@Martin54, as you have already been reminded recently, Ship's Commandment number 8 states
8. Don’t crusade – Don’t promote personal crusades. This space is not here for people to pursue specific agendas and win converts.
The existence of God and the supernatural are not the topic of this thread. Please do not derail it by dragging it onto this topic.
If you wish to discuss the non-existence of God, please do so on an appropriate thread. It is up to other posters to decide whether they wish to engage with such a discussion.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
To the extent that @Lamb Chopped keeps blithely saying the Bible is a human *and* divine book, I’d argue that conversation around the supernatural aspects of that claim is fair game.
You do realize that the New Testament is a very human book, as well as a divine one, and was intended to be so from the start?
In any case, God—this God—seems to like things messy, or at least not to mind it. And so the coming of the New Testament into the world bears some resemblance to childbirth—a messy, bloody process, with pain and joy mixed. And probably a lot of swearing…
To the extent that it's divine, to what extent do you believe it (the text we read) reflects God's divine will?
Does the influence of the Holy Spirit mean that it is sufficient (though not perfect) to relate God's divine will to us? Or does the human involvement corrupt it to the point where aspects of God's will are obscured to the point where some of us can't see them? Is the ambiguity and confusion that we experience reading and understanding it just a consequence of how it came to be, or intentional?
This is a very good question, and one that we're not likely to answer on this thread, focused primarily as we are on the text and how it came to be.
Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for.
It is basically the old argument between inerrancy and ... not; and the discussion on both sides rests on a whole lot of theological assumptions that are to some extent outside the text.
I'm not trying to dodge the question! Rather I'm explaining that while I, with my viewpoint (and my reasons for it) would say, "Absolutely it's sufficient, and more than that," I'm aware that other Christians would argue for a lower view.
To elaborate a bit more on what I think: The human involvement was absolutely welcomed and planned by God, and is not some sort of blemish on the project; if God had wanted a Quran-style text, he could have had one, easily. He deliberately chose human authors and allowed (encouraged!) them to stamp their personality all over the text, and at the same time oversaw it in such a way that what resulted was trustworthy. I'm speaking, of course, of the original autograph manuscripts.
After that, what? The ordinary human transmission of texts, with all the disasters and occasional errors that introduces--which is why we have textual scientists, to scrub that crap off, as best we can. Has the Holy Spirit entirely let go of the transmission process? I don't think anybody can speak authoritatively to that, but based on the pattern I see in history, my suspicion is no. He has a much looser hand on it, and certainly errors and outright disasters do happen (like certain deliberate mis-translations done by cults to shore up their teachings).
I think I see where you're coming from, up to this point. And I think it's a bit wider than just being about inerrancy. It sounds more like you're accepting that there are rough edges, but that they're within acceptable limits. Also that it doesn't stand or fall by its inerrancy or infallibility.
But if he's gone away altogether and left us to our own devices, what of the invention of the printing press? Where one of the earliest projects was to print the Bible. What of the Renaissance focus on koine Greek, and the resulting NT text by Erasmus, and the explosion in Reformation theology that came from it? What of the current worldwide Bible translation and distribution programs, which as a byproduct do several very useful things for the people they serve--reducing oral languages to an alphabet, teaching local people to read and write, and thereby allowing them to enter the wider world of communication and education if they wish to?
These all look like good things to me. So I conclude he's still involved, if not to the extent he was during the research and writing process.
I would be rather more equivocal about all these being good things. The printing press (at the least) is rather implicated in the Wars of the Reformation - but you could see that as essentially an issue with the human use and misuse of media technologies, in a similar way to social media and (presidential) elections. A more serious issue would be in the colonial history of some bible translations, for example:
Decolonising Translated Bibles: The Tragic Erasure of the Vhavenḓa’s Concepts of God through the 1936 and 1998 Tshivenḓa Bible Translations
Abstract
The Bible translated into South Africa’s indigenous languages has a colonial history. For the Vhavenḓa people, the 1936 and 1998 Bible translations are revered as icons that hold a privileged position. However, this paper argues that these two translations should be seen as colonial language tools that do not serve the culture of the Vhavenḓa people. Instead, they can be viewed as weapons against them. These translations distorted the Tshivenḓa language by imposing distorted and foreign concepts of God, thereby rendering the Vhavenḓa people to have been without knowledge of God.
I think what's bugging me about my own answers to these questions--which are decent questions, yes?--is that we're getting pretty far into the realm of speculation without evidence, and that isn't what the bulk of this thread has been about. I'd really rather a second thread where we could take up questions like "Has the Holy Spirit loosened his hold over the Bible transmission process, and if so, why?" and "Are Bible translation and literacy projects a good thing, a bad one, or both?" That way we could keep the speculation down a bit--at least from me. Because I wouldn't want anybody to think that the academic type stuff I was writing earlier was in any way a product of my own guesses the way this latter stuff is.
Pease, you wrote "Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for."
The difference as I see it is that my references to the Holy Spirit and his work in the formation of the NT are not my personal speculations and guesswork. Rather they are a mainstream understanding of, if not the whole Christian church, certainly a large percentage of it. I wasn't setting out on this thread to lay out my personal theories, crackpot or otherwise. I wanted to lay out a very standard and widely accepted view of the subject from many angles.
So if you all don't mind, any further questions addressed to me that seem to provoke personal speculative answers from me, I will move to separate new threads. Just to keep things straight.
I think that's a good move. To take personal, subjective responses to other threads.
But I do find myself wondering how viable that is in practice.
Here's why, and please don't take this the wrong way @Lamb Chopped ...
I'm one of those who would accept divine inspiration and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the 'enscripturation' process.
This is an Orthodox position shared with other mainstream Christian traditions. I believe I'm right in thinking that the Anglicans and Orthodox were on the same page on this one when formulating the Moscow Declaration a good few years ago now.
Obviously individual Anglicans or Orthodox may not agree on the fine detail and it's hard to determine how 'representative' it was. I'd suggest many Anglicans have shifted position since.
Be that as it may ...
Truth be told, as much as I agree with you in principle, in practice I'm not so comfortable with what appears to me to be an attempt to 'blame' your interlocutors for 'provoking' your more speculative posts. As if their line of questioning has forced you to speculate.
It may be a Catch-22 thing, of course. Their persistent challenges provoke a kickback. 'Here I stand ...'
Now where have we heard that before? 😉
Again, I'm treading carefully here but from where I'm standing, not a miles away, you do appear to reach for the speculative nuke button quite early on in any confrontation.
That's not to say you don't marshal your 'conventional forces' - please excuse the military analogy - all that research and textual analysis - but as soon as that is challenged you seem to change gear into 'woo woo' or subjective opinion mode.
It appears to be a feature of your more apologetic threads. 'Y'all can say what you like but I love Jesus / I've seen miracles / I've seen heavy shit ...'
I don't doubt that you have and can certainly understand your line of argument. At the risk of imaginative speculation of my own I can picture the disciples saying, 'But he's alive, I tell you! I saw the empty tomb, I saw the marks in his hands and side when Thomas cane in ... why don't you believe us?'
So, yes. I get it.
In fairness, those of us who do take a 'supernaturalist' approach are going to fall back on this sort of thing at some point. I do it myself so am not singling you out for censure.
The Orthodox can be very unapologetic about this sort of thing. It makes us pains in the butt to deal with in ecumenical relations.
As ever, I'm saying two paradoxical things at once here. On the one hand I appear - I said 'appear' - to be asking you to tone things down, and on the other to be suggesting you don't. 😉
Forgive me if I'm not making sense or speaking out of turn.
I think what's bugging me about my own answers to these questions--which are decent questions, yes?--is that we're getting pretty far into the realm of speculation without evidence, and that isn't what the bulk of this thread has been about. I'd really rather a second thread where we could take up questions like "Has the Holy Spirit loosened his hold over the Bible transmission process, and if so, why?" and "Are Bible translation and literacy projects a good thing, a bad one, or both?" That way we could keep the speculation down a bit--at least from me. Because I wouldn't want anybody to think that the academic type stuff I was writing earlier was in any way a product of my own guesses the way this latter stuff is.
The issue in this sense is that it's not just academic type stuff - it's faith-academic type stuff. This is fair enough, within its own terms.
Pease, you wrote "Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for."
The difference as I see it is that my references to the Holy Spirit and his work in the formation of the NT are not my personal speculations and guesswork. Rather they are a mainstream understanding of, if not the whole Christian church, certainly a large percentage of it. I wasn't setting out on this thread to lay out my personal theories, crackpot or otherwise. I wanted to lay out a very standard and widely accepted view of the subject from many angles.
