Of ancient texts and modern historiographical standards

Getting Inerrancy Wrong | Parchment and Pen

Sadly, though, it is becoming increasingly clear (again) that even some of those who believe in the inerrancy of Scripture have different interpretations of what inerrancy means. I believe in inerrancy. But maybe not how others define it. No I am not trying to redefine anything, but the fact is that when it comes to this issue there is a spectrum of belief in those who confess the doctrine. I am sure that there would be those out there who would see my view of inerrancy as a liberal compromise.
Inerrancy: the Biblical doctrine that says that the Scripture, in the autographs (originals), when interpreted correctly, is true in all that it teaches and upon which it touches.

My response (with minor editting and awaiting moderation):

When discussing inerrancy, one of the major pitfalls that people fail to avoid is judging ancient historical texts by modern standards of historicity. For example, Tony Woodman writes that Tacitus’ frequent use of of what Woodman calls "substantive imitation’... may sound scandalous to the majority of his modern readers, who evidently still regard him as a faithful historian[*], but that is because they fail to take account of the way in which ancient writers wrote history.... [A]ncient historians resorted to ‘substantive imitation’ far more regularly than is sometimes supposed" (from his essay in Creative Imitation and Latin Literature, pp. 152-153; emphasis added). Rather than utilizing a "just the facts" approach to recording history, the ancients were more interested in imitating the writings of past worthies and writing dramatic narratives- both which, they hoped, would make their writings more memorable. Thus, they saw nothing wrong with arranging events in achronological order or utilizing such rhetorical devices as mimesis (another word for Woodman’s "substantive imitation"), telescoping events, etc. as long as the basic facts were correct. Applying this to the biblical texts, it would be just as wrong to judge their historicity by modern standards as it would be to similarly judge the writings of other ancient historians.
* I’m not sure whether Woodman is implying that Tacitus wasn’t a "faithful historian" for failing to live up to modern standards of historiography. If so, I would argue that one would first have to show that the modern standards are somehow more accurate in recording history than the ancient standards before doing so.

More fun deconstructing children's literature

SAET » Tom Wright Reads Humpty Dumpty » The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Clearly the writer is telling an Israel story, and here alludes to the Temple.  This echoes other lines in early 2^nd Nursery Literature, such as Mother Hubbard’s cupboard (the "storehouse" of the Temple) and the bone (resurrection life) which she sought for her dog ("Gentiles"). "But when she got there, the cupboard was bare and the poor little doggie had none."  The temple had nothing to offer the Gentiles, and they thus remained in their state of Adamic sin and decay.

Somehow, Wright (and everyone who responded to the post) missed the significance of the name "Humpty Dumpty", an error I sought to correct in my response (awaiting moderation; I've added here the "during the clearing of the temple":that I meant to original comment and changed the word "invasion" in the original to "intrusion".)

"Clearly the writer is telling an Israel story, and here alludes to the Temple."
I’m surprised that no one has of yet deconstructed the name "Humpty Dumpty" itself. Remove the nonsensical last syllable from both words and you get "Hump" and "Dump".
The former, especially with the mention of the "wall" as noted by Wright, is a clear reference to the Temple Mount. But note that instead of the Temple {"wall") being on the Mount {"Hump"), the order is reversed in the rhyme so that the "Hump" is on the "wall". IOW, everything has been turned upside down and is in chaos (It may also be a subtle allusion to Jesus’ "city on a hill" in Matthew 5:14, but once again, with the order upside-down). This is further strengthened by the "Hump" being combined with the "Dump", as the name of Jerusalem’s dump is the well-known... Gehenna (or "Hell"), indicating an intrusion of the unholy into the place of the sacred that echoes Jesus’ quote of Jeremiah 7:11*: "My house shall be called a house of prayer: but ye make it a den of robbers" during the clearing of the temple.
Need Mother Goose paint a clearer picture than this of what is going on here?

*I’m tempted to make a Slurpee joke here, but will attempt to resist it.

In a similar vein (the link to the following was provided in the "SAET » Tom Wright Reads Humpty Dumpty » The Society for the Advancement of Ecclesial Theology" post).

