NT/History Blog

God vs Irony

2013-05-14T20:54:00.000-05:00

If context is king, then irony is queen. Sometimes you can't tell which one wields more authority. Sometimes she likes it that way. Then again, the linguistic nature of irony's supremacy proves that "man" being the measure of all things is ultimately an illusion. Every author eventually loses authority. Every ironist is immediately subject to irony. But if there is a God then our ignorance is trumped by God's knowledge. Or would be... if we could know what God knows.

The authoritative grand narratives of past ages have given way because we are too knowing, and too meta-knowing. Yet, I believe we are also too self-confident in our ability to see through human deception. Consider the paradox of models - that a simplified explanation becomes more inaccurate as it becomes more comprehensible. This hints at an ultimate paradox for all language and explanation, including all literature, science and history. We do not really know quite as much as our explanations imply and we cannot really say quite as much as we [think that we] know.

If we cannot explain it, then how do we know (that we know) it?

We do not. We cannot. That is why all our talk is dependent on recognizing authority and that is why authorities are evidently made manifest by the recognized power of their words. We are gods to ourselves, or we'd like to be. Or, at least, we'd like to convince others to think so, for a while.

But what of God? What of God's authority? What of God's words?

If human words cannot fully express human knowledge, how can God's words - in human language - ever hope to express God's knowledge? How could God ever have put his hope into words?

Consider the irony of the 2nd (3rd) commandment: no graven images. Technically, the alphabetic Hebrew characters carved in stone were icons, which are images. Visibly, words are images. Obviously, this technicality does not mitigate the force and intention of the commandment. Images lead to idolatry. Words, also, can lead to idolatry. The Bible has become idolatrous to some. So also, in some places, depictions of the Ten Commandments have been set up as shrines, as graven images, as idols.

Nevertheless, we believe, God handed down this commandment.

The fact that God's own words are so hopelessly susceptible to ironic redefinition (to say nothing of simple misunderstanding) suggests that (1) God's words must not be held too literalistically, lest the partial implication obscure the whole understanding, and (2) a God who is greater than our human language must of necessity fail to communicate with humans. And yet, we believe, God attempts to communicate anyway.

It is up to us to make sense of God's words, and yet it cannot not be up to us. But a God who is greater than language must know this. If he communicates to us via human words, he must do so secure in the knowledge that he *will* express himself incompletely, and that humans *will* understand him imperfectly.

The church as incarnation is ironic because we cannot really know which humans might be speaking for God. The scripture is ironic because it's treated as the last word but we cannot avoid further interpreting it's words. The christian life is ironic because we speak about following God, and yet which of us actually hears him?

Is, perhaps, God himself being ironic? What he says, we must presume, he means straightforwardly. That is, if he still speaks. But does he? Does God present his thoughts to us - in words so much infinitely less than all that God's thoughts might possibly mean - straightforwardly? Does God speak words that he intends us to accept plainly, that he expects us to understand perfectly?

Perhaps he does. Perhaps God has said it all perfectly and now therefore maybe God feels that it has all been said. On the other hand, what if God himself is not yet sure what else God wants to say? Interpreters of scripture disagree about whether God knows (or doesn't know) everything about what's going to happen next. Maybe God is or is not maintaining complete operative control over everything going on around here.

The grand narrative of Calvinism has absolutely served calvinist authoritarians very well, but it may or may not have served God's own agenda. What does God think of Calvin's grand narrative? Oh, how grateful God must have been when one among us was finally bright enough to have re-explained God. And how upset God must therefore equally be when all the rest of us fail to re-explain him with as much accuracy. On the other hand, if our redefinitions of God are so weak, then perhaps even our best explanation is not much more greatly pleasing to God than our worst explanation. Do our explanations, then, work to please only ourselves? (This one may. Yours, I decline to judge. Maybe.)

We continue to re-explain God. Has God ever explained God's own self?

If God's greatest self-explanation is not with words, then perhaps that is why God does not seem to have any active provision at work for counteracting our recontextualizations and redefinitions and our re-explanations. We go on, battling among ourselves. As we say more and more, God seems to say less and less.

But despite all that, I must suppose he does intend to outlast us. If so, that means the ultimate irony is not yet, but will come. The ultimate redefinition of meaning awaits time's own end. The ultimate subjective opinion, will be God's own viewpoint. The ultimate interpretation will be reality's own denoument.

The authoritative, limitless, uniform and final account of reality - words and deeds - can only be accounted for by whatever story God tells Godself.

The Bible may be God's words, or human words, or both. In any case, our perceptions of God's meaning is limited. Our narrative accounts of God's own story are necessarily limited. If the Bible itself presents a tragic-ironic view of our own limited self-awareness, and limited God-awareness, the Bible therefore succeeds most of all at expressing God's greatness, in contrast to all of our lack.

I suspect the truth is that God does not write human words any more than he paints human pictures or plays human music. I suspect the truth is as simple as what I will now try, but surely somehow fail, to illustrate:

God expresses himself in Christ.
God portrays himself by making images of Christ.
God communicates his thought by the Word, Christ.
God is moved to move within our world by incarnating himself, again and again.
God expresses himself as Christ, in the Body of Christ.
(And, occasionally, we attempt to write words about it.)

The mystery, of course, is whether or not this great limtlessness of God can ever be known or expressed through such very limited human forms. My guess is, yes. I suppose that it can. I suppose - and I can only believe - that Divine fundamentals remain active despite the human condition, despite our deeply ironic "fall".

The hope of God is nothing other than Christ being expressed in a gaggle of christians.

This cannot be, and yet somehow it is. This cannot work, and yet sometimes it does. All is not right, and yet it's somehow alright. The church is dead or dying in each place that we look. And yet we hear stories of God's love and life blooming again and again.

What is more ironic than life out of death? What more can God express but that God is not human?

Apparently, God's chief strategy is simply biding his time. God expresses Godself when God desires to do so. The ironic fall in literature is ultimately that whatever we say or do is so much infinitely less than whatever we are and might do. What I'm proposing is that, if this is true about persons, so all the more is this true about God.

God does not merely get the last word. God gets the last everything.

Of the making of many books there is no end. There will always be more to say. Commentary begets commentary. But God begat Christ.

What we say and what we believe and what we author... in words... cannot be Christ. Because words are not Christ. Words can never amount to the sharing of Christ. Only Jesus is Christ. Jesus' Body is Christ. God IN us, that may be Christ.

And where is Christ? Who is Christ? What is Christ saying? We may all try to say, but God will not speak to settle our arguments. We may all claim that we know, but only God silently knows. We may all try to judge, but only God is the judge. If God has given us that which might settle these issues, God does not seem to have done so using words.

So, then. After all that, what else can *I* say? What on Earth can *I* write? What words that are mere words can be helpful for building up anyone as part of what God is doing now, on Earth, in Christ?

I am not sure. But for now, I suppose, that's okay...

Maybe God knows. Maybe we'll find out someday.

Anon then...

That's it. I'm at loggerheads with myself.

2013-04-11T11:23:00.001-05:00

I need an editor and academic advisor. I can't do without one any more. Does anyone have any suggestions for how to proceed? Or with whom? Or through what institution?

Money is *not* available right now. Nor will it be in the near future. But I'm stuck stuck stuck stuck.

I know what I think, and I'm doing my homework, and I'm aware of many landmines and wrinkles within my topic. If you've been following the blog these past six months, you can see the new day job has given me TONS of time to think carefully and thoroughly and I've made progress. What I'm struggling with is the writing.

What happened is that I finally submitted a paper to SBL. It was one of "many fine" submissions that were "too many to accept". So that's okay. My plan was (is?) to continue submitting. But I find myself second guessing each paragraph and completely of two minds about such editing choices.

It's not that I can't keep writing and submitting. It's that I suddenly feel groundless. What I submitted may or may not have been good enough to present. But self-doubt isn't hardly the problem. The problem is that I know it can always be better, and I'm fighting that battle between "finished" and "done". The perfect is the enemy of the good. But as an amateur, I feel it's an appropriate concern that anything I submit better be really, really, really impeccable.

In past years, when I faced a block such as this, I'd switch topics and hope for a breakthrough eventually. What I've found is that breakthroughs do come but only in thinking, in argument, in understanding. That isn't nearly my problem. It's the writing. I just don't have enough confidence and experience in communicating with my intended audience (New Testament Scholars) to make good, firm, clear-headed decisions about paper content, style, approach, footnote moderation, and argument strategy.

I've come at this thing six different ways. I can revise it again. I can keep trying. None of that is the problem.

The problem is I have no guidance on which of these multiple options might work best.

I guess, in lieu of other options at the moment, I just have to write all six versions and hope to submit the best one by chance. Apart from divine guidance, which - though I don't know about you - never seems to come to me in such a finely tuned form, I will be firing blind.

I guess the only thing to do is embrace that, and to fire away.

But I'm more than willing to be rescued here, if anyone feels so gallantly moved...

What Year was Jesus' 13th Passover?

2013-04-06T17:16:00.002-05:00

The odds are incredibly strong that Archelaus' exile preceded the episode in Luke 2:41-51. That's not speculation. What we have is a statistical coincidence with nearly 100% correlation, which in turn suggests a reasonable probability of actual causation. Allow me to explain.

First, we begin with 7 BC and 6 BC and 5 BC - the years most often suggested by scholars for when Jesus was born. Next we count forward, but remember that three Roman calendar years spread across four Jewish festival calendars. That leads to what we'll call options Alpha, Beta, Gamma and Delta.

Here's the Math. (Remember, there is no "year zero".) Option Alpha: If Jesus was born in very early 7 BC, then he turned "1" before Passover of 6 BC and he turned "12" before the Passover of AD 6. Option Beta: If Jesus was born between March/April of 7 BC and March/April of 6 BC, then he turned "1" before Passover of 5 BC and "12" before Passover of AD 7. Option Gamma: If Jesus was born between March/April of 6 BC and March April of 5 BC, then he turned "1" before Passover of 4 BC and "12" before Passover of AD 8. Option Delta: if Jesus was born in mid to late 5 BC, then he turned "1" before Passover of 3 BC and "12" before Passover of AD 9. To sum up, the leading options require Jesus to turn 12 before Passover of AD 6 or 7 or 8 or 9.

Now, Archelaus was called to Rome and sailed there in the middle of AD 6, from whence he was immediately exiled. In three of the four cases above, Jesus' pilgrimage at age 12 did in fact take place *after* Archelaus was exiled. Furthermore, those three cases represent approximately 94% of the 36 months under consideration (those being the 36 months which fall 12 years subsequent to 7, 6 and 5 BC).

Altogether, therefore, unless one is willing to posit that Jesus was born prior to March/April of 7 BC - and almost nobody does - then one must accept that Jesus' 12 year old pilgrimage (if historical) belongs after Archelaus' exile.

The only remaining questions are - How long afterward? and Was this merely a coincidence?

Suddenly, this is the proper point at which to begin considering the relevant material in Luke and Matthew's infancy narratives. First, Luke's strong implication is that Mary & Joseph avoided bringing Jesus to Jerusalem until he was twelve. Second, Matthew's direct claim is that Joseph feared Archelaus for Jesus' safety's sake. In the light of the above statistical review, is it now harder to suppose that these points are related, or that they are unrelated?

The obvious hypothesis presents itself immediately without any speculative leaps. It's the suggestion that most succinctly accounts for all evidence. Joseph's fear of Archelaus not only seems to have been historical, it was significant enough that it evidently did not disappear until the Ethnarch of Judea was exiled by Augustus.

Interestingly, the most basic form of this hypothesis does not necessarily require Joseph to bring Jesus to the very first Passover after Archelaus' exile, although that indeed seems most likely. To be fair, for all that we know, Joseph could have continued to wait a year or two, perhaps making sure that there would be no riots under the new Roman rule. On the other hand, however, the Roman takeover under Governor Quirinius seems to have encountered little resistance, capturing the would-be-revolutionary "Judas of Galilee" while the property registration was still going on (Josephus never says any uprising actually took place, only that the plan to revolt "made much progress" - Loeb).

By that measure, the stability of Judea should have seemed well in hand before winter of AD 6/7. Still, Joseph does not have to stop being caution just because Quirinius had ruled well for six to nine months. Yet, all in all, it seems more speculative to imagine that Joseph's extreme caution lived on after Archelaus was gone, especially since the Gospel tradition which got passed down was of a particular fear of a particular man, or perhaps of two Herodian rulers. It seems more speculative to concoct an additional reason for Joseph to restrain Jesus in Nazareth for the Passover of 7 AD. By comparison, it seems much less speculative to allow this evidence to declare what it most naturally suggests.

Given the statistical near-certainty that Jesus' 13th Passover occurred not before Archelaus' exile, and given the aspects of tradition which seem so neatly correlated between Luke and Matthew, the most reasonable conclusion is that the Passover episode of Luke 2:41-52 belongs to the year 7 AD. The less likely options, that it belongs to 8 or 9 AD, are more speculative by far.

Working backwards, to conclude, this means that if Jesus was 12 in March/April of 7 AD, that he was born between early Spring of 7 BC and early Spring of 6 BC. This happens to coincide with a very popular time-frame into which most scholars have been dating the Lord's birth for the last several decades. Again, this is highly likely to be not mere coincidence. With no other scenario being demonstrably more plausible, and unless some grave dilemma surfaces about putting Jesus' historical nativity in the above window, BC - Spring 7 to Spring 6 - the most likely and least speculative conclusion available to us is apparent.

Jesus was born in 7/6 BC and attended Passover at age 12 in the year 7 AD.

The Disciples on Good Friday

2013-03-29T08:04:00.002-05:00

"Jesus - Mother". One word in Latin could have saved John from getting arrested.

I don't know that he said it, or wound up needing to say it, but I do suspect it was one reassuring contingency plan someone came up with to help John when he set out with the Marys to watch Jesus be executed. Now, I doubt seriously that John the fisherman from Capernaum knew a word of Italian. But who might have? Any one of the 120. Mary Magdalene may be the most likely, if she'd made any "business" trips to Capernaum.

This is one more area where we've overlooked the disciples' corporate decision making. Our traditional narrative about the other 10 disciples was that their courage failed. Yes, they abandoned him. But look at John. His courage obviously remained. But that may not be the difference. And John may not have decided alone to go stand with the women on Good Friday.

It's likely Mary was the one protecting John. Ostensibly, he was supporting the aggrieved mother. In reality, it's most likely nobody bothered him that day. But in the morning, when the disciples were all hiding together, it was those men - as a group - who could not have allowed those women to go out alone. It was therefore most likely those men - even if John volunteered - it was those men as a group who came up with a plan. Because that's what guys do.

Even when basically hapless together, a group of guys will still put together some kind of a plan for the day. Even when they don't need to. Again, this is universal to the gender. It's not even hard to imagine the dialogue might have gone something like this.

Okay, John. You go. But if a Roman soldier hassles you, say she's the mother.
That should keep you from having to run.
Or fight.
Yeah, ha. John wouldn't last long in a fight!
Wait, you stupids. John doesn't know Roman.
Does anybody here know any Latin words?
"Mater" The word for Mother is "Mater".
Okay, John. If they try to arrest you, just point to Mary and say "Jeshua Mater".
And keep your arm around her, to show that you're comforting her.
And you should practice that word. What was it again?
"Mater" "Jeshua Mater" "Mater, Mater"

Although I wouldn't bet a denarius that John needed to say it, or said it, I bet that was the plan. And although I don't think it would have been hard for 120 of them to come up with "Mater", I'm not really suggesting the plan necessarily required Latin.

All I'm really suggesting is that we should not look with western eyes as individualists and imagine that John made a decision all by himself to go stand with the women that day. The disciples abandoned Jesus, but their hiding was prudent. In some sense, I suggest, John was their representative.

They weren't all cowards. Peter's two swords were gone, and they only had one shield. Jesus' mother.

(And don't you dare say it was cowardly to hide behind Mary. She probably needed to feel like she could protect somebody on that day. It probably comforted her that she and John would be helping each other. But that's a whole different story...)

Have a thoughtful Good Friday, everyone.

Fundamentalist Scientists: "Physicists Know Nothing"

2013-03-24T01:03:00.003-05:00

Just a bit of fun: This conference report from the Scientific American yesterday is still cracking me up. Physicists Debate the Many Varieties of Nothingness. What could possibly be less falsifiable for scientific investigation than theories about, literally, nothing!? Ah, but apparently there are multiple types of "nothing". How amazing. Who knew? (I can hear Leonard Hofstadter protesting ironically, "My theory has internally consistent logic.")

My favorite part of the recounted debate is when the athiest chimes in about someone being "insufficiently enlightened". Right on! No, seriously. I'm totally with that guy. Skeptics ought to be skeptical. Scientists ought to be scientists. But how in the world anyone could discuss these outlandish theories with such dogmatic confidence and then turn around and criticize the idea of religious faith, that's a mystery to me.

Seriously, scientists. Believe what you want, for whyever you want. But admit it. You're faithers.

Full disclosure: All of this felt especially rich because I'm currently enjoying my way through Stephen Prickett's 2002 book, Narrative, Religion and Science: Fundamentalism Versus Irony, 1700-1999, in which he begins with Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and proceeds to illustrate similarities in the ways different folks go about constructing their preferred meta-narratives. It's fascinating.

By the way, Prickett's book was next on my list after I finished meticulously devouring Clare Colebrook's Irony (The New Critical Idiom). Not much to say about either right now, except I recommend them highly, if you're interested in their topics. I have really enjoyed both of them, but together they've taken up most of my free time the past couple of weeks.

