Hi Veradico: Just getting back to you on some of the points you made in your last post.
I just want to first explain my statement that ‘traditional form-criticism is now obsolete’ – certainly it sounds rather dramatic and a big claim to make, but it is for all intents and purposes true, at least the kind of form criticism that predominantly started with Bultmann about 85 years ago.
The basic reason for this claim is because of the increasingly compelling body of evidence and scholarship that lays waste to nearly all of the fundamental assumptions of the form critics. I have touched on some of this in my earlier threads, but particularly that evidence relates to the new understandings and insights gained relatively recently about the nature of oral societies and how they remember traditions, especially through the work of Kenneth Bailey. Along with that, is the fact that the current position of folklore scholars have also made many of form criticisms assumptions untenable (the currently accepted time-frame for the oral period is now much shorter than was believed in Bultmann's time - and folklore spans much longer periods of time.) Plus, the very recent research being done into ancient historiographic practices and how the gospels compare with them is the latest stream of evidence to augment this shift in gospel scholarship, a shift that is unearthing new insights into the oral tradition and leading to eminent scholars (ridiculing them as 'evangelistic scholars' simply won't do!) such as Dunn and Bauckham to ‘shake the foundations of a century of scholarly study of the gospels’ (Graham Stanton, University of Cambridge)
James Dunn, for example, notes the following ‘striking…major flaws’ of the traditional quest for Jesus: The quest has been trapped in a literary paradigm, having ‘little or no idea what it would have been like to live in an oral culture’. The earlier questers failed to appreciate ‘how incapable the literary mindset is to appreciate the way in which the Jesus tradition came to be formulated in the first place and the failure to take seriously and make sustained inquiry into what transmission of such tradition would have involved in first century Palestine.’ ‘….Bultmann could not escape from the literary mind-set, his own literary default setting; he could not conceive of the process of transmission except in literary terms. This becomes most evident in his conceptualization of the whole tradition about Jesus as “composed of a series of layers.” It is the same with the recent focus on Q material. The focus is now on whether different compositional layers can be distinguished within Q! There is an explicit assumption that each layer is to be conceived as a written document, and the process of development conceived in terms of editing and redaction. Kloppenberg, for example, envisages his investigation of Q in terms of an archaeological dig, as Excavating Q, where, as with Bultmann, the process is visualized as striping away successive layers to reach the bottom layer, or as removing the redactional elements of successive editions to recover the original edition. This literary paradigm predominates, but Dunn exposes how this literary paradigm is entirely inappropriate to a predominantly oral society. He states “But to treat the history of the Jesus tradition as though it were a matter of recovering some original version of the tradition is to conceptualize the transmission of the Jesus tradition at best misleadingly. This is one of the points on which the Jesus Seminar completely misjudged the character of the Jesus tradition.” He then draws on Bailey’s work and other recent insights in ancient orality, compares the model to the gospels, and presents a new paradigm for how the gospels should be assessed in light of these new insights.
Dunn sums it up like this:
“In these chapters I have been arguing that the quest of the historical Jesus has been largely unsuccessful because the earlier questers started from the wrong place, began with the wrong assumptions, and viewed the relevant data from the wrong perspective. In each case they forgot what should have been more obvious than it evidently has been and so lost the way almost from the beginning.
The first of these mistakes was to assume that faith was a hindrance to the quest, something that had to be stripped away I the quester was to gain a clear view of the historical Jesus. My response is that, on the contrary, the quest should start from the historical a priori that Jesus made a faith impact on his disciples, and that the only way to approach Jesus historically is to do so through that faith impact. In contrast to the older questers, the faith of the first disciples, not yet Easter faith, should not be stripped away, indeed cannot be stripped away, without throwing away the baby with the bathwater.
The second mistake has been to assume that the transmission of the Jesus tradition can be understood effectively only in literary terms, as a process of copying or editing earlier written sources. There has been a willing recognition on the part of most that the earliest Jesus tradition and earliest period of transmission of that tradition must have been oral in character. But there has been an almost complete failure to appreciate that such transmission could not have been like the literary process. There has been a consequent failure to take seriously the challenge to investigate how that tradition functioned in the oral period, and to ask whether the oral character of the earliest tradition could help us better understand the lasting and present form of the Jesus tradition. In contrast, it is my thesis that such an investigation can give us a clearer idea both of how the Jesus tradition first emerged and of its enduring character. That is, the character of the Synoptic Gospel tradition may have already been determined in large part during the oral period and before it was written down extensively in Mark and Q.
