Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Oh boy! This is one of my favourite questions . . .

Yes, there is an implicit "infantilizing" of ancient authors but it stems from ignorance of the way ancient literature was constructed. As children most of us probably wanted some favourite story to be true and we wished it so much we tried to kid ourselves into believing it so. As adults, and having had lots of practice, we get a bit smarter about wanting to believe certain things and manage to hide our motives from ourselves more skilfully.

Is the question raised in other fields of ancient historical inquiry? If so, is the context of that question and the expected course of the discussion the same as we encounter it in topics related to biblical studies?

I believe classicists and scholars of ancient history worked out the answer to the OP's question long ago: they know that they cannot get away with seriously proposing that they can, with reasonable probability, reconstruct historical events on the assumption that their written sources are reliable in essential details because it is most reasonable assume that those contents were inherited via oral tradition, across decades and even multiple generations, that originated with eyewitnesses to the events we think to reconstruct? They know they cannot even say that beneath the accumulation of oral fluff there is some essential core to believe happened. Those days are gone in the field of ancient history.

Classicists have learned to grow up and work at understanding how ancient texts were produced and made public and understand they are reading works of (in one sense) peers. They know that they cannot assume that an oral tradition fed a narrative into their texts - not even if the author wrote, "Following is a story that I heard from so-and-so." One prominent Roman author, Lucian, even made fun of the willingness of people to naively believe in what was written just because the authors said their stories were true.

The only way to seriously interpret a narrative (including deciding whether it contains genuine historical details within its narrative) is to check out the background and interests of the author, the literary culture of the time, the nature and construction of the contents of the text itself, and only after doing all of that and ticking all the right boxes can a researcher make evidence-based decisions on how much, if any, of the contents have a historical basis.

Without that process, it is wishful thinking and a bit of laziness that might tempt a researcher to assume "there must be oral tradition" behind it all making it true. If that is a default position one might say that it is the researcher who is regressing to infantile days of wishing a story to be true and in turn projecting that infantile world on to the texts and their authors.

There's nothing wrong, infantile or otherwise, with a creative writer drawing on entertaining stories that are making the rounds. The primary guild fantasy is that there was some sort of quality control that ensured the accuracy of these hypothetical oral stories about Jesus and his associates, so that when the gospel writers drew upon them, some trace of real history made its way into the canonical scriptures.

It is only a secondary guild fantasy, I think, that these same writers were also somehow incapable of making up any entertaining stories of their own, and relied exclusively on pre-existing, quality controlled stories, whether oral or from some no longer extant written source(s).

If so, would that make them infantile? I dunno, it sounds more like being portrayed as derivative to me. "Hacks" in contemporary American speech. Say it ain't so, Mark.

Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:53 pm So far, the only defense for its historicity I've seen, in any detail, is the Criterion of Embarrassment by invoking the embarrassment of Matthew, Luke, and John.

what do you think about the Gmirkin's case about the Book of Revelation justifying, in virtue of its anti-Roman pro-Zealot propaganda, the application of the criterion of embarrassment on the same Gospels, along the so-called disiepta membra (I think about Bermejo-Rubio's view here) betraying the oral tradition about a remembered seditious historical Jesus?

I think that it is the only historicist way worth of inquiry. A minimalist position on Jesus, one who gives up even to a seditious description of him, appears to me as basically indistinguishable from an agnostic/mythicist position.

Thanks in advance for any answer.

Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:53 pm Anyways, what do you think? Do appeals to things like oral tradition or hypothetical documents infantilize and deemphasize the creative powers of ancient authors?

This is definitely true. Also, given what you said in your post, I think you would enjoy my book, Deciphering the Gospels Proves Jesus Never Existed, because it touches on all of the issues that you raised.

But most certainly, conservative Christian theologians have "infantilized", or delegitimized, especially the writer of the Gospel of Mark, but really of the writers, because they want to turn the Gospel writers into mere scribes or chroniclers of traditions that existed outside of the minds of the writers. It is important for Christians that the Gospels are "records" of events/memories/teachings. Thus, they are loath to acknowledge the potential that elements of the Gospels are creative inventions of the writers.