And all of that is really just to explain (partly) why I haven't blogged anything yet this month.

This, too, shall pass...

Why is Fiction so much more popular than History?

2013-02-24T23:00:00.000-06:00

This was sparked by a quote from Hayden White, On Paul Ricoeur:

Historical stories and fictional stories resemble one another because whatever the differences between their immediate contents (real events and imaginary events, respectively), their ultimate content is the same: the structures of human time. Their shared form, narrative, is a function of this shared content. there is nothing more real for human beings than the experience of temporality - and nothing more fateful, either for individuals or for whole civilizations. Thus, any narrative representation of human events is an enterprise of profound philosophical - one could even say anthropological - seriousness. It does not matter whether the events that serve as the immediate referents of a narrative are considered to be real or only imaginary; what matters is whether these events are considered to be typically human.

If you don't think he's right, then please read it again. He's absolutely correct, in the sense that he means what he says. But if your head's already swimming, then just dive into my take, as follows:

Most people, if asked, will tell you that - Yes, of course it matters! And it does. That is, knowing whether something is a true story or not has an effect on people. Try telling someone a story is true, and afterwards reveal it was actually false, and you'll find out! However, the quotation above is not actually saying the opposite.

White's point, a la Ricoeur, is that reading a novel or watching a movie is most engaging to us precisely because of this representational interplay. We know some aspects of the story are "false", but it's the aspects of the story that do strike us as "typically human" that cause us to be so fully engrossed, disturbed, enlivened, or even inspired. In other words, Fiction has a powerful ability to present us with realistic aspects of what real life is actually all about.

So what's History's problem?

The major trick, I think, is probably all about letting the audience know where the boundaries are, right up front. Nobody gets upset about fiction being "untrue" as long as the boundaries are made clear as things move along. Once an audience knows where the truth can be found, the realistic and compelling aspects of fiction are free to have their natural impact. It's not that your hero's situation isn't completely ridiculous. It's that you recognize aspects of what it feels like to be truly alive. And you feel you've gained something.

Sadly, however, Historical Storytelling has too often focused on declaring or convincing or proving that such-and-such is the true version of things gone past, or that version-you-heard-once-before, well, that isn't the real story. Such ugly work can be necessary, and certainly has it's place, but it necessarily reverses the dynamics that make Fictional Tales so effective, and so enjoyable. Instead of marking off reality first, and then getting to the story, we work through the story in order to (finally) set boundaries.

Booooring!

What's even worse is when a Historian is inordinately authoritative. Usually, unless the audience has other reasons to agree, the tale can be as likely to spark skepticism as confidence. After that, well, the whole thing can seem pointless. In Jesus studies, liberal and conservative portrayals alike have leaned hard on this authoritarian approach to Storytelling. The results for both sides, to be fair, have been mixed, but the disappointed seem to outnumber the elated.

One must admit - although this will serve case in point - that whenever a reader or a room full of listeners is agreeable to the truth value of the History being presented, Historical Storytelling can become a rousing affair, quite on par with the emotional experience of the most powerful fictions, and often more so, because of the belief that this story is fully, wholly and completely true.

Sadly, however, the general experience is that huge segments of an audience which really should by all rights greatly enjoy engaging with history -- with past sagas as relatable human experience, with case studies as compelling true-to-life dramas, with the endless fascination of how and why people go about behaving in the odd ways people do -- these large crowds who should hang on History's stories have instead become turned off to the whole subject area.

The battle over history has rendered it seemingly impossible. This is tremendously unfortunate, because the magic of narrative is exploring possibilities.

There may yet be hope. I have personally found, on occasion, that it can spark curiosity in some readers and listeners if I first lay out the boundaries of our historical knowledge right from the start. If I tried to summarize that tonight, it might sound something like this:

Here's what everyone agrees with, and over here's where we've got some solid clues to work with. Now, here's where I'm doing my bit. If I'm wrong, the Story changes, and we explore a different Story. Maybe you'll decide which version you believe, and maybe you won't, but these possibilities are what History has to offer. The adventure is discovering how these different Stories might affect our worldviews differently.

If there is Truth in a Story, that truth should be able to present challenges, naturally, as the Story unfolds. But whenever we engage with Stories, we prefer to know the boundaries up front. Exploring stories together is a wonderful way to share aspects of life experience, and to connect with others despite all of our differences. Exploring past stories together eventually brings these dynamics into play. What is real? Do we know?

Whether we aim to explore various stories, or present one cherished version of Truth, and whether we aim to produce History or Historical Fiction, our Retellings of History will always have fuzzy boundaries. That is, History and Fiction get fuzzy in very different ways, but they do both get a bit fuzzy.

The chief sin, in either case, is pretending they don't.

Evoking Archelaus in Matthew

2013-02-16T13:14:00.002-06:00

I think words primarily evoke images; secondarily, emotions. This post begins as reflections to that effect about how literature works and then it turns toward applying such considerations to Matthew's evocation of Archelaus. If you want to jump to that part, I've bolded his name where it picks up, below.

A thousand words cannot replace most pictures(*), but a single word or two can potentially conjure thousands of images in mind of engaged readers. Engage, if you please, and consider now. War. (pause) Interstate Highway. (pause) Food court. (pause) NFL Football. (pause) Shopping mall. (pause) Sunday services. (pause)

Do you see? No. Did you see?

It is precisely because words are so limited that the writer's task is always to do more with less. But it's precisely because words are so pregnant that the writer believes she can communicate. In the final analysis, "good writing" may be nothing more than whatever happens to provide a particular author and a particular reader with a communicative link.

Reconsidering those pauses at top, my choice of "NFL Football" likely evokes more for some readers than others. It does well if you happen to have that experience. It fails utterly if you do not. For analysis of literature, however, my success or failure may not matter so much. That is, estimating the likelihood that I have strategized effectively (for any particular readers) may be less important than recognizing the fact that I have, in fact, strategized deliberately. My choice of "NFL Football" reflects that I spent a moment of believing you would recognize that term and recall visual images and remembered knowledge about what "NFL Football" denotes, and connotes. If I had then proceeded to mention "Superbowl parties" it might imply my expectation that you, my reader, have almost certainly been to at least one superbowl party. Unless, that is, I went on to explain and describe in detail what a "Superbowl party" is like.

This is the essence of what I've been getting at in my recent posts about composing through ambiguity.

Exposition implies authorial insecurity. The lack thereof implies assumed reader knowledge.

Getting back to images, specifically, it's worth considering that most human memory is probably emotional or sensual, auditory or visual. Sometimes I remember striking words seen on a page or words said to me with a bold tone of voice. When you say my Dad's name, I don't think verbally. I conjure images and I remember emotions. It's the same way, collectively, when I say, "Barack Obama" or "Richard Nixon" or "General Custer" or "Archelaus", in that you probably conjure an image more than anything else.

It doesn't matter that you've never seen the man called General Custer. You probably conjure whatever image your mind first constructed the first time you heard the story of Little Big Horn. If there's no such memory, the word probably has no meaning. Or perhaps the word only recalls for you the confusion you felt at some time when you heard the name but received no exposition. In such a case, the image you recall is of your own past experience, and whatever emotions you associate with slight to moderate confusion.

Likewise, since you've not likely seen images of King Herod's ultimate heir, the name "Archelaus" may only evoke for you personal memories; perhaps you may recall visually seeing that text in the Gospel, or recall where you were sitting on the last memorable occasion when you heard the name, or read the scripture. Alternatively, as some do for Custer, you draw the mental blank, and I've evoked only confusion.

However, suppose I go on to exposit the term. "Archelaus was Herod's son who took the crown briefly in 4 BC, was demoted to ethnarch and later exiled by Augustus". Now you're most likely accessing mental files that have to do with "Herod" and "crown" and "Augustus" and perhaps "4 BC". You still have no precise picture in mind for "Archelaus", but the next time you hear "Archelaus" it should evoke some collage of these newly associated images.

Quick sidebar: In Thursday's post I mentioned "Senator Barack Obama" with no hesitance. You understand I am referring to the man as he was during a brief window of time. I should be able to speak the same way of General Washington, candidate Lincoln, David the shepherd boy, or baby Moses. In composing literature, we often seek to evoke awareness of temporal distinction just as efficiently as we do anything else. If the audience is aware of something (or at least, if the writer believes them to be aware of that something) then the writer can (or at least, will) reference that something as efficiently as possible. You already know Washington and Lincoln and Obama became Presidents. You already know David and Moses grew up, and the rest of their stories. Therefore, I have no reason to waste words by reminding you of what you already know! Our purpose in this composition is to connect with each other and consider ideas about these people, whom we both already know.

Another word on this evocation in general: Some writers attempt to capture their mood or surroundings with descriptive details. This style can be popular, but it is not extremely common, most likely because it requires tremendous duration (as I noted about Dickens, Hugo and Rowlings). The more efficient, which is to say, the more evocative writers find ways of conjuring up moods and images that already exist in the reader's mneumonic vocabulary (so to speak). It is this evocation, this efficiency, that makes a writer more effective, IFF he correctly connects with a reader's memory - or with readers' collective memory/ies.

And now, a final word on Archelaus: The more I read up on lit theory and the more I consider such things for myself, the more I am convinced that I'm not imagining things, and that it can be demonstrated how Matthew intended this one verse to evoke readers' collective memory/ies of Archelaus' early rule, at the precise period of time when he was, de facto, "King". The word 'basilewei' was not enough by itself, or else Josephus' two uses would have been confusing. [Citation forthcoming; check Perseus if I don't get around to it soon.] But where Josephus appears to refer to the young ethnarch's 10 seasons of rule in general (an idea apologetical translators may or may not have followed knowingly) the reference in Matthew is buttressed by other aspects that make temporal precision more certain. These I have mentioned here repeatedly, and will no doubt mention again soon.

But today it is the simple task of language at work that impresses me most. By itself, this point is no wise conclusive, but it's just impacting me greatly today. The fact that language must evoke (or else exposit ad nauseam) in order to communicate succinctly - and Matthew's reference to Archelaus is nothing if not succinct - strongly suggests Matthew cannot have meant nothing. But more precisely, the combination of elements - even the "when Joseph heard" expresses freshness - altogether, I'm convinced, show that Matthew himself intended to evoke King Archelaus, and not other memories of him.

Finally, to bring all this together: In terms of evoking visual and emotional memory, the evocation of Archelaus would have been something like 9/11 or the Kennedy assassination or Pearl Harbor; but especially that last one. There was no television in December of 1941, but millions of Americans got the news on that day, and for decades later - even before artificial commemorations of the audiovisual variety began compromising the integrity of remembered details - many of these rememberers could still tell you fifty and seventy years later where they were and how they felt, what they heard, and how it affected everyone.

I believe it is reasonable to reconstruct the natural consequences of that Passover massacre, the way news gradually filtered back throughout Israel/Palestine, the way every soul who'd not lived through the experience had to "hear" (as did Joseph, in Matthew's story) about the new tyrant, the new acting King, the new Archelaus. In fact, I believe we can reasonably show through a reconstructed chronology that many families left for Jerusalem before news of Herod's death had even got around, and so the first news about Archelaus, for some high proportion of all Judeans and Galileans not at the festival, would have been the massacre. Thus, "afraid" also connects directly with what Matthew's readers most likely recalled, at the evocation of "Archelaus".

All in all, it must have been a powerful bit of rhetoric, at the time.

I hope I can eventually do half as well in demonstrating that it was.

Work continues...

----------------------------

(*) "Words and Images" go together like chocolate and peanut butter, and they have a long history of doing so. Without question, visual storytelling has profound advantages over text, a fact recognized long before film, TeeVee, graphic novels, the Sunday funnies, or Sports Illustrated, there were Egyptian hieroglyphs, cave paintings, Grecian urns, and the Sistine Chapel. In those cases, the words would be spoken, as the artist surely intended. I mean, you can't imagine Michaelangelo did all that work on that ceiling without anticipating - and desiring - all the discussion it would generate? Or the glyphs and urns, constructed somewhat ambiguously by artists who doubtless expected that verbal-aural interpretation would accompany the visual media on occasional viewings. But spoken-visual storytelling eventually inspired textual-pictorial storytelling. Art students can trace the development from stained glass windows with captions engraved underneath, to moralizing or allegorical triptychs in the middle ages, to Linus, Snoopy, Nancy, Sluggo, Dilbert & XKCD. All of this, by the way, is available in far more detail via the brilliant, singular and acclaimed study produced by Scott McCloud, in graphic form, called Understanding Comics.

King Archelaus: a Microchronology of 4 BC

2013-02-14T13:20:00.003-06:00

It's well known that, but not when, Augustus Caesar demoted Archelaus to 'ethnarch' of Judea. Commentators often write as if the official demotion was retroactive, but I doubt anyone living in 3 BC cared to re-label their memories of Archelaus from 4 BC. Today, we may say "Senator Obama scared Republicans to death" and nobody misunderstands. It's a reference that plays on historical knowledge and requires basic chronological nuance.

Recognizing from Josephus that Archelaus indeed ruled as "King" briefly - and quite impactfully at the time - allows a new reading of Matthew 2:22. It now appears the Gospel writer was employing historical irony, speaking to readers who he assumed could recall (collectively if not individually) the different temporal context between the fresh "King Archelaus" and the humiliated "Ethnarch Archelaus". There are other clues: mentioning "immediately" after Herod's death (twice), using the word Basileuei, qualifying the dominion as being 'anti' Herod's, and playing on the chrono-geographical irony of whether Galilee was safe-already or safe-almost (as Matthew has God predict that it would be).

In the guild, some may suspect this seems too good to be true. Did Matthew really intend to set this episode (whether fiction or non) in such a precise window of historical infamy? And even though this reading only provides a contextual verisimilitude, without proving the historicity of Jesus, Mary or Joseph reacting to these things, how can scholars feel confident this new reading is not merely wishful thinking or christian apologetics in scholarly clothing?

To show more conclusively that this reading deserves pride of place among scholars, a more cautious and rigorous study is underway, examining the verse from exegetical, literary and historical perspectives. However, since the foundation of this reading comes from knowing about the events of the year 4 BC, it's worth considering that in the first place.

What follows here remains only a sketch for the moment. It may even have mistakes I've not caught yet. But a better version is, alas, for the future. Thus, without further ado, here's what I have at the moment.

King Archelaus: a microchronology of 4 BC

It is famously well known that Herod the Great died about mid to late March, but Augustus cannot have rendered his final verdict on Herod's will until around October. First, the Emperor's judgment followed a final report from Governor Quinctillius Varus on the violence in Judea that summer, and that final stage didn't begin to wind down until at least August, on top of which the imperial post should have taken about 48 days for Varus' report to arrive. Similarly, the last-minute sea voyage of Philip (the Herodian prince, soon to be named tetrarch, who sailed from Antioch no sooner than August, and more probably later) journeying to Rome must have taken a minimum of six weeks, and likely more with the late summer Norwesterlies (the etesian winds) blowing hard throughout August. Basically, September is the earliest possible date for Augustus' decision, and circumstances mixed with probability lean hard toward a slightly later occasion, especially for the Emperor who lived by festina lente.

What and where was Archelaus, in between? From before April until no later than June, Archelaus was in Jericho, Jerusalem, and Caesarea. (Cf. Josephus' Antiquities17.188-222) In Jericho, the soldiers acclaimed him as King, a title Archelaus later claimed he refused, but with title or no title he still ordered them onwards. In Jersuaelm, Archelaus stood high on a golden throne and platform when he made his "I'm-not-calling-myself-king" speech of the week, and afterwards, of course, he made promises only a king could have offered to keep. At the Passover the Judean not-a-King commanded the royal army with such authority they entered the Temple on what Josephus calls the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, and brutally massacred thousands of innocent pilgrims along with the outspoken protesters. Following that, the non-King decreed that every non-Jerusalemite at the Passover had to exit the city and return home, immediately. In other non-Kingly actions, Archelaus had also (earlier) sent an appeal to Governor Varus, and obviously commandeered the royal treasury and the royal palace(s) in each city he visited, and presumably also the royal fleet, once the sailing was good.

There is more. Standing before Caesar in Rome, at an early hearing, probably sometime in June, one Antipater (son of Salome, sister of the departed King Herod) argued that a primary reason for Augustus to forbid Archelaus the kingship was precisely because "since he had in fact taken over the royal power before Caesar granted it" (Ant.17.230). In Josephus' words, Antipater continued, and "assailed him with reproaches for the changes that he had made among the officers of the army, for publicly seating himself upon the royal throne, for deciding lawsuits as if he were king, for assenting to the requests of those who publicly petitioned him, and for his entire performance, which could not have been more ambitious in conception if he had really been appointed by Caesar to rule." And so forth.

On the larger chronology, the eclipse of March 12/13 was most likely at Purim, with the fast on the 12th an effective occasion for Herod to require Israel's chief men assembled in Jericho; the Passover was then about April 11th (as it ought to have been for all practical purposes, and not because of metonic-cycle hypotheses). When we chronologize the activity required all before the battle at Pentecost (Ant.17.254ff) we see that if Varus' arrival at Caesarea was indeed brought on by Ptolemy's appeal (Ant.17.221) as Josephus claims, then Ptolemy's commission cannot have been given after Passover. [In other words, there was not enough time between Passover and Pentecost for all the additional activity after Varus' arrival, if not only the Legion's departure from Antioch but also Ptolemy's travel to Antioch (300+ miles) had not begun until April 12th. Moreover, beyond chronological impossibility, sending Ptolemy to Varus within hours of Herod's death was the smart thing to do, politically, and Nicolas of Damascus Aunt Salome was supportive enough of Archelaus in those early days that she absolutely would, or at least should have suggested it.]

