Mike Bird posted a list of the 10 worst ideas in c20 NT scholarship over the weekend. By my reckoning just over half of them (listed below with Bird’s numbering) are at least in part about already decided or derived models being imposed on the data.
1. The Gnostic Redeemer Myth
3. The Cynic Jesus
4. The Fourth Gospel as Hellenistic Dogma in a Christian garb
5. Judaism as uniformly legalistic
6. “Early Catholicism”
7. Pre-Christian Gnosticism
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity
My guess is that 100 years from now, when someone looks back at our century, most of the bad ideas will also come from imposing models on the data, and I suspect that more than a few will be associated with forms of social-scientific criticism. I don’t mean to dismiss it by saying that, just note the temptation to model-imposition of an approach which lacks one of the primary tools of anthropology (participant observation) and two of the primary tools of sociology (survey and interview). In both disciplines such empirical research can query the model. In the use of those disciplines by historians and biblical scholars, it’s decidedly easier to massage the non-resisting data into the contours of the model.
I would also say that three and a half items on Bird’s list owe something to what I see as an undue attention to the sayings tradition in Jesus research.
2. Form Criticism
3. The Cynic Jesus
8. Palestinian Christianity vs. Hellenistic Christianity
11. The postulation of a “Q”or “Johannine” community [the half item]
I wanted in a comment to take it a bit further, by losing the idea of “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” which in my view predates c20, and putting in instead either the idea of Aramaisms or the criterion of double dissimilarity. I was taken to task in the comments by James Crossley (what can you expect from a Man U fan?) who sees Aramaisms as absolutely vital for historical Jesus research. (Update at 21:41 — I may have misunderstood what James was saying, see the comments on Mike Bird’s post.)As I pointed out there:
I am not remotely convinced that Aramaisms have any significant place in historical Jesus research. First, I think that the language of the Septuagint distorts the whole question. Second, I can imagine a Jesus-saying that actually enters the Greek tradition well-translated by a fluently bilingual follower of Jesus showing little trace of the source language. Thirdly I can imagine a saying of Jesus made up by an Aramaic speaking follower.
In short, I think they are virtually useless as a criterion of historicity. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought that this, together with my suggestion about the negative use of the criterion double dissimilarity (to rule sayings out), is really a protest about privileging the sayings as a route to the Jesus of history.
First, privileging sayings gives more weight to the hypothetical and reconstructed Q, and to Thomas, whose dating, and geographical and theological placing are seriously problematic, than it does to the canonical gospels, because “saying collections” are understood to be the more primitive and therefore implicitly reliable sources.
Second, privileging sayings already implies certain answers to the question that are far more likely to emerge with Jesus as sage, prophet and teacher, than as exorcist, healer, wonder-worker, Messiah (whatever that means). The answers begin to be presupposed by the methodology.
Finally, the gospel tradition itself bears some witness to the ways in which some sayings at least were moved around or collected together. Sayings come with less historical context and information that narrative units, either those narrative units that reach their high-point in a saying, or those which report deeds. Consequently sayings naturally carry less implicit historical information, and re-contextualising them can easily shift their meaning.
Doing what Sanders does with some verve, or Meier with little verve but great thoroughness, of moving from contexts to content, seems to me far more appropriate, and far less prone to fanciful reconstruction. What I really want to replace Bird’s item 5 “Judaism as uniformly legalistic” with is this: “Making jigsaws of the sayings of Jesus and calling it history”
6 responses so far ↓
1 Angela Erisman // Jun 26, 2007 at 9:52 pm
Hi Doug,
I wonder if you aren’t a little hard on “model-driven” scholarship? In truth, there is nothing but model-driven scholarship. Texts don’t speak for themselves. Even the presupposition that they do (New Criticism) is a model and involves assumptions about what texts are and how they work.
That said, I think you make a good point. I would simply frame it differently. The problem isn’t whether we use models (social science or otherwise), but HOW we use them. They can be wonderful tools with which to interpret the text, provide questions and insights we might never have thought to ask otherwise. But, like any tool, they can be wielded inappropriately and used to abuse. I hear you talking about the abuse of models, and with that I heartily concur. While all scholarship is driven by models and assumptions, there is such a thing as forcing data into a paradigm it doesn’t fit.
I think the difference in framing is important. Because we all use models and employ assumptions, it’s important to be aware of them precisely so that we don’t abuse them. And so that we know when they’ve stopped being useful and it’s time to move on to something else.
2 Angela Erisman // Jun 26, 2007 at 10:03 pm
Clarification: “Texts don’t speak for themselves” sounds kind of funny, because, well, they’re made up of words. What mean is that the meaning of a text is dependent on context. How we frame the context is important and contributes to what we understand the text to mean. And we frame the context based on models. Even if the model is as simple as something like: “God wrote it,” or “texts exist and mean something independently of authors and readers” (New Criticism), or “authors and readers both participate in the creation of meaning, mediated by a text” (reception theory).
Sorry if I made a statement that sounded really stupid. Here’s the context for what I meant.
3 doug // Jun 26, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Angela, you made me re-read what I’d written to see where I’d said “texts speak for themselves” - and I can’t actually find it. I’m glad about that, because I don’t belive that texts do speak for themselves. My point was not that models are wrong, but that a too enthusiastic attachment to the model imposes it on the data, and discards or ignores that which doesn’t fit. In my view, model and data belong in a heuristic spiral in which date can query the model, the model interpret the data, and so on, until what seems to be a “best-fit” emerges. And then start over again as needed. The work of the interpreter / reader / hearer is key.
I was also noting here that the methodology used by the social sciences to query the data is simply unavailable to historical application of those models, and that should make us doubly aware of the danger of what I call “model-imposition.” (By which I mean the Procrustean bed approach to the texts.)
I suspect our views are not very far apart.
4 Angela Erisman // Jun 27, 2007 at 4:16 am
Hi Doug,
Yes, we’re pretty much on the same page, here. But I so often encounter the “let the texts speak for themselves and theory is evil” approach that perhaps I am a bit trigger happy when it comes to these things.
You make a great point about watching out for models that may be anachronistic as-is when applied to data from an ancient context. These can often be tweaked to account for some of the historical differences. I’m doing just this for a project I’m currently working on, and it’s exciting to be both inspired by what a model can generate and to think through the differences, too.
5 James Crossley // Jul 2, 2007 at 11:51 pm
Sorry about the dealy (floods, admin, downright laziness) but, yes, I did mean the Aramaisms in the weakest sense (referring to the SofM problem). I think there is more to be siad on the issue but it’s late…!
6 AKMA // Feb 5, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Angela joys my heart by suggesting this, and Doug by affirming it. Thank you for perking up my morning.
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