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

[iskander]

" An Inner-Biblical Elaboration of the Decalogue
Prof. Ed Greenstein
The Decalogue in Liturgy
In the late Second Temple period, the Ten Commandments, or Decalogue, was as central to Jewish worship as the Shema (Deut 6:4-9) and preceded it in the morning prayers of the priests, prior to their making the daily (Tamid) sacrifice in the Temple (Mishnah Tamid 5:1).

We find the canonical sequence of Decalogue- Shema in the Book of Deuteronomy (chapters 5-6), and in an ancient page of papyrus from around 150 B.C.E.[1] Experts agree that this papyrus records a part of the daily Jewish liturgy. The Decalogue was, then, an integral part of Jewish worship.


Removing the Decalogue from Liturgy
Already in the early Talmudic period, however, the practice of reciting the Decalogue prior to the Shema was discontinued. The Talmud (b. Berakhot 12a) provides an explanation. Many Jewish Christians and certainly gentile Christians—minim or “sectarians” in rabbinic terms—maintained that the full gamut of mitzvot, and especially the ritual ones, need no longer be observed. The essence of the mitzvot, they held, can be boiled down to a number of mostly ethical injunctions found in the Decalogue.


The excision of the Decalogue from the liturgy was a drawn out process, and for several generations during the rabbinic period, leading rabbis tried to re-instate the practice of reciting the Decalogue daily and including it in the boxes of tefillin, but their efforts did not succeed.[2] Today, the only way we mark the significance of the Decalogue ritually is that we stand when we read it from the Torah in the synagogue (in Parashat Yitro, Parashat Va’etḥanan, and on the festival of Shavu‘ot).[3] "

http://thetorah.com/an-inner-biblical-e ... decalogue/

[neilgodfrey]

All agreement is welcome. Can we make some progress, then, on the idea that those fluids might mix sometimes?

They mix, yes, like couples mix on a dance floor. They do not become hermaphrodites, though.

I sometimes think agreement is rare; what is more common is coming to a better understanding of each other's position. Maybe it's mostly about just acknowledging the grounds for different perspectives and moving on, fatalist that I am.

Shakespeare is irrelevant to the historian of Julius Caesar

Which profession exists because there are other parties to the transactions by which the historian earns the bread to sustain her life. Historians get to dictate who belongs to their professional societies. They don't get to dictate what history is, and have no vote qua historians in what fiction is.

In particular, they don't get to enforce a market-sharing arrangement to bar the consumer of approximately factual information about the human past from buying Shakespeare's play to satisfy his or her goals, rather than buying a substitute good from a competing "peer approved" vendor.

I marvel that this is news to you, the vigorous advocate of a minority view about a relatively simple secular fact claim concerning the human past. If historians get to dictate whose writings are history, then yours aren't. Full stop. If consumers have a voice in the matter, then maybe yours are history after all.

I have to confess I do not follow you here. What ancient historian uses Shakespeare as a historical source for the study of Julius Caesar? I think even the consumer public would be surprised if any serious historians did so.

Where you speak of "consumers" etc I think of what is best described as public knowledge. There is a public knowledge about cultural stories etc that we can call historical. But in this discussion I am thinking of history as more than that, or rather as something narrower, as a disciplined study of the past according to professionally accepted norms.

(As for my views, I don't think I "advocate" (rather I do explore, yes) any that are not advanced (explored) by professional historians themselves. Even minorities conform to the range of professional norms. In fact most of my "advocacy" is about the application of those norms -- too many in biblical studies especially set up their own institutionally idiosyncratic methods that no serious (real) historian would ever give the time of day.)

....they are simply learning a fiction that is going to be useful for getting along in the world for whenever they hear a mention of Julius Caesar...

Unlikely. I suspect the typical undergraduate student easily distinguishes between clear fact claims like "Marc Antony was politically allied with the living Julius" as opposed to unperfected or fully non-claims like, "Marc Antony addressed a crowd gathered about Julius' corpse using the phrase 'Friends, Romans, countrymen: lend me your ears ...' "

My own take is that a statement like "Marc Anthony was politically allied with the living Julius" can only be called a "clear fact claim" in the sense of being "true history" if there is some other measure outside the Shakespeare play that allows them to take it so. Otherwise it can never be anything but a "factual statement" about a plot in a stage play.

I would say that when people isolate details in the play as "historical" they are not referencing the play but they are referencing historical facts that we know apart from the play.

but that would be a very loose meaning of the term and not the sense in which I thought we are discussing it.

OK. I thought the topic was what writings can reasonably be called fiction and what can reasonably be called history, within the English-speaking linguistic community at large (as opposed to looking only at jargon-sharing specialist subcommunities).

Time for a drink and to talk about something else? Definitions, definitions.... Details, details....

But I think we have been talking about more than terms confined to narrow communities. Or perhaps what you are describing I might have referred to in other contexts as discussions of public knowledge as distinct from public information, data, etc -- and how societies establish "authoritative" institutions and viewpoints, etc.

But I do appreciate the opportunity to have an interesting exchange here.