The third failure of previous quests has been the mistake of looking for a distinctive Jesus, distinctive in the sense of a Jesus different from his environment. This failure also has a twin aspect: first, the determination to find a non-Jewish Jesus; and second, the methodological assumption that the search should be directed toward identifying the particular saying or action that made Jesus stand out from his context most clearly.”
Dunn concludes by calling for a complete altering of the default setting from the deeply ingrained literary mindset that has dominated form criticism for so long, to ‘recognise that the early transmission of the Jesus tradition took place in an oral culture and as oral tradition requires us consciously resist the involuntary predisposition to conceive that process in literary terms and consciously to re-envisage that process in oral terms.
Also emphasizing these serious flaws in most form criticism, Bauckham states (2006):
“It is a curious fact that nearly all the contentions of the early form critics have now been convincingly refuted, but the general picture of the process of oral transmission that the form critics pioneered still governs the way most New Testament scholars think.”
“Virtually every element in this construction [from criticism] has been questioned and rejected by some or even most scholars. Much of these criticism are rooted in the much better and fuller information that is now available about the way oral traditions operate in predominantly oral societies.”
Bauckham then notes four points of criticism that “effectively demolish the whole edifice of tradition history erected on the basis of form criticism….since these points are widely admitted, the inability of form criticsm to tell ushow the gospel traditions were transmitted between the eyewitnesses and Gospel texts should be generally agreed. But there is more:”
He then outlines five more criticisms and in conclusion states that “Even a few of these criticisms would be sufficient to undermine the whole form-critical enterprise. There is not reason to believe that the oral transmission of Jesus traditions in the early church was at all as Bultmann envisaged it. It is remarkable that this is not more widely acknowledge explicitly, though, once one is aware of it, it is not difficult to see that many contemporary Gospels scholars acknowledge it implicitly by ignoring from criticism in its classical form. But what form criticism has bequeathed as a long enduring legacy is the largely unexamined impression that many scholars – and probably even more students – still entertain: the impression of a long period of creative development of the traditions before they attained written form in the Gospels. The retention of such an impression is not defensible unless it is justified afresh, for the arguments of the form critics no longer hold water.”
So I hope you can see why I made the statement that traditional form criticism is now 'obsolete'.
To explain my statement that the "ancient oral storytelling" is an "area of study that has not been adequately treated", from some of the comments above it is evident that classic form criticism relied on many assumptions about the oral tradition that suffered from not adequately inquiring into ancient orality. But recently many insights and new understandings have been made that have shed much light on this neglected area, resulting in the discarding of many of the old assumptions. To underscore how much neglect there has been in this area, Dunn (2005) gives a bit of a summary as follows:
“As E.P. Sanders points out, the problem is “that we do not know how to imagine the oral period.” However, the problem has been and is being addressed – in two ways in particular:
One has stemmed from the fundamental research into folklore, particularly the research into the Homeric and Yugoslavian sags, carried out by Milman Parry and Albert Lord. This line of inquiry has generally been regarded as irrelevant to an understanding of the Gospel tradition. Folktales and sags, often of considerable length and transmitted through generations of trained and dedicated poets and singers, cannot be expected to provide much of a guide to Jesus tradition of the Synoptic Gospels, where the teaching is characteristically aphoristic or in short stories (parables) and the period of transmission to be allowed for is no more than about fifty or sixty ears or less. The study of oral tradition in different parts of Africa is largely subject to the same critique. And anyway, it is becoming less relevant to our concerns since a paradigm shift took place in such folklore studies in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, when a new emphasis on performance and the social interaction between performers and audiences directed attention away from the study of the transmission of oral tradition.
