Rule #1 of Historical Reasoning

[neilgodfrey]

Guess what I found by chance when skimming through a chapter by Niels Peter Lemche in Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity -- but before you do that, do recall that this thread had something to do with finding a primary source in a secondary one, courtesy of an article by Elias Bickerman.

Here's what I found, in a chapter titled "Is the Old Testament Still a Hellenistic Book?" by NPL:

The problem for biblical historians was, and still is, that they have tended to identify the oldest source found in a written document with a primary source, understood as a contemporary source. To a great extent, they have ignored the fact that also the oldest part of an ancient document may be a secondary source! They have been absolutely blind to the claim of the “father” of Danish historians, Christian Erslev (1852-1930), that secondary sources are also of value if they are read as testimonies from the time when they came into being. This also implies that primary sources embedded in a document, which can only be considered a secondary source, are likewise part of the outlook of the people who drafted older information into their own retelling of the past.

Here we have it. All that argument from Bickerman's article that I dwelt upon -- and now NPL simply tells us in a half dozen words what we sometimes find in the literature: primary sources are sometimes found embedded within a secondary source.

But NPL did not have to contend with critics on BC&H, so I still think it worth being careful with words and noting that it's the "intellectual content" of a primary source that is embedded in a secondary source.

[MrMacSon]

... I still think it worth being careful with words ...
.

So do I, so ----

... in a chapter titled "Is the Old Testament Still a Hellenistic Book?" [in Biblical Interpretation Beyond Historicity by Niels Peter Lemche]:

The problem for biblical historians was, and still is, that they have tended to [incorrectly] identify the oldest source found in a written document with [as] a 'primary' source ... To a great extent, they have ignored the fact that also the oldest part of an ancient document may be a secondary source!

... that secondary sources are also of value if they are read as testimonies from the time when they came into being [is a good point, but it is moot as to the point of being primary sources of the primary issue being addressed].

This also implies that primary sources [information or commentary] embedded in a document, which can only be considered a secondary source, are likewise part of the outlook of the people.. retelling the past.
.

... what we sometimes find in the literature: primary sources [information] sometimes [is] found embedded within a secondary source.

... it's the "intellectual likely content" of a primary source that is [may be] embedded in a secondary source.
.

[DCHindley]

I am hesitant to treat these documents that were "quoted" in secondary sources as somehow primary sources, regardless of how strongly a modern critic may argue that it has the look and feel of an authentic document.

The quote may well be entirely fabricated or strongly restated, yet fashioned according to well-known patterns of official communications and decrees. The book of Daniel contains several of these supposed decrees, and there is hot debate as to whether we should take the author(s) of Daniel at face value. Most modern critics, I believe, do not do so.

Unless we actually find a decree, engraved in stone in a monument, that matches the quote, we have to assume that it could have been refashioned and paraphrased in a way that supports the agenda of the person who quoted it. The stelae on which such decrees are engraved are primary sources. A quotation, as if from such a decree, is not a primary source, it is just a rhetorical element in a secondary source which may or may not be true.

Jus' my 2 centavos.

DCH

[Ben C. Smith]

I am hesitant to treat these documents that were "quoted" in secondary sources as somehow primary sources, regardless of how strongly a modern critic may argue that it has the look and feel of an authentic document.

The quote may well be entirely fabricated or strongly restated, yet fashioned according to well-known patterns of official communications and decrees. The book of Daniel contains several of these supposed decrees, and there is hot debate as to whether we should take the author(s) of Daniel at face value. Most modern critics, I believe, do not do so.

Unless we actually find a decree, engraved in stone in a monument, that matches the quote, we have to assume that it could have been refashioned and paraphrased in a way that supports the agenda of the person who quoted it. The stelae on which such decrees are engraved are primary sources. A quotation, as if from such a decree, is not a primary source, it is just a rhetorical element in a secondary source which may or may not be true.

I think it may be worth pointing out something about the following list from the OP:

Bickerman goes into very detailed argument to establish a reasonable case that the historian is indeed justified in using Josephus's record as a genuine copy of original correspondence dating from the time of Antiochus IV. His arguments is based on several lines of evidence:

• archaeological evidence supporting originality of the correspondence in Josephus's work and providing details highly unlikely to have been known in the time of Josephus;

• misunderstandings by Josephus in his use of the letters that demonstrate an ignorance of practices alluded to in the letters that passed from usage in the Roman era;

• anachronistic references by Josephus that demonstrate a failure to understand the original context of the correspondence;

• other examples of genuine and forged correspondence used as controls in Bickerman's argument;

• the extraordinary difficulties a forger would have had in getting specific details correct -- formulae appropriate to a narrow geographical and chronological range; accurate dating despite many potential chronological traps such as years beginning differently from one city to another, -- as they are in the correspondence cited by Josephus.

Only one and a half of these items (#5 in its entirety, and #1 if we change "known in the time of Josephus" to "known any time after the purported time period of the original") really goes to demonstrate that the embedded source belongs to the correct time period. The others serve only to demonstrate that Josephus himself was not the forger; they do not rule out a forgery before he got his hands on it.

[neilgodfrey]

I am hesitant to treat these documents that were "quoted" in secondary sources as somehow primary sources, regardless of how strongly a modern critic may argue that it has the look and feel of an authentic document.

We often encounter letters and documents that are quoted as if from an earlier generation and as if they are copies of historical sources -- and of course the rule of thumb is to treat those quotations as artificial as the speeches concocted and put into the mouths of historical persons. They usually serve some narrative function so have to be treated prima facie as narrative inventions.

But that's not what Bickerman is doing or what NPL is referring to here -- as Ben reminds us.

