I enjoyed listening to the Podcast where Mark Goodacre interviews Robyn Walsh on her book “The Origins of Early Christian Literature”. In these comments, while I am critical of many aspects of her thesis, it should be noted that I am not arguing for the complete historicity of everything in the Gospels or Acts.
Part of my criticism also stems from similarities between some of Walsh's treatment of material, and ones regarding in particular Frazer's Golden Bough, where I am coming from a background of study in the field of paganism and neopaganism rather than New Testament origins. The similarity of her treatment of texts and the methodology of Frazer struck me at once when listening to the podcast.
Walsh’s thesis, as I understand it, is that we should not understand the New Testament gospels and the book of Acts as having some kind of basis in believing communities, but instead should “understand the gospels as ‘normal’ ancient literature produced by educated, elite members of Greco-Roman society”
As she says, “The true origins of Christianity are in how its canonical texts were later collated, circulated, and established as authoritative, not in the mythic constructions we find described in the writings themselves”
And she says the history of the early church described in the Acts of the Apostles is an “invented tradition”.
Indeed, according to her, “the gospels are engaged in the same discourses, imagery, and style of creative elaboration as their peers” – those who wrote novelistic literature.
For Walsh, references to sources, e.g., “eyewitnesses” in the preface to the Gospel according to Luke, represent literary topoi (strategies of invention), and “specific characteristics of Jesus’ portrayal in the Synoptics need not be a function of oral tradition, but a reflection of the rational interests of elite, imperial writers”
Now there is nothing wrong with that as a working hypothesis, but the alternative one that there might in fact be eyewitnesses should surely not be discounted. Her approach which leads her to say that of the gospel writers that “there is only so much we can determine in terms of their motivations, conversation partners, audiences, and so forth” only holds together provided she can discount the preface to Luke’s gospel which states the author’s motivation.
To argue that the prefaces of Luke and Acts are strategies of invention does not explain why Luke should be so singular in making use of them, while Matthew and Mark do not.
Walsh’s thesis, as I understand it, is that we should not understand the New Testament gospels and the book of Acts as having some kind of basis in believing communities, but instead should “understand the gospels as ‘normal’ ancient literature produced by educated, elite members of Greco-Roman society”
As she says, “The true origins of Christianity are in how its canonical texts were later collated, circulated, and established as authoritative, not in the mythic constructions we find described in the writings themselves”
And she says the history of the early church described in the Acts of the Apostles is an “invented tradition”.
Indeed, according to her, “the gospels are engaged in the same discourses, imagery, and style of creative elaboration as their peers” – those who wrote novelistic literature.
For Walsh, references to sources, e.g., “eyewitnesses” in the preface to the Gospel according to Luke, represent literary topoi (strategies of invention), and “specific characteristics of Jesus’ portrayal in the Synoptics need not be a function of oral tradition, but a reflection of the rational interests of elite, imperial writers”
Now there is nothing wrong with that as a working hypothesis, but the alternative one that there might in fact be eyewitnesses should surely not be discounted. Her approach which leads her to say that of the gospel writers that “there is only so much we can determine in terms of their motivations, conversation partners, audiences, and so forth” only holds together provided she can discount the preface to Luke’s gospel which states the author’s motivation.
To argue that the prefaces of Luke and Acts are strategies of invention does not explain why Luke should be so singular in making use of them, while Matthew and Mark do not.
Moreover, we have the strange phenomena whereby one author takes another's writing and reworks it, and another does the same, incorporating new material, and also adapting and taking from the other two. I have not yet seen an example of that in the ancient literature. Alternative, if we posit one author, then the rewrites attempt different styles which also seems strange.
The rewrite which Matthew makes to the empty tomb story in Mark addresses a criticism that the body had been stolen. Or are we to take it that this was added in line with other empty tomb stories and Matthew knew of those and added them in his novelistic account? Both seem plausible, one within stories circulating within a community, and the other with the framework of novelistic literature, and the community background cannot be discounted so easily as Walsh would like.
The Unknown Writers
“Writers need not be a part of a religious community in order to write about Jesus, for example, but they must be a part of a social network that is in a position to circulate or publish their works. Whether such a network also counts among its members what we might call “Christians” in part or in full is something the field will continue to interrogate. “
So where is this social network? Unlike other works cited as Greek or Roman novels, which for the most part have known authorship, the textual tradition makes it as certain as can be that the original writings had no ascription, which is very strange if they are writing in a social network of fellow writers.
Moreover, when the first historical documents mention all or parts of the gospels, we find them within the Christian communities, and not with any other social network of fellow writers. How did they move from being novels within a social network to their use within the early Christian communities if they were not intended in the first place for that readership?
