Was Herod replaced by Pilate in virtue of the same reason why Jesus was replaced by John as giver of grace?

[klewis]

My main point is that I am convinced it is perilous to explain only one datum among these texts without also either (A) making sure to explain other data which seems related or (B) making sure that those other data belong to texts which are too late to matter. I do not think there is any certainty to be had on option B in this case, so option A ought to be exercised: explaining Luke alone (by way of Acts) leaves open very real questions involving Ignatius, the Ascension of Isaiah, the gospel of Peter, and perhaps other texts.

That is a powerful point you make.

[neilgodfrey]

My main point is that I am convinced it is perilous to explain only one datum among these texts without also either (A) making sure to explain other data which seems related or (B) making sure that those other data belong to texts which are too late to matter. I do not think there is any certainty to be had on option B in this case, so option A ought to be exercised: explaining Luke alone (by way of Acts) leaves open very real questions involving Ignatius, the Ascension of Isaiah, the gospel of Peter, and perhaps other texts.

That is a powerful point you make.

I can't help but suspect that these sorts of exercises are unique to "biblical studies" (and less scholarly pursuits). We have lots of data and someone tries to imagine a scenario that connects lots of the dots and it all looks fine until someone points out that there are more dots to be connected ... so then a new scenario is imagined to connect the extra dots, etc etc etc etc

But how does the scenario find justification? Is it not merely an idea that can connect lots of dots -- but the idea comes from us, and from our inferences from this or that little bit (or a very few little bits) of the data.

Is not the problem here apparent?

In what other field of historical inquiry do we find such an approach?

[klewis]

My main point is that I am convinced it is perilous to explain only one datum among these texts without also either (A) making sure to explain other data which seems related or (B) making sure that those other data belong to texts which are too late to matter. I do not think there is any certainty to be had on option B in this case, so option A ought to be exercised: explaining Luke alone (by way of Acts) leaves open very real questions involving Ignatius, the Ascension of Isaiah, the gospel of Peter, and perhaps other texts.

That is a powerful point you make.

I can't help but suspect that these sorts of exercises are unique to "biblical studies" (and less scholarly pursuits). We have lots of data and someone tries to imagine a scenario that connects lots of the dots and it all looks fine until someone points out that there are more dots to be connected ... so then a new scenario is imagined to connect the extra dots, etc etc etc etc

But how does the scenario find justification? Is it not merely an idea that can connect lots of dots -- but the idea comes from us, and from our inferences from this or that little bit (or a very few little bits) of the data.

Is not the problem here apparent?

In what other field of historical inquiry do we find such an approach?

Biblical studies is full of whacked out ideas, so I can understand your hesitation. The approach I use and coined is Genetic Literary Reconstruction (and the only one that practices it, so that should tell you that what I say, should be suspect) which is similar to Genetic Criticism. Where as in Genetic criticism, the critic examines the life and previous editions, drafts, and other sources, of the manuscript and derives a story of how it got there. In Genetic Literary Criticism, we have the sources, such as Luke contains most of Mark, texts derived from the Hebrew Scriptures, and other known sources. There is literary pattern that these authors write which makes it possible to reconstruct the order that a document was written in. The pattern is in the form of Hebrew poetry. For example, Luke-Acts is comprised of one giant simple parallel, two lists of times in the same order. Genesis-Exodus is composed as one giant chiasmus / inverted parallel (two lists in opposite order of each other).

Genetic Literary Criticism assumes that when a parallel is written between two passages such as 'A' and 'B' they were written as a well formed passage. In this example, when the author forms a parallel with 'A' and another section which we will call 'C', the parallel formed between 'A' and 'B' will be malformed. The same process of forming parallels internal to the work is also used in forming parallels from other works, such as Mark, the Hebrew scriptures, and Q, in the case of Luke. The process of reconstructing prior drafts is discovering the order and how the external works were added and the order that the internal parallels were added. This form of writing allows us to create a logical order of construction and thereby allows us to produce approximate drafts of a book.

Once again, I apologize to everyone for the marketing of the book.

If you wish to see the process in minute detail, my book "How John Wrote the Book of Revelation: From Concept to Publication" shows how revelation was written from the first line of the text to the last parallel. The book is 380 pages detailing the process and each of the "approximation" drafts (these drafts show the source material and the text of Revelation today).On Kindle and Google books it is outrageously priced at $2.00. The paperback is $18.95 but you can find it every now and then for $5.00 or so.

This is a review that Dr. Robert M. Price gave on my book.

Kim Mark Lewis’s book How John Wrote the Book of Revelation: From Concept to Publication is itself a revelation! How nobody else ever came up with this I don’t know. It seems so obvious once he points it out! The author frames a new approach, a new methodology, enabling us to discern distinct stages of composition in the Apocalypse of John. Sure, the late, great Raymond E. Brown outlined a series of stages in the composition of John’s Gospel, but that’s not what’s new and compelling here. Essentially it’s this: All careful readers know that Revelation is not simply an eyewitness account of a series of mind-blasting visions. That is a fictive premise. That doesn’t mean it’s some kind of fraud; that’s just part of the literary genre of an apocalypse, of which there are many, both ancient (e.g., Daniel, 4 Ezra, the Apocalypse of Peter) and modern (e.g., Dante’s Divine Comedy and Dickens’s A Christmas Carol). Revelation is instead a fantastically elaborate tapestry woven with threads borrowed from many biblical books, especially Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel. Yes, that quickly becomes evident to the serious reader. What Kim has done is to distinguish broken patterns in the text. That is, he zeroes in on all the allusions/quotations from any single Old Testament source text and is able to show how these verses look as if they were used by the author to create, e.g., a chiasm, a ABC-C’B’A’ pattern, an initial sequence of words and ideas counting down, then counting back up again. (This is a common stylistic device in the New Testament.) But it only works in Revelation once you isolate the relevant verses. And the fact that it does work implies it is no coincidence, and that the intervening material must have been a subsequent addition by the same author, expanding his book. He was willing to sacrifice his original structural flourishes to accommodate new Old Testament material appropriate to the context. This material, too, may have been laid out in new patterns. In a still subsequent stage of revision, the author will have again felt free to obscure his previous structures in favor of the intended content.

This would have been much easier if John of Patmos had had access to a computer! But he didn’t. He couldn’t even have flipped back and forth between Old Testament passages to compare them, since there weren’t yet bound collections of biblical books like our modern Bibles. So how on earth did he manage it? Lewis explains how ancient writers often employed reusable wax writing tablets, placing them side by side. These would have contained earlier drafts of Revelation, simplifying his redactional task.

The technique Lewis sets forth enables us not only to track the progress of the Revelator’s work; by doing so, he is also able to demonstrate the evolution of major themes in the book. We do this all the time in redaction criticism of the gospels, comparing Mark’s text with Matthew’s and Luke’s rewrites of it. In this way, e.g., we can trace the progress of Christology from one gospel to another. Lewis enables us to make such comparisons between editions of a single work by a single author. The analytical tool he has fashioned in this book may prove to be of great value in reconstructing the composition history of other biblical writings as well. I can’t wait to see the results of that!

[neilgodfrey]

Thanks.