dlester@cs.man.ac.uk (David Lester) (06/25/91)
In article <Jun.22.21.32.02.1991.18265@athos.rutgers.edu> conan@sizzlean.berkeley.edu (David Cruz-Uribe)... > [... comments upon a discussion of the authorship of New Testement Epistles.] It can often be helpful, when trying to take the heat out of these sorts of discussions, to look at the rise of critical methods in other fields. I suppose that it goes back to Greece, as most of these things do, and to a couple of poems: the Iliad and the Odyssey. Traditionally, both were ascribed to Homer; the first is a tragedy describing the critical action of the Trojan War, the second is a "comedy" and describes the difficult return of one of the warriors from the war. By the way, if you haven't read them already I recommend that you do. [I'm currently trying to work them into the "Foundations of CS" course I'm teaching next year, any suggestions gratefully received.] Eventually, by about 400BC, the greek city states had made the transition from intermittant civilisation to a more or less continuous one. My definition of civilisation is fairly niave: civilisation occurs when agricultural surpluses lead to leisure time for at least some of the population. In this leisure time people naturally started to ask questions. Let's start with a simple one: where is Troy? At that time no one knew exactly. This might lead an adventurous mind to ask various other questions: when did the war occur, and where are the other places mentioned? So far we have asked questions that implicitly accepted that the events described really occurred. Much more interesting questions were finally asked: did thousands of people spend ten years fighting over a woman? Could the same man have been responsible for writing both poems? Are there really cyclops? Of course the Greek intelligensia failed to resolve these issues, the general consensus being: yes, yes, and probably in answer to the above questions. Just like today there were mavericks who would insist that the answers were no, no and no. It is interesting to try to categorise these questions: perhaps we might agree that the first is about historical accuracy, the second is about authorship, and the third about "common sense". To give you an idea of the difficulty of asking the final question, it would be a little like asking someone today whether they thought that there was such a thing as gravity. It sounds such a dumb question! With the eclipse of Greek culture by the Romans, leisure time was spent more on imperial expansion rather than philosophical speculation, and with the collapse of the empire there was rather less leisure time in Europe. It's ironic that just at the time Aquinas was puting the finishing touches to his synthesis of Aristotle and Theology, the boys at my alma mater were busy preparing the the ground for a comeback of the critical method. John Dunn and Bill Ockham had both started asking real questions again, and insisting that their students do the same. [Sad comment about real questions and students today deleted.] To get an idea of how revolutionary this seemed to their contempories you might try reading the fictional account in Eco's "The Name of the Rose". Alternatively, the contemporary joke: "I've been sent to Oxenford to study heresy", might give you a clue. In Renaissance Italy, time was again being made to ask questions about the Classics. Only now there was only a limited amount of material on which to make judgements, and even that material might have been corrupted by copyists. Stylistic questions began to be asked: could the same man have written the Iliad and the Odyssey? Once again no conclusive answers were given. For a light-hearted account of the debate circa 1700, see Swift's "Battle of the Books"; his view of "criticks" (sic) is given in "Tale of a Tub", which is also an entertaining read. What's the situation today? Well, Ilium has been discovered; it has had cycles of fabulous wealth and destruction, one of which would fit quite well into the suppossed time of the Trojan War. And that's it as far as history goes. We just can't answer the (historical) question: did thousands of men fight a war for ten years over a woman? However, given some of the insanities that have occurred in history, I find this an entirely plausible reason for a war. Did Clytemnestra murder her husband after he returned? Consider what you would do if your husband said "I'm just popping out with the boys", and didn't return for 10 years. Are there really cyclops? No one really asks that question these days. And, if you asked me personally, whether the same man wrote both poems, I'd have to unask the question. In my view both of them are the product of a 500 year oral tradition, followed by over 2000 years of rewritings and copying. It is hard under the cicumstances to think of either poem being "written" at all. Furthermore, so far we have just been talking of the text; but that is just a lot of greek symbols on paper. What do they actually mean? A simple example: libations. Over and over again the protagonists in the narrative pour out libations. To understand what is being said we have to know something about the society in which the story is set. We must be particularly careful about reading our own values and interpretations into the story, but of course we need to do precisely this in order to make the story come alive. So should the translation of libations be: (a) spilt some wine on the ground, or (b) praised God, by celebrating communion. [Well, I exaggerate a little, but I hope you see the point.] So after a minor digression, let's get back to the Bible. >What bothers me the most however, is that this scholarship is then >used to "edit" the Bible to support particular conclusions. This has been a particularly common technique throughout Church History. The most famous example is that of Luther, whose German translation did not include the Epistle of James, as it was "an epistle of straw". >I would appreciate any thoughts which could help me clarify my thinking >on this issue. > >Yours in Christ, Let's try a little test: (a) Is it permissable to ask critical questions about the classics? (b) What techniques is it permissable to use, in answering critical questions about the classics? (c) What criteria will we use to evaluate the answers to critical questions of the classics? And another: (a) Is it permissable to ask critical questions about the Bible? (b) What techniques is it permissable to use, in answering critical questions about the Bible? (c) What criteria will we use to evaluate the answers to critical questions of the Bible In my view it is perfectly acceptable to come to entirely different answers to the parallel sets of questions. One should not, however, expect others to automatically accept the criteria you use to distinguish the two sets of problems. ["Why are the answers to the two sets of questions different?" is itself a critical (or perhaps meta-critical) question.] Only you can really decide these issues. I should finally come clean about my position: I think that critical questions have very little relevance to Christian Faith. One has only to ask: "What is the Greatest Commandment?" and to read the reply in Mark 12:28ff to realise how unimportant critical questions are. {\it in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,} David Lester, Manchester University, UK BTW, if you reread John Graves article, I think that you will find that you objected to Mr Graves comments, rather than anything Professor Hopper wrote.