Walsh’s statement that “specific characteristics of Jesus’ portrayal in the Synoptics need not be a function of oral tradition, but a reflection of the rational interests of elite, imperial writers” is an interesting hypothesis if there were no Christian communities, but we know from Paul’s letters, the later Pastoral epistles, and the individuals we may identify as “the early Church fathers” (such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr etc), that were was a Christian community in which the person of Jesus played an important role.
It would seem that for gospels which were essentially mostly novelistic fictions to be incorporated into the Christian communities, there must have first been enough overlap that there was nothing which obviously contradicted those communities, and then directed their usage of them. Secondly, enough time to have passed for no eyewitnesses to Jesus to contradict the broad outline of the narratives, or eyewitnesses with insufficient power within the communities to displace them if they were seen as what in effect were pious fictions.
Rather than the “Big Bang” theory of Christian origins, Walsh seems to have provided just as problematic account of the gospels when they fell, fully formed, into the traditions of the early Christian communities and were accepted and assimilated with ease. By removing the community as the locus for the writers, the community then has to become the terminus for the writers’ stories.
By giving up the idea of “communities” associated with the gospels at their origin (as stated above), she faces the problem of how they ended up being associated with Christian communities and no other g social networks afterwards. The distance she posits as possible between writers and communities is very problematic. And we know from Paul that the core traditions of the early communities had the major points of crucifixion, resurrection, Lord's supper which were written before the gospels and part of the tradition Paul inherited.
“Writers need not be a part of a religious community in order to write about Jesus, for example, but they must be a part of a social network that is in a position to circulate or publish their works. Whether such a network also counts among its members what we might call “Christians” in part or in full is something the field will continue to interrogate. “
So where is this social network? Unlike other works cited as Greek or Roman novels, which for the most part have known authorship, the textual tradition makes it as certain as can be that the original writings had no ascription, which is very strange if they are writing in a social network of fellow writers.
Moreover, when the first historical documents mention all or parts of the gospels, we find them within the Christian communities, and not with any other social network of fellow writers. How did they move from being novels within a social network to their use within the early Christian communities if they were not intended in the first place for that readership?
Walsh’s statement that “specific characteristics of Jesus’ portrayal in the Synoptics need not be a function of oral tradition, but a reflection of the rational interests of elite, imperial writers” is an interesting hypothesis if there were no Christian communities, but we know from Paul’s letters, the later Pastoral epistles, and the individuals we may identify as “the early Church fathers” (such as Clement of Rome, Ignatius, Justin Martyr etc), that were was a Christian community in which the person of Jesus played an important role.
It would seem that for gospels which were essentially mostly novelistic fictions to be incorporated into the Christian communities, there must have first been enough overlap that there was nothing which obviously contradicted those communities, and then directed their usage of them. Secondly, enough time to have passed for no eyewitnesses to Jesus to contradict the broad outline of the narratives, or eyewitnesses with insufficient power within the communities to displace them if they were seen as what in effect were pious fictions.
Rather than the “Big Bang” theory of Christian origins, Walsh seems to have provided just as problematic account of the gospels when they fell, fully formed, into the traditions of the early Christian communities and were accepted and assimilated with ease. By removing the community as the locus for the writers, the community then has to become the terminus for the writers’ stories.
By giving up the idea of “communities” associated with the gospels at their origin (as stated above), she faces the problem of how they ended up being associated with Christian communities and no other g social networks afterwards. The distance she posits as possible between writers and communities is very problematic. And we know from Paul that the core traditions of the early communities had the major points of crucifixion, resurrection, Lord's supper which were written before the gospels and part of the tradition Paul inherited.
But if we assume the writers came from those kinds of communities (hence the core traditions and the use of them in their novels), then we are faced with the question of why the communities accepted those narratives. We know from the reception of the Acts of Paul and Thelca that even a pious fiction would be rejected as factual if known to be so, and it is not such a great historical distance between the gospels and that.
The Book of Acts in History
One of the most remarkable features of the book of Acts is the account of Paul and Gallio in Acts 18:12–17 (NIV84):
While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him into court. “This man,” they charged, “is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.” Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to the Jews, “If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanour or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” So he had them ejected from the court. Then they all turned on Sosthenes the synagogue ruler and beat him in front of the court. But Gallio showed no concern whatever.
One of the problems with discounting the historicity of Acts, and looking upon it as invention, is that it assumes the author knew of Gallio, and places him in the correct place geographically. We know from a stone inscription that Gallio was appointed by Emperor Claudius to be proconsul of Achaia around July 51 A.D. He was proconsul for about only a year.