[neilgodfrey]

This post may succeed in explaining why there is one reason for accepting the existence of a Jewish heretic in the first century AD, one as Jesus

Re: The secret of the sacrifices
by iskander » Sun Apr 03, 2016 2:50 am
http://www.bmv.org.il/shiurim/tamid/tam05.html
Jewish liturgy before Yeshu HaNotzri recited the ten commandments before any other prayer in the morning service. This prayer was dropped to protect the power of the management. This change was not a trivial one.
. . . .

Sorry iskander but I don't really have the interest to motivate myself to read articles that in the surface do nothing to support your claims.

Why would rabbis drop the Ten Commandments from a liturgy because of anything Jesus said or did? Why? What did Jesus say or do that would make them do that?

Which one of the articles you listed actually says the rabbis dropped the Ten Commandments because of something said or done by Jesus. Jesus (not "minim").

I am not disputing that the rabbis changed the liturgy. I simply have not read anything to tell me that they did so because of anything in particular said or done by Jesus.

[iskander]

In the video , Ten commandments or 613, in Minute 38:29. because of the disciples of Jesus.
Torah cafe
Rabbi Benjamin Blech

[Paul the Uncertain]

Neil

Our disagreement clarifies. I see history as heuristically adequate truth-respecting reasoning about the human past. You see it as:

... a disciplined study of the past according to professionally accepted norms.

We'd both like to distinguish history from fiction among works that were created before the 19th Century, which is about the earliest anybody could practice "history" under your definition. Also, if you're thinking of the Bayesian or a near-Bayesian path, then you need to accept domain-independent norms.

My own take is that a statement like "Marc Anthony was politically allied with the living Julius" can only be called a "clear fact claim" in the sense of being "true history" if there is some other measure outside the Shakespeare play that allows them to take it so.

But there always is, at least for people in the age group I mentioned. BTW, "clear" was meant to modify "claim." Shakespeare clearly claims that Marc Antony was Julius' ally; how the reader evaluates the claim is another matter. Shakespeare doesn't claim to offer a verbatim transcript of one of Antony's speeches.

In a brief presentation, I had my hypothetical student march right straight through from profound ignorance to confident accurate belief. It is enough to carry the points in question that before reading the play, the student was unable even to guess the name of a single political ally of Julius Caesar, and that afterwards he or she estimates that it is seriously possible that Marc Antony was one. That is heuristically adequate truth-respecting reasoning about the human past.

I would say that when people isolate details in the play as "historical" they are not referencing the play but they are referencing historical facts that we know apart from the play.

Maybe sometimes, but other times not. The play clearly claims that there was a historically real comet associated with Julius' death. While I rate that claim as "likely," I don't know it to be true, and when I checked, I find that there are apparently quite serious "Caesar's comet sceptics."

"Giving examples" and "isolating details" are easily mistaken for each other. I chose the play in the first place because fact claims are woven throughout - right along with things that are at best approximations to the truth, and other things that many serious people associate with the title character (like the comet), but whose truth status, even approximately, I simply don't know.

But I do appreciate the opportunity to have an interesting exchange here.

Likewise.

[andrewcriddle]

I have to confess I do not follow you here. What ancient historian uses Shakespeare as a historical source for the study of Julius Caesar? I think even the consumer public would be surprised if any serious historians did so.

Ancient historians do use Aeschylus' play the Eumenides as an important source for reconstructing changes in the political and judicial system of Ancient Athens. In general ancient historians have such limited data they can't be too choosy.

One doesn't use Shakespeare as a source for Julius Caesar because we have the sources Shakespeare used (mainly Plutarch). If Plutarch's Life of Caesar did not survive our attitude to Shakespeare might be different.

We do use the Augustan Histories (which is genuinely a work of historical fiction) as a source because it used good sources which do not survive.

In studying the historical Pythagoras an important source is the Life by Iamblichus a deeply anachronistic retelling of Pythagoras as the prototypical neo-Platonist written about 300 CE. Iamblichus quoted and rewrote much older sources now lost.

Andrew Criddle

[neilgodfrey]

In the video , Ten commandments or 613, in Minute 38:29. because of the disciples of Jesus.
Torah cafe
Rabbi Benjamin Blech

Tell me what it says.

[neilgodfrey]

We'd both like to distinguish history from fiction among works that were created before the 19th Century, which is about the earliest anybody could practice "history" under your definition. Also, if you're thinking of the Bayesian or a near-Bayesian path, then you need to accept domain-independent norms.

I have slipped into the habit of returning here and just looking at the latest comments before replying to those specifically -- and losing sight of the larger discussion that has led to those comments. Sorry, I need to focus.

What had been on my mind when referring to "history" as opposed to "fiction" was essentially the question of how we know something was true/truly happened in the past. I have now gone back and checked the OP and see the original question was about "historical explanation" as distinct from fiction. I think I have been in the wrong discussion here. I somehow had come to think we were talking about how we know something was historically "true" as opposed to fiction. (Not the same thing as "historical explanation" for events.)