I think my point wasn't that these are your own personal theories - I am quite happy to take them as representing the perspective of a significant proportion of people who have been involved in the process over the years. The issue is that you are writing from the perspective of a believer but that you are writing *for* people who are not believers (as well as believers), and you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position. For example:
"...it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic."
"Someone with an anti-supernaturalist worldview may well have an easier case to make; but the point of research and learning isn't to produce an easy case, it's to find the truth. If the truth is in fact at least partly supernatural, then we have to face up to that fact. Ignoring it to make our work easier is intellectually dishonest."
So if you all don't mind, any further questions addressed to me that seem to provoke personal speculative answers from me, I will move to separate new threads. Just to keep things straight.
In effect, by choosing to frame it in the way you have, what you are saying boils down to "the reason we can be sure this is what God the son said and did is that God the Holy Spirit intervened in the process of recording and transmitting it to us". It's a faith position.
6. Respect the Ship’s crew – If you disagree with an admin, host or editor in their Ship role, raise the issue in the Styx, our board for in-house stuff. Personal attacks on crew members for their official actions aren’t tolerated.
If you believe that one shipmate is being unfairly treated by the Crew, you may take the issue to the Styx. You may not do so here.
I think what's bugging me about my own answers to these questions--which are decent questions, yes?--is that we're getting pretty far into the realm of speculation without evidence, and that isn't what the bulk of this thread has been about. I'd really rather a second thread where we could take up questions like "Has the Holy Spirit loosened his hold over the Bible transmission process, and if so, why?" and "Are Bible translation and literacy projects a good thing, a bad one, or both?" That way we could keep the speculation down a bit--at least from me. Because I wouldn't want anybody to think that the academic type stuff I was writing earlier was in any way a product of my own guesses the way this latter stuff is.
The issue in this sense is that it's not just academic type stuff - it's faith-academic type stuff. This is fair enough, within its own terms.
Pease, you wrote "Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for."
The difference as I see it is that my references to the Holy Spirit and his work in the formation of the NT are not my personal speculations and guesswork. Rather they are a mainstream understanding of, if not the whole Christian church, certainly a large percentage of it. I wasn't setting out on this thread to lay out my personal theories, crackpot or otherwise. I wanted to lay out a very standard and widely accepted view of the subject from many angles.
I think my point wasn't that these are your own personal theories - I am quite happy to take them as representing the perspective of a significant proportion of people who have been involved in the process over the years. The issue is that you are writing from the perspective of a believer but that you are writing *for* people who are not believers (as well as believers), and you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position. For example:
"...it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic."
"Someone with an anti-supernaturalist worldview may well have an easier case to make; but the point of research and learning isn't to produce an easy case, it's to find the truth. If the truth is in fact at least partly supernatural, then we have to face up to that fact. Ignoring it to make our work easier is intellectually dishonest."
So if you all don't mind, any further questions addressed to me that seem to provoke personal speculative answers from me, I will move to separate new threads. Just to keep things straight.
In effect, by choosing to frame it in the way you have, what you are saying boils down to "the reason we can be sure this is what God the son said and did is that God the Holy Spirit intervened in the process of recording and transmitting it to us". It's a faith position.
Sure, which is what I am trying to get at in the 'woo-woo' thread (excuse the term).
A faith position isn't necessarily indefensible by other means.
Rightly or wrongly, @Lamb Chopped believes that it is possible to arrive at it by considering the evidence objectively and that intellectual honesty demands that we admit the supernatural dimension.
I understand that as a position and it's one I've heard from Christian apologists before.
The problem I have with it, without dipping back into Orthodox 'woo-woo' or at least, trying not to ... is that the corollary could be the suspicion that anyone who reaches a different conclusion isn't weighing the evidence properly or guilty of going 'La la la la la! I'm not listening!'
One could argue that all these arguments become circular.
Orthodoxy teaches that scripture can't be understood properly outside of the Church. By which we mean The ChurchTM. Us. The Orthodox Church. That isn't to say that Lutherans or Anglicans or atheists or anyone else can't get anything out of it or that their understanding doesn't come close to or correlate with aspects of the Orthodox 'take' on things.
That's bound to sound exasperating to anyone who isn't Big O Orthodox.
Beardy-wierdy Bastards!
But in a small o sense, Lamb Chopped does represent a traditional understanding of the inspiration of scripture, one shared by the Big O Orthodox, the RCs, traditional Lutherans and Anglicans and many others. She also recognises when she is going beyond that into more personal or speculative territory. Hence she gets 'bugged' by her own posts.
I appreciate diverging threads at this point, so thank you. I've started and deleted three different responses here re: the whole woo-woo thing, but I just haven't been able to post them. Off we go.
I think what's bugging me about my own answers to these questions--which are decent questions, yes?--is that we're getting pretty far into the realm of speculation without evidence, and that isn't what the bulk of this thread has been about. I'd really rather a second thread where we could take up questions like "Has the Holy Spirit loosened his hold over the Bible transmission process, and if so, why?" and "Are Bible translation and literacy projects a good thing, a bad one, or both?" That way we could keep the speculation down a bit--at least from me. Because I wouldn't want anybody to think that the academic type stuff I was writing earlier was in any way a product of my own guesses the way this latter stuff is.
The issue in this sense is that it's not just academic type stuff - it's faith-academic type stuff. This is fair enough, within its own terms.
Pease, you wrote "Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for."
The difference as I see it is that my references to the Holy Spirit and his work in the formation of the NT are not my personal speculations and guesswork. Rather they are a mainstream understanding of, if not the whole Christian church, certainly a large percentage of it. I wasn't setting out on this thread to lay out my personal theories, crackpot or otherwise. I wanted to lay out a very standard and widely accepted view of the subject from many angles.
I think my point wasn't that these are your own personal theories - I am quite happy to take them as representing the perspective of a significant proportion of people who have been involved in the process over the years. The issue is that you are writing from the perspective of a believer but that you are writing *for* people who are not believers (as well as believers), and you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position. For example:
"...it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic."
"Someone with an anti-supernaturalist worldview may well have an easier case to make; but the point of research and learning isn't to produce an easy case, it's to find the truth. If the truth is in fact at least partly supernatural, then we have to face up to that fact. Ignoring it to make our work easier is intellectually dishonest."
So if you all don't mind, any further questions addressed to me that seem to provoke personal speculative answers from me, I will move to separate new threads. Just to keep things straight.
In effect, by choosing to frame it in the way you have, what you are saying boils down to "the reason we can be sure this is what God the son said and did is that God the Holy Spirit intervened in the process of recording and transmitting it to us". It's a faith position.
I think I can best answer this post by addressing the bit that's bolded, "you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position." No, not at all. This is not an apologetics thread, and I was not attempting to convert anybody.
In fact, I was attempting to do much less than that. This thread is in fact nothing more than my attempt to summarize the commonly understood processes, data and theories behind the formation of the New Testament. Nobody need agree with me; in fact I expected far more debate than actually turned up. Maybe "boring" was in fact the right word!
To be sure, I did not represent every possible point of view--I wasn't trying to; I was aiming for the mainstream. And yes, there is an unashamed supernaturalist element in the mainstream, because the majority of scholars who have worked in this field over 2000 years are and have been Christian believers. (That does not mean that they sacrifice their academic integrity to their faith; rather that they find the two work perfectly well when harness in parallel, which is a thing I've noticed in my own scholarly life as well. Yes, I know there are those who will disagree that this is possible.)
So to repeat: I was not attempting to convert ANYBODY to any faith position. I was giving you Seminary 101--a summary of the issues surrounding the creation and transmission of the New Testament. Readers of the thread are absolutely free to read it and reject it, or anything in it (obviously). And anybody wanting to go beyond the highlights is totally free to go find their nearest academic library. I gave you sources, and there are zillions more out there. Have at it!
I created this thread, not to convert anybody, but because lately we've had more than the usual number of posts calling into question whether we can ever know "what Jesus actually said and did" (to return to the OP) on the grounds that the text as we have it is completely corrupt and worthless.
Frankly, I was tired. Tired of answering off-the-cuff remarks like that with painstaking long arguments about highly technical matters like variants and filiation, or reminders about the material circumstances affecting communication in ancient times. Tired of doing that on thread after thread, when the posters saying such things ("We all know it's impossible to trust a word of John" or what have you) have already skipped blithely away to some other thread, where they post the same misleading remarks, which are based on no serious research whatsoever, as far as I can determine. Worried about the number of other readers who may see those posts and believe them, because nobody is taking the time to contradicts them using proper evidence and argumentation. And frustrated by the fact that it always takes at least ten times as long to counter off-the-cuff bullshit as it does to spread it in the first place.