Why would an author creating a Roman novel put in Gallio as proconsul of Achaia if he was not taking at least some of his facts from history?
Regarding modern novels, there’s an interesting difference in the way two authors approach novels with a historical background. In Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”, what is not pillaged from “Holy Blood and Holy Grail” is just made up. Aspects of geography and facts about artefacts are altered to accommodate the plot. The same happens in the stinker of a book “Digital Fortress” where ciphers and the Enigma machine are mispresented in a sloppy careless way. Brown is really writing fiction, and he could not care about facts.
The Book of Acts in History
One of the most remarkable features of the book of Acts is the account of Paul and Gallio in Acts 18:12–17 (NIV84):
While Gallio was proconsul of Achaia, the Jews made a united attack on Paul and brought him into court. “This man,” they charged, “is persuading the people to worship God in ways contrary to the law.” Just as Paul was about to speak, Gallio said to the Jews, “If you Jews were making a complaint about some misdemeanour or serious crime, it would be reasonable for me to listen to you. But since it involves questions about words and names and your own law—settle the matter yourselves. I will not be a judge of such things.” So he had them ejected from the court. Then they all turned on Sosthenes the synagogue ruler and beat him in front of the court. But Gallio showed no concern whatever.
One of the problems with discounting the historicity of Acts, and looking upon it as invention, is that it assumes the author knew of Gallio, and places him in the correct place geographically. We know from a stone inscription that Gallio was appointed by Emperor Claudius to be proconsul of Achaia around July 51 A.D. He was proconsul for about only a year.
Why would an author creating a Roman novel put in Gallio as proconsul of Achaia if he was not taking at least some of his facts from history?
Regarding modern novels, there’s an interesting difference in the way two authors approach novels with a historical background. In Dan Brown’s “Da Vinci Code”, what is not pillaged from “Holy Blood and Holy Grail” is just made up. Aspects of geography and facts about artefacts are altered to accommodate the plot. The same happens in the stinker of a book “Digital Fortress” where ciphers and the Enigma machine are mispresented in a sloppy careless way. Brown is really writing fiction, and he could not care about facts.
Robert Harris, on the other hand, takes great care to research historical details and background and his books on Pompeii or Cicero, while fiction, contain a substantial core of historicity (as far as we can know from sources).
Like Dan Brown, the Golden Ass or the Satyricon contains no references to real people or places, but Acts does. If it is a work of fiction, it is more like Harris than Brown. But where in the ancient world do we find an author placing in his work of fiction the accurate name and geographical location for a small interval of time? And why would they do it?
This seems to me to tip the balance towards Acts having a solid core of history rather than being a work of fiction, and that would mean that the authorial intent, as described in the prologue, has to be taken seriously and not discounted as literary topoi.
But once we do that for Acts, we have to take the prologue to the Gospel of Luke as seriously, that the author is not indulging in a literary trope, but engaged in a process of writing a document which he regards as based on a historical core, and for which he was engaged in research on sources, potentially eyewitnesses.
A Genetic Fallacy?
“We can no more posit a Markan community than we posit a Virgilian community or a Philonic community. We just have to deal with the author.”
Walsh regards the notion of the gospels emerging from a community of believers and an oral tradition as a myth which has its roots in the Romantic tradition and treatment of folk tales. I am not wholly persuaded by this argument. It is well known, for example, that Julius Wellhausen’s understanding of the formation of the Torah was heavily influenced by Hegelian ideas about the dialectic of historical forces, but the analysis taken up, and then improved by others was not dependent upon its origins.
Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits. Unfortunately a lot of time is spend in placing what she sees as “the myth of Christian origins” within this historical framework, which is almost a textbook example of the genetic fallacy.
The source criticism of the Torah, for example, has been supplemented by a more exact study of ancient Hebrew, and differences in the vocabulary of the text, and does not require the underpinning of a Hegelian dialectic.
Fair Comparison or Parallelomania?
Walsh says that “When compared side by side, the bioi (lives) written by the gospel authors are no more remarkable than writings like Lucian’s Demonax, the Satyrica, other Greek and Roman novels, or later works like Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (a.k.a. The Golden Ass), among others.”
She sees this kind of comparison by placing the resurrection stories as part of a Roman imperial and Greek heroic, mythographic tradition, about the fable of a mortal who becomes a hero or god, and puts Jesus alongside figures like Romulus, Alexander the Great, Castor and Pollux, Herakles, or Asclepius”
When I heard this, it reminded me of Frazer’s Golden Bough. The concept of a dying-and-rising god was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890) Frazer was notable for placing stories about Jesus within a tradition of a dying-and-rising god – a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected.