The other line of research is ore current – into the way memory works. Unfortunately, much of the research is flawed. Some scholars are content to think of memory only as it functions in regard to casual gossip of individuals and the serendipitous reminiscences of college reunions (Eg, Crossan seems to think of oral tradition principally in terms of individuals’ casual recollection – Birth of Christianity, 49-93)…”
Dunn also refers to the influential theories of ‘social memory’ and ‘cultural memory’ of Maurice Halbwachs and Jan Assman older research, which tended to support one of the big assumptions of form criticism that the original eyewitness testimonies got rapidly subsumed into anonymous community traditions that were constantly changing to meet the theologial agenda of the group (homeostatis). But Dunn notes problems with Halbwacs theories in light of new thinking on the gospels. He then examines Kenneth Bailey’s 30 years of research on oral societies and considers Bailey's 'informal, controlled' model to be the best to date.
Bauckham similarly notes that researchers into how memory works have refuted much of Halbwachs’ theories. These other theories show that, far from individual memory being completely subsumed into an evolving group memory, as if individuals are mere automatons, individual memory is often very resistant to change, there are often very powerful dissenting forces against changes to group memory, and that the latest evidence of the characteristics and process of remembering in oral societies shows that there is always a substantial original core that didn’t change. Thus Bauckham also affirms Bailey's model, however, Bauckham parts way with Dunn at this point by making the case that the eyewitnesses factor plays a more significant role in the gospels than the 'community' factor.
Bauckham’s new book is especially good for its chapter on eyewitness memory, noting that ‘New Testament scholars have rarely made any use of these resources [psychologists studies of recollective memory for well over a century]”. His chapter here is a 'first attempt' to examine this area of research as applied to the gospels.
So I think my statement is a fair one. While it is true that there are different streams of form criticism that have all made different contributions to the whole puzzle, on the whole, they have operated from many of the same old assumptions that are now being soundly refuted.
Veradico, on your point here: When the oral tradition (as well as literary sources) are converted by an author into a fixed literary text, redactional criticism becomes quite useful and valid. The author will choose to convey his message in a particular literary genre. Thus, one must look at how the author fits into the characteristics typical of that genre during his general time period. That's why I mentioned the biography of Apollonius of Tyana.”
This outlook is largely from the ‘non-historical genre’ school of criticism, ie, that the gospels are really just another type of literary genre of the time with little, if any, historical basis. There is, however, much scholarly weight to make the case that is objection is overstated, that the editing and ordering of the material by the gospel writers is a lot less than the form critics believed. Unless someone can rebut Bauckham's tome (time will tell), the gospel writers are a lot more faithful to the eyewitness reports than was imagined and the role of the writers was more to assemble the kerygmas in a readable fashion, giving it a logical, chronological, narrative effect. There is no real evidence that the gospel writers imposed any significant personal style or freely created agenda.
Veradico, on your claim here: “Within the community of the Beloved Disciple, we can see the way a group of Jewish Christians slowly became alienated from the Jewish community as a whole (cf. John 9:22) and developed an elevated Christology which explained the Jews' rejection of Jesus and his followers as a rejection of God Himself.”
To say the community of the ‘beloved disciple’ slowly became alienated from the Jewish community is really nothing but an assumption. It’s from a popular and longstanding theory that all the traditions evolved separately and anonymously from one another. Although this view is still predominant in gospel scholarship, I would really encourage you to read Bauckham’s book as he deals specifically with this theory and presents a formidable challenge to it.
Also, Veradico, you say: “I would prefer that people would trust their own experience and rational abilities, rather than turning from one authoritarian system of belief to another. To accept the tradition of a church or the text of a book wholesale strikes me as a dangerous gamble. The holy books of the world and the doctrines of the various faiths that produced them depend, very often, on authority, not reason, and speak of events that do not correspond to experience of most of us.”
I agree, however, we are ALL the product of all manner of authority structures and belief systems, religious or not. Everyone has accepted the ‘text of a book’ to some degree or other, whether it’s the Bible or The Origin of the Species. No matter how much we think we can trust our ‘own experience and rational abilities’ no one is without bias or influence from whatever sources they have derived their particularly worldview from. Sceptics and atheists are as guilty of this as Christians. Atheists and those who reject religion can just as easily be accused of coming under the ‘authority’ of post-modernism and materialistic views of the universe as Christians are of following alleged myths and fairytales. The modern critics are simply influenced by the ‘authority’ of new norms and schools of thought as much as Christians are of older norms and schools of thought. But newer does not mean truer. What is often viewed as correct today is soon discarded a few decades or centuries later, and many old-fashioned ideas that were pooh-poohed are later vindicated. While many Christians are guilty of not adequately testing the foundations of their faith (which I am on a journey of doing), many in fact have; and they have made a rational decision to adhere to the Christian worldview based on their research of the available evidence as it currently stands. Atheists and skeptics are often just as guilty of jumping on popular, trendy, politically correct bandwagons without really testing the evidence and making an objective rational choice as Christians are of staying on there more traditional bandwagons.