In other words, Ptolemy's trip to Antioch must have begun prior to April 11th, and not after. However, if Josephus is also accurate in locating Ptolemy among the royal party exiting Jerusalem on the morning of April 12th, then Ptolemy must have had time to both reach and return from Antioch before festival time. Estimating Ptolemy's speed as much as 50 miles a day (if commandeering fresh horses and nightly lodging en route) the latest King Herod may have died would have been somewhere between March 20th and 24th.

This means Archelaus began ruling as King sometime between March 20th to the 24th. His departure for Rome probably wasn't right at the (slightly dangerous) start of the Mediterranean sailing season, so most likely late April or early May.

Finally, the early hearing around June was dismissed without ruling from Caesar, who waited first until Quintus Varus was satisfied in Judea that all rebellion had ended, plus approximately six weeks for an imperial messenger to arrive in Rome with Varus' dispatch to that effect, plus some further days if not weeks of deliberation before announcing his decision, at the Temple of Apollo, near the Rome's (Jewish) Trastavere district. That was probably October-ish, give or take.

In sum, that means that Archelaus' Kingship - in practical terms - lasted only for about four to six weeks at the most, even though Archelaus' Kingship - in retroactively officialized terms, according to our modern perspective - lasted for either five to six months (if based on Herod's final will) or perhaps zero days long (if based on Caesar's eventual failure to ratify that will).

Despite all modern attempts at categorization or characterization, the micro-chronology of 4 BC shows, first, that Archelaus was proclaimed King in late March, ostensibly declined premature coronation as a show of false humility, but in fact continued right on ruling as if King with complete and virtually unquestioned autonomy, at least until leaving Jerusalem on April 12th. Second, the micro-chronology of 4 BC shows that while the official position may have been murky, the practical situation was entirely straightforward; or to put that another way, if the official political truths were entirely straightforward, then the practical situation contradicted it fully.

Whether king or not-king, Archelaus was acting as king for those few weeks. What is more, Archelaus' general inactivity after April 11th was unknown to those pilgrims who left Jerusalem, as was the non-King's eventual departure for Rome.

In short, the plain facts not only present an Archelaus who was acting as King for all practical purposes, they show that no commoner in Judea at that time had any good reason to think of him otherwise. Neither did any Passover pilgrim, and thus, neither did Joseph. And thus, it absolutely appears that Matthew 2:22 at least happens to be set within a well known historical context - or what ought to be a well known historical context - with exacting chronological precision.

For more work on Matthew's intention as author, and what modern critics should reasonably expect of his readers...

Stay tuned!

Cross-referencing Ambiguities: towards Algorithms for Writing and Reading

2013-02-12T11:12:00.000-06:00

My working theory and methodology of literature continues to develop...

Is it too strict, or not, to say that language is representational in its denotative function and evocative in its connotative function? That is, the denotation(s) within a word are referential, and the connotation(s) within a word are contextual. "Cow" gives you both a thing to envision as well as a pre-loaded collection of typical places to put it, people it typically works with, and things a cow would typically make and do. Like chewing its cud, giving milk and, on rare occasions, parachuting into stadiums.

As any sentence progresses, each word offered in sequence introduces vast ambiguities, unclear possibilities of endless potential meanings, which our mind processes at nigh infinite speed. For example, just look back two lines: "As", "any", "sentence", "progresses"; even that phrase has no coherent meaning until the possibilities of those first three words are tied together in one meaning by the fourth word in its turn. Likewise, "progresses" by itself conveys many possible meanings, but, as the fourth word in this particular phrase, the potential meanings for "progresses" have been reduced to a single meaning, due to the combination of cross-referenced ambiguities when combined with "As any sentence".

Likewise, the pool of uncertain meanings for "As" and "As any" and "As any sentence" becomes gradually smaller, by association, and thus more clear. The first three words restrict the fourth word to its intended meaning, and although this is addition of words is a constructive process, the work being done is actually a reductive enterprise. In order to write with clarity, the proliferation of meanings from individual words must be cancelled out by juxtaposition with other words. In order to be clear, the writer does not encode specific meanings so much as cancel out extraneous ones.

Eventually - early on, actually - the human computer learns to process whole phrases as units, so frequent combinations don't require reprocessing each time. Consider, as a unit, "And they're off." Does that refer to horse racing, or something else? Consider these familiar standards, each three words long: "Can I have", "Did they really", "How do you" and "Would you like". Each phrase, as a unit, conveys a normal set of referential and evocative potential. Now, consider that "Would you like a" presents another infinitely different set of meanings than "Would you like to". Different, and yet, smaller.

Observe that "Would you like" contains all the potential of "Would you like a" plus all the potential of "Would you like to" as well as several other possible variations. ("Would you like several" of something; "Would you like not" anticipating a gerund; Etc.) The variation of meanings appears to multiply, but in practice it actually divides. Comprehensively, it is not the vast difference of "a" versus "to" that somehow 'creates' a new set of thoughts. Rather, it's the combination of potential meaning sets that strategically reduces ambiguity until one meaning is clear. Potential meanings are reduced by cross-referencing against one another.

This explains both why and how the last word in a phrase often causes re-evaluation of the first word in a phrase, and of the entire phrase. The process has been going on all along. It isn't magic, it's an algorithm! What feels like magic is when a particularly surprising combination appears, just at the end. The common suddenly twists to become something uncommon. But! There isn't a different process going on when the last word is surprising. In fact, this process of detecting such "hidden meanings" - whether symbolism, irony, sarcasm, or punch lines - is always precisely the same.

A connection of two or three words (meanings) doesn't create a new meaning, it cross-checks, or 'triangulates' their trajectories from all possible meanings. As those vectors are starting to converge in a general area of thought, a new laser beam joins the rest from an unexpected angle, and shouts 'hey, over here'. Now the semantic search area gets smaller. The combining of words is what provides more precise meaning, but the eventual meaning we're given (*or, the one that we 'take') was actually there all along, waiting to be discovered, once we knew where to look. (*Unless the reader gets truly inventive; on which, see below.)

Remember Mark Twain's famous dictum on word choice: "The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter—’tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning." Actually, that's the original quote, according to Bartleby.com, but the famous line has been popularly rephrased, so that "bug" now tends to be the last word of the quote. This collectively approved revision slightly improves on the quotation, if not the idea, because, to a broad audience, it better illustrates the point being made. While Twain's original emphasis moved from weak (an insect) to impactful (a storm), and thus encouraged authors to work for poetic effect, the "bug" ending (while more pedantic) emphasizes the most basic aspect of what's being discussed in the first place. What better way to illustrate the power of word choice than by employing the ever popular 'twist'!

Just as the last scene in a story can cause reevaluation of the entire plot line, the last word in a sentence has a well known ability to provide this same counter-interpretative effect. My point today is to observe that there's nothing especially magical about the last word, at least, not apart from all the words that preceded. As we all know, 'the twist' doesn't change things. It reveals things that were already there.

The best writers have known this for eons. The real power behind a punch line is all in the setup. For instance, here's a groaner that I happen to adore. Did you hear the one about the golden retriever, in the old west? He limped into town one day and said, "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw." (Cue groan.) I enjoy telling that one mostly for the brevity and efficiency. Set the stage. Load the twist. Pull the trigger. Paw!

It's not the funniest joke, but the minimalism of construction is beautiful. Telling that joke is like a social experiment. The phrases pile up, the world of infinite possibility is slowly whittled down, and the search for understanding is visible on your listener's face. A positive subject (lovable dog, must be our protagonist!), a setting (time and place, probably visualizing the cliche'd main street or ghost town) an odd detail (the limp) more familiar cliches ('into town', 'looking for a man', together evoking the well worn pastiche of the main street showdown) and the punch line, which evokes one last familiar 'old west' cliche, replete with the pun ("shot my Pa").

The cliches and the pun certainly undermine the joke's quality but the efficiency is breathtaking. A whole world is built - actually not built, but evoked - fleshed out and then made unique. The uniqueness comes in the surprise juxtaposition. We've heard all these phrases before, but never in this particular combination. Again, meaning is not so much constructed as restricted, with fine tuned precision. A series of denotations and evocations in sequence systematically reduces the listener's ambiguity, as they process rapidly, and the potential meanings coalesce into one particular world, denoting one particular event, including the twist. (Note: the most work this joke has to do, linguistically, may be in the opening. I've tried variations on this one dozens if not hundreds of times, and when I leave out "Did you hear the one about", the punch line sometimes leaves them hanging. In other words, you have to set up that this is going to be a joke! Apparently golden retrievers and cowboy movies aren't well known for being used in comedy. However, with the first line included, or perhaps with people who know me as a joke-ster, the punch line rarely fails to deliver - laughs and/or groans, that is!)

In many ways none of this is news to our understanding of human communication, but the innovation in terms of literary and language theory is that instead of looking for "the loaded word" which connects with the twist, we recognize that *all* words in an effective composition are designed to contribute - not just to the 'punch line' but - to a strategic, even a systematic, sentence-wide program of reducing ambiguity by cross-referencing ambiguities.

All the words must be checked against one another, while considering meanings, in sequence, before the last word can fly in and take all the glory. Even with normal sentences, that don't appear to have such a big 'twist', the last word can be fairly predictable, but it still ties up the meaning. Thus, all last words in sentences (or phrases, or clauses) perform this type of a function, but some last words get less glory than others.

There's a grammatical corollary here, also. Punctuation doesn't so much indicate a pause for breath or style, so much as when to pause and compile the most immediate unit of meaning, or when to stop and re-compile several units as one. Alas, the period will never get as much glory as that crucial last word!

Here's a common experience summed up in a well known sarcastic saying. It goes, "How come you always find something in the last place you look?" We recognize the absurdity alongside the familiar emotion. Finding something after much exasperated searching does feel that way, producing that Aha! moment in a way that feels more dramatic than if you hadn't spent so much time looking fruitlessly in all those places at first. Except that's just it precisely.

You didn't look fruitlessly in all those other places. You concluded, sequentially, that each of those other places was not the desired location. Thus, revelation arrives not by a sudden discovery, but by a gradual process of elimination, which can quickly approach exhaustive proportions. Whatever the proportions, this much is true. In general, the more work goes on during that elimination process, the more profoundly one feels that satisfying surprise at the end. You thought it was going to be in all these other places, but it's here, and you didn't see it, but it seems so obvious now.

So goes the twist sentence. You thought the meaning was going to be all of these other things, but it's this, and you didn't see it, but it seems so obvious now. Like the 'fruitless search', the more work being done by all the words being cross-referenced, the greater the impact of a twist at the end. But - and this is vitally important - the twist both is and isn't the thing, at least not like we think of twists. That is, the twist may almost always be there, but it rarely has to be something incredibly special.

Observe: Jack and Jill go up a hill. Jack and Jill go up a ladder. Jack and Jill go up to bed. Jack and Jill go up the org-chart. Jack and Jill go up the meter. Jack and Jill go up the ante. Jack and Jill go up in flames.
Here, it's easier to see how the clarifying power of the final word always takes effect in reverse. Again, the period is a pause to compile. In these elementary examples, note how the meaning of "go" and "up" changes based on whatever comes next. Even the context of going up a ladder conjures a dramatically different situation than going up a hill. Further, if we add "go up the ladder" you might mentally insert 'corporate' before 'ladder'. This is not merely elementary.

What's most instructive is recognizing what all this implies. All language begins in ambiguity and the progress of working towards clarity is actually negative, rather than positive. All language works together in varying juxtapositions, constricting meanings both ahead and behind, meta the linear sequence, but in order to communicate more precise meanings the work being done is not constructive so much as reductive.

Sentences are built but meaning is sculpted.

In theory, this implies a heavy role for the writer. In practice, of course, the reader's role is as important as the writer, if not much more so. As they say, "Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, going backwards in high heels." In all the strategy of composition, it is ultimately the reader who does the hard work of reducing ambiguities. There is much more to be said here about the reader's role which is positive.

On the flip side, however, an overly subjective approach to reader-theory destroys the whole game. If readers create new meanings after the writer has finished composing, then those new meanings were not available to the writer (as part of the collective pool of all meanings shared by their culture or sub-group of language users) and thus a fully reader centric approach to "meaning" is, by definition, a deliberate sabotage of authorial intent.

On the other hand, both writer and reader know that language is always evolving. Both writer and reader know that the writer is capable of coining new phrases. Indeed, an enjoyable writer will often invent neologisms and neophrasisms as well, although the experienced reader knows that this type of surprise meaning construction will generally be rare in most compositional efforts. Either way, the reader who leans heavily toward creative interpretation in meaning "construction" has definitively dropped all respect for the writer as strategist, and for the dynamic of composition itself.

Composition itself, as this theory now holds, works by strategy. Without strategic reduction of ambiguities in language, there is no possibility of communication between two persons. Thus, overly subjective or creative readings can be valid as interpretive exercises, or perhaps even as defiantly personal affirmations, quixotically, but when the reader divorces the writer she destroys the text as composition. In a real sense, it remains true that "All meaning is constructed" but strong minded readers should also grapple with "All text is composition" and "All communication is reductive."

In short: Please do not attach onto my words any additional meanings because the whole point is that I was busily trying to whittle them down, for your sake.

And yet, there is a fundamental problem remaining.

Creative readings become inevitable whenever compositions are less than completely effective at reducing ambiguity. Of course, this describes all writing, at times.

Here is where the rubber finally meets the road.

So far, this theory has implicitly described the way in which "good" writers communicate effectively and the way in which "good" readers follow the appropriate cues in "making meaning" successfully. Ah, but who is a "good" writer? Everyone sometimes, but nobody always. Therefore, in practical terms, the real challenge is not what to do when ambiguity persists. The real challenge is what to do when a writer is unclear. Technically, that should say, "when writing is unclear", but although this does not often describe whole works of literature, but it does often describe portions and snippets and phrases within literary works.

Quite often, compositions show consistent patterns in their attempted strategy, however inconsistently effective it may be. The most basic axiom of this 'Ambiguity Theory' has to say about Literature is that writers attempt to be clear by reducing ambiguity, and that any persistent ambiguity may indicate a point where the composition needed additional work, but it also indicates a moment when the composer expected the opposite. In short, patterns of persistent ambiguity may, themselves, suggest the readers' path towards clarity.

To underscore the point a bit: Just as there is no Santa's list of naughty or nice little children, for all are both at times, so also there is no way to divide writers between "good" and "bad" and there is no way to judge units of language as objectively "clear" or "unclear" - at least, not in a Boolean sense. If this theory only worked for "good" writing, then it would be no theory at all. Rather, perhaps it would not even be necessary. (!) To illustrate, we may recall that the most frequently misconstrued book in the western civilization is widely believed to have been written by God, and there is probably no theory of "authorial intent" which can square that paradox objectively. (!!)

Where, then, is the "good writing", and how do we judge portions of it to be relatively clear or unclear? In one sense, there is none and we cannot. In a more practical sense, however, we may have some graspable handles on this problem, right in front of our faces.

What we need is a method for measuring - comparatively, if not independently (although, according to Physics, all measurement is technically comparative and no measurement is technically independent, but I mean here to draw contrast against the conventional sense of how people measure things, in practice, versus (say) how we measure people, which is by comparison to other people) - just how often any given writer appears to be clear or unclear.

This, at last, may present a practical algorithm for readers. Are there any patterns to notice in the way a text leaves some terms are unexplained while providing other references with (alternately) minimal or excessive amounts of expository attention?

Given that all writers vary somewhat in terms of how effectively they provide readers with clarity, or 'reduce ambiguity' as we can say now, then the best way of understanding a given writer should be to study their most ambiguous elements first of all, gather observations and draw tentative conclusions if possible, and then apply those discoveries as a comparative standard for recognizing and interpreting less ambiguous elements within the same work.

Wherever meanings can be exhaustively catalogued - which may not be very often - then exhaustive cross-referencing may be possible, perhaps by computer. In all fairness, a full application of this seems completely unattainable for most words/meanings in any language, but a moderate application may be somewhat more feasible for certain categories of meaning than others.

For starters, historical information may be of some use here; if a writer shows by greater ambiguity which historical references he expects his readers to need no help in remembering, then we might ask - Where by comparison does the writer spend more labor, attempting to help the reader recall, or (alternatively) attempting to help the reader reframe particular facts and suggest her opinions? Where does he work less, and where does he work more? In the more laboring passages (note: I do not mean 'laborious'), we will have to judge: is this verbal labor sufficient to identify and introduce, or does it seem more characteristic of what is modernly called 'spin'? Is the amount of explanation being provided for some historical reference unduly dissimilar to the amount provided for a related reference, which was provided with complete ambiguity (ie, total confidence of reader recognition)?

Depending on how we answer these questions, we might well discover what the reader "knows" (or perhaps, remembers) and when the writer is trying to reframe in some fashion, to clear up popular misconceptions or to push an agenda (whether personally or narratively driven), as opposed to when the writer is merely trying to inform ignorance. (The greater bulk of all literature, one suspects, takes by far the less noble endeavor. I don't merely want you to know what I know. I want you to see as I see. If I have to inform, it becomes harder to spin. Spinning works best when there is a shared experience to start from. Thus, we should expect writers to assume that readers know a great deal. It's only how to know, and what they know, that are questions for us.)