Frazer was very influential, but was also very superficial in drawing parallels. The main critique was that his evidences were a surface-level collation of analogous stories which exaggerated the importance of trifling resemblances.
The strongest argument against deploying this with ancient literature was probably given by Samuel Sandmel in 1962, where he argued against what he termed “parallelomania”
Sandmel notes that: “We might for our purposes define parallelomania as that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction”
“Two passages may sound the same in splendid isolation from their context, but when seen in context reflect difference rather than similarity.”
The Empty Tomb
The example by Walsh of the empty tomb is a good example. A number of empty tomb stories are mentioned, and in particular she cites that of the Satyricon. Most of these are superficial in their similarity, although the Satyricon as has been noted seems to be aware of and mocking the gospel narrative.
It is well summarised by Andy Reimer:
“Here a faithful wife remains in the tomb of her dead husband, while nearby a soldier is guarding crosses to prevent robbers’ remains from being removed and properly buried. The wife and soldier eventually end up in a three night sexual tryst in the dead husband’s tomb. The parents of one of the crucified, seeing the guard was lax, steal the body and bury it. The guard, suicidal over the empty cross, certain of his punishment, was only prevented from ending his life by the quick thinking virtuous wife. She offers her husband’s body to be placed on the empty cross and the following day onlookers wondered “by what means the dead man ascended the cross””
No one who has read the gospel narratives and the Satyricon in detail can confuse them as being anything like a similar genre. The latter contains serious and comic elements; and erotic and decadent passages. As parallels with the gospel goes, it is an extremely bad comparison. And in a similar way, other apparent parallels fall down when we consider context and details.
In fact, the idea that Mark is employing a certain, well-worn illustration of the super-natural status of his subject only works as long as the assumption is that he produces something entirely unlike the Roman novel. I've read the Golden Ass, the Satyricon, and the Demonax, and they couldn't be more unlike that.
Like Dan Brown, the Golden Ass or the Satyricon contains no references to real people or places, but Acts does. If it is a work of fiction, it is more like Harris than Brown. But where in the ancient world do we find an author placing in his work of fiction the accurate name and geographical location for a small interval of time? And why would they do it?
This seems to me to tip the balance towards Acts having a solid core of history rather than being a work of fiction, and that would mean that the authorial intent, as described in the prologue, has to be taken seriously and not discounted as literary topoi.
But once we do that for Acts, we have to take the prologue to the Gospel of Luke as seriously, that the author is not indulging in a literary trope, but engaged in a process of writing a document which he regards as based on a historical core, and for which he was engaged in research on sources, potentially eyewitnesses.
A Genetic Fallacy?
“We can no more posit a Markan community than we posit a Virgilian community or a Philonic community. We just have to deal with the author.”
Walsh regards the notion of the gospels emerging from a community of believers and an oral tradition as a myth which has its roots in the Romantic tradition and treatment of folk tales. I am not wholly persuaded by this argument. It is well known, for example, that Julius Wellhausen’s understanding of the formation of the Torah was heavily influenced by Hegelian ideas about the dialectic of historical forces, but the analysis taken up, and then improved by others was not dependent upon its origins.
Genetic accounts of an issue may be true, and they may help illuminate the reasons why the issue has assumed its present form, but they are not conclusive in determining its merits. Unfortunately a lot of time is spend in placing what she sees as “the myth of Christian origins” within this historical framework, which is almost a textbook example of the genetic fallacy.
The source criticism of the Torah, for example, has been supplemented by a more exact study of ancient Hebrew, and differences in the vocabulary of the text, and does not require the underpinning of a Hegelian dialectic.
Fair Comparison or Parallelomania?
Walsh says that “When compared side by side, the bioi (lives) written by the gospel authors are no more remarkable than writings like Lucian’s Demonax, the Satyrica, other Greek and Roman novels, or later works like Apuleius’ Metamorphoses (a.k.a. The Golden Ass), among others.”
She sees this kind of comparison by placing the resurrection stories as part of a Roman imperial and Greek heroic, mythographic tradition, about the fable of a mortal who becomes a hero or god, and puts Jesus alongside figures like Romulus, Alexander the Great, Castor and Pollux, Herakles, or Asclepius”
When I heard this, it reminded me of Frazer’s Golden Bough. The concept of a dying-and-rising god was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890) Frazer was notable for placing stories about Jesus within a tradition of a dying-and-rising god – a religious motif in which a god or goddess dies and is resurrected.