But, so much of how I view the Gospels is as products of the creative invention of the writers. In other cases we see that the Gospels contains narrative elements that are responses to other written works, especially other Gospels. In other words, Gospels X says that Jesus did A, so the writer of Gospel Y has Jesus do something that contradicts A, indicating that A would be false.

Here what we see are not the records of traditions, but rather a literary process in which writers are building upon and responding to writers. Thus what we see over and over again in the Gospel is evidence that we are dealing primarily with literary development and the creative constructs of writers, not works that are records of teachings held by communities.

I agree with the OP with the serious problem in biblical studies with assumptions of oral tradition behind the gospels. Can't wait to see them blow their lid over the word infantilizing though. I disagree in that I believe the Pauline's are heavily interpolated. Robyn Walsh's latest book The Origins of Early Christian Literature takes on this problem and gives the authors due credit for their creativity.

Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Sun Dec 26, 2021 9:53 pmThe issue I have is that in the cases of like the Baptism of Jesus, they all still claim that this is historical but with no particularly good reason, and it bears all the same hallmarks as the Flight to Egypt or Slaughter of the Infants by Herod.

Yes, you are correct.

1. From the fact that there are Stories about "Jesus" written from Sources, it does not follow that these Source Stories were originally about "Jesus".
Even positing significant "Oral Tradition" cannot overcome this. Whoever writes "Jesus" first changes "Oral" to "Written" and that makes all the difference. Even Weber's "Verstehen" does not offer a Path to describing Veridical Experiences of Cultures though it is written and descriptive.
"Existence is not a Predicate, except when describing 'Jesus'". Ummm...No.

2. John 1: 2 - 3 (RSV):

[2] He was in the beginning with God;
[3] all things were made through him, and without him was not anything made that was made.

As soon as these written verses hit the Prologue, things change. "Jesus" is no longer an Itinerant Preacher, wandering around spouting vicious Aphorisms. He is the Son of God. Your point concerning the Imperial Court is essentially correct. This makes Discovery an Empirical Exercise and "Oral Tradition" becomes Guess-Work. Its utility is marginal.
***
Everyone here has books to recommend and I would recommend Jay Raskin's Christs and Christianities ( https://www.amazon.com/Evolution-Christ ... 1413497918 ) specifically because of your background in creative writing. Raskin's Background is in film-making and where there is an awkward piece in the Gospels, Jay has a ready replacement verse that makes more sense. Poster Neil is making good headway these days as well.

Best to you in your Discoveries.

CW

Chris Hansen wrote: ↑Mon Dec 27, 2021 8:39 am Robyn Walsh's book is actually one of my new favorite books and I hope will be paradigm shifting in the field. It was pretty amazing. My only real gripe is that she still thinks Q is a thing and her interpretation of Gal. 1:11-12 I think still weirdly just accepts Paul at his word and I think is a little uncritical. But other than those little quibbles, her work is pristine.

I'm hoping for a paradigm shift as well, looks like it's going to be a generational divide. The old guard takes the 'collectors of oral tradition approach' too much for granted (even the non-apologists) and robs the authors of agency.

perseusomega9 wrote: ↑Mon Dec 27, 2021 7:27 am I agree with the OP with the serious problem in biblical studies with assumptions of oral tradition behind the gospels. Can't wait to see them blow their lid over the word infantilizing though. I disagree in that I believe the Pauline's are heavily interpolated. Robyn Walsh's latest book The Origins of Early Christian Literature takes on this problem and gives the authors due credit for their creativity.

I liked Walsh’s book. It’s a relatively bold challenge to NT studies groupthink (though not as original as she seems to think; no mention of Brodie). Whereas Brodie is most interested in the NT re-writing of the LXX, Walsh looks for similarities with early empire Greco-Roman writers. The story of the widow of Ephesus in the Satyrica is great fun, and quite possibly a satire of the Easter stories (although she doesn’t definitely assert this).

But perseusomega9 raises a good point, relevant to the limits of Walsh’s model. Yes, we should think about authors in their real world 2nd century context. But there are no genuine authors in Jewish/Christian scripture! They are anonymous, pseudonymous, and constantly being edited and re-edited. The Gospels of Luke and John are almost certainly the work of many hands over many decades. So we have to be careful what we mean by “the author.”