Initial Explorations: Bultmann Reads Mother Goose

Internal evidence rejects the view that wehave here an original composition by Mary (Mother) Goose of Boston(1686-1743).[1] The phrasing of I-A is definitely late eighteenthcentury, since the Goose Period would have rendered it "diddley-diddley" (and thus "fiddley" in I-B). Furthermore, the sequence "cat-cow-dog-dish" represents an obvious redaction and is a compilation ofat least four different accounts.[2] Thus, the author of the piece isunknown,[3] and its date set between 1780 and 1820.[4] The Sitz imLeben of the Depression of 1815 may be reflected in III.2.

 See also "Of Bears (and others) of 'very little brain'"

Of bears (and others) of "very little brain"

Reconstructing the Pooh Community - Justin Taylor

But few know of [Richard Bauckham's] years spent in the Winnie-the-Pooh books, reconstructing the community behind the texts [by using methods similar to those used to reconstruct the "Johannine community"]. In this unpublished paper he summarizes the "major methodological breakthrough which virtually all Pooh scholarship now takes for granted." Here is a snippet:

I couldn't do justice to the humor of what follows, you'll just have to read it yourself.  Instead, I'll just skip to my response

So what he's saying is that both Winnie the Pooh and the Gospel of John must have been the works of redactors working with multiple sources?  Because we all know there's no way that the Gospel of John could have been the work of a single author.

For a parody of the "documentary hypothesis" (a.k.a., JEDP), there's New Directions in Pooh Studies: Überlieferungs- und religionsgeschichtliche Studien zum Pu-Buch, for which I've provided the following excerpt:

There is little need, at the present stage of scholarship, to attempt a justiÞcation of the principle that the dogma of unitary authorship for works of literature must be totally abandoned. In all conÞdence we may say that a priori we may expect the Pooh corpus (viz. Winnie-the-Pooh, hereafter abbreviated W, containing traditions of higher antiquity than the Deutero-Pooh book, The House at Pooh Corner, hereafter abbreviated H) to be of composite origin; even if there were such a person as A.A. Milne, traditionally the 'author', we may be sure that he did not write the Pooh books. His name does not occur once within the narratives themselves, and we can hardly be expected to take a title-page, manifestly a later addition, seriously.

 See also "More fun deconstructing children's literature"

Review: The History of the Higher Criticism

The History of the Higher Criticism

by Canon Dyson Hague, M.A.

Chapter 1 of The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth, Vol. 1 (the series of booklets from which fundamentalism took its name)

The Good

• Explains difference between Higher Criticism and Lower Criticism
• Explains why Higher Criticism isn't always antithetical to orthodox Christianity, and why many assume that it is
• Fairly good summary of the history of rationalist Higher Criticism.
• Shows why the compromise position is untenable.  If the Bible has been tampered with to the degree that the liberal Higher Critics claim, then it is no longer reliable.

The Bad

• Presupposes that the Bible is special, such as the "Subjective Conclusions" section (while I agree with him that it is, he is likely to fail to convince any skeptics by doing so).
• Resorts to ad hominem in the "German Fancies" section.  This section would have been greatly improved if he had instead given some examples of what he thought was "hypothesis-weaving and speculation" on their part and why.
• On a similar note, he gives no examples of how the Germans Higher Critics were more "speculative... and conjectural" than the French-Dutch or British-American counterparts.

 

The MiXeD

• While he does well to point out the anti-supernatural bias of many of the rationalist Higher Critics, he never really explains how this alone discredits their arguments (again, I'm not disagreeing with what he says, but instead think he could have strengthened his case by arguing against their conclusions, rather than against their beliefs because he is unlikely to convince any skeptics that way)..
• Names scholars of equal academic credentials who disagree with the liberal Higher Critics, but doesn't provide any of their arguments.

Conclusion
Obviously, an article as short as his can't provide in-depth analysis of all the issues.  However, room for even a superficial treatment of a few of them could have been made by removing the unsupported assertions and replacing it with solid argumentation.  Instead of simply preaching to the choir, more effort should have gone into trying to convince the skeptic (or even the undecided).

RATING: 3/10 (while a good introduction to the topic, it needs less fluff, more meat)