Frazer was very influential, but was also very superficial in drawing parallels. The main critique was that his evidences were a surface-level collation of analogous stories which exaggerated the importance of trifling resemblances.
The strongest argument against deploying this with ancient literature was probably given by Samuel Sandmel in 1962, where he argued against what he termed “parallelomania”
Sandmel notes that: “We might for our purposes define parallelomania as that extravagance among scholars which first overdoes the supposed similarity in passages and then proceeds to describe source and derivation as if implying literary connection flowing in an inevitable or predetermined direction”
“Two passages may sound the same in splendid isolation from their context, but when seen in context reflect difference rather than similarity.”
The Empty Tomb
The example by Walsh of the empty tomb is a good example. A number of empty tomb stories are mentioned, and in particular she cites that of the Satyricon. Most of these are superficial in their similarity, although the Satyricon as has been noted seems to be aware of and mocking the gospel narrative.
It is well summarised by Andy Reimer:
“Here a faithful wife remains in the tomb of her dead husband, while nearby a soldier is guarding crosses to prevent robbers’ remains from being removed and properly buried. The wife and soldier eventually end up in a three night sexual tryst in the dead husband’s tomb. The parents of one of the crucified, seeing the guard was lax, steal the body and bury it. The guard, suicidal over the empty cross, certain of his punishment, was only prevented from ending his life by the quick thinking virtuous wife. She offers her husband’s body to be placed on the empty cross and the following day onlookers wondered “by what means the dead man ascended the cross””
No one who has read the gospel narratives and the Satyricon in detail can confuse them as being anything like a similar genre. The latter contains serious and comic elements; and erotic and decadent passages. As parallels with the gospel goes, it is an extremely bad comparison. And in a similar way, other apparent parallels fall down when we consider context and details.
In fact, the idea that Mark is employing a certain, well-worn illustration of the super-natural status of his subject only works as long as the assumption is that he produces something entirely unlike the Roman novel. I've read the Golden Ass, the Satyricon, and the Demonax, and they couldn't be more unlike that.
The nearest comparison are the ancient biographies, such as Plutarch’s first-century Life of
Alexander (the Great), Suetonius’s early second-century Lives of the Caesars, and the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, a first-century teacher and miracle worker, by the Greek philosopher Philostratus
(ca. 170—ca. 247). While these may not be pure history, most scholars agree they are not mere novelistic fictions and contain a historical core. Acts, however, is more akin in style to ancient historiography in which could be compared to the writings of Herodotus and Thucydides, again with a historical core.
The notion which has been mooted that it is more like a historical romance novel - for instance Xenophone's An Ephesian tale but the tone of those is more akin to writings such as "The Acts of Paul and Thelca". The fact that Acts contains at least some certain historical facts - that relating to Gallio - whereas the Thelca narrative falls down on accuracy would seem to put it more in the category of ancient historiography.
Literary Novels and Oral Traditions
The dominant post-Gutenberg paradigm for understanding the gospels and any underlying tradition has been a literary one, as despite the supposition of oral traditions, most New Testament scholars actually work from a literary model even though they pay lip service to an underlying oral traditions. Robyn Walsh takes the paradigm one step further by removing the need for an oral tradition altogether and effectively disconnecting the gospels from history. In this instance, the Christ of the Gospels is largely a novelistic fiction, built from scraps of knowledge filled out by the writers.
But against that should be set an approach - that by James DG Dunn in "Jesus Remembered" which actually does take oral tradition seriously and builds on the impact that Jesus must have had on his earliest disciples and the emergence of the church. Should we be considering transmission within an oral culture seriously or just discounting it?
Concluding Comments
I think that imaginary histories of the process by which the gospels were written, whether by oral traditions, Christian communities, or elite authors for that matter, are all hypothetical by their nature, and however convincing, cannot be checked by fact.
In such circumstances, examining weaknesses of an approach can yield useful methodological information, and in challenging the status quo, Walsh forces her readers to re-examine the more conventional approaches to looking at the gospel texts, and also to see where such approaches have greater strengths than her thesis.
The questioning of an approach which involves eyewitnesses - taken by Walsh as a literary fiction - must also take into account the time frame for the writing of the Gospels and Acts.
A general flaw in later lives of saints (for example) is to assume the geographical and historical background of the past is close to that of the present, a flaw also seen in Thelca, whereas earlier lives reflect far more accurately the milieu and locale in which they were written.
Most historians would see saints lives written close to the time of the saint - the Life of St Martin, Life of St Sampson etc - as more likely to be closer to history if eyewitnesses could still be living, and could critique any fictions. Other lives of Saints have gaps of 400 years or more, and invariably look more like pious fictions.
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