Chances are super high that many of you folks reading this will say, "This was a monumental waste of time, who cares that much about the New Testament anyway?" And you have a right to think and to say so. But I personally think it matters, and so I put in the time and effort in for this thread.
I'm hoping in future days that the next time someone makes an off-the-cuff comment of the sort I mentioned, I may be able to avoid writing walls and walls and WALLS of text, and instead post something like, "Actually, if you're interested in the variants of the New Testament and whether they affect Christian doctrine, have a look at this post" and link them to this thread. So I won't have to keep typing it over and over and over.
I hope this makes some sort of sense. I'm short on sleep and packing for a trip; my apologies if I've managed to offend someone unwittingly.
And apologies if I have caused offence in my responses on this thread. It's far from boring and I'm sure many of us are grateful to you for taking the time and effort to post so much thought-provoking material.
In fact, I was attempting to do much less than that. This thread is in fact nothing more than my attempt to summarize the commonly understood processes, data and theories behind the formation of the New Testament. Nobody need agree with me; in fact I expected far more debate than actually turned up. Maybe "boring" was in fact the right word!
I, for one, am reading your summary with great interest and appreciation, but without debating anything in response. Silence may be indistinguishable from boredom, but they do not equate.
The issue is that you are writing from the perspective of a believer but that you are writing *for* people who are not believers (as well as believers), and you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position.
...
In effect, by choosing to frame it in the way you have, what you are saying boils down to "the reason we can be sure this is what God the son said and did is that God the Holy Spirit intervened in the process of recording and transmitting it to us". It's a faith position.
I think I can best answer this post by addressing the bit that's bolded, "you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position." No, not at all. This is not an apologetics thread, and I was not attempting to convert anybody.
Agreed - that is why I explicitly said on the other thread:
I do not consider the boring thread to be an apologetic thread within my understanding of the term.
But it's also the case that the process you describe is written from the perspective of someone who believes that God the Holy Spirit directly intervened (and still intervenes) in the process, and that the integrity of the process depends on this. In that sense, the rigour of the process you describe can only be fully understood and accepted from someone sharing your faith position.
What you have given us are your reasons for believing that believers can have substantial confidence in the integrity of the bible, alongside reasons why non-believers can have some, lesser, confidence in the integrity of the bible. This is fine, as long as you do not expect a non-believer to have, or be able to have, the same level of confidence in the integrity of the bible as you do.
... I was aiming for the mainstream. And yes, there is an unashamed supernaturalist element in the mainstream, because the majority of scholars who have worked in this field over 2000 years are and have been Christian believers. (That does not mean that they sacrifice their academic integrity to their faith; rather that they find the two work perfectly well when harness in parallel, which is a thing I've noticed in my own scholarly life as well. Yes, I know there are those who will disagree that this is possible.)
I don't think it's a question of whether or not it's possible or reasonable, but of what you require of your readers in order to be able to follow *all* your arguments.
... Worried about the number of other readers who may see those posts and believe them, because nobody is taking the time to contradicts them using proper evidence and argumentation.
The implication of your approach, as a believer, is that your definition of "proper evidence and argumentation" is not the same as a non-believer's. This is fine, as long as you do not expect a non-believer to be able to engage in debate in the same way as you.
It's virtually certain that in the case of consultations in the various buildings under Pilate, Herod, and the high priests, that our information is coming from later converts among the servants, guards, etc. There was very little expectation of privacy in the ancient world, and the servants etc. would have been ubiquitous for such people. As for the alternate idea that the Gospel writers simply "made it all up," a la Thucydides when he inserts stirring speeches into the mouths of his generals, etc. no. There is nothing to suggest that they would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.
From the History of the Peloponnesian War:
"In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation."
Let's assume that every word we have reported of Jesus was originally uttered in Aramaic. Where does that leave us, then? Does it mean that the koine Greek version we have is utterly untrustworthy and we should throw it out the window? (I'm obviously overstating the case here.) Of course not. Those who wrote the Gospels etc. were also bilingual to greater or lesser degrees and capable of producing a decent translation; and returning to the "woo woo" aspect of New Testament development, it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic. If you refuse to admit that the Holy Spirit exists or that he did this work, well, you do you. I did say that the Bible is both a human and a divine book, and the messiness of this is bound to offend people in places, and this is one of them.
I'm still not clear on your standards for translation here. You completely dismiss Thucydides for using paraphrases "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used", and yet this is exactly what we expect from a translation process; using different words to convey the same "general sense" of the words originally spoken. Your harshness against Thucydides would seem to indicate a Quranic-style stance against the validity of translated works, and yet you seem willing to violate this rule when it comes to the Second Testament.
Ugh. Do we have to keep arguing Thucydides? I was under the impression (fostered by a course long ago) that the man made up and inserted suitable speeches into his protagonists' mouths; you disputed this; I bowed to your greater knowledge; you seem determined to make this about translation now, and why? Just no.
Ugh. Do we have to keep arguing Thucydides? I was under the impression (fostered by a course long ago) that the man made up and inserted suitable speeches into his protagonists' mouths; you disputed this; I bowed to your greater knowledge; you seem determined to make this about translation now, and why? Just no.
Why? Because translation is the process of substituting other words, ideally ones "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used", for the words originally spoken/written. You were horrified at this level of "sloppiness" when it came to Thucydides and cited his methodology in particular for being untrustworthy. You even went so far as to claim that "there is nothing to suggest that they [the Gospel authors] would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.", with "such a thing" apparently being recording anything other than the exact, perfectly remembered, verbatim words of everyone they portray in their writings.
Thucydides explains his decision regarding the speeches he records as "it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory". This seems like a fairly reasonable admission to make. This would seem to be doubly true for a work in translation, where by definition you're paraphrasing things. I suppose if you're willing to claim that the Gospel authors (and everyone they consulted as a source) had photographic memories of every event involving Jesus you can simply attribute that to "woo woo" as you put it, but that tends to move the Gospels away from being "both a human and a divine book", as you also put it, and simply making it a divine book by erasing all sources of human fallibility.
It seems to me that the discussion is moving beyond the literary transmission which @Lamb Chopped has largely been discussing to the pre-literary process. (There is also the question of translation or paraphrase, but that is a separate issue.)
As far as the pre-literary transmission is concerned (which may well have co-existed with the beginning of written collections - cf. Paul’s books and scrolls) I find Kenneth Bailey’s argument for an informal controlled oral tradition makes a strong case for a substantially accurate transmission of the teachings of Jesus. The argument is also quite eye-opening as to the existence of a robust oral culture in parts of the modern world.
It's virtually certain that in the case of consultations in the various buildings under Pilate, Herod, and the high priests, that our information is coming from later converts among the servants, guards, etc. There was very little expectation of privacy in the ancient world, and the servants etc. would have been ubiquitous for such people. As for the alternate idea that the Gospel writers simply "made it all up," a la Thucydides when he inserts stirring speeches into the mouths of his generals, etc. no. There is nothing to suggest that they would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.
From the History of the Peloponnesian War:
"In this history I have made use of set speeches some of which were delivered just before and others during the war. I have found it difficult to remember the precise words used in the speeches which I listened to myself and my various informants have experienced the same difficulty; so my method has been, while keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation."
You completely dismiss Thucydides for using paraphrases "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used", and yet this is exactly what we expect from a translation process; using different words to convey the same "general sense" of the words originally spoken. Your harshness against Thucydides would seem to indicate a Quranic-style stance against the validity of translated works, and yet you seem willing to violate this rule when it comes to the Second Testament.
I'm still not seeing the difference between saying Thucydides made it all up (Lamb Chopped, "completely dismissing", "harsh") and saying Thucydides assumed how the trial should have gone (you to whom Lamb Chopped was responding, apparently fine).
When you said the Gospel writers wrote down how they assumed the trial would have gone a la Thucydides did you mean they wrote down something as close to the sense of what was actually said as a good translation should be?
Because if you did mean that it certainly wasn't clear.
And if you didn't mean that, then you were the one who introduced the idea that Thucydides is a standard for inaccuracy in reporting speech and you're being disingenuous now.