Still with regard to historical references: Even in places where we lack external corroboration (or lack additional information that bears against some apparent non-information in the composition being studied) we may be able to delineate patterns that show what is substantially explained, versus what is substantially unexplained, versus what perhaps seems more "spun" than explained. In turn, all of this might begin to show how the writer's compositional mind was working, strategically, at least some of the time.

If we find success via this method for discerning historical meanings, we might then proceed to more esoteric meanings that convey 'themes', ideologies and so forth. The kind of trope (irony, metaphor, etc) should not be the determinative difference, but the accessibility of meanings.

For another example, let's consider geographical references. If a modern writer says "New York" it may remain completely ambiguous, unless he wishes to draw out particular aspects of New York, to highlight or refresh particular connotations in the popular awareness of "New York". Alternatively, if a writer says, "Yonkers" or "Pougkeepsie" or "Oneonta", the burden of necessary explanation would probably rise. Naturally, the most efficient writers would find ways to both inform and to spin simultaneously, which also enhances engagement for differently informed readers all at once, and the more pedantic writers (or those writers deliberately aiming at lower levels of readers) might explain before proceeding to spin. Nevertheless, researchers in some post-apocalyptic library in the far future would likely be able to determine, comparatively, that the burden of reducing ambiguity fell disproportionately on the less familiar of locations. Even if the state and island of New York were completely obliterated (in this hypothetical future), the ubiquity of that term, "New York", and (more importantly) the high levels of ambiguity that various writers felt comfortable allowing for that term, would naturally testify as to the familiarity that pre-apocalyptic readers were assumed to have had with the term, "New York". The post-apocalyptic critic could then proceed to consider how much literal exposition "Yonkers" and "Pougkeepsie" and "Oneonta" received, comparatively. And so forth.

This results in the kinds of observation that have been obvious in ancient studies, at the times when they've been obvious.

What I am wondering about in this theory is whether this can be made systematic, algorithmically.

Now, let's try and pull this all together.

Instead of focusing primarily on looking for 'unknown unknowns' (or, more accurately, worrying about not knowing when we're missing a hidden meaning and thus a hidden connection) we might gain more ground by beginning with 'known unknowns', that is, identifying the most blatant ambiguities across one piece of literature and using those as a sort of 'meaning map', detailing what types of information the writer assumed (whether thoughtfully or tacitly) that the reader would also assume.

Such a catalog, or meaning map, built on the most ambiguous aspects of a text, could be helpful in discerning the strategic purpose of less ambiguous phrase work, whether that might be to introduce completely new information, or to redirect the readers' thoughts about familiar information, or perhaps to do both at one time. Again, it should be the comparative patterns of one writer within one work (or across multiple works) that can reveal what a writer most likely assumed readers to recognize, to know, to remember, to varying degrees.

The basic idea is to begin with a text, analyze it all throughout, and consider what types of reader knowledge (or memory) this writer went about assuming, in general, before finally going back to review individual statements. The basic hope is that we might determine, at least, whether some phrase of dubious clarity has any parallel in linguistic construction or in topical similarity, elsewhere, that can reveal the more likely angle of the phrase under scrutiny, whether: to inform afresh, to explain known curiosities, to reframe the familiar, or to ironize (play on) the familiar. Note that all of these angles can be for various purposes, whether: rhetorical, narrative or ideological.

All of this contrasts with the opposite method: speculate, fill in perceived "gaps", and then put it all together with a semblance of objectivity.

Clear writing reduces ambiguities through precise cross-referencing. Unclear writing perhaps attempts this but fails at reducing precisely enough, for whatever reason. The critical problem of bad writing is assuming too much. The critical problem of good writing is assuming just enough. No one writer is perfectly "good" or "bad", but many writers display a consistency of technique and ability across individual works, for the most part. Comparing the relative ambiguities allowed to remain in a single literary piece may be the best way to determine precisely how much is being left "in between the lines".

This is all I can say without further experiment.

Look for an application of this theory to the Gospel of Matthew, as soon as I'm able.

Thanks for reading. I know this was somewhat repetitive, but I sure hope it was clear!

The Strategic Ambiguity of "Baby Shoes"

2013-02-05T01:18:00.001-06:00

A famous six word short story makes a quick and easy first test case for my latest ideas. Legend says Ernest Hemingway wrote this to settle a bet, which seems most likely apocryphal, but whoever wrote it crafted a fascinating short story.

For Sale:

Baby shoes.

Never worn.

You may feel free now to partake in a moment of silence. (pause) Okay? Good.

Now. How does this work? According to my budding theory, each word offers potential meanings mitigated via relative ambiguities. If the composition succeeds in communicating effectively, the writer will have evoked a series of recognitions within the reader, each word or phrase recalling possible connotations, which the reader must sort through along the way, seeking the proper connections with which to assemble one coherent storyline.

Special Note: It may be helpful to realize in this case, these six words themselves are not actually a narrative. They are the text of an advertisement. They do, however, prompt the reader to craft her own mental narrative from adding up likely implications as the details pile up. Unlike Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the story does not 'unfold'. The story is put together by the reader, and the writer has worked very hard to evoke her response. Let's examine this short piece as it progresses sequentially, analyzing each two word phrase in three segments, one at a time.

(1) How is "For Sale:" strategically ambiguous?

In the 20th century - whether this was authored in the 30's, 40's or 90's - the most common evocation for this phrase is a newspaper ad. However, this recollection is not singular. The familiarity of "newspaper ad" does not come to mind in words (despite those scare quotes) but in images, feelings, general connotations associated with all the times pseudo-Hemingway's readers would have seen such a newspaper ad, heard tell of one, or considered posting one of their own. This vast mental file includes types of things that go into an ad, the typical style of how such ads are written, the brevity of such ads (an important coup for p-H here, as it set expectations immediately for the short story's incredible brevity!), and many other aspects of the common 20th century experience of seeing such ads.

Nevertheless, the phrase is deliciously ambiguous, vitally pregnant with possible meanings, and perhaps one ideal exemplar of an intriguing first thought. It's openness is a bit like a cinematographer's wide pan which gradually narrows in focus, while also setting the frame of a world we're about to explore a bit more deeply. "For Sale:" provides at once the general context and complete range of possibilities for whatever might come next.

Other brilliant writers were asked to assemble their own six word stories, and some of these are quite good, but none come close to pseudo-Hemingway in their opening phrase. "For Sale:" evokes an entire paracosm, one already existing inside readers' minds, one that is both commonly familiar and potentially exotic, one that is both finite in definition and limitless in possible content. A writer could begin a somewhat longer short story with "Play Ball!" and successfully evoke perhaps as many potential details, but excepting serious baseball fans the intrigue and the pregnancy would not be nearly so intriguing. Pseudo-Hemingway not only created great intrigue within great familiarity, he made the commonality nearly universal. Probably any literate person in the 20th century must have had some experience with newspaper ads.

That is the considerable ambiguity of "For Sale:" It creates story potential in various meaningful directions.

It also embeds one particular mental grenade in the memory banks... which we'll come to in reviewing point three, below, but it basically goes to motivation. For now, we proceed to point two.

(2) How is "Baby shoes." strategically ambiguous?

First, the rush of memorable connotations is so full and vast that the mind takes a moment to make the surprising connection. By themselves, these two words evoke memories of all that is typical in our society about reacting to babies, and cute little baby paraphernalia. Heart strings are automatically tugged at, without any overtly cognitive processing. Just the word "baby" touches something deep in our consciousness. Babies are precious and adorable, and yet we also know deep down - without thinking about it - that babies are difficult, and require much care, and they are delicate, and they are fragile. In the earlier decades of the 20th century, infant mortality was improving but the built up social memory (memories embedded within the countless linguistic connotations for 'baby') was familiar with an even worse infant mortality rate, which was doubtlessly present in the deep memories of families' stories of loss going back to the late 1800's.

In combination with the opening line, however, these two new words introduce mystery. "For Sale: Baby shoes."?? Who sells baby shoes? Another familiar cultural phenomena that was fairly ubiquitous in the 20th century - albeit certainly more prominent near the beginning of the 20th century, than at its end - was the peculiar but sentimental custom of having baby shoes bronzed. Among the more literate members of the early 20th century, who were more likely to know people that happily afforded the minor but unnecessary expense of bronzing baby shoes, this would have been very familiar. Still today, many mothers consider them keepsakes, bronzed or otherwise. The most popular alternatives were almost as ubiquitous; that being, "hand-me-downs". Something so small on a child growing so fast doesn't wear out. If one has family, if one has neighbors, if one has young married couples anywhere in their church or among friends, the greater value was not in selling such cherishable items, but in passing them on.

The wide open paracosm of the 'want pages' has just narrowed dramatically. Of all the common "For Sale" items in the reader's experience, "Baby shoes" would be virtually unknown. Thus, the second line is startling precisely because it works against the familiarity of the first line. That enormous ambiguity of expectation has collided with uncertain meaning. Probably the most natural emotion is "What!?" followed quickly by "Why?"

Why would someone sell baby shoes? Despite the wonders of cognition, most of us think - and especially react - by conjuring mental images and connecting with familiar emotions, more than by verbalizing thought patterns. Nevertheless, the basic evocation Pseudo-Hemingway is aiming for here must be something like, "Why would anyone sell baby shoes?"

This natural feeling of perplexity sets up the reader to answer her own question, tragically.

(3) How is "Never worn." strategically ambiguous?

There are many possible reasons why baby shoes, once obtained, might never have been put to use. As the readers' minds race through those scenarios, none of them are not tragic. Thus, even at the last part of Pseudo-Hemingway's masterpiece, there is no dictated conclusion, no monster in the attic, no smoking gun, no shocking facts to reveal, no other shoe left to drop. The other shoe has indeed dropped, but we don't know how why or when. What we do realize, as we rush to put details and potentials together, is that it seems none of these options is good. Each possibility feels horribly sad.

Thus, strangely, the ultimate mixture of ambiguities results in a general sort of conclusiveness. It's not that the writer causes us to choose one explanation. It's what all the likely explanations have in common. Therefore, the open ending is only partly open. Pseudo-Hemingway doesn't want to dictate the precise details of the narrative's ending; just the effect.

And yet still, one more layer remains! Upon considering the connection of lines two and three, the reader's mind sooner or later comes across another connection, between lines one and three. With reflection, we might even decide that the saddest thing of all is that these unused baby shoes are being sold!

The initially wide sense of ambiguity has narrowed further and further, shrinking logically each time by cross-referencing possibilities until the likely meanings are reduced to a handful. One suggestible connection at a time, the combined meaning(s) have drawn together one final ambiguity into our minds, this being the "mental grenade" which I teased about the author having planted from the beginning, back at line one. It goes back to selling.

Of all the various evocations brought about by "For Sale:", this one particular aspect of meaning surfaces only now, being specifically re-evoked by the uncertain implications of line three. This aspect is, simply, the readers awareness that sellers' have three basic motivations for selling things. In this, also, the new connection re-evokes and deepens the basic ambiguity evoked previously when taking line two by itself. Why would someone sell baby shoes?

If the baby is dead, why would you sell the shoes? If the adoption fell through, why would you sell the shoes? If there is some other horrible scenario where the baby never arrived, or never needed the shoes, why would you sell them? Presumably - we must conclude - you would sell them for one of the reasons nearly anyone sells things in the want ads. You don't want them anymore. You don't need them anymore. Or you are simply that desperate for money. Again, none of these options is positive. Each of these options only adds to the

A critical piece of pseudo-Hemingway's strategy - for the entire piece - is that this final aspect, hiding there all along, has a particularly tight range of possible implications. At the close of the story, all three of these possibilities present tragic implications when suddenly brought into combination with the last words, "Never worn."

Part of the "magic" accomplished by any successful short story is that the ending begs reinterpretation of the beginning. In this case, what may be most impressive of all is to realize again that no story has actually been told! For this particular trick, the magician Like a magician performing a trick - which is how all short story writing operates, ideally - the writer has distracted his audience at precisely the right moments, directing their attention at things which they think are connections, which are not necessarily in evidence as connections.

There is a seventh word in this story, and it is "story". The legend of this tale begins with your being told, "Hemingway wrote a short story..."

Except, technically, it's not a story. It's not a story at all, in the telling.

The reader makes it a story by guided inference, by imagining implications, by the evocation of strategic ambiguities (unfolded and cross-referenced in deliberate sequence!).

But imagine this ad actually went in the paper. Strictly speaking, you wouldn't know for sure that anything tragic had happened at all. For these six words to be true, a grandmother could have bought pink shoes in advance but her daughter gave birth to a son. It could have been that a father came home with a nice pair that were cute but too small, and the store doesn't accept any returns. It could have been that a young couple planned to adopt an infant but fell in love with a darling one year old child, instead.

Instead of dwelling on *why* readers' minds go so naturally to the negative possibilities, we might better conclude this analysis by recognizing that Pseudo-Hemingway correctly expected that precise chain of reactions and successfully evoked that precise chain of reactions - for nearly all readers, we trust - by crafting a sequence of words with strategic ambiguity.

It was not that a reader had to "fill in the blanks". There were no blanks there for filling! In fact, nothing blank was provided, but specific ranges of potential meaning were generated, each in turn, and then cross-mingled, along the way, to collectively bring the readers' minds into gradual focus, from the general possibilities to the more particular. It worked somewhat like the way a long distance camera shot methodically zooming in on a small piece of a larger more intricate world. In the last moment, the amount of ambiguity left with the reader has also been managed. Yes, the reader can "choose" one scenario over another, but the most aware reader will realize, even while choosing, that although she is making a choice, and although the possibilities are broader, that they are not so very broad, and that the writer has drawn her to these precise options.

That is one example - concise but exhaustive - of Strategic Ambiguity at work.

Hopefully, this helpfully illustrates my new working theory and method for interpreting rhetorical narrative.

More examples and case studies, hopefully, to come...

Full Disclosure: on my 'Ambiguity Theory'

2013-02-03T11:21:00.003-06:00

Before yesterday's breakthrough, I'd been reading lit crit stuff for weeks, but nothing seemed to be really helpful.

Mark Allen Powell's book, What is Narrative Criticism? (in the Kindle edition, which really should have linked footnotes, but doesn't, but that's okay b/c I had my Kindle Reader open on this netbook screen, next to the Kindle screen, which was like way totes more convenient, like not, but yeah kinda) was brilliant, and a joy to work through, but it didn't have what I needed. Focusing on the text itself is a wonderful strength, but N.C. brackets out the actual writer and original readers, and yet admits relying on historical criticism (or, perhaps actually rather, "Background Studies") for any possible insight into referential aspects of the narrative. That seems like a very large limitation, if one's primary purpose in doing narratology is historically oriented.

In contrast - and I'll admit I haven't spent as much time looking into this one, but insofar as I understand it - Rhetorical Criticism seems to have the opposite major strength and weakness when compared to Narrative Criticism, in that R.C. only attempts access to the original writer and reader/s by constructing the 'rhetorical situation', which must necessarily come first, before interpreting the text in such light. Aside from being speculative, any insights resulting from such a method would seem heavily suspect as to circular reasoning. Especially for use in analyzing the Gospels, the text itself would no longer be much foundation (though to be fair, I understand this may be somewhat less so for Paul's Epistles).

What I needed was an approach to the original writer and original readers that begins solidly with the text.

Powell had tightly summarized Wayne Booth's 4 steps of reconstruction, but it hadn't stuck with me, and I'd seen the name "Booth" a number of times. But it was skimming his introduction to 'A Rhetoric of Irony' that I realized a kindred mind, in that he complained about a lack of practicality in previous studies. (Apparently, it so far seems to me, no one has yet replaced his prominence on this since the 1970's, either.) That passion for method sent me back to finish reading this helpful summary of Booth's program, while I waited for Amazon to send me his relevant book.

For months, by the way, I'd been wanting to go more broadly around "irony" in the contradictory sense, and to focus more on the other aspects of how the text evokes reader-based ironies, especially historical ironies, which obviously stretch the ridiculously broad definitions of "Irony" in yet another direction.

At any rate, it was reading Booth's 4 points again, as summarized by novelist Sara Humphreys, that broke the camel's back and tied a bow on all my thinking. The writer does something that makes the reader pause and reassess. Boom. That was it. It's not that reader contribution is some mysterious process of filling in things that aren't there. It's that a writer contributes specific mysteries which provoke the reader into 'solving' them, and hopefully with success.

I think my formulation is obviously much broader, but I want to give proper credit, on the record, because I'm really hoping this matters someday. (!)

I'm already drafting a few experimental posts, applying my new theory, but I've gotta go to work for the rest of the day. I'm planning one post about Pseudo-Hemingway's "baby shoes", and another about Matthew. And then several more about Matthew. But I was analyzing a trade magazine with this late last night, before falling asleep. And it worked. So who knows?

Promises, promises, promises to keep.

And miles to go, before I sleep...

Strategic Ambiguity in Composition

2013-02-03T00:04:00.000-06:00

(Evoking Reader Knowledge, Detecting Authorial Implications)

This post introduces my working theory and tentative methodology for interpreting rhetorical narrative. It is here mainly for self reference, but also in the vain hope of receiving critical feedback. Surely, it ain't perfect yet. At any rate, this post is waaaaay too long for most anyone who will stumble upon it. Nevertheless, message in bottle, here it will float. If you care to pop off this cork, then feel more than free to float me one back, or enjoy, or just ponder away...