[DCHindley]

I think it may be worth pointing out something about the following list from the OP:

Bickerman goes into very detailed argument to establish a reasonable case that the historian is indeed justified in using Josephus's record as a genuine copy of original correspondence dating from the time of Antiochus IV. His arguments is based on several lines of evidence:

• archaeological evidence supporting originality of the correspondence in Josephus's work and providing details highly unlikely to have been known in the time of Josephus;

• misunderstandings by Josephus in his use of the letters that demonstrate an ignorance of practices alluded to in the letters that passed from usage in the Roman era;

• anachronistic references by Josephus that demonstrate a failure to understand the original context of the correspondence;

• other examples of genuine and forged correspondence used as controls in Bickerman's argument;

• the extraordinary difficulties a forger would have had in getting specific details correct -- formulae appropriate to a narrow geographical and chronological range; accurate dating despite many potential chronological traps such as years beginning differently from one city to another, -- as they are in the correspondence cited by Josephus.

Only one and a half of these items (#5 in its entirety, and #1 if we change "known in the time of Josephus" to "known any time after the purported time period of the original") really goes to demonstrate that the embedded source belongs to the correct time period. The others serve only to demonstrate that Josephus himself was not the forger; they do not rule out a forgery before he got his hands on it.

unt

We often encounter letters and documents that are quoted as if from an earlier generation and as if they are copies of historical sources -- and of course the rule of thumb is to treat those quotations as artificial as the speeches concocted and put into the mouths of historical persons. They usually serve some narrative function so have to be treated prima facie as narrative inventions.

But that's not what Bickerman is doing or what NPL is referring to here -- as Ben reminds us.

Gentlemen,

What we have here is a bandwagon.

What this approach does is blur the distinction between a relic from the period, which is where I draw the line on "primary source," and something that is *probably, to a fair or even certain* degree, a *presentation* of a decree by a secondary source. As are all narrative *presentations,* it is subject to manipulation to advance an author's agenda.

Being aware of these things is all we can reasonably do as interpreters or history. However, an accurate-looking representation of a decree is not the same as an actual surviving relic giving the decree and made in the period when it was issued. Yet even then, how do we know that the decree was not originally published (usually by stele) in multiple languages, or in multiple steles with different wording to suit the treaty relationships of regions that were affected by it? We don't know.

I think I remember encountering the supposed actual decrees of several Persian kings when I created a tabular comparison of the overlapping texts of MT/Lxx Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, and 1 & 2 Esdras. In the quite different environments from which these versions/translations originated, they couldn't be more different. All of them try, to an extent, to make it look and feel like what his readers might expect of such documents, but they couldn't be more different.

http://www.textexcavation.com/documents ... ehezra.pdf

So, despite the utmost respect I have for you both, and for many of the scholars you favor, I do not jump on bandwagons.

DCH

[neilgodfrey]

So, despite the utmost respect I have for you both, and for many of the scholars you favor, I do not jump on bandwagons.

DCH

DCH, I think you are arguing against those who agree with you, but without having paused to take in what they have actually argued.

I don't know where any bandwagon comes into it. I took Bickerman's discussion as a one-off and something entirely new to me. The so-called primary sources in Chronicles, Ezra & Nehemiah etc are clearly not primary sources according to Bickerman and NPL, as I thought should be clear from what has been covered till now in this discussion.

I also toned down my language in the ensuing discussion to speak of "verbatim intellectual content" of a primary source as distinct from the primary source itself.

Moreover, NPL is very strong in many of his writings on the physical nature of a primary source and that was why his comment about a primary source being found embedded in a secondary source stood out, or struck me enough as something very unusual -- not a bandwagon -- and in this context worth commenting on.

It is opposition to bandwagons as found among biblical scholars that have led me to point out here what are the standard methods of historical research among those most dedicated to history per se. (I also reject PM bandwagons that appear to have discovered subjectivity in sources and researcher questions when those things have been with the staid old field of history since Ranke.)

[DCHindley]

Gentlemen,

Oops!

Couldn't see the forest for the trees, it seems. Ben also contacted me off-list to say pretty much the same thing.

Unfortunately, it can be difficult for me to follow long convoluted threads. My interest in the subject is there, but my ability to focus is no longer honed to a razor edge (some might say it was never so honed).

Perhaps it was the abundance of bullet points that Ben cited from the OP that made me think that he was defending the identification of that decree as a primary source, when he was actually doing so to show agreement that such a case can never be made 100%. That's my paraphrase, anyways.

Bandwagons do exist, though. The case of Stephen C. Carlson's book Gospel Hoax comes to mind. If one was lurking on Crosstalk2 when the book 1st came out, the buzz was very strong to the effect that Carlson had brilliantly and decisively "unmasked" this "hoax" and agreed with his characterization of the person who published the discovery of the fragment (of what purported to be a letter from Clement of Alex. containing a snippet of a "secret Gospel" of Mark), Morton Smith, as a "bald swindler!"

Carlson's book was not deep and profound, more like an ad hominum attack to kill the messenger, with the supposed "clues" Smith had left being, IMHO, childish and self-serving. People are *still* 100% convinced that Smith was *really* promoting a homosexual agenda designed to destroy the Christian faith, I guess because this portrayal confirms their own personal beliefs. Oye! Almost EVERYONE, including many avowedly moderate and skeptically minded scholars, were beating drums and lighting tiki-torches in order to march up to Frankenstein's castle.

"It's pronounced 'Fronk-en-steen!'" yells the mad doctor from a window in his castle tower as the mob advances. Actually, Smith did not dignify the name calling with a retort, although he did respond to substantive criticisms, but why let that get in the way of my story-telling?

So, my apologies for over-reacting.

Anyone remember Alvin Toffler's book Future Shock? It predicted exactly this kind of mass resistance to overwhelming and disparate information by circling wagons to fight a life or death battle for survival.

DCH