I think at this point I will leave this thread for now. It is requiring too much of my time and it seems no one except a very few individuals on this forum are interested in this fascinating subject anyway.
I’ll wind up my imput by saying that anyone seriously interested in getting a balanced view of this field of scholarship simply must read Dunn and Bauckham’s works. It was most refreshing to see that Leolaia is presently reading Bauckham’s book and it would be interesting to hopefully get her thoughts on it later. She at least acknowledges that she has found Bauckham’s scholarship is very good. Although I’ve been critical of what I see as Leolaia’s heavy emphasis on intertextuality, effectively portraying the gospels as not much more than some kind of complicated, sophisticated, works of plagiarized fiction, I think her admission about the quality of Bauckham’s scholar is telling in comparison to Narkissos’ ad hominem dismissal of it.
The bottom line is that, no matter what our personal view is about God and miracles, there is clearly a growing body of evidence that is weighing in favour of the overall reliability of the oral tradition behind the gospels. It will be interesting to see what the scholarly response is to Bauckham’s work and I look forward to reading that very much in due course. No doubt there will be some criticisms and it will beimportant to analyse that.
However, there is clearly a paradigm shift occurring in modern gospel scholarship that is having the effect of narrowing the window through which the skeptics can continue to object to the gospels as nothing by mythology and folklore. Many years ago the reliability of the textual transmission was largely doubted, but new textual discoveries, particularly since the discovery of the dead sea scrolls, means that now hardly any reputable scholar seriously questions that the textual transmission is 99% accurate or thereabouts. New evidence about ancient orality is causing a similar phenomenon in the world of NT scholarship. The same shift appears to be occurring with the oral transmission process.
Latest Gospel scholarship supports the reliability of the oral tradition!
by yaddayadda 33 Replies latest watchtower bible
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yaddayadda
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Terry
The bottom line is that, no matter what our personal view is about God and miracles, there is clearly a growing body of evidence that is weighing in favour of the overall reliability of the oral tradition behind the gospels. It will be interesting to see what the scholarly response is to Bauckham’s work and I look forward to reading that very much in due course. No doubt there will be some criticisms and it will beimportant to analyse that.
The premise we begin with leads to the conclusion we are left with at the end!
People (scholars) have agendas. Those agendas color their presuppositions and creep into the premise at the outset. Nobody can be surprised by the conclusions with such a foundation.
Incorporating "faith" into the argument is incorporating "I don't have any facts, but, I believe this is true" into the result. This is the FALLACY called "The argument from Ignorance."
Defined:
The argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam ("appeal to ignorance" [1] ), is a logical fallacy in which it is claimed that a premise is true only because it has not been proven false, or that a premise is false only because it has not been proven true.
In the world of Theology you have a constant see-saw action/reaction from the very beginning. The cause is some criticism and the effect is the apologia from the wounded party.
Scripture that has been written down stems from this bickering see-saw!
The Hebrew scriptures contain dual contradictory accounts for this very reason! Some third party (redactor) wants to smooth over conflicts by appeasing two opinionated groups at odds with each other. This is done by allowing both contrary views to exist side by side so that neither side wins outright, but, neither can claim supremecy.
In the Christian Greek (New Testament) you have contradictory accounts of Jesus and his activities. The very fact there are contradictions IS PRIMA FACIE evidence of the conflicting opinion as to who did what when and where.
As Aristotle so long ago warned us, the evidence of error is the presence of contradiction.
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Narkissos
Just came across this blog with many entries on Bauckham's book, fwiw:
(or http://wordpress.com/tag/bauckhamjesus-and-the-eyewitnesses/)
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yaddayadda
Excellent resource:
http://www.christian-thinktank.com/stilltoc.html