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Strategic Ambiguity in Composition: Evoking Reader Knowledge, Detecting Authorial Implications

Understanding that readers react to ambiguity by engaging a text more intensely, writers can attempt to actively raise or lower the readers' level of engagement by deliberately composing with strategic ambiguity. There are many ways of doing this, both poetic and referential, from omitting explanations, to blatant sarcasm, to various ironies, to highly sophisticated literary tropes. In all cases, the basic goal of the writer is to communicate more efficiently, transmitting the full meaning intended with fewer words than might otherwise be required.

Writers seek such efficiency for various reasons, and it's important to note that saving ink is not necessarily a less worthy motive than avoiding political trouble by going 'over their heads'... or than skirting taboo by leaving the banned language implicit... or than building community by leaving the full message exclusive to those "in the know"... or than any other motivation for (what is called) irony, or dissimulation, or allusions, or figurative speech, or (etc).

Technically, all communicative efficiency is strategic, and all unexplained references are ambiguous to someone. If a writer says so much as "quiche", she is consciously or unconsciously expecting the uninformed readers to look it up. (Technically, the same goes for "water", "music" and "hot", and even "the"; but perhaps that's approaching absurdity!) Now, obviously, the linguistic conventions of established societies provide countless shortcuts for transmitting recognized meanings, but ambiguity is still relative. On the other hand, one's own uncertain inferences are only engaging for oneself. It's most often the spectacularly ambiguous things that tend to be most provocative, even if (or especially if) people don't agree on what something's supposed to provoke.

For a non-literary example: If Elvis Presley had gone onstage thrusting his hips straightforwardly like a dog in heat, he would have disgusted his fans and been locked up for public lewdness. It was only by gyrating suggestively that he was able to express sexuality without causing direct offense. But skirting taboo wasn't really what made it so exciting. It was that, plus the efficiency and the cleverness, just the very fun game of it. It was getting the audience more fully engaged by imagining something in their minds that he wasn't actually doing.

Back to literature: something like the audacity of Elvis' pelvis can be what writers seek to accomplish by composing with strategic ambiguity. At other times, ambiguity merely conserves paper and ink, or (in the digital age) helps trim the word count.

Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo were not great conservators of brevity, in offering descriptions and back stories and explanations of seemingly everything (in their bygone eras of England and France, respectively) but Dickens and Hugo engineered a different type of reader engagement, by gradually unfolding a fully realized paracosm. (Look it up!) J.K. Rowling also did this masterfully on a children's level as she laid out the elaborate intricacies of her wizardly world. (Rowling and Hugo also impress critics with their consistently thematic illustrations of human pathos, but Dickens gets less praise, probably because as a serialized novelist he was often just filling his column. Sorry, but Oliver can't hold a candle to the regenerative power of Les Mis, and that's hardly due to Cameron Mackintosh!)

Not coincidentally, these three writers also rely far more on straightforward realism than on figurative [evocative] technique. However, when one does not have endless time to engage the reader with a fully realized paracosm, one must evoke the pre-existing world of the readers' experience. Thus, the efficiency of ambiguity is an evocative strategy. Doing more with less can be as necessary as it can be powerful.

Now, without further ado, to the pertinent questions:

How precisely does a writer attempt to solicit particular inferences and interpretations?

And...

How do readers & critics detect when the game is afoot?

The simplest answers to these two questions are reflexive in content. The very basic way a writer signals that readers need to contribute more thoughtfulness is by introducing ambiguity. Likewise, the very basic way that readers (or critics) recognize when to infer subtlety or incorporate previous knowledge, is by noticing the writer's use of ambiguity. Repeating the introductory sentence at top, "Understanding that readers react to ambiguity by engaging a text more intensely, writers can attempt to actively raise or lower the readers' level of engagement by deliberately composing with strategic ambiguity."

That is, the method by which a writer invites reader collaboration in the process of meaning-making is not by allowing vagueness to persist or by leaving "obvious gaps" to be filled in by the reader. To the contrary, the writer does not clue in readers by what is left unsaid. The writer works by writing. The clues are entirely present, albeit hidden to some, within some of the words that are included. By definition, the method isn't based on invisible words, but invisible meanings.

The best trick, for the reader, is recognizing which words contain clues that evoke reader contribution.

The only trick, for the perceptive critic tragically unfamiliar with those clues, is to categorically sweep the writer's entire corpus for any patterns regarding how, when and where certain terms are left (1) unexplained, (2) under-explained, or (3) oddly-explained.

Historically, when critics have attempted to detect "irony" and "double entendre", the investigation often and quickly begins wrangling with subjectivity, and eventually hopelessness. There seems no way to be aware that one has failed to recognize a "hidden meaning" if one simply remains sadly uninformed in that case.

By shifting the focus from "irony" (a la definition du jour) to this newly coined and broader concept of "ambiguity", this new theory and method recognizes a greater fundamental reality, that the writer is always in control of her word selection, even at times when an ambiguous word choice may be nothing but sloppy work or poor awareness on her part. Such moments nevertheless *must* qualify as moments when the writer assumed her readers would fill out whatever meaning intended at that point. In other words, there is ambiguity by design, and there is ambiguity by default, but both types cause the reader to engage more thoughtfully, with or without eventually producing results.

By definition, upon declaring a composition to be finished, then a writer has said (and meant) all she intended to say (and to mean). Whether each case of ambiguity was conscious or unconscious, deliberate or sloppy, the writer has de facto proclaimed her expectation that the intended readers should be capable of successfully inferring the appropriate implications. Again, this obviously includes plenty of cases where the writer has miscalculated (or failed to calculate at all) in some communicative decisions, and nothing may prevent cases of readers and critics remaining hopelessly in the dark in such an event. In the larger perspective, however, by working from this much broader concept of ambiguity, the reader/critic has a better chance to at least recognize when such moments do and do not occur.

Again, this new view of things obviously cannot prevent occasions when the writer communicates ineffectively and the reader/critic is simply doomed to remain in the dark. However, by employing this new concepts and method, the reader/critic should hopefully recognize that this has in fact taken place. At least, that's the plan. Much experiment remains, but the proposal here stands on objectively based footings, to a certain extent.

The hunt is not for ethereal ghosts, but for fat bodies, or dead bodies. The hunt is not for invisible meanings, but for pregnant words, or impotent words.

Oh. But the perennial trap is wondering if we know all the possible meanings of words... and suddenly we are back at hermeneutical square one.

Or are we?

Somewhere near the top, about when things barely veered away from absurdity, the following statement was made: "the linguistic conventions of established societies provide countless shortcuts for transmitting recognized meanings, but ambiguity is still relative." Implicit in that statement is another concept, that ambiguity can be recognized relative to how clearly it does or doesn't transmit one or more recognized meanings from a particular society. Or, instead of a given society at large, perhaps a writer intentionally worked to evoke the particular awareness of a specific sub-culture.

For instance, if a particular double-entendre only communicates to the fans of a particular sci-fi franchise, such as Firefly, then a clueless critic would have to scour the communications of such fans, or the archives of the franchise, looking to get clued in on additional meanings. But of course, the clueless critic might not even know which sub-culture to study, unless a particular text was known to be, or was overtly forward about being, intended for some-such precise audience. In these clueless cases, a seemingly plain reference would need to appear odd in some way for the researcher to suspect hidden meaning. That is, the reference would have to appear somehow unusual when compared to the rest of the writer's pattern of making similar references.

The methodology suggested here is theoretically exhaustive, although practically inexhaustible, and perhaps impossible to ever follow through completely. Nevertheless, this approach is pragmatically superior to all previous approaches, and here is yet one more reason:

Historically, searches for irony tended to look *anywhere* but seemed to expect irony would reveal itself "obviously", as if a researcher should plan to wander across various texts with a hermeneutical divining rod, waiting for some connection to strike, perhaps somewhat subjectively. In contrast, the search for ambiguity must not simply look *anywhere* but in fact, exhaustively, *everywhere* and it must not seek to detect cleverness or connectedness. The search for ambiguity aims to observe words that are (1) simply not explained, (2) peculiarly under-explained, or (3) explained in an uncharacteristic fashion, and perhaps we should add, (4) unusually employed.

Suitable illustrations of these points will have to wait for the near future. Again, the method requires further refinement through experimentation, and this is a working theory with tentative methodology, but for now the concept appears to be sound.

Detectable or not, if an intentional ambiguity has been constructed effectively by a writer, then that ambiguity will rarely solicit an open ended evocation (unless of course open endedness is was the writer sought to evoke). Most often, the well crafted expression will be minimally ambiguous. After all, the writer is not trying to confuse, but to communicate. The writer's task, therefore, is to employ helpful linguistic cues which are capable of successfully evoking the targeted meaning. The challenges for reader and critic have been stated, above.

The writer introduces ambiguity. The reader recognizes ambiguity. In effective communication, the reader infers successfully, actively guided by the embedded subtleties of evocative ambiguity. Finally, the critic detects ambiguity by distinguishing between consistencies and inconsistencies of composition.

The critic may or may not fully fill out the equivalent meanings as would the writer's intended readers, but the critic can probably isolate patterns in most any composition, by first regarding what is left unexplained, and how much and how often, and second by comparing similar language that is differently explained, or similar types that are differently referenced. And so forth. The critic will not always detect hidden meanings, but the critic should have some ability to know when she knows that she does not know completely.

That much, perhaps, will be progress for many interpreters. It will, at least, be objective analysis.

Computer search may be what ultimately makes this method practically attainable. One possible method of integrating the various commonalities and uniqueness of sub-cultural knowledge may be simple statistics. There were three words used above to illustrate how defining ambiguity could approach absurdity - in the aside just after "quiche". Those three wordrs were "water", "music" and "hot". In fact, those words were not randomly chosen, but were three of the top most significant, specific and non-personal terms in at least one internet list offering the 200 most common words in English. Now - supposing that all English speakers collectively agree on these basic meanings, and perhaps also some alternate meanings, for the first 1,000 words - it might be theoretically possible to begin an idealized search, as described by the method proposed above, just by searching all words in all extant texts (of a given language, at least for starters) and cross checking everything against everything.

In this imaginary and idealistic computing scenario, a given text - say, Harrison Bergeron, by George Orwell - might be scanned, cross-checked, and "measured", word for word, against the statistically most common words in its language of composition, English, perhaps even stratified for decade of publication, or by some other data-sampling adjustment. A researcher could then possibly give more attention to words which were more common, if they had registered multiple meanings, or to words which were less common, if they did not. (By the way, nothing remotely like this to my knowledge has ever been done by me or by anyone else on Harrison Bergeron, or any other literary composition for that matter, but as that is a short story known for its ironic stance on "equality", it could be an interesting test case; surely one of a great many.)

That's enough speculation for now.

This is the basic idea:

Writers use word cues to tell readers when it's time to supply meanings, and readers detect these cues by recognizing deliberate ambiguity on the part of the writer. In cases where this does happen effectively, it may be easier for a well educated researcher to clue herself in on both sides of this collaborative effort, simply by studying the in/consistencies of the writer's explicative manner, and to thereby detect all the meanings - the authorially implicit meanings - of a particular passage of text.

My first experiment with this theory and method will begin soon.

Stay tuned...

Jesus' Eyewitnesses as Community

2013-02-01T01:26:00.000-06:00

Anthony Le Donne has me thinking tonight about Memory and Eyewitnesses again. Googling (to see what/who Anthony might have been critiquing) was inconclusive, but the following quote sparked something worth posting on here. First, the quote, from D. E. Nineham, cited in Richard Bauckham's Jesus and the Eyewitnesses (p.348):

The formal, stereotyped character of the separate sections, suggestive of long community use, the absence of particular, individual details such as would be irrelevant to community edification, the conventional character of the connecting summaries, all these point to a development which was controlled by the impersonal needs and forces of the community and not immediately by the personal recollections of the individual eye-witness. ... [Thus, the form critics conclude/d] that the Gospel tradition owed the form in which it reached our evangelists almost entirely to community use and its demands, and hardly at all to direct intervention or modification on the part of the eye-witnesses.

That makes good sense, to a point, but maybe I'm missing something. Why are Jesus' original followers seen as a collection of personally interested individuals, whereas the later christian associations are seen as "communities"?

Although Form Critical theory, as described by this quotation, may no longer be much in vogue, it does seem to have maintained its influence quite strongly. If nothing else, much of Bauckham's Eyewitness project seems designed to refute these basic claims, in attempting to show that eyewitnesses could indeed have produced the Gospel material as we now have it (or something close to that, perhaps). As you all know, I'm no expert on any of this; as usual, this is just enough bridge to make my own point, to ask my own question, today.

What if the Gospel traditions about Jesus were taking shape according to community needs even while Jesus himself was still walking around, leading them all? In my personal theory, the whole community enlisted their one or two members who were literate enough to start writing things down. Those original journals were eventually used by Mark, who brought his own agenda to the task (or perhaps, or if you prefer, that of his own later community). Then Matthew used Mark and the journals to make his own version. Then Luke came along and used all three.

But the foundation -- the first "oral traditions" or the first "collective memories", or the first "community versions" of FAQ talking points, or whatever -- regardless of however accurate or general they all may have been -- I still suspect much of that material had begun the transition (from social and oral to written journal form) long before Jesus marched into Jerusalem.

Point one: these guys thought he was that special. How could they NOT elect ~~a parliamentarian~~ some kind of record keeper? Point two: these guys weren't all soldiers in Jesus' marching retinue. They were as autonomous as he was approachable. But maybe that's the real sticking point that scholars haven't considered. (?) Seriously. Am I missing something or have I just nailed something here?

Why do scholars seem to think that latter 'early-christendom' developed "communities" as if Jesus' original followers were just mindless walk-behind-ers and occasional cheerleaders? Who decided Jesus must have been some kind of (gregariously) charismatic (ministerially) authoritarian preacher who did all the talking, took all the initiative, and encouraged his people to receive the content of his preaching, but not to reproduce or retransmit or re-represent any of that material during his lifetime?

Are we thinking too much of other powerful ministers we've known?

Hmmmm....

If Theology is OK, then History is OK

2013-01-29T18:30:00.003-06:00

If the christian life were all about what we believe, about God, then I suppose we'd have to look through scripture and ask questions like, "What else did Paul believe about God, based on what we have here?" and "What else did Jesus really believe about God, based on what we have here?" and "What else did the Gospel writers really believe about God, based on what we have here?" And so forth.

Whenever it wasn't clear, I suppose we'd have to build up from clues and reconstruct the beliefs of those writers as approximately as possible. For instance, we might not find Paul explaining clearly that God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit were three persons and One God... but we might successfully propose that such a theory (a) rests soundly on logical analysis of certain key pieces of the info that we have and (b) does the best job of explaining all the info that we have. After doing such work thoroughly well, we'd probably decide to accept our new theory... even though Paul nor Jesus nor the Gospel writers ever said such a thing, precisely, in the scripture.

And I think this would be good.

Now, then...

If the Christian life were also all about what we do, as believers in God, then I suppose we'd also want to look through scripture and ask questions like, "What else must Jesus have done, based on what we have here?" and "What else must the disciples have done, based on what we have here?" and "What else must Paul and his co-workers and his converts have done, based on what we have here?" And so forth.

Whenever it wasn't clear, I suppose we'd have to build up from clues and reconstruct the activities of those characters/historical figures as approximately as possible. For instance, we might not find the Gospels explaining clearly that Jesus spent three decades of Sabbaths silently learning, without parading his knowledge in Nazareth, and that he slowly developed a deep and active devotional life before God... but we might successfully propose that such a theory (a) rests soundly on logical analysis of certain key pieces of the info that we have and (b) does the best job of explaining all the info that we have. After doing such work thoroughly well, we'd probably decide to accept our new theory... even though Paul nor Jesus nor the Gospel writers ever said such a thing, precisely, in the scripture.

And I think this would also be good.

And possibly much, much, much better.

The Arbitrated Division of Herod, Incorporated

2013-01-29T00:06:00.000-06:00

A half jewish, half arab, business executive & real estate tycoon was dying. Despite reaching his fifth decade of incredible corporate success, having married ten wives who produced seven legitimate sons, the family resembled a Greek tragedy. Eight of the wives and four of the sons had been banished, disinherited or snuffed out, for offenses real, imagined or rumored. Alleged disloyalty also stained the potential of the man's last three legitimate sons, who were named Andy, Archie and Phil. Because of all this, the old man had great trouble settling on which remaining son should inherit the company and replace him as the next CEO.

It didn't help that he was also suffering through the last stages of an unspeakably horrible disease.

But despite all of this, at his core, the old man naturally envisioned these young kids running the company together, just as he had worked together with his father and brother in the company's earlier days, both before and after the old man first became CEO. As with any large company, theirs had always been subdivided under regional managers, who just as naturally and always had answered to one powerful chief of command. So the three young men would inherit together, but who would take on the CEO position?

In his last and possibly most confused days on earth, the old man changed his formally legalized will by making handwritten modifications, right up to the end.

Remember, the three sons were Andy, Archie and Phil. The legal will had named Andy as sole heir (while rumors had been affecting the other two), but the new handwriting replaced him. Now the will said that Archie was going to be chief heir and CEO, but with Andy and Phil as co-inheritors and junior executives, with all three working together to sustain what their father had built.

Unfortunately, Archie let the new power go straight to his head and almost ruined the family empire within just a few weeks.

Predictably, key family members now rallied around Andy and took their case straight to the supreme court, hoping the chief judge would declare that the first will, the one legally filed in advance, might win out.