But if we are talking about how we know something "was true" then I would like to back up a bit from my previous comment.

If my following comments appear to shift gears, it's with the above in mind....

My own take is that a statement like "Marc Anthony was politically allied with the living Julius" can only be called a "clear fact claim" in the sense of being "true history" if there is some other measure outside the Shakespeare play that allows them to take it so.

But there always is, at least for people in the age group I mentioned. BTW, "clear" was meant to modify "claim." Shakespeare clearly claims that Marc Antony was Julius' ally; how the reader evaluates the claim is another matter. Shakespeare doesn't claim to offer a verbatim transcript of one of Antony's speeches.

Surely a "fact claim" made in a Shakespeare play is nothing more than a fact claim within the plot of a dramatic presentation or text. It cannot be the source of a historical fact in the days of the Roman Empire. If we know that Shakespeare's claim really was "historically true" it is because we know the historical "truth" for other reasons in advance. And that requires evidence external to the play to establish the "historical fact".

In a brief presentation, I had my hypothetical student march right straight through from profound ignorance to confident accurate belief. It is enough to carry the points in question that before reading the play, the student was unable even to guess the name of a single political ally of Julius Caesar, and that afterwards he or she estimates that it is seriously possible that Marc Antony was one. That is heuristically adequate truth-respecting reasoning about the human past.

I don't see your student doing anything more than engaging with and learning the plot of the play -- not "historical facts".

If the student is told that certain facts in that plot are based on "historical facts" then that information surely has to be derived from evidence etc outside Shakespeare, quite independently of anything Shakespeare wrote.

I would say that when people isolate details in the play as "historical" they are not referencing the play but they are referencing historical facts that we know apart from the play.

Maybe sometimes, but other times not. The play clearly claims that there was a historically real comet associated with Julius' death. While I rate that claim as "likely," I don't know it to be true, and when I checked, I find that there are apparently quite serious "Caesar's comet sceptics."

This seems to support what it is I am meaning to argue. A "fact claim" in a play is nothing more than a factual detail about the plot. If this detail coincides with history, was inspired by history, then that's fine -- it means our knowledge of what is "factual" comes from something other than Shakespeare.

I realize there is an ocean of discussion material I am eliding in the above comments. But one step at a time.

(I fear, though, you may think at this point you are going around in circles?)

[neilgodfrey]

I have to confess I do not follow you here. What ancient historian uses Shakespeare as a historical source for the study of Julius Caesar? I think even the consumer public would be surprised if any serious historians did so.

Ancient historians do use Aeschylus' play the Eumenides as an important source for reconstructing changes in the political and judicial system of Ancient Athens. In general ancient historians have such limited data they can't be too choosy.

One doesn't use Shakespeare as a source for Julius Caesar because we have the sources Shakespeare used (mainly Plutarch). If Plutarch's Life of Caesar did not survive our attitude to Shakespeare might be different.

We are comparing apples and cheeses here. The functions, occasions and natures of the plays of Aeschylus and those of Shakespeare are totally different.

Classicists don't drive themselves to despair trying to understand the changes in the Aereopagus and in sheer desperation hold their noses and scrape Aeschylus out of the bottom of the barrel to help them out as a final resort.

Historians don't lower their standards in order to get the information they want or need. Rather, they adapt their questions and expectations to accord with the nature of the sources available. (I'm not talking about apologist biblical scholars, though.) That's how ancient history works: different questions, different levels of analysis, all to match the data available.

Having said that, Shakespeare is also a source for historians of the Renaissance. He provides valuable data for philosophical, political, cultural developments at the time. But his play Julius Caesar adds nothing to the ancient historian who is investigating "the historical JC".

Similarly, classicists do not study the Oresteian trilogy to learn about "the historical Orestes". Aeschylus is a valuable source for questions related to changes to the Aereopagus that are known from other sources to have happened.

We do use the Augustan Histories (which is genuinely a work of historical fiction) as a source because it used good sources which do not survive.

I'm not sure who you mean by "we" or in what ways and how you are saying we "use" them.

In studying the historical Pythagoras an important source is the Life by Iamblichus a deeply anachronistic retelling of Pythagoras as the prototypical neo-Platonist written about 300 CE. Iamblichus quoted and rewrote much older sources now lost.

A biography is not entitled the presumption of "historicity" simply because of its author or genre. Demonax is a case in point. Classicists may defer to historicity in his case but nearly always with reservations and cautions. Doubts are always kept in easy reach. Pythagoras is given some more credence than Demonax and as having a varied number of traditions about his historical existence on the basis of evidence prior to (external to) Iamblichus. The oldest testimony goes back to Xenophanes of Colophon of the 6th/5th centuries bce cited within Diogenes Laertius.

[neilgodfrey]

For the benefit of anyone who more sensibly has no idea what an Aeschylus or a Eumenides is, you may find something of interest in my post on a book by Lynn Kauppi. See Acts, the Areopagus and the Introduction of New Gods.

(Not that this post discusses the questions classicists are primarily interested in. But I will spare you my memories of undergrad studies in ancient history and English lit.)