Clearly the work of Thucydides and the Gospel writers are different. There are different ascriptions of "out-there" validity to the Gospel writers' accounts, but getting bogged down in a case of Thucydides vs. Gospel writers for how we understand historiography is stupid. They had different projects, and I think LC has done a good job of noting that what the Gospel writers were doing was different.
I thank you, and frankly, the longer we have this Thucydides thing, the more I feel like my brains are being sucked out my ears. I can't even with more of this argument. It makes no sense to me. Croesos, if you want a victory parade or something, have at it and enjoy yourself. I'm off to do something more productive, like scratching my puppy's ears.
I created this thread, not to convert anybody, but because lately we've had more than the usual number of posts calling into question whether we can ever know "what Jesus actually said and did" (to return to the OP) on the grounds that the text as we have it is completely corrupt and worthless.
Well, I for one have opined that I don't believe we can know exactly what Jesus said, and I still feel that way. But I've never thought of the Bible was "completely corrupt and worthless" as a result. I enjoy reading about scholarship, though, and this thread is fun.
I thank you, and frankly, the longer we have this Thucydides thing, the more I feel like my brains are being sucked out my ears. I can't even with more of this argument. It makes no sense to me.
It's a question of the validity of paraphrase as a form of record. Your specific objection to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation". In other words, your claim that by not recording the exact words, Thucydides was engaged in a kind of fraud. As I said, this isn't about Thucydides specifically, but about the standards being applied to historical works generally and whether paraphrase can ever be legitimate. This matters a lot for Second Testament scholarship. If we assume that Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, then that means that most of what we have of his teaching is a translation, or a paraphrase because all translation is a paraphrase. Even if we posit that he spoke koine Greek exclusively this poses problems since most modern Christians are not literate in this language and thus can only access the Gospels via paraphrased (i.e. translated) versions.
Whether or not paraphrased writings are legitimate gets to the core of whether we really "know what we know about what Jesus said and did".
Your specific objection[/url] to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation".
I could be missing something, but isn’t the issue here the italicised rather than the bolded part. In that it says he was paraphrasing to say what he thought the speakers should have said, rather than than to convey the sense of what he thought they did say ?
O/T, but this reminds me of an episode of Yes Minister* when high ranking government official Sir Humphrey remarked that minutes were designed not to record what was actually said at a meeting but what, on reflection, you wish had been said.
*For any non-UK shipmates unaware, this was a BBC satirical comedy series revolving around conflict between politicians and their civil servants
It seems to me that in the past history and dramatic retelling were much closer concepts than they are today. We only have to go back to Cervantes and Shakespeare to see a playing with these concepts.
And yet dramatic retelling has a certain power to it. British history has for a long time been strongly influenced by Shakespeare, despite the Bard not even attempting to claim knowledge of historical facts from centuries before.
I would contend that we do not, cannot, know the purpose of ancient documents. It is perfectly possible they are pious retelling of histories, they're drama with some other purpose (such as provoking nationalism) or even that the standards of what was/wasn't an accurate retelling of history were not established as clearly as it is now.
Your specific objection[/url] to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation".
I could be missing something, but isn’t the issue here the italicised rather than the bolded part. In that it says he was paraphrasing to say what he thought the speakers should have said, rather than than to convey the sense of what he thought they did say ?
Yes that nails it for me @Doublethink, along with the elision between translation and paraphrase.
I recognise that translation and paraphrase can be seen as sitting on a spectrum, and that there are hard cases e.g. where idiom is involved*. But in general usage there is a distinction.
(* the French “ jeté un coup d'œil” more literally means “threw a blow of the eye” where English would say “glanced” or “peeked”)
<snip>
I would contend that we do not, cannot, know the purpose of ancient documents. It is perfectly possible they are pious retelling of histories, they're drama with some other purpose (such as provoking nationalism) or even that the standards of what was/wasn't an accurate retelling of history were not established as clearly as it is now.
And I would contend that we very often can tell, with reasonable confidence, what the purpose of an ancient document is. We can also get pretty good clues to enlist to tell with at least some confidence, the kind of expectations of what we would call “historical accuracy” Are embodied in a text.
There is, essentially, very little difference between translation and paraphrase. When a text started in a different language, the difference is most a value judgement rather than an absolute one.
As I may have said before, the gospels were written by people, in an environment in which hagiography, proving the holiness of the subject, was an emerging genre within Christian communities. The priority was on proving the sanctity of Christ, placing him theologically in the trinity, rather than on recording the details of his life. There must have been far more material available: apart from the apparently recurring festivals, the incidents in the gospels could have happened over the course of a matter of months, even allowing for walking time. Christological accuracy, faithfulness to the tradition/viewpoint from which they emerge overwhelmed biographical accuracy, so the title of this thread will always be wrong. All we can ever even hope to know is what the gospel writers wrote. We can also consider their process of compilation, but I think the need to enter a restriction of our ambition is pressing and indeed paramount.
There is I think very little evidence that the early Christian communities made up stories about Jesus' sayings as an adult to prove Jesus's sanctity, and quite a lot of evidence that they cared about accurate transmission of the stories and sayings of his adult life.
(I would not care to defend the historicity of the infancy narratives on secular grounds.)
Later non-canonical gospels are later and differ in style.
There is, essentially, very little difference between translation and paraphrase. When a text started in a different language, the difference is most a value judgement rather than an absolute one.
This is too simplistic. There are areas where the one shades into the other, but "Il a dit, 'Je ne sais pas.'" is translated by, "He [has] said 'I do not know.'" It is paraphrased by "He expressed his ignorance on the subject." In many, maybe most cases there is a clear distinction.
As I may have said before, the gospels were written by people, in an environment in which hagiography, proving the holiness of the subject, was an emerging genre within Christian communities.
I'd be interested in the evidence, and your source for this. To the best of my knowledge the earliest 'life of a saint' (I haven't read it to know whether it qualifies as a hagiography) is the life of Cyprian of Carthage written shortly after his death in 258 AD, a century and a half after the latest widely accepted dating for the latest gospel (John).
The priority was on proving the sanctity of Christ, placing him theologically in the trinity, rather than on recording the details of his life.
Luke, John, and to a lesser extent Mark are quite open in saying that they write what they do in order that people may believe. Luke's preface indicates that the writer considers that this purpose is served by setting out 'an orderly account' so that his reader(s) 'may know the truth'.
There must have been far more material available: apart from the apparently recurring festivals, the incidents in the gospels could have happened over the course of a matter of months, even allowing for walking time.
Well, yes. Evidently. But his doesn't say anything one way or another about the accuracy of the depiction we have. A Wikipedia summary of the life of Winston Churchill is clearly less complete than Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert's eight volume official biography. That doesn't per se mean it is providing an inaccurate depiction.
Christological accuracy, faithfulness to the tradition/viewpoint from which they emerge overwhelmed biographical accuracy, so the title of this thread will always be wrong.
What is the evidence and source for this assertion? Biographical completeness is obviously lacking, but what is the evidence for saying the biographical accuracy was sacrificed?
All we can ever even hope to know is what the gospel writers wrote. We can also consider their process of compilation, but I think the need to enter a restriction of our ambition is pressing and indeed paramount.
I agree that we need to be careful about the actual words of Christ in the gospels given that he probably spoke in Aramaic and our record is in Greek (and I'm not a fan of red-letter editions of the New Testament, at least partly for that reason). But I can't see any good evidence to suggest that what is recorded is not a faithful and fair record of Christ's ministry.
(Coming late to this discussion, so please forgive me if I raise points that have already been covered...)
Can we know the exact words of Jesus? In most cases, probably not, given the points that have already been raised about the difficulties of transmission and translation. But do we need to know the exact words? I would argue not - they are not in any way "magical" and the early church certainly didn't think so, or else they would have transmitted them in their original Aramaic. This is where Christianity is different from large parts of Islam, where the exact words, in their original language, of the Koran are important, as they are the very words of Allah. Hence the need for Muslims of any nationality and tongue to be able to read Arabic.
But I would say that we can have some confidence that, in some cases, we can get very close to the very words of Jesus. To begin with, his teachings would of course have been given on a regular basis, so that they could be remembered. Secondly, the people of that age (especially disciples of rabbis) were accustomed to learning their master's teaching by heart. In an age where most people (especially in rural areas) were not literate, remembering teachings and religious texts was vital.
What matters most, to me, is the question of whether we can know the message of Jesus? The actual words are often irrelevant - what matters is whether we have understood the message that he was trying to get across. and I would say that, mostly, we can be confident that we have the key parts of his message, especially in regards to such matters as the love and forgiveness of God and the call to love one another, as we have been loved by God.