The court’s decision was difficult. It was clear the old man’s primary concern hadn’t been for his children, but for his own great legacy, and now even that was in serious jeopardy. Perhaps Andy was more suited for takeover, but Archie had all the reigns of power at the moment. The youngest, Phil was wise not to make waves, but he did greatly impress one key officer of the court, who urged the judge to consider Phil also.

There were a few too many options, but that wasn't the actual problem.

Above all, what became most clear at this point was that joint leadership of the company seemed increasingly unworkable. The old man had left each subordinate son in charge of one major division, but at this point it didn't look like Andy and Phil were going to do very well as middle men always answering to Big Archie, and due to his early and spectacular failures Archie didn't look at all capable of being in charge over both of them, either.

The head judge had a very difficult choice. The legal will could have simply replaced Archie with Andy, and that might have been best for the company, but at this point it was now also likely to lead to a family war. Besides that, the handwritten will had been treated as legal across the whole company for several months to this moment, so undoing all that momentum was also going to cause difficulty. Either decision guaranteed the conflict would continue, but neither decision could ultimately preserve all that the old man had built.

This must have been sad for the judge. The old tycoon had been something of a friend. At least, they had swapped important favors for several decades. Having hoped for those corporate favors to continue, the judge would have been most pleased with a strong CEO as successor, but the company no longer seemed capable of staying in business, with these three brothers in charge.

After much deliberation, the chief judge chose a third option!

Archie would stay in control of the company, but the company was going to be split apart. Only the main line of operations would remain in Archie's company. In a stunning development, the judge decreed that Andy and Phil would now become independent CEOs of the company's former subdivisions.

The old man’s empire was no longer intact, but the brothers now received full incentive to preserve their own portion, instead of undermining or attacking each other.

It wasn't anyone's first choice, but it probably did make the best of a bad situation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hopefully by now you've recognized all of this as a true story.

The judge was Caesar Augustus and the deceased executive was of course Herod the Great. His last three legitimate sons, Archelaus, Antipas and Philip were intended to rule the company (Kingdom) together with one another, but each wound up ruling separate territories - Judea, Galilee and the Trachonite region. The biggest loser, Archelaus, had his total revenue cut in HALF!

The revenue splitting was the Emperor's critical innovation, but without that there would have been no political division. Previously, Archelaus would have decided how much of the Galilean and Trachonite income his brothers could keep, and Archelaus would have ruled over all three regions in the Kingdom, supervising his underling brothers. Instead, Archelaus suddenly lost everything from those territories - both income and power - but the revenue was the key bit. Territorial autonomy came automatically, with one remarkable move by Augustus.

The point of this exercise is to illustrate and hopefully begin to remove an anachronism that's unconsciously assumed in many historical studies today.

Herod the Great never intended to break up his kingdom. That was purely Augustus' decision, brought on by the family's embarrassing disunity in Rome.

There will, of course, be more to say on this, in time...

What do Readers Remember?

2013-01-22T01:03:00.002-06:00

Literary Theory and Social Memory Theory have developed independently, but I've been studying them together and they seem very much connected to me. Here are some fresh personal reflections, considerations and contentions:

* If a text attempts to evoke reader knowledge of historical information, that reader knowledge is likely a form of social memory. The writer may be expecting that reader (singular) to draw from a particular community's general or standard or preferred recollections about their historical past.

* If a text featuring an unexplained historical reference was specifically written to be read, shared and/or performed in community, then that text may work best by evoking the memory of readers (plural) in collaborative recollection. That is, whatever prior reader knowledge is being expected of each individual reader is all the more likely to be fully recalled by an entire community of readers/listeners sharing their individual recollections.

* If a writer has aimed at readers from one particular social group, who not only share the same preferred version of past history but who can also collaborate actively to recall details more fully, then the writer most likely expected to evoke specific historical knowledge and opinions from the community of readers.

* If a writer has aimed at readers from various social groups, whose familiarity with the past diverges somewhat in recalling history differently, then the writer most likely expected to evoke only generally agreed upon recollections of historical knowledge, without assuming opinions from any particular community.

* Any significant words which a text does not overtly explain can be taken as words the writer hoped or expected would be recognized by the reader(s). If a collected sample of such words displays any pattern of appearing to require greater amounts (*or lesser amounts*) of historical knowledge, that pattern might stand as possible evidence that the actual writer intentionally wrote for a specific community (*or a more general audience, respectively*).

Update: in hindsight, these next two points are the biggies!

* If it cannot be determined, or has not yet been determined, whether a text (as we have it) was written for a specific community, then the safer hermeneutical strategy is to assume the writer is only capable of evoking recollections of historical knowledge that would find broad based agreement across social groups. In performing such analysis, if a reasonable reconstruction can be proposed for what evocations were potentially accessible with a general audience of various social groups, then the same evocations (at least) should be equally accessible for a specific community audience.

* At any rate, it is difficult to suppose how one might determine how MUCH expected knowledge to assign for any imaginary reading community. However, if the cross section of all possible communities provides a basic or minimum level of historical memory from which to begin, then it should be completely reasonable to assume any writer requires at least so much - which is to say, merely so much - from any contemporary audience.

In retrospect, these points are an attempt to re-formulate and to strengthen the basic thinking behind the new "Posterity Theory" I've been working on recently, beginning with trying to figure out what all got into the brain soup to begin with. Also, of course, I'm trying to get these thoughts into more precise terms, and into more acceptable, or presentable, or at least recognizable (!) terms, for an SBL audience. (That's specific AND general!)

I've been reading and I'll keep reading, but I've not yet found anyone combining Social Memory Theory with Literary Theory, certainly not as a foundation towards any methods of teasing new historical data out of a text by ascertaining literary/narrative implications. I have noticed that Narrative Criticism for one seems to have been originally designed to steer clear of historical issues altogether, and though I have heard multiple Narrative Critics say they believe it should lead to connections with history, they may be hamstrung by allegiance to tools that simply prevent any connection with history. I'm only beginning to learn about "implied readers" and "implied writers", but I don't think those concepts would have gotten me here, tonight.

At any rate, as always, any public or private feedback will be greatly appreciated.

Anon, then...

Chris Keith, Relative Literacy & Scribal Status

2013-01-19T12:13:00.004-06:00

If one sticks with a haystack long enough, one may indeed find, eventually, a few needles. Such uniqueness, I daresay, belongs to this impressive discussion about Jesus' Literacy, a book that just moved to the top of my buy list. What impresses me most, even aside from the very impressive results of the author's actual study, is the method.

Just from this interview, it would appear that Dr. Chris Keith has successfully (1) embraced differences in the four Gospel accounts but (2) avoided the trap of attacking those differences - either by tossing out his own less preferred details, as do many critics, or by smoothing over those details creatively, as do many apologists & harmonists. Instead, (3) Keith seems to care deeply about finding the most plausible way to actually account for what material we do have... not by accepting some bits and rejecting others... and not by brushing things under the rug, or by timidly suggesting something 'really' means something else... but rather by attempting to account for the reality of variance in human perspectives, and thus treating the material respectfully. Also, that pomo stuff about "social memory theory" apparently helps a great deal as well! ; - )

Here's Chris Keith describing this 'new' angle, in his own words:

...the various images of Jesus must factor into an overall theory about the historical Jesus. In other words, it wouldn’t be appropriate historiography simply to choose Mark’s scribal-illiterate Jesus or Luke’s scribal-literate Jesus, then dismiss the other image from the historical task altogether. Whatever theory one proposes, it must explain how we already have differing images in the first century.

For more on the method, again, see the interview.

Now, the concluding hypothesis / explanation that's eventually presented is, of course, what really and ultimately validates his entire method. In short, Keith discovered that just as literacy is a relative aptitude, so was scribal status a bit relative by perception.

I think I may understand this point a bit better than most. As a "wannabe scholar", I am very much like what Keith describes from his thesis. My friends among the village folk, who both know me and like me, will occasionally describe me to others as something of a scholar. On the other hand, the Jerusalem Scribes with whom I try to interact sometimes struggle politely to make sense of my overall presentation. Even if I'm correctly observing some particular point, my verbal manner and conversational stylings aren't quite right. Or sometimes my logic presents itself well, but my field knowledge displays large gaps, which is automatically troubling to specialists. While it's very obvious I'm kinda smart and I've read some stuff, it's equally obvious that I'm not properly trained in the ways of the Force. Uh, I mean, in the ways of the Academy.

All of that, to say nothing of the personal aspect that I usually happen to be coming from left field, with my own unique questions. (That's not bragging unless you think unique = better, which it does not.) And we know Jesus himself, as it only so happened, seemed to come at these guys from surprising perspectives. So there's that. (I'll trust you now to understand where this comparison starts and ends.) But enough of me using myself to illustrate someone else's thesis!

The eye-opening point is that Jesus must have seemed differently abled to various perceivers. Country folk thought he was a rock star caliber Rabbi with high level educational knowledge & skills. Jerusalem's scribes got a distinctly different impression. Something like this, at least, is what Dr. Keith has concluded, and I find it a brilliant suggestion, all personal empathy aside.

The entire discussion, by the way, is expressed in terms that are highly field specific. I'm kind of glad that I didn't get to read this interview last May when Matthew posted it. Having met Dr. Keith at the Jesus Criteria conference in Dayton last October, having listened to him present and interact, and having recently read and re-read his contributions to the atomic bomb of an icebreaking book that accompanied the conference... the discussion was much easier to follow with speed than it might have been otherwise.

Nevertheless, I will be going back soon to read and re-read this blogpost over at New Testament Perspectives.

If you want to learn something about developments in the field which I think are extremely promising, I encourage you to go read, and re-read, and (if necessary) re-re-re-re-read the interview, as well.

Finally, the book's like $100 in hardback, but I heard recently they're soon releasing a paperback. When that's accomplished, I may post more here in time.

Thanks for reading my wannabe scholar blog post! XD

-----------------------
(A big H/T also to Christopher Skinner whose old blog posts I was skimming, which reminded me to finally go read that interview. The new job is wonderful at helping me catch up on missed reading, but it wouldn't work nearly as well without the excellent and helpful curation. So many thanks to Chris, Matt & Chris also, just for continuing to blog.)

Posterity Remembers

2013-01-16T23:57:00.003-06:00

Perhaps it's the "lowest common denominator" of various memories, whether individual or social/collective, but if that definition is indeed reasonable, functional and suitable, then Posterity may sit helpfully low, like a foundation stone. At the very least, "Posterity" is becoming a key term in my own thinking about historical research, and I realized today I've been using the term somewhat uniquely. To recap:

Twelve days ago I merged several of my own recent thought streams into a post called Narrativizing Critical Points, which clearly owes much more to gleanings and reflections on recent discussions among NT scholars than to anything resembling mastery of those scholars' actual positions. Natch. At any rate, in that post, I began coining this usage:

Sometimes narrative merely records the natural selectivity of a moment's posterity.

Modern historians of our own recent past work from the first draft known as mass-media journalism. Ancient historians of their own recent past had no such advantage, but in their culture at large some expectations were doubtless more prevalent than others ... popular and dramatic envisionings sometimes pre-impose a particular narrative before the writer begins.

Sometimes a slanted narrative isn't necessarily imposed by a writer, so much as pre-imposed by the writer's sources, or by general posterity beforehand.

In grasping at ways of explaining my thought, I borrowed this less frequent use of "posterity" as something not in the future, but something current, ongoing, or instantaneous. A Google search for "posterity remembers" turns up a slew of examples (mostly from journalism) which illustrate the conceptual shift. Instead of predicting that future generations will remember certain aspects of the past with some degree of mnemonic uniformity, people sometimes remark that today's population at large currently shares some basic understandings of the past that are uniform in detail. (You've probably heard a similar phrase before. "Posterity remembers Lincoln as the great emancipator" and so forth.)

To my current knowledge and understanding, this is not necessarily the same as what any published scholar has yet referred to by "Social Memory", which is often described as being shaped within social groups, motivated by present needs. (Update: Not quite completely; See here.) In contrast, I suggest that "Posterity" may refer to the more generally shared recollections of multiple social groups, across any society with a shared historical background. By definition, then, this requires that Posterity's recollection will almost always claim and reflect less knowledge than any personal or collective memories, but in exchange those claims will also be more foundational regarding any particular topic. By foundational, I do not mean merely more reliable, but also more definitive.

For example, 2013 Democrats may remember Ronald Reagan in certain ways, and 2013 Republicans may remember Ronald Reagan in other ways, but while all of these "memories" are heavily suspect due to ongoing politicization of the past, it may yet remain possible to ascertain commonalities across all of these variously constructed accounts of the past. In the case of Reagan, Democrats and Republicans would probably agree that he was bold in dealing with Russia about nuclear weapons, and that it seemed to have a big impact. Such a common perspective, I submit, does more than testify to the basic veracity of the past memory. In the future, it will almost certainly dictate some contours of future historians' future narratives about Reagan. In short, the ubiquity of Posterity demands its own place at History's writing desk.

Four days after my post about Narrativizing Critical Points, that newly crystallized thinking suddenly intersected with some (also recent) deeper reflections on R.T. France's introductory remarks (in one of his commentaries on Matthew) about Judea and Galilee in the Gospels. Things that occurred to me in parallel now connected, and I posted on Identifying Jesus Geographically:

the basic geographic arc of Jesus' story, along with its corresponding good or ill fortune, was more than enough in the first century to let anyone know 'who he was', or at least who you were talking about.

the popular Galilean guru executed in Judea" is enough to distinguish him against anyone else with remote similarities

People said many things about Jesus' identity, but posterity recalled one basic set of parameters by which to identify Jesus.

The argument of that post built a case for discerning expected reader knowledge (which plays into my search for irony, below) but regardless of that at the moment, my use of "Posterity" continued finding its way toward helpfulness, hopefully. Anyway, by that point I think I had gotten a stronger hold of posterity as societal memories' "least common denominator", although I hadn't phrased it so succinctly for myself until beginning this post tonight, from the top.

In the follow-up post, Geographic Irony in the Gospels, the only new development was attempting to use the new language and/of the new concepts helpfully. The first paragraph from that post tried five or six different ways of saying the same thing, since I honestly had no idea which would make most clear what I was trying to say. Other linguistic and historiographical experiments from that (loooong) post include:

the easiest way of identifying Jesus must have been the primary thing most people knew about Jesus. That makes the above synopsis virtually certifiable as assumed reader knowledge

the readers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should not have to be told that Jesus remained safe while in Galilee and met ill fortune in Judea. Indeed, knowing that much was essentially a prerequisite, tantamount to being told, "This is a story about Jesus."

the general audience of Matthew, Mark and Luke was already widely aware that Jesus had in fact, somehow, become very popular in Galilee without getting arrested

posterity rarely seeks much explanation for ubiquitous absolutes. It doesn't provoke much challenge to mention something so universally familiar

once we realize posterity's complete pre-knowledge about Jesus' basic geographical story-arc, the meager explanation [for Antipas' ignorance of Jesus] is easy to allow

The writer isn't telling a story unknown to the reader, but building upon a story already known, the purpose of which was to enhance the story's significance, to review or entrench select details and to sharpen the writer's own favored perspective. There is art in all history, especially storytelling, but the narrative slant is no more fabricated than the narrative content. Sometimes, the basic narrative arc has been pre-imposed by posterity.

the long noted geographic "theme" in the Gospels is not something the writers worked to create, or superimposed over their facts [but] actually an ironic filter being laid over a familiar narrative pre-imposed by posterity, a posterity reconstructed with great confidence by reducing the basic facts about Jesus' identity to their very most distinguishing details.

In conclusion tonight, I must again underscore how much I am still exploring my own paths towards saying helpful and meaningful things, both in analyzing the Gospel narratives for historical benefit and working towards more substantially confident ways of composing Narrative History based on the Gospels.

This fresh approach may or may not be entirely original, but I hope it has been applied uniquely and helpfully, with all proper respect due to past posterity and present posterity, and for the sake of present posterity and for future posterity. (Or should that be "posterities"?)

Moreso than ever, now, your feedback and constructive criticisms will be greatly appreciated.

Anon, then...

Geographic Irony in the Gospels

2013-01-10T13:17:00.000-06:00

Because Jesus was primarily distinguishable as 'the popular Galilean guru arrested and executed in Judea', as I said recently, a similar designation must have been hung on him shortly after his own time. That is, since this basic synopsis of contrasting fortunes according to geography was the best way to identify Jesus, in common terms that would have been widely agreeable to all concerned, then that very synopsis must have become the most fundamental basis of knowledge about Jesus, across the various posterities within first century Palestine. Again, if this is the most succinct version of Jesus' story that remains distinctly identifiable as being his unique story, then this must have been the basic information which became universally known about him.

In short: the easiest way of identifying Jesus must have been the primary thing most people knew about Jesus. That makes the above synopsis virtually certifiable as assumed reader knowledge for all four Gospel writers. And whenever we realize the reader and author share the same unspoken knowledge, we are able to look for, and perhaps to detect, various ironies at work (or 'at play') in the text.

In this particular case, the practical discovery is that whenever Gospel writers play on Jesus' contrasting fortunes in those geographical regions, those writers are not really creating a theme in the readers' minds, but playing upon a theme already present and easily accessible within those readers' minds.

[Update: I neglected to mention why this qualifies as "Irony". I called it Geographic Irony in the post title, but it's technically dramatic irony, or what I might call historical irony. Basically, the reader already knows that Jesus will experience good fortune in Galilee that Jesus won't be arrested or killed until he goes to Jerusalem at the end of the story. So, for as long as Jesus himself does not seem to know his own future (see below) the reader's knowledge provides the irony. In hindsight, the "Ironic" contrast isn't the most significant way of looking at what here follows. A more general theory of literary analysis, befitting these ideas, is in the works.]

