Methodology for Ancient Historical Sources

[ficino]

Very interesting, thanks. I haven't read White. I don't think I can engage his thought right now, to the extent that I can guess about it from what you offer above. All I can do is throw out the question, what are the practical implications for today's historian if s/he works from an assumption that all historical writing is rhetoric? The kind of question one brings to the text will determine the direction of one's inquiry. Can one, for example, propose a date for the writing of Daniel 8-12 (or 7-12) with some degree of plausibility?

If "it's all rhetoric," then I wonder whether we're going any further than Nietzsche's "there are no facts, only interpretations." If there are still subclasses within "rhetoric" in White's sense, then we seem able to do some things with inquiry into genre.

I should think that if a piece of writing is classified as rhetoric, it's another question whether an assertion in it that X occurred is true or false. How would inquiry into "invented traditions" proceed if we say that the tradition under study, and the product of the inquiry itself, are both species of rhetoric? ( cf. link to this subforum:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=345) I would think the "it's all rhetoric" claim would threaten to become merely trivially true and that we should be aware of how narratives are shaped and leave it at that.

Maybe we need another thread on rhetoric and history. I've gone down the path of postmodernism a little ways a few times and haven't ventured very far, and I'm surmising that White has gone a long way down that path, even perhaps blazed a trail into territory new in his day.

As to genre, a few test cases:
-- can we classify the book of Jonah as "fiction" in the modern sense, which teaches various lessons about God, the Jews, Gentiles, and other topics?
-- the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke - some sort of midrash or pesher?
-- percentage of the text devoted to speeches and dialogue. I've read that the Gospels represent far more speech of characters than do works typically considered "history." I.e. this is one argument that their genre is not history writing.
--

[DCHindley]

Very interesting, thanks. I haven't read White. I don't think I can engage his thought right now, to the extent that I can guess about it from what you offer above. All I can do is throw out the question, what are the practical implications for today's historian if s/he works from an assumption that all historical writing is rhetoric? The kind of question one brings to the text will determine the direction of one's inquiry. Can one, for example, propose a date for the writing of Daniel 8-12 (or 7-12) with some degree of plausibility?

If "it's all rhetoric," then I wonder whether we're going any further than Nietzsche's "there are no facts, only interpretations." If there are still subclasses within "rhetoric" in White's sense, then we seem able to do some things with inquiry into genre.

I should think that if a piece of writing is classified as rhetoric, it's another question whether an assertion in it that X occurred is true or false. How would inquiry into "invented traditions" proceed if we say that the tradition under study, and the product of the inquiry itself, are both species of rhetoric? ( cf. link to this subforum:
viewtopic.php?f=4&t=345) I would think the "it's all rhetoric" claim would threaten to become merely trivially true and that we should be aware of how narratives are shaped and leave it at that.

Maybe we need another thread on rhetoric and history. I've gone down the path of postmodernism a little ways a few times and haven't ventured very far, and I'm surmising that White has gone a long way down that path, even perhaps blazed a trail into territory new in his day.

"Rhetoric" has a somewhat negative implication, as if it denotes intent to deceive. The fact that narrative by its very nature employs plot elements, argumentative strategy and is even influenced by the writer's ideology does not negate the reality of the event(s) being interpreted. It does call into question the confidence we can put in the "facts" we "know" about past events. "Facts" tend to be interpreted evidence.

Hayden White generally categorizes agendas (at least for writers since the enlightenment) under the headings Anarchism, Radicalism, Conservatism and Liberalism. These agendas are often linked to the modes(s) of emplotment (Romantic, Tragic, Comic and Satiric) and argumentation (Formist, Mechanist, Organicist or Contextualist) employed by the historian to explain the evidence. Certain modes of emplotment or argumentation lend themselves better to some agendas than others.

Only a few poststructural historians go full out relativist, but these include influential reader-response critics, heavily favored by conservative critics, primarily because it puts the emphasis on the text and how it influenced the hearers, not so much on the historicity of what is related. Jacob Neusner has decided that it is bad form to try to get into the head of the writer to impute motive, we should only pay attention to how it is said, but I think this is because as a Rabbi he is "erecting a wall around torah." Steve Mason, who is hardly a conservative, has also found it hard to determine to his satisfaction what historical truth there may be behind Josephus' account because he feels that Josephus' rhetoric so completely obscures it. I am not willing to go that far. During the "Cold War" there were whole cadres of intelligence analysts who spent all their time deciphering the official statements and publications of Soviet media. I have to assume they got things correct a good portion of the time, despite the "official" rhetoric.

As to genre, a few test cases:
-- can we classify the book of Jonah as "fiction" in the modern sense, which teaches various lessons about God, the Jews, Gentiles, and other topics?
-- the Infancy Narratives in Matthew and Luke - some sort of midrash or pesher?
-- percentage of the text devoted to speeches and dialogue. I've read that the Gospels represent far more speech of characters than do works typically considered "history." I.e. this is one argument that their genre is not history writing.
--

I am drawing a blank at the moment. This will have to wait for later ...

DCH

[ficino]

Hayden White generally categorizes agendas (at least for writers since the enlightenment) under the headings Anarchism, Radicalism, Conservatism and Liberalism. These agendas are often linked to the modes(s) of emplotment (Romantic, Tragic, Comic and Satiric) and argumentation (Formist, Mechanist, Organicist or Contextualist) employed by the historian to explain the evidence. Certain modes of emplotment or argumentation lend themselves better to some agendas than others.

White sounds interesting. I'm trying to cope with so many scholars at the moment that I don't think I can detour into his schema, though! I do agree with your paragraph one.

Jacob Neusner has decided that it is bad form to try to get into the head of the writer to impute motive, we should only pay attention to how it is said, but I think this is because as a Rabbi he is "erecting a wall around torah."

Ha ha, love this!

Started as "train reading" a very interesting paper by Roman historian T.P. Wiseman, "Lying Historians: Seven Types of Mendacity," in Lies and Fiction in the Ancient World, edited by Wiseman and ancient philosophy guy Christopher Gill. Wiseman goes into things that ancient writers say about writers of history. Polybius comes off, in his view, as approximating the "write the truth" aspiration. He goes into ancient discussions of the role of rhetoric and the question, how much history writing is or is not a species of rhetoric. If I can summarize what he says, I'll post it. I wasn't able to find it on Google Books so didn't post a link.