Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Discussion about the New Testament, apocrypha, gnostics, church fathers, Christian origins, historical Jesus or otherwise, etc.
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rgprice
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Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by rgprice »

I'm dealing with an issue where one scene appears to be borrowed from another scene. Once scene is more complex and imaginative than the other. I'm looking for something that talks about principle that more complex scenes are generally considered to have been copied and elaborated upon from less complex scenes. Anyone know of a good source I can cite for the use of this principle?
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Irish1975
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by Irish1975 »

This thread from Prof. Mark Bilby seems relevant
vocesanticae wrote: Tue Sep 15, 2020 10:49 pm Hi Ben,

Thank you so much for the question and the constructive feedback. I'll take another look at the Aesop quote/reference in 4.23. Don't want to overstate my case there.

About the Signals Triangulation Theorem, this is *exactly* what I wanted to be the start of this discussion, because only when we can agree on legitimate, verifiable, reproducible scientific methods for our work on ancient texts (i.e., discrete data strata) can we expect to come to logically sound, historically legitimate conclusions about those data strata.

It's not simply about tracing the *direction* of signal transmissions. It's about tracing the process of how signals are synthesized over time (the third signal transmission type), and coupling this with triangulation (the basic principle for locating anything in space as well as time), to ensure independent transmission of two other signal types. The third type is the key, but it has to work in concert with the other two. The core of the theorem for sequencing texts is that synthesizing only goes forward in time, *never* backwards. Like our DNA, our speech and thought patterns are combinations of what came before. We can never give birth to the earlier combinatory signal sets that are our parents or grandparents. They can only give birth to us, and we to our children, and so on. Evolution isn't just the basic principle of life; it is how all signaling works. Evolution can be degradation or evolution of traits that are disadvantageous, but there is and can never be de-evolution.

For example, if I gave you three statements, how would you order them sequentially as to when they first emerged in history and how they are related to each other?

"May the schwartz be with you."
"The schwartz, the force, same difference."
"May the force be with you.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by Ben C. Smith »

rgprice wrote: Sat Jan 09, 2021 1:14 pm I'm dealing with an issue where one scene appears to be borrowed from another scene. Once scene is more complex and imaginative than the other. I'm looking for something that talks about principle that more complex scenes are generally considered to have been copied and elaborated upon from less complex scenes. Anyone know of a good source I can cite for the use of this principle?
Pride & Prejudice is a complex, detailed, intricate Regency novel. Bride & Prejudice is a modern Bollywood romantic comedy derived and simplified from Jane Austen's classic. How would your proposed criterion for direction of dependence deal with this kind of thing? Would it apply only to ancient literature and not to modern or something? Is there some nuance in what you mean by complexity that would render this and innumerable other examples of complex literature being remade into something far simpler null and void for your purposes?
rgprice
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by rgprice »

What I'm talking about is this, from RMP:
We need to invoke the fundamental historical-critical axiom that in any choice between a more or less spectacular version of the same event, the less spectacular is preferred since if the more colorful were first available we cannot account for the fabrication of the more mundane.

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 25)
I'm looking for where RMP is getting this from.
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Ben C. Smith
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by Ben C. Smith »

rgprice wrote: Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:44 pm What I'm talking about is this, from RMP:
We need to invoke the fundamental historical-critical axiom that in any choice between a more or less spectacular version of the same event, the less spectacular is preferred since if the more colorful were first available we cannot account for the fabrication of the more mundane.

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 25)
I'm looking for where RMP is getting this from.
For the first part, a story being spectacular and a story being complex are not the same thing. I could write a very complex story about something perfectly ordinary or a very simple story about something spectacular.

For the second part, depending on what is meant by color or mundanity, I would suggest that these aspects may be a function of the storytelling ability of the author rather than of the direction of dependence. A good storyteller can take a mundane story and make it colorful; a bad storyteller can take a colorful story and make it mundane.
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Irish1975
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by Irish1975 »

RMP is still alive and I believe he answers questions.
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mlinssen
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by mlinssen »

rgprice wrote: Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:44 pm What I'm talking about is this, from RMP:
We need to invoke the fundamental historical-critical axiom that in any choice between a more or less spectacular version of the same event, the less spectacular is preferred since if the more colorful were first available we cannot account for the fabrication of the more mundane.

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 25)
I'm looking for where RMP is getting this from.
That argument can be found in pretty much any work dealing with direction of dependence, mostly found in discussion of the Synoptic Problem but also used when, for instance, discussing the relation between Thomas and the Synoptics. The shorter and simpler version is most likely to be original

And yes, given that criterion, all of Thomas would be very original indeed - but that is just a general rule really

:cheeky:
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Re: Looking for citation about textual borrowing

Post by mlinssen »

mlinssen wrote: Thu Jan 14, 2021 8:31 am
rgprice wrote: Sat Jan 09, 2021 3:44 pm What I'm talking about is this, from RMP:
We need to invoke the fundamental historical-critical axiom that in any choice between a more or less spectacular version of the same event, the less spectacular is preferred since if the more colorful were first available we cannot account for the fabrication of the more mundane.

Price, Robert M.. The Amazing Colossal Apostle: The Search for the Historical Paul (p. 25)
I'm looking for where RMP is getting this from.
That argument can be found in pretty much any work dealing with direction of dependence, mostly found in discussion of the Synoptic Problem but also used when, for instance, discussing the relation between Thomas and the Synoptics. The shorter and simpler version is most likely to be original

And yes, given that criterion, all of Thomas would be very original indeed - but that is just a general rule really

:cheeky:
You'll find Kloppenborg's piece interesting: A New Synoptic Problem: Mark Goodacre and Simon Gathercole on Thomas

http://jnt.sagepub.com/content/36/3/199

Both reject—rightly in my view—the older arguments for the independence of Thomas that appeal to supposed unidirectional ‘laws’ of development in the Jesus tradition, whereby shorter formulations are always prior to longer versions

Can't use that argument of course! All of Thomas would be earlier than the canonicals that way.
It's funny to see how Goodacre does use the criterion, only to conclude that Thomas derives from an other source - which one that would be, is never mentioned alas

Gathercole restricts himself to those Thomasine sayings that have both a Markan and either a Matthaean or Lukan parallel, so that one is able to isolate Matthaean/Lukan redaction of Mark and to determine whether Thomas betrays knowledge of this redaction. This avoids the impressionistic form-critical arguments that have sometimes been invoked in the past, according to which Thomas’s version is simpler, more direct, or less ‘developed’ than its Synoptic cousins, and therefore earlier. The consequence of the strictures that Gathercole imposes on himself is that only 20 sayings are the subject of intensive analysis: Gos. Thom. 4, 5, 9, 13, 14, 20, 22, 25, 31, 33, 35, 41, 44, 47, 65, 66, 71, 99, 100 and 104 (149-55)

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