Are there "secondary" teachings in the gospels, which have been placed into the mouth of Jesus by the early Church? I wouldn't be at all surprised. It would seem that the Gospels are not about providing "historical records" as we would understand them, so much as documents that will lead people to have faith in Jesus or to strengthen their faith in Jesus. But I don't think that this affects the key message of Jesus.
Are there words of Jesus that have not been retained in the Gospels? Almost certainly. One of my most precious theological books is "Unknown Sayings of Jesus" by Joachim Jeremias, dating from 1957, where he considers 21 sayings that are not found in the gospels but which he thinks have good grounds for being from Jesus. It is a fascinating book.
@brojames. As one who wants to believe (and that means know for me) to one that does, I can't get past your final sentence. It's faithful and fair for the time. 70+ to 100 CE. 40 to 60 years after the subject. By two people, at best, with the best of good will, who knew Jesus. Assuming it's truly faithful and fair for all time, i.e. that the unnatural elements are true, then I can see how the accounts are totally authentic. Including by the one who certainly wasn't there, and the late C1st school of John. And I would have to start to bow the knee to the guide of the Holy Spirit. But then all of impossible 'mystery', and evil of the good news starts to break the surface. And I'm back to what is recorded is a faithful and fair record of Christ's ministry, for the time. Naturally.
Your specific objection[/url] to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation".
I could be missing something, but isn’t the issue here the italicised rather than the bolded part. In that it says he was paraphrasing to say what he thought the speakers should have said, rather than than to convey the sense of what he thought they did say?
Is that the issue? That I didn't properly strip quote Thucydides to remove the context of the first part of what was already a partial sentence? What if it was translated:
. . . it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.
Does translating that passage in this way change the meaning conveyed?
Yes that nails it for me @Doublethink, along with the elision between translation and paraphrase.
I recognise that translation and paraphrase can be seen as sitting on a spectrum, and that there are hard cases e.g. where idiom is involved*. But in general usage there is a distinction.
Is there a hard distinction to be made here? Translation is literally using different words in an attempt to convey the same information. In most other contexts we would consider this a paraphrase. I know that there's a pretense that language translation is like a bijective transformation function where you can put in words from one language and there is always exactly one legitimate translation for any phrase or sentence, but human languages don't work like that. There are usually a lot of synonyms for the same concept and they don't always have the same connotations. I'm sure we're all familiar with the dodginess of machine translations, so the process is not as simple and automatic as some here are portraying it. We even had a game based on this here on the Ship. I know that you know this, @BroJames.
Your specific objection[/url] to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation".
I could be missing something, but isn’t the issue here the italicised rather than the bolded part. In that it says he was paraphrasing to say what he thought the speakers should have said, rather than than to convey the sense of what he thought they did say?
Is that the issue? That I didn't properly strip quote Thucydides to remove the context of the first part of what was already a partial sentence? What if it was translated:
. . . it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.
Does translating that passage in this way change the meaning conveyed?
Not in my opinion. The part I have underlined, which AFAICT corresponds to the part in unbolded italics in your previous post, remains problematic.
Yes that nails it for me @Doublethink, along with the elision between translation and paraphrase.
I recognise that translation and paraphrase can be seen as sitting on a spectrum, and that there are hard cases e.g. where idiom is involved*. But in general usage there is a distinction.
Is there a hard distinction to be made here?
No. I've specifically said there is a spectrum - i.e. it shades from one to the other.
Translation is literally using different words in an attempt to convey the same information. In most other contexts we would consider this a paraphrase.
But not the context where one is attempting to convey the same information in a different language. In most contexts we consider that to be a translation.
I know that there's a pretense that language translation is like a bijective transformation function where you can put in words from one language and there is always exactly one legitimate translation for any phrase or sentence, but human languages don't work like that. There are usually a lot of synonyms for the same concept and they don't always have the same connotations. I'm sure we're all familiar with the dodginess of machine translations, so the process is not as simple and automatic as some here are portraying it. We even had a game based on this here on the Ship. I know that you know this, @BroJames.
Indeed. I'm not a believer in that pretence. I think that is clear from my previousposts.
Is that the issue? That I didn't properly strip quote Thucydides to remove the context of the first part of what was already a partial sentence? What if it was translated:
. . . it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said.
Does translating that passage in this way change the meaning conveyed?
Not in my opinion. The part I have underlined, which AFAICT corresponds to the part in unbolded italics in your previous post, remains problematic.
How so? The Greeks had a relatively well developed system of rhetoric. We can be reasonably certain of the forms that would be demanded of them for certain speeches (funeral orations, diplomatic debates, etc.). Can you expand on why it's problematic for Thucydides to (for example) make Perikles give a funeral oration at a military funeral rather than a stand-up comedy routine?
Translation is literally using different words in an attempt to convey the same information. In most other contexts we would consider this a paraphrase.
But not the context where one is attempting to convey the same information in a different language. In most contexts we consider that to be a translation.
My point is that it this seems to be a distinction without a difference. In both cases different words are being substituted for the original words. If you want to get specific translation is a specific type of paraphrase, but it still falls into the category of paraphrase. It's not a separate and completely different thing.
I mean, if you're happy to adopt a position that implies that a translation of Sophocles' Elektra is interchangeable with a translation of Euripides' Elektra then you can certainly maintain that all speeches by Greek rhetoricians are paraphrases of each other; and there is no ambiguity in saying both that a speech is composed by Thucydides as what he thinks was demanded by the occasion and that it adheres as closely as possible to the sense of what was really said.
Most translators would I think consider that overlumping. Since the Athenians did apparently compose lists of the best speechwriters in history it would seem that they did distinguish between different speeches even on the same topic.
Is it reasonable to expect verbatim transcription of anything that was said before the age of recording? In some situations, there may have been witnesses who could listen to a speed and memorize it exactly (to relate it later), but how common was that? For instance, the address of Robert the Bruce to his troops before Bannockburn is available (in the Scottish dialect of Middle English), but it seems unlikely anyone had tape recorder or even took shorthand. Do we know that the account is accurate? Did Gen. McAuliffe really say "Nuts"? Did the Spartans really answer Philip of Macedon with "If" (or the equivalent in Greek)?
Some people might say that if you have a good story and you also have the truth, tell them both.
Sticking my nose in for a moment to say that my understanding (from Walter Ong) is that memory in a largely oral culture is a rather different thing than it is for us, who are print and electronic-dependent. There are books out there on the differences (I found one on Greek epic poetry, but can't recall the title), but it's not safe to say that their memories were as poor as ours generally are.
Did the Spartans really answer Philip of Macedon with "If" (or the equivalent in Greek)?
It would be fairly memorable if they had.
Also, the story is:
Philip: if I invade the Peloponnese I will kick you out of all the territories you've conquered.
Spartans: If
Philip invades the Peloponnese, and kicks the Spartans out of all the territories they've conquered.
Spartans whimper quietly to themselves.
I mean, if you're happy to adopt a position that . . . there is no ambiguity in saying both that a speech is composed by Thucydides as what he thinks was demanded by the occasion and that it adheres as closely as possible to the sense of what was really said.
Given that Thucydides claimed both were true, there doesn't seem to necessarily be a contradiction, unless one is willing to completely dismiss any form of paraphrase as valid. Which is where we came in.
Sticking my nose in for a moment to say that my understanding (from Walter Ong) is that memory in a largely oral culture is a rather different thing than it is for us, who are print and electronic-dependent. There are books out there on the differences (I found one on Greek epic poetry, but can't recall the title), but it's not safe to say that their memories were as poor as ours generally are.
This reminds me of certain passages of the Iliad about how people today just didn't measure up to the standards of the Old Days.
Just as Diomedes hefted a boulder in his hands, a tremendous feat — no two men could hoist it, weak as men are now, but all on his own he raised it high with ease, flung it and struck Aeneas' thigh where the hipbone turns inside the pelvis, the joint they call the cup - it smashed the socket, snapped both tendons too and the jagged rock tore back the skin in shreds.
Deterioration of standards among The Kids TodayTM seems a perennial complaint.
I really don't want to make this about Thucydides specifically, but he lived in what is being claimed is a largely oral culture (despite the existence of writing) and he claims to have resorted to his methodology because "it was in all cases difficult to carry them [speeches] word for word in one’s memory". I suppose we could argue that Thucydides was exceptionally deficient in this regard relative to his peers, but we have no record of criticisms along the lines of "Thucydides can't even remember verbatim a twelve minute speech he heard once many years ago" or anyone studying the text in Antiquity considering this to be a remarkable admission.