This is known as reader dependent irony, as opposed to text dependent irony. In such cases, a writer can even come close to spelling it out, moreso as the story goes on, perhaps in order to be more emphatic, or just in case someone's not clued in. In any case, though, so long as we, in our historical and literary analysis, have good enough reason to know that the bulk of an audience was already clued in, then we are absolutely right to conclude that the irony is there, and to demonstrate how the irony works on the story, and plays with the readership.

In this case, again, the readers of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John should not have to be told that Jesus remained safe while in Galilee and met ill fortune in Judea. Indeed, knowing that much was essentially a prerequisite, tantamount to being told, "This is a story about Jesus." In the rare case that any ~~reader~~ audience member was ever unsure about Jesus' identity, the most succinct way to prepare them for the story about Jesus was for another ~~reader~~ audience member to quickly interject something like, "You know. That guy from Nazareth who led his followers to Judea and got crucified at the Passover." To restate the point, though already belabored: there was no more effective description to offer, as basic identifying information.

Given this reasonable reconstruction of first century posterity, any Gospel reference to the regional geography of Palestine is automatically viable as reader-dependent irony. That is all my conclusion. All that follows here, in this piece, serve as tentative illustrations, and perhaps partly as celebration. Enjoy.

To begin:

This may be why Matthew says Jesus "withdrew into Galilee" (anachoreo) after John was arrested in Judea (4:12; 3:1,13). Matthew doesn't have to explain that Jesus might have felt danger at this point; he simply alludes to the well-known geographical contrast. In fact, the irony works even if Jesus was not in real danger at this point, in terms of actual historicity. By saying 'anachoreo' and 'Galilee', Matthew cues the reader to recall what they already know. It obviously heightens the tension and foreshadows the (also to-be-expected) ending, but the general theme is not purely Matthew's creation. It plays on expected reader knowledge.

A similar subtlety may also play at John 4:1-3, where Jesus disappears from Judea when the Pharisees begin talking about him. Although John's audience wasn't exclusively Jewish or regionally Palestinian, nevertheless, to whatever extent the readership was clued in, they did not have to wonder why Pharisaic conversation was such a big bad thing to avoid. As in Matthew, the side allusion to John's arrest is enough to remind the readership/audience of what it already knows. Oh, that's right. Jesus gets killed in Judea. This must be him retreating to Galilee, just to make sure he'd be safe. Also as in Matthew, the potential historicity of any implied dynamics doesn't affect how the irony plays in the readership's minds. Any hint of a threat in Judea plays - with the audience - as a more dangerous threat. They know why Jesus retreats here, even without the narrator telling us anything about what Jesus may have been thinking.

On a much broader scale, and for a more significant example, this phenomenon is most likely the main reason why no synoptic writer offers a strong explanation for Herod Antipas' seeming ignorance of Jesus. Of course the fourth Gospel never mentions this at all, but it shouldn't require much defense to point out that the explanation offered by the Synoptic writers seems fairly unrealistic. How much time are we to suppose must have passed before Herod realized the dead baptizer was seemingly "at large" doing wonders, drawing big crowds and visiting every solitary town and village in Antipas' entire tax base!? Or how much of Jesus' activity took place while the baptizer was imprisoned? Surely no reader quickly supposes that Herod was actually so stupid? Ignorant, perhaps. But not stupid. So why, then, do the synoptic writers get away with such a slight explanation? The best answer is probably: the readership's previous awareness.

When we realize the general audience of Matthew, Mark and Luke was already widely aware that Jesus had in fact, somehow, become very popular in Galilee without getting arrested - because, as previously determined, that was the basic story everyone passed on Jesus, and because apparently it went unquestioned - then it makes sense for the Synoptic writers to offer what little explanation they had, remaining unconcerned about how well it satisfied anyone's curiosity. In the end, this was not a detail any audience would require explanation for or feel skeptical about.

When you think about it, posterity rarely seeks much explanation for ubiquitous absolutes. It doesn't provoke much challenge to mention something so universally familiar, which is why few bother wondering for very long about things like, why the sky is blue, or why the President doesn't make laws, or why public schools perform poorly. The handy response - air molecules reflect/refract H20, the Congress makes laws, poor schools skew the statistics - doesn't provide a true answer, but it fills the role of an answer, more than enough to satisfy casual inquiry. We assume it's complex on some level, but we've got the whole gist already.

Moving on, it must also be noted that each Synoptic writer shows Jesus departing Galilee and skirting round its edges after the precise point in each of their narratives when Herod Antipas does become aware about Jesus. This itself may be the stronger "explanation" for the readership, but again it leans hard on posterity at large; Jesus was safe in Galilee because, somehow, there was a time when Antipas just didn't know he was doing things. And then later, whatever the reason, once Antipas did know about Jesus, you see, Jesus began avoiding Galilee also. Some modern readers might find consider this, too, as a fairly weak explanation, but - let us refresh the thesis - once we realize posterity's complete pre-knowledge about Jesus' basic geographical story-arc, the meager explanation is easy to allow, simply because no further explanation was absolutely required.

The writer isn't telling a story unknown to the reader, but building upon a story already known, the purpose of which was to enhance the story's significance, to review or entrench select details and to sharpen the writer's own favored perspective. There is art in all history, especially storytelling, but the narrative slant is no more fabricated than the narrative content. Sometimes, the basic narrative arc has been pre-imposed by posterity.

Back to the illustration: By continuing to play on reader knowledge, this last move (above) heightens the tension, despite the ultimate lack of suspense. Even though Jesus' final Judean dangers are foreknown, Jesus' expatriate phase after John's death allows the readership/audience to feel the expected narrative's screws as they are tightening (so to speak). Galilee was *the* safe place for Jesus. Now the safe space is shrinking, as we see Jesus avoiding Galilee but also staying completely away from Judea as well. Finally, after persisting at some length in this roundabout theme, each synoptic narrative unveils the actual surprise; not that Jesus would go to Judea and get killed, but that he would anticipate and embrace such a fate! (Mt.16,Mk.19,Lk.9)

Altogether, this analysis shows how the long noted geographic "theme" in the Gospels is not something the writers worked to create, or superimposed over their facts, but that the long observed literary technique is actually an ironic filter being laid over a familiar narrative pre-imposed by posterity, a posterity reconstructed with great confidence by reducing the basic facts about Jesus' identity to their very most distinguishing details.

There is more to be said, and much more work to be done, but this should demonstrate the promise of my thesis for the moment.

In the near future, hopefully, I'll apply this to my ongoing project to fully explicate how the irony in Matthew 2:22 is both geographic and chronological... but this is more than enough irony for one post.

"Don't ya think?"

Identifying Jesus Geographically

2013-01-08T14:31:00.002-06:00

He was the popular Galilean guru, arrested and killed in Judea. That's not nearly enough to explain Jesus' identity, but it's the minimum information sufficient to identify Jesus, distinguishing him from other famous gurus of his era. (Or prophets. Or rabbis. Or rabble-rousers. Or what-have-you's.) While other distinctive elements of Jesus' story are far more significant in explaining who he was and what he was all about, the basic geographic arc of Jesus' story, along with its corresponding good or ill fortune, was more than enough in the first century to let anyone know 'who he was', or at least who you were talking about.

While Judas "the Galilean" was also dispatched by Romans in Judea, he was not known to be popular in Galilee, nor did he generate much influence around his true home of Gamala in Gaulanitis, until his sons were fully grown, decades after Judas' death. While Judas "son of Ezekias" gained influence in Galilee, he was not known to show much interest in Judea, or to make any impact there, and he was destroyed by the Romans who burned Sepphoris. While John the Baptist was arrested in Judea, he was beheaded in Antipas' territory by the Herodian tetrarch. John's popularity spanned both Judea and Galilee, but his famous end was not blamed on Judea. And although, years later, one Theudas was also killed by the Romans in or near Judea (or at least, near the Jordan), this mysterious man was never said to be anyone among the Galileans, much less even a Galilean himself.

Again, that Jesus was "the popular Galilean guru executed in Judea" is enough to distinguish him against anyone else with remote similarities. It is further unique that Jesus was arrested and pushed toward Roman justice because of the Judean authorities, according to the Gospels.

At any rate, no other would-be or so-called revolutionary guru met his end in Judea, before 67 to 70 AD.

Along with Judas of Gamala, Jesus was the only other significant outsider who took his mission and message evangelistically into Judea, and the only other rebellious-type to be taken down within Judea itself. But unlike Judas of Gamala, Jesus was the one and only such figure to be arrested and dealt with by the Judean authorities primarily. This makes all the more sense given that Jesus’ chief target of criticism was not Rome or Caesar, but those would be authorities over Judaism, the authorities whom Jesus’ followers believed were ruining the glorious nature of what Judaism was supposed to be all about, truly.

At least, all this was the story being told at the time and for years afterwards. Setting aside today’s scholarly discussions about imperial criticism and Roman responsibility for Jesus death, the point at hand is that Matthew’s original audience was being told a story whose basic parameters were extremely familiar.

The record supports this and the Gospels themselves [that is, their strong narrative reliance on Jesus' geographical story-arc; that is, such reliance, itself] strongly suggest that this pattern was indeed fully unique.

Who was Jesus? In the most primary of identifications possible, Jesus was the popular Galilean guru, the one arrested and killed in Judea, reportedly due to machinations of the Judean authorities. People said many things about Jesus' identity, but posterity recalled one basic set of parameters by which to identify Jesus.

Therefore, whenever a Gospel writer plays up the contrast between Judea and Galilee, whatever else that Gospel writer may be doing, he is, at the very least, building upon information the audience already knows.

And that tiny point is my clever segue for another blog post, in days to come...

Narrativized 'Critical Points'

2013-01-04T11:54:00.003-06:00

In Algebra/Calculus, "critical points" or "inflection points" are said to occur where the curve* changes direction. In Narrative/Storytelling, there's a similar phenomenon.

Events can feel more dramatic when they alter potential, instead of causing actual change. Consider the departure of a powerful or dynamic individual. An enormous drama attaches itself to such moments, not merely because of various opportunities that might suddenly open or close, but (more significantly) because a massive amount of psychological energy is immediately expended by people trying to make sense of their altered expectations.

Anticipation is inherently dramatic. In our minds, we are all stage actors, constantly rehearsing, rewriting and redirecting our own future scripts. Thus, major changes in life feel more "dramatic" because they wipe the script clean, which demands immediate mental rewriting of tomorrow's blank page. Your own mental narrator prepared you to expect things would go in a certain way, and now things are suddenly different. Dramatically different.

Now consider the narration of history. Modern critics are right to hold as suspect any writer whose narrative is a little too dominant or a bit too convenient for the sponsor of its publishing. But what of dramatic perspective? Emplotment is always dramatic, but is that always suspect?

The narrative emphasis on certain critical points may not always reveal an overly selective bias on the part of the writer. Sometimes, in a non-fiction account, the dramatic positioning of plot elements may simply reflect the dramatic tension felt by participants at the time. Sometimes, assuming the writer worked from good sources, a dramatic telling of history may be giving us much fact and slight bias, instead of the opposite, which is what critics often [try to] assume.

'Emplotment' isn't always misleading. The human proclivity to narrativize is more than our way of creating sense out of chaos. Sometimes, narrativizing gives us the ability to recognize sense within chaos. By simplifying, although hopefully without over-simplifying, a good narrator can at least illustrate how major factors contributed to altering the more popular (or culturally dominant) projections. Sometimes narrative merely records the natural selectivity** of a moment's posterity.

Modern historians of our own recent past work from the first draft known as mass-media journalism. Ancient historians of their own recent past had no such advantage, but in their culture at large some expectations were doubtless more prevalent than others. The lunar eclipse that came near Herod's death was no portent, but it was remembered because so many minds were predisposed to considering it as portent. Thus, popular and dramatic envisionings sometimes pre-impose a particular narrative before the writer begins.

Whether making or recognizing sense out of chaos, patterns can/do emerge in the vast sweep of massive human activity, and the simplest pattern to observe is the 'big change'. Call it***, the Critical Point.

In Math, a critical point is the easiest to "zero" in on, to identify [locate], and to "plot". In Historical Literature, a critical point it's exactly the same. In both cases, the critical point is just one of infinite points, each contributing to ongoing tangential change. In both cases, the critical point is a supremely helpful location from which to begin exploring, understanding, and eventually sketching/presenting to others all that preceded, and all that followed.

In a practical sense - whether for purposes of engaging with narrative or reconstructing a history, or both - the critical point is always much more significant because all other points absolutely appear to lead into and flow out from the critical point. In working with narrative, I think the helpfulness of these critical points matters much more than the way we prefer to characterize them.

History changes far less than the projected futures that lived and died as actual history developed, and there are far more historical changes at play than the number of critical points that present themselves for examining. As always, if the choice is to tear down or build, my personal preference is clear.

Sometimes a slanted narrative isn't necessarily imposed by a writer, so much as pre-imposed by the writer's sources, or by general posterity beforehand.

Progress isn't always progress, of course, but as long as human beings cannot help but keep projecting ahead of themselves, things will always progress. Or appear to. And we will keep on narrativizing critical points.****

Writing them. Reading them. Learning from them.

Hopefully...

---------------------------------

*Mathematical inflection points aren't really about the curve, but the tangent. When we say the "direction" changes, we're talking about the instantaneously projected angle (slope/derivative/tangent).

**Pun only partly intended, but even anti-evolutionists believe in some degree of natural selection. At any rate, if some ancient narratives survived because they are fittest, then social memory may be somewhat Darwinian. Perhaps. So to speak. ; - )

***I used this term elsewhere in discussing chronology as a math problem, where some data points are more helpful in finding solutions because they provide boundaries, such as the classic 'terminus a quo' or 'quem'. Here I obviously mean something a bit different but the metaphor is almost the same.

****I'm pretty sure I said something stupid or revealed my true ignorance somewhere while trying too hard to be oh-so insightful in this piece. If you find it, please tell me. I've run out of editing time. But hey... it's a blog, right?

The Historical Jesus-birth-census

2012-12-10T09:12:00.002-06:00

Only Luke calls this a "decree" but it was Augustus' regime which first expanded the Roman census outside Italy. Since provincial governors were responsible for their provincial registrations, it's no surprise that we can't find a record of one universal census happening everywhere in the same year. There would be no practical reason to have everyone count simultaneously. Obviously, without instant telecommunications, last year's numbers were as good as next year's numbers.

I'm not sure what Luke was thinking, but it's mostly our own reading of 2:1 that assumes Luke meant "the whole world, all at the same time". Yes, the next line flows into "everyone" going home, but the third line jumps ahead to Quirinius in AD 6, whereas Augustus' new census was probably put into effect during the 20's BC. Whatever Luke thought he was accomplishing, that's a long span of history being collapsed into not many words. If the first and third line are 30 years apart, how can we decide whether that "everyone" belongs at one end and not the other?

If the conservative grammar police would allow Luke the soft fallacy of awkward usage, everything would be simple. If Luke tried to say (or meant to say) that the Jesus-birth-census was "before" that more famous one two decades later - that's "before" and not "first" or "when" - then these awkward book ends would clearly reveal themselves, merely, as broad scale historical framing. Luke would then only be saying, my story begins after Augustus changed censusing but before Quirinius put down Judas' rebellion.

That is, it could all be so simple if we allow that Luke apparently slipped into coherent but nonstandard grammar. Alas, theologians apparently require an inerrant linguistics much more than a coherent accounting of actual events. Tis pity, tis true. Some of them feel that way about *you*, too. (Caring much more that you say the right words than what you do with your life.)

Nevertheless, despite Luke's lack of clarity he does reference the Jesus-birth-census 4 times in 5 verses, so let's home in on that. If Augustus decided to count Herod's subjects, it had to be punishment for the alleged offense of 9/8 BC, the precise years when the Proconsul of Syria was Gaius Sentius Saturninus, Augustus' former brother-in-law, the one whom Tertullian cites as being actually responsible for the Jesus-birth-census.

Besides, that fruit basket turnover plan was so ludicrous, it must have been unique (at least, to that point). Personally, I suspect Saturninus came up with it on his own. He was probably trying to be thorough, since there were no previous records to go by, but the logistical and scheduling nightmare that surely ensued does make him look like a bit of an idiot. As it happens, Saturninus isn't known for any notable accomplishments in his long career babysitting important provinces. Ah, nepotism!

To sum up: I don't care so much about explaining what Quirinius is doing in verse three. What matters much more is that - as it so happens - we do in fact possess a coherent accounting of factual data to explain how and why Joseph had to go down to Bethlehem. That Mary came too probably means the census was their excuse to relocate and leave scandal-town.

Faith doesn't and shouldn't depend on having facts to support what we might as well already believe... but such background evidence is still very nice when we happen to have it. Don't you think?

search bar: [Luke census] or [Saturninus] or [Quirinius] for much more on this site

Steve Mason on Irony/Josephus*

2012-12-03T06:45:00.001-06:00

(*For the hopeful takeaway towards my own research in Matthew, skim to bottom.)

I've been re-reading Steve Mason's chapter in Flavius Josephus and Flavian Rome, called "Figured Speech and Irony in T. Flavius Josephus". It's amazing how the same piece can be so much more helpful when much reflection goes on between first and second reviews. Anyway, here's what I got this time around:

Ancient people were "partial to figured speech" but modern ironologists find definition impossible. The most elusive forms of Irony involve "saying something without saying it". Of course, doing so effectively depends on having a clued-in observer, so the writer's challenge is how to clue them in, and the analyst's challenge is how to determine where/when the game is afoot.

