out and we take time to stop and think about them. For example: A past tense with an adverb that indicates a future action -- "His plane left tomorrow". Makes perfect sense as we read about the character and the pressures upon him etc. The past tense is from the authorial perspective but the tomorrow is a future indicative: the author has shifted gears and given the reader the author's perspective. That's not history; it's fiction, if you like. The narrative's reference is to the world and people created by the author; it is not referenced to the real external world. It's not how a historian or biographer would express it. I'm reminded of Mark 14:1 -- "After two days was the passover". But that's the English translation and I need more information about the Greek (Ἦν) to know if it is a genuine parallel example.

Cohn's criteria aren't all so subtle as this one, by the way.

I see your anti-postmodern Cohn, and raise you a Narratologist (can't get any more post-modern than that):

Jean-Marie Schaeffer, Fictional vs. Factual Narration in The Living Handbook of Narratology website:
http://wikis.sub.uni-hamburg.de/lhn/ind ... _Narration

The problem with reading this kind of thing is that it is really easy to get swamped with details.

DCH