Of course one of the ways oral tradition works is repetition. And also repetition. We have no indication that people from oral traditions have better memories for one-time speeches than moderns. That's not how human memory works and positing superhuman attributes to our ancestors is a fraught endeavor. For a lot of Jesus' teachings we could argue that they were part of a "routine" that he'd worked up when preaching, so the repetition would have been built in for those who followed him around. They would have heard the same pitch multiple times. (What's the plan today, rabbi? Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain?) On the other hand there are also a lot of one-off events in Jesus' life. He was probably only tried before Pilate once (or maybe twice if you go by Luke's account) or had one conversation once with a Syro-Phœnician woman, so there's less opportunity there for repetition. Or repetition.
Seems to me that almost all oral traditions I'm aware of include considerable embellishment.
There's that great shadow puppet tradition in Thailand called Nang yai where the actors continue all day.
It seems like the actors putting their own "stamp" onto the performance is as important as hitting all the points in the narrative. It's very unlikely that it is being repeated verbatim, that's not the point.
Sorry just to say that I may have got the name wrong. According to Wikipedia there are various Thai shadow puppet traditions, I'm now not too sure which one it is that I'm thinking of.
I tried to search for "Philip and Spartans" and found this (slightly edited) on StackExchange:
Plutarch, in De garrulitate , writes this concerning the brief, concise language used by the Laconians:
And when Philip wrote thus to the Spartans: If once I enter into your territories, I will destroy ye all, never to rise again; they answered him with the single word, If.
To King Demetrius exclaiming in a great rage, What! have the Spartans sent me but one ambassador? the ambassador nothing terrified replied, Yes; one to one. Certainly they that spoke short and concisely were much admired by the ancients.
Subsequently, neither Philip nor his son Alexander the Great attempted to capture the city. Philip is also recorded as approaching Sparta on another occasion and asking whether he should come as friend or foe; the reply was "Neither".
Translation is literally using different words in an attempt to convey the same information. In most other contexts we would consider this a paraphrase.
But not the context where one is attempting to convey the same information in a different language. In most contexts we consider that to be a translation.
My point is that it this seems to be a distinction without a difference. In both cases different words are being substituted for the original words.
I’ve given an example of the difference here if it doesn’t seem different to you, I don’t think I have the ability to explain it more clearly.
Of course one of the ways oral tradition works is repetition. And also repetition. <snip>
Which of course was a staple of rabbinic method in Judaism of his day. Plus he was almost certainly giving the same message from place to place many times — a repetition which is elided by the gospels. Any then there will have been occasions which simply stuck in the mind, I can imagine the conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman being one such. And there is clear evidence that the disciples discussed Jesus’ teaching among themselves at the time — something else that is likely to have fixed it in memories.
Comments
To the extent that @Lamb Chopped keeps blithely saying the Bible is a human *and* divine book, I’d argue that conversation around the supernatural aspects of that claim is fair game.
BroJames, Purgatory Host
But Martin behaves worse than others.
I think I see where you're coming from, up to this point. And I think it's a bit wider than just being about inerrancy. It sounds more like you're accepting that there are rough edges, but that they're within acceptable limits. Also that it doesn't stand or fall by its inerrancy or infallibility.
I would be rather more equivocal about all these being good things. The printing press (at the least) is rather implicated in the Wars of the Reformation - but you could see that as essentially an issue with the human use and misuse of media technologies, in a similar way to social media and (presidential) elections. A more serious issue would be in the colonial history of some bible translations, for example: https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/15/1/117
Pease, you wrote "Thanks for your reply. It seemed reasonable to at least ask on this thread, given that you chose to include multiple references to the Holy Spirit being directly involved in the story of "the text and how it came to be", as well as the relevance of what the text is actually for."
The difference as I see it is that my references to the Holy Spirit and his work in the formation of the NT are not my personal speculations and guesswork. Rather they are a mainstream understanding of, if not the whole Christian church, certainly a large percentage of it. I wasn't setting out on this thread to lay out my personal theories, crackpot or otherwise. I wanted to lay out a very standard and widely accepted view of the subject from many angles.
So if you all don't mind, any further questions addressed to me that seem to provoke personal speculative answers from me, I will move to separate new threads. Just to keep things straight.
But I do find myself wondering how viable that is in practice.
Here's why, and please don't take this the wrong way @Lamb Chopped ...
I'm one of those who would accept divine inspiration and the guidance of the Holy Spirit in the 'enscripturation' process.
This is an Orthodox position shared with other mainstream Christian traditions. I believe I'm right in thinking that the Anglicans and Orthodox were on the same page on this one when formulating the Moscow Declaration a good few years ago now.
Obviously individual Anglicans or Orthodox may not agree on the fine detail and it's hard to determine how 'representative' it was. I'd suggest many Anglicans have shifted position since.
Be that as it may ...
Truth be told, as much as I agree with you in principle, in practice I'm not so comfortable with what appears to me to be an attempt to 'blame' your interlocutors for 'provoking' your more speculative posts. As if their line of questioning has forced you to speculate.
It may be a Catch-22 thing, of course. Their persistent challenges provoke a kickback. 'Here I stand ...'
Now where have we heard that before? 😉
Again, I'm treading carefully here but from where I'm standing, not a miles away, you do appear to reach for the speculative nuke button quite early on in any confrontation.
That's not to say you don't marshal your 'conventional forces' - please excuse the military analogy - all that research and textual analysis - but as soon as that is challenged you seem to change gear into 'woo woo' or subjective opinion mode.
It appears to be a feature of your more apologetic threads. 'Y'all can say what you like but I love Jesus / I've seen miracles / I've seen heavy shit ...'
I don't doubt that you have and can certainly understand your line of argument. At the risk of imaginative speculation of my own I can picture the disciples saying, 'But he's alive, I tell you! I saw the empty tomb, I saw the marks in his hands and side when Thomas cane in ... why don't you believe us?'
So, yes. I get it.
In fairness, those of us who do take a 'supernaturalist' approach are going to fall back on this sort of thing at some point. I do it myself so am not singling you out for censure.
The Orthodox can be very unapologetic about this sort of thing. It makes us pains in the butt to deal with in ecumenical relations.
As ever, I'm saying two paradoxical things at once here. On the one hand I appear - I said 'appear' - to be asking you to tone things down, and on the other to be suggesting you don't. 😉
Forgive me if I'm not making sense or speaking out of turn.
The issue in this sense is that it's not just academic type stuff - it's faith-academic type stuff. This is fair enough, within its own terms.
I think my point wasn't that these are your own personal theories - I am quite happy to take them as representing the perspective of a significant proportion of people who have been involved in the process over the years. The issue is that you are writing from the perspective of a believer but that you are writing *for* people who are not believers (as well as believers), and you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position. For example:
"...it has always been understood in the church that the Holy Spirit watched over this textual process just as he did all the rest of them. We take it that he safeguarded the translation process sufficiently that we are not getting nonsense or mistakes in what Jesus said, just because it is put into koine Greek instead of what was probably Aramaic."
"Someone with an anti-supernaturalist worldview may well have an easier case to make; but the point of research and learning isn't to produce an easy case, it's to find the truth. If the truth is in fact at least partly supernatural, then we have to face up to that fact. Ignoring it to make our work easier is intellectually dishonest."
In effect, by choosing to frame it in the way you have, what you are saying boils down to "the reason we can be sure this is what God the son said and did is that God the Holy Spirit intervened in the process of recording and transmitting it to us". It's a faith position.
Hostly beret on
@Caissa Ship's Commandment number 6 states
If you believe that one shipmate is being unfairly treated by the Crew, you may take the issue to the Styx. You may not do so here.
Hostly beret off
la vie en rouge, Purgatory host
Sure, which is what I am trying to get at in the 'woo-woo' thread (excuse the term).
A faith position isn't necessarily indefensible by other means.
Rightly or wrongly, @Lamb Chopped believes that it is possible to arrive at it by considering the evidence objectively and that intellectual honesty demands that we admit the supernatural dimension.
I understand that as a position and it's one I've heard from Christian apologists before.
The problem I have with it, without dipping back into Orthodox 'woo-woo'
One could argue that all these arguments become circular.
Orthodoxy teaches that scripture can't be understood properly outside of the Church. By which we mean The ChurchTM. Us. The Orthodox Church. That isn't to say that Lutherans or Anglicans or atheists or anyone else can't get anything out of it or that their understanding doesn't come close to or correlate with aspects of the Orthodox 'take' on things.