The two types of irony (in literature) are text-dependent irony and audience-dependent irony. Mason explains carefully:

Text-dependent irony is the simpler and less risky of the two forms. An author wants to ensure that an audience, or an indefinite number of audiences, will detect his intended irony. So he frames the ironic story within an authoritative statement, for the audience alone, of facts unknown to characters in the story.
...
The most famous [non-comedic] example is probably the Gospel of John, which includes an authoritative divine prologue (John 1:1-18) concerning Jesus' heavenly origin... The repeated claims of ignorant characters in the story to certain knowledge of Jesus' origins (John 2:45-6; 6:42; 7:41-3) are devestating because the audience - any audience at any time - knows otherwise.

Audience dependent irony is what the ancient critics had in mind when they discussed 'figured speech' (above). [Mason had previously cited Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and several others.] ... Because of the tacit connections with current affairs, the genre is not easily portable: a modern reader of Aristophanes can only appreciate these references through diligent background study... [But] It was prior audience knowledge of the plot that gave poignancy to Oedipus' vow to find and punish the one who was polluting Thebes...

Audience-dependent irony can be subtler and more effective than text-driven irony, though it is riskier because it operates without the safety net of authoritative guides. The author must be sure not only that the audience will know certain crucial items but, in potentially dangerous contexts, that they will not read the wrong sort of irony into his presentation.

From this point, Mason goes on to show the necessity of dissimulation in the upper classes of early Imperial Rome, from Augustus' age to Domitian's. The rest of the article is a compelling argument that much of Josephus' writing included sly winks to his Flavian readers. A comment about Nero served as a subtle jab at Domitian, for example. In such cases, Mason argues, what helps contemporary readers to feel certain about Josephus' true meaning is the contemporary knowledge we have about ancient Rome in those days.

It's a great article on the whole, and Oxford only wants $225 for a copy of the whole book. Alas, I don't get by TCU as much as I used to. But if anyone wants to get this for my christmas gift... seriously, don't do it. $225, are you crazy? But thanks for the thought. (!)

As far as my new questions about Irony in Matthew, this helps tremendously by giving me practical terms in which I can proceed. Instead of reading the Gospel again and asking "Okay, where's the irony?" it seems more appropriate (and more obvious, suddenly!) to ask, "What did Matthew expect his readers to know, at any given point?" To be thorough, of course, I'll look for both text-dependent irony as well, because any time one character knows something another does not, the reader is "clued in" as well.

One more thing; Quintilian found three "contexts" [appropriate times for usage] for such language. They are: "when it is unsafe to speak frankly, or unseemly to do so, or merely for subtle effect." After I've gone through and found places where Matthew either (type 1) directly provides or (type 2) seems to expect any special knowledge from his readers, I shall also consider which of these three (if any) may have motivated his usage.

Tons of fun, right? I actually think so, though it can be exhausting.

Feel free to join in and help...

Matthew's Historical Use(s?) of Irony

2012-11-25T11:38:00.000-06:00

It's very difficult to compose a narrative about historical persons without employing dramatic irony at some point. Given hindsight, the writer naturally observes significant moments in ways the participants did not, and leveraging those contrasting contexts or awarenesses is very tempting, for understandable reasons. Using irony gives one's reader a perspective superior to the figures or characters in view and engages the mind more enjoyably during a storyline, not to mention the educational advantage of using irony to provide critical relief, illustrating more clearly and helpfully for a novice some previously unrealized aspect of what past times were actually like. To accomplish all this, however, the use of irony (ironically!) draws the reader's mind just as much towards the present as into the past, which is why some historians detest using irony, or at least over-reliance upon it. Nevertheless, for as long as historians continue to write, some amount of dramatic irony will inevitably find its way into most forms of History, especially historical narrative.

In my present study, I'm examining whether Matthew's use of dramatic irony in 2:22 should be recognized as clear literary evidence of a more specific intent on the part of the writer. I mean, I'm convinced that it should, but I'm working on the argument more carefully. Here's a quick offset summary, in one paragraph:

Since Matthew draws the reader's mind to an ironic contrast between past and present - in this case, Galilee under Archelaus (which already was unsafe) versus Galilee after Archelaus (which turned out to be safe) - we should count this as evidence that Matthew assumed his readers would be familiar with both ends of that context, including the distinction or 'gap' between time periods.* Further, because he placed that demand on his readers' collective cultural memory, we can take confidence that Matthew is giving this episode a very specific chronological setting. For critical purposes, it does not matter here whether Matthew intended to relate fact or compose a historical fiction. In either case, Matthew has effectively set Jesus' return from Egypt precisely into the earliest weeks of Archelaus' reign, when the younger Herod was actually "King" over all Israel. (*) For more on the historical period from 4 BC to 3 BC, and for a rough sketch of the argument-in-progress, see this post. (*)

The payoff here is that a deliberate and fairly precise chronological context was intended by Matthew to go along with this story. What we do with that conclusion is another discussion; today's post is to continue refining what I'm doing so far.

Today, I'm hoping you can help me find Irony elsewhere in Matthew.

But, ah, what kinds of irony (in Matthew) are very similar to this kind of irony!?!?

I have enough confidence in my analysis so far that I might proceed without parallels, except of course for the intrinsic value and potential surprise benefits of simply doing the diligence to examine Matthew more broadly. Is this as unique in Matthew as I suspect, or is it part of a pattern? I'm not really sure how to begin answering that question.

For starters, I'd rather not research broad irony in general. Yes, Jesus becomes the true King and Herod/Archelaus/Caesar/Antipas was not. I see that, and I like it too. I could stand to be oriented towards more examples like that, personally, but in the end I'm not sure it's a helpful comparison for my study on the implied future context about Archelaus in 2:2. What I'm looking for is dramatic irony relating to historical context/s that were both recent and well known in Matthew's day.

Are you aware of any other "historical irony" (so to speak) in Matthew's Gospel? Is there other dramatic irony in the Jesus storyline, or something about the disciples? Could there possibly be any such irony regarding the implied futures of King Herod or Pontius Pilate? (I mean, aside from them dying or being recalled in disgrace, which is so general I'm not sure it qualifies. What do you think?) Or the future of the high priest? Does anything in Matthew allude to the rising influence of the Pharisee party? (Post AD 70?) Or am I overlooking someone else whom the original readers may have known as a historical figure? Is there any irony implied about John the Baptist's future legacy? Does Jesus wink at us, via Matthew's pen, about JTB's future legacy, when Jesus discusses the old wineskin? It'd be a stretch to think Matthew was concerned about Apollos, but perhaps there were other folk running around Judea not too different than Apollos. Or perhaps not. Of course, since we're unaware this kind of irony would be hard to detect, but it could potentially be there. But - again - is it like the implied reference to Archelaus' future in 2:22?

These questions today are just me spitballing, of course. I'm trying to purify my own expectations before I begin research, and I guess you can see that my tactical focus is starting to narrow a little bit.

For now, friendly readers, if you have any ideas or prior knowledge about Irony in Matthew - whether about any kind of Irony in general or whether the specific kind I'm considering - I will greatly appreciate all your suggestions. Thanks in advance!

Did Galilean Anti-Imperialism really exist?

2012-11-16T12:21:00.002-06:00

Prior to 44 AD, "Roman Galilee" wasn't Roman. How, then, could it be anit-Roman?

Although Judea became Roman in AD 6, Galilee remained "independent" for all of Jesus' natural born life. Of course, today we know very well that Herod Antipas ultimately answered to Caesar in Rome, but at that time a large part of the imperial "client king" understanding was that Herod and all of his subjects got to maintain the illusion of true independence.

Thus, for Jesus and all his contemporaries, Judea was Roman, but Galilee was decisively not. Here are several concrete examples to help paint the picture in a bit more detail:

The tax collectors in Galilee were Herodian. (The Gospels call Levi a 'publican' for semantic convenience. That Italian word had become Greek-ese for "tax collector".) In political-financial terms, what we know is that the residents of cities like Sepphoris paid taxes to Antipas, whose own financiers dutifully sent along the imperial tribute. Likewise, the merchants of harbor towns like Tiberias paid customs fees to Herodian agents, one of whom was Antipas' own nephew Agrippa (who served there briefly, somewhere between 30 and 32 AD, before leaving Galilee, and later returning as King in 41).

In Jesus' era, Herod Antipas was free to collect all the revenue he could justifiably commandeer. Rome would look into his overall wealth and increase expectations when appropriate.

Any soldiers in Galilee were Herodian. The centurion in Capernaum was retired (and probably not even Italian*). Any local peace keeping was done by Herodian soldiers or by Herodian-authorized armed Galileans. At one point, Antipas built his own army. (We don't know when, or how large it remained, but there may be some continuity between the Royal Army dissolved in Judea (by AD 6) and the Army which Antipas stationed at Gamla (c.34-36). At the very least, some internal peacekeeping was necessary, to say nothing of providing deterrent for potential threats: whether Trachonitie brigands, revenge-minded Nabateans or budding Gaulanite Zealots.

Antipas couldn't have not kept at least a small army. Syria's four legions were more than twelve or fifteen days' march to the north!

(* On Capernaum's Centurion: We know he was retired for two reasons. First, there were no Romans stationed in Galilee directly at this point. Second, the Centurion's wealth suggests he must have sold the land granted to all Legionaries who survived 20 years' service. Now, his designation as "Centurion" means he'd worked for the Romans, not that he was born an Italian. Like most Roman soldiers recruited under Augustus, the man probably came from outside Italy; but he probably wasn't Galilean himself, given his gentile status. The major piece of knowledge we don't have is to know why he chose to relocate to Galilee, of all places - especially since, circa 30 AD, it had been 24 years since a Legion's recorded march through the region, and 34 years since Rome's last military action *in* Galilee! One plausible explanation could be that this Centurion bought, freed and married a Galilean slave woman whom he found somewhere else in the empire. This could also explain the great fondness he reportedly held for in general. Alternatively, he could have grown up a gentile in Galilee before becoming a soldier, but that would not as easily explain the fondness involved in his desire to return. *)

The synagogue communities, whether or not they received oversight from or paid tax to the government, held joint property and did commerce solely at the pleasure of Herod Antipas. Tiberius sometimes had opinions about Jewish people in Rome, and he paid due heed to the political prowess of the Jerusalem Temple party and all their adherents, but there was no need for Caesar to meddle directly with religious affairs that took place strictly in Galilee.

In general, therefore, the population of Galilee, being Jewish but not Judean, were in a more comfortable position regarding everything Roman. As long as Herod Antipas kept the peace, Rome wasn't worried about Galilee. As long as the Galileans didn't revolt, Rome wouldn't come depose Herod. This much should have seemed abundantly clear after the Galileans observed what happened to Archelaus' Judean regime (4 BC to AD 6). Being content under Herod was a good way to remain with the "devil they knew".

One natural consequence of Galilee being so insulated from Rome is that Galilee never seemed to develop as much concern about Rome. The independent government of Judea (AD 66 - 67) had to send out Judean generals (such as Josephus) to rouse a Galilean defense from the coming onslaught. And when Vespasian came in, his first target was the zealot hotbed of Gamla (that also being strategic high ground in the Golan). In contrast, the Galilean defenses were neither such a priority nor very difficult to surmount.

For another example, the famous rebel of AD 6, "Judas of Galilee" stirred up a lot of anti-Roman feeling in Judea, due to Quirinius' settlement, but his "No Lord but God" rhetoric didn't go down as being leveled against Antipas in Galilee or with Philip's tetrarchy. (It's well known Judas was from Philip's lands, not Antipas', but that doesn't affect the point here.) Apparently, it must be the case either that Judas didn't feel that way about Herodian princes or that he couldn't make the argument stick with their subjects.

Either way, the Galileans seemed content enough to remain under Herod. Instead of making them anti-Rome, that only makes them conservative culturally (as all ancient cultures naturally were). Granted, also, Antipas' peaceful rule deserves some credit for its own modest success. One can paint pictures of the big, bad, evil empire from Italy, but the very strong evidence for that accurate portrait is not based on experiences being felt by the Galileans of Jesus' day or before.

((** Not even in Sepphoris of 4 BC, where that individual city was itself overrun by a gang of toughs who decided to play king of their very small mountain. That Judas, "son of Ezekias" had no grand vision or ideological agenda, is the record from Josephus. That Sepphoris was burned down is probably due to the inexperience of the Legion's commander on that day when, after a brief ultimatum, Varus' son ordered destruction by fire. A dark tragedy can be written about the drama in Sepphoris in that season, but it did not stem from prior anti-Roman sentiment and could as easily have been blamed on the brashness of the Galilean agressors or the (passive?) complicity of the Sepphorian city folk. At any rate, if Galileans had any cause to hate Rome, it would have been over Sepphoris, and yet we have no record of such sentiment. In fact, we don't even have record of Galileans in general caring much about Sepphoris. As horrific as it turned out to be, the burning of Sepphoris had been Rome's first violent incident and the after-event publicity no doubt did put the blame onto Judas E and his gang. Such a dubious and isolated event - however horrible - cannot by itself succeed in creating a national uprising of furor against those involved, nor sustaining such furor three to four decades later (nor even seven, apparently). **))

All in all, the Galilean experience prior to Jesus' heyday just doesn't show any evidence of being rife with anti-Roman sentiment. To the contrary, all the above evidence quite suggests that, at least to speak of, there simply was none. Probably there was some general sympathy pain for the Judean experience, since many Galileans cared a good deal about Jerusalem. However, again, since these feelings didn't seem strong enough to stoke up much resistance even in the raging days of the late 60's, how much righteous secondary anger was there likely to be around Galilee in the placid 20's and 30's?

Down in Judea, Pilate made one or two newsworthy mistakes but they were cleaned up quickly enough, and Caligula didn't threaten his Temple stunt until AD 40/41. Even those were primarily, if not strictly, Judean events. (Personally, I'm fully convinced the Galileans were Jewish, but they weren't Judeans. Or, to rephrase that as a comedic Greek speaking New Yorker might say - The Galileans were Ἰουδαῖοι, but not, you know, Ἰουδαῖοι-Ἰουδαῖοι.)

Even the Judean's own strong feelings against Rome weren't built in a day! Significantly, it wasn't so much the famous but isolated incidents which caused Judean hostility to develop, but the daily emotional grating effect of seeing Roman influence everywhere. After five hundred years of being ruled from afar, the Romans were least tolerable - not only because they came last, but because they were most brutally effective at the actual governing part. Rome didn't just send Satraps to send home their tribute money. Rome stationed soldiers in the Antonia fortress next to the Temple. Rome greatly limited local governmental autonomy in micro-managerial ways. Rome acquired the Samaritan cavalry in 4 BC and kept them (with their Greek name, Sebastioi) as enforcers of Roman authority over Judeans. Rome did all this and more - relentlessly - for several decades in a row.

But Rome did all of this only in Judea. In great contrast, Galilee suffered from none of these symptoms.

In short, "Roman Galilee" wasn't ever Roman enough to become anti-Roman.

In fairness to certain popular theories today, one can indeed make a case that Jesus himself was somewhat anti-imperialistic, but it seems only for personal, spiritual and devotional reasons. There's no way to show that Jesus was overtly driven by feeling that "Caesar is bad". There are, deeply, many ways to show that Jesus was jealous for the Hebrew Divinity's behalf. If Jesus had any "anti" imperialistic sentiment, it wasn't anti, but pro. It would have been, simply, "God ought to rule".

In conclusion, however, I don't think one can argue strongly that such a message played well *politically* in Galilee in the late 20's and early 30's AD. Judea, yes. But Galilee, no.

And in this, perhaps, we might find a surprising new opportunity for research.

One could perhaps look for a slight change in message as Jesus moved from Galilee into Judea, late in his ministry... but then that would require re-examining the Gospels (first as literature, second as historical portraits of both Jesus and the context swirling around him) to determine whether Matthew, Mark, Luke and/or John made any efforts to consistently present such a "slight change in message" as their narratives draw towards Jerusalem. And if so, another question is whether that narrative arc would stand as evidence of deliberate chronological or generally developmental narration by the Gospel writers.

Such a new research project only has to begin with one simple chronological supposition. It is both general, basic and easy to detect in the Gospels. The general alignment of episodic content across the Synoptic Gospels (and John, to a lesser extent) divides sharply into two groups content narrated before John's beheading versus after John's beheading. If the episodic content aligns so consistently, perhaps the didactic content was also placed deliberately into two groups - what Jesus preached early in Galilee, and what Jesus preached later in Judea. (Full disclosure: in complete honesty, these last two paragraphs came on me by surprise. The post above was never set up to lead me to chronology. It's just that chronology wasn't far from my thoughts at the moment this post was beginning to wrap up. Go figure!)

Again, I say all this would involve a great deal of future research. I hope someone is game enough to take all of this on. I heartily encourage them hereby so to do!!!

BONUS: One more side observation to all this: the crowd members shouting "make him King" at the seaside around Passover time were most likely those crowd members from outside of Galilee. There was already reason to suppose that some of these multitudes seeking Jesus were substituting one pilgrimage for another, but the present discussion now suggests with more definite specificity that there were most likely Judeans in this crowd of pilgrims, Judeans who were leaving Judea and traveling away from the Temple to go visit Jesus at Passover time, instead.