That's bound to sound exasperating to anyone who isn't Big O Orthodox.
Beardy-wierdy Bastards!
But in a small o sense, Lamb Chopped does represent a traditional understanding of the inspiration of scripture, one shared by the Big O Orthodox, the RCs, traditional Lutherans and Anglicans and many others. She also recognises when she is going beyond that into more personal or speculative territory. Hence she gets 'bugged' by her own posts.
I get that. I get 'bugged' by mine.
I think I can best answer this post by addressing the bit that's bolded, "you are saying that in order to understand the rigour of the process, they are required to adopt a faith position." No, not at all. This is not an apologetics thread, and I was not attempting to convert anybody.
In fact, I was attempting to do much less than that. This thread is in fact nothing more than my attempt to summarize the commonly understood processes, data and theories behind the formation of the New Testament. Nobody need agree with me; in fact I expected far more debate than actually turned up. Maybe "boring" was in fact the right word!
To be sure, I did not represent every possible point of view--I wasn't trying to; I was aiming for the mainstream. And yes, there is an unashamed supernaturalist element in the mainstream, because the majority of scholars who have worked in this field over 2000 years are and have been Christian believers. (That does not mean that they sacrifice their academic integrity to their faith; rather that they find the two work perfectly well when harness in parallel, which is a thing I've noticed in my own scholarly life as well. Yes, I know there are those who will disagree that this is possible.)
So to repeat: I was not attempting to convert ANYBODY to any faith position. I was giving you Seminary 101--a summary of the issues surrounding the creation and transmission of the New Testament. Readers of the thread are absolutely free to read it and reject it, or anything in it (obviously). And anybody wanting to go beyond the highlights is totally free to go find their nearest academic library. I gave you sources, and there are zillions more out there. Have at it!
I created this thread, not to convert anybody, but because lately we've had more than the usual number of posts calling into question whether we can ever know "what Jesus actually said and did" (to return to the OP) on the grounds that the text as we have it is completely corrupt and worthless.
Frankly, I was tired. Tired of answering off-the-cuff remarks like that with painstaking long arguments about highly technical matters like variants and filiation, or reminders about the material circumstances affecting communication in ancient times. Tired of doing that on thread after thread, when the posters saying such things ("We all know it's impossible to trust a word of John" or what have you) have already skipped blithely away to some other thread, where they post the same misleading remarks, which are based on no serious research whatsoever, as far as I can determine. Worried about the number of other readers who may see those posts and believe them, because nobody is taking the time to contradicts them using proper evidence and argumentation. And frustrated by the fact that it always takes at least ten times as long to counter off-the-cuff bullshit as it does to spread it in the first place.
Chances are super high that many of you folks reading this will say, "This was a monumental waste of time, who cares that much about the New Testament anyway?" And you have a right to think and to say so. But I personally think it matters, and so I put in the time and effort in for this thread.
I'm hoping in future days that the next time someone makes an off-the-cuff comment of the sort I mentioned, I may be able to avoid writing walls and walls and WALLS of text, and instead post something like, "Actually, if you're interested in the variants of the New Testament and whether they affect Christian doctrine, have a look at this post" and link them to this thread. So I won't have to keep typing it over and over and over.
I hope this makes some sort of sense. I'm short on sleep and packing for a trip; my apologies if I've managed to offend someone unwittingly.
I, for one, am reading your summary with great interest and appreciation, but without debating anything in response. Silence may be indistinguishable from boredom, but they do not equate.
What you have given us are your reasons for believing that believers can have substantial confidence in the integrity of the bible, alongside reasons why non-believers can have some, lesser, confidence in the integrity of the bible. This is fine, as long as you do not expect a non-believer to have, or be able to have, the same level of confidence in the integrity of the bible as you do.
I don't think it's a question of whether or not it's possible or reasonable, but of what you require of your readers in order to be able to follow *all* your arguments.
The implication of your approach, as a believer, is that your definition of "proper evidence and argumentation" is not the same as a non-believer's. This is fine, as long as you do not expect a non-believer to be able to engage in debate in the same way as you.
I'm still not clear on your standards for translation here. You completely dismiss Thucydides for using paraphrases "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used", and yet this is exactly what we expect from a translation process; using different words to convey the same "general sense" of the words originally spoken. Your harshness against Thucydides would seem to indicate a Quranic-style stance against the validity of translated works, and yet you seem willing to violate this rule when it comes to the Second Testament.
Why? Because translation is the process of substituting other words, ideally ones "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used", for the words originally spoken/written. You were horrified at this level of "sloppiness" when it came to Thucydides and cited his methodology in particular for being untrustworthy. You even went so far as to claim that "there is nothing to suggest that they [the Gospel authors] would consider such a thing, and a lot against it.", with "such a thing" apparently being recording anything other than the exact, perfectly remembered, verbatim words of everyone they portray in their writings.
Thucydides explains his decision regarding the speeches he records as "it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory". This seems like a fairly reasonable admission to make. This would seem to be doubly true for a work in translation, where by definition you're paraphrasing things. I suppose if you're willing to claim that the Gospel authors (and everyone they consulted as a source) had photographic memories of every event involving Jesus you can simply attribute that to "woo woo" as you put it, but that tends to move the Gospels away from being "both a human and a divine book", as you also put it, and simply making it a divine book by erasing all sources of human fallibility.
As far as the pre-literary transmission is concerned (which may well have co-existed with the beginning of written collections - cf. Paul’s books and scrolls) I find Kenneth Bailey’s argument for an informal controlled oral tradition makes a strong case for a substantially accurate transmission of the teachings of Jesus. The argument is also quite eye-opening as to the existence of a robust oral culture in parts of the modern world.
When you said the Gospel writers wrote down how they assumed the trial would have gone a la Thucydides did you mean they wrote down something as close to the sense of what was actually said as a good translation should be?
Because if you did mean that it certainly wasn't clear.
And if you didn't mean that, then you were the one who introduced the idea that Thucydides is a standard for inaccuracy in reporting speech and you're being disingenuous now.
Well, I for one have opined that I don't believe we can know exactly what Jesus said, and I still feel that way. But I've never thought of the Bible was "completely corrupt and worthless" as a result. I enjoy reading about scholarship, though, and this thread is fun.
It's a question of the validity of paraphrase as a form of record. Your specific objection to Thucydides as an accurate historian is his practice of "keeping as closely as possible to the general sense of the words that were actually used, to make the speakers say what, in my opinion, was called for by each situation". In other words, your claim that by not recording the exact words, Thucydides was engaged in a kind of fraud. As I said, this isn't about Thucydides specifically, but about the standards being applied to historical works generally and whether paraphrase can ever be legitimate. This matters a lot for Second Testament scholarship. If we assume that Jesus primarily spoke Aramaic, then that means that most of what we have of his teaching is a translation, or a paraphrase because all translation is a paraphrase. Even if we posit that he spoke koine Greek exclusively this poses problems since most modern Christians are not literate in this language and thus can only access the Gospels via paraphrased (i.e. translated) versions.
Whether or not paraphrased writings are legitimate gets to the core of whether we really "know what we know about what Jesus said and did".
I could be missing something, but isn’t the issue here the italicised rather than the bolded part. In that it says he was paraphrasing to say what he thought the speakers should have said, rather than than to convey the sense of what he thought they did say ?
*For any non-UK shipmates unaware, this was a BBC satirical comedy series revolving around conflict between politicians and their civil servants
And yet dramatic retelling has a certain power to it. British history has for a long time been strongly influenced by Shakespeare, despite the Bard not even attempting to claim knowledge of historical facts from centuries before.
I would contend that we do not, cannot, know the purpose of ancient documents. It is perfectly possible they are pious retelling of histories, they're drama with some other purpose (such as provoking nationalism) or even that the standards of what was/wasn't an accurate retelling of history were not established as clearly as it is now.
I recognise that translation and paraphrase can be seen as sitting on a spectrum, and that there are hard cases e.g. where idiom is involved*. But in general usage there is a distinction.
(* the French “ jeté un coup d'œil” more literally means “threw a blow of the eye” where English would say “glanced” or “peeked”)
As I may have said before, the gospels were written by people, in an environment in which hagiography, proving the holiness of the subject, was an emerging genre within Christian communities. The priority was on proving the sanctity of Christ, placing him theologically in the trinity, rather than on recording the details of his life. There must have been far more material available: apart from the apparently recurring festivals, the incidents in the gospels could have happened over the course of a matter of months, even allowing for walking time. Christological accuracy, faithfulness to the tradition/viewpoint from which they emerge overwhelmed biographical accuracy, so the title of this thread will always be wrong. All we can ever even hope to know is what the gospel writers wrote. We can also consider their process of compilation, but I think the need to enter a restriction of our ambition is pressing and indeed paramount.
(I would not care to defend the historicity of the infancy narratives on secular grounds.)
Later non-canonical gospels are later and differ in style.
This is too simplistic. There are areas where the one shades into the other, but "Il a dit, 'Je ne sais pas.'" is translated by, "He [has] said 'I do not know.'" It is paraphrased by "He expressed his ignorance on the subject." In many, maybe most cases there is a clear distinction.
I'd be interested in the evidence, and your source for this. To the best of my knowledge the earliest 'life of a saint' (I haven't read it to know whether it qualifies as a hagiography) is the life of Cyprian of Carthage written shortly after his death in 258 AD, a century and a half after the latest widely accepted dating for the latest gospel (John).
Luke, John, and to a lesser extent Mark are quite open in saying that they write what they do in order that people may believe. Luke's preface indicates that the writer considers that this purpose is served by setting out 'an orderly account' so that his reader(s) 'may know the truth'. Well, yes. Evidently. But his doesn't say anything one way or another about the accuracy of the depiction we have. A Wikipedia summary of the life of Winston Churchill is clearly less complete than Randolph Churchill and Martin Gilbert's eight volume official biography. That doesn't per se mean it is providing an inaccurate depiction. What is the evidence and source for this assertion? Biographical completeness is obviously lacking, but what is the evidence for saying the biographical accuracy was sacrificed? I agree that we need to be careful about the actual words of Christ in the gospels given that he probably spoke in Aramaic and our record is in Greek (and I'm not a fan of red-letter editions of the New Testament, at least partly for that reason). But I can't see any good evidence to suggest that what is recorded is not a faithful and fair record of Christ's ministry.
Can we know the exact words of Jesus? In most cases, probably not, given the points that have already been raised about the difficulties of transmission and translation. But do we need to know the exact words? I would argue not - they are not in any way "magical" and the early church certainly didn't think so, or else they would have transmitted them in their original Aramaic. This is where Christianity is different from large parts of Islam, where the exact words, in their original language, of the Koran are important, as they are the very words of Allah. Hence the need for Muslims of any nationality and tongue to be able to read Arabic.
But I would say that we can have some confidence that, in some cases, we can get very close to the very words of Jesus. To begin with, his teachings would of course have been given on a regular basis, so that they could be remembered. Secondly, the people of that age (especially disciples of rabbis) were accustomed to learning their master's teaching by heart. In an age where most people (especially in rural areas) were not literate, remembering teachings and religious texts was vital.
What matters most, to me, is the question of whether we can know the message of Jesus? The actual words are often irrelevant - what matters is whether we have understood the message that he was trying to get across. and I would say that, mostly, we can be confident that we have the key parts of his message, especially in regards to such matters as the love and forgiveness of God and the call to love one another, as we have been loved by God.
Are there "secondary" teachings in the gospels, which have been placed into the mouth of Jesus by the early Church? I wouldn't be at all surprised. It would seem that the Gospels are not about providing "historical records" as we would understand them, so much as documents that will lead people to have faith in Jesus or to strengthen their faith in Jesus. But I don't think that this affects the key message of Jesus.
Are there words of Jesus that have not been retained in the Gospels? Almost certainly. One of my most precious theological books is "Unknown Sayings of Jesus" by Joachim Jeremias, dating from 1957, where he considers 21 sayings that are not found in the gospels but which he thinks have good grounds for being from Jesus. It is a fascinating book.
(Enough waffling for now...)
Is that the issue? That I didn't properly strip quote Thucydides to remove the context of the first part of what was already a partial sentence? What if it was translated:
Does translating that passage in this way change the meaning conveyed?
Is there a hard distinction to be made here? Translation is literally using different words in an attempt to convey the same information. In most other contexts we would consider this a paraphrase. I know that there's a pretense that language translation is like a bijective transformation function where you can put in words from one language and there is always exactly one legitimate translation for any phrase or sentence, but human languages don't work like that. There are usually a lot of synonyms for the same concept and they don't always have the same connotations. I'm sure we're all familiar with the dodginess of machine translations, so the process is not as simple and automatic as some here are portraying it. We even had a game based on this here on the Ship. I know that you know this, @BroJames.
How so? The Greeks had a relatively well developed system of rhetoric. We can be reasonably certain of the forms that would be demanded of them for certain speeches (funeral orations, diplomatic debates, etc.). Can you expand on why it's problematic for Thucydides to (for example) make Perikles give a funeral oration at a military funeral rather than a stand-up comedy routine?
My point is that it this seems to be a distinction without a difference. In both cases different words are being substituted for the original words. If you want to get specific translation is a specific type of paraphrase, but it still falls into the category of paraphrase. It's not a separate and completely different thing.
Most translators would I think consider that overlumping. Since the Athenians did apparently compose lists of the best speechwriters in history it would seem that they did distinguish between different speeches even on the same topic.
Some people might say that if you have a good story and you also have the truth, tell them both.
Okay, back to my paying job.
Also, the story is:
Philip: if I invade the Peloponnese I will kick you out of all the territories you've conquered.
Spartans: If
Philip invades the Peloponnese, and kicks the Spartans out of all the territories they've conquered.
Spartans whimper quietly to themselves.
Given that Thucydides claimed both were true, there doesn't seem to necessarily be a contradiction, unless one is willing to completely dismiss any form of paraphrase as valid. Which is where we came in.
Apparently for some it is.
This reminds me of certain passages of the Iliad about how people today just didn't measure up to the standards of the Old Days.
Deterioration of standards among The Kids TodayTM seems a perennial complaint.
I really don't want to make this about Thucydides specifically, but he lived in what is being claimed is a largely oral culture (despite the existence of writing) and he claims to have resorted to his methodology because "it was in all cases difficult to carry them [speeches] word for word in one’s memory". I suppose we could argue that Thucydides was exceptionally deficient in this regard relative to his peers, but we have no record of criticisms along the lines of "Thucydides can't even remember verbatim a twelve minute speech he heard once many years ago" or anyone studying the text in Antiquity considering this to be a remarkable admission.
Of course one of the ways oral tradition works is repetition. And also repetition. We have no indication that people from oral traditions have better memories for one-time speeches than moderns. That's not how human memory works and positing superhuman attributes to our ancestors is a fraught endeavor. For a lot of Jesus' teachings we could argue that they were part of a "routine" that he'd worked up when preaching, so the repetition would have been built in for those who followed him around. They would have heard the same pitch multiple times. (What's the plan today, rabbi? Sermon on the Mount or Sermon on the Plain?) On the other hand there are also a lot of one-off events in Jesus' life. He was probably only tried before Pilate once (or maybe twice if you go by Luke's account) or had one conversation once with a Syro-Phœnician woman, so there's less opportunity there for repetition. Or repetition.
There's that great shadow puppet tradition in Thailand called Nang yai where the actors continue all day.
It seems like the actors putting their own "stamp" onto the performance is as important as hitting all the points in the narrative. It's very unlikely that it is being repeated verbatim, that's not the point.
Plutarch, in De garrulitate , writes this concerning the brief, concise language used by the Laconians:
And when Philip wrote thus to the Spartans: If once I enter into your territories, I will destroy ye all, never to rise again; they answered him with the single word, If.
To King Demetrius exclaiming in a great rage, What! have the Spartans sent me but one ambassador? the ambassador nothing terrified replied, Yes; one to one. Certainly they that spoke short and concisely were much admired by the ancients.
Subsequently, neither Philip nor his son Alexander the Great attempted to capture the city. Philip is also recorded as approaching Sparta on another occasion and asking whether he should come as friend or foe; the reply was "Neither".
Let's not attack Sparta this week.
Sounds like the incident in the Book of Joshua when the Commander of the Lord's Host appears.
'Are you for us or for our enemies?'
Perhaps there was a both/and vibe going on ...
Which of course was a staple of rabbinic method in Judaism of his day. Plus he was almost certainly giving the same message from place to place many times — a repetition which is elided by the gospels. Any then there will have been occasions which simply stuck in the mind, I can imagine the conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman being one such. And there is clear evidence that the disciples discussed Jesus’ teaching among themselves at the time — something else that is likely to have fixed it in memories.