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corpus-paul - Re: Does True Historian = Objective Historian?

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  • From: "Ronald L. Troxel" <rltroxel AT facstaff.wisc.edu>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Re: Does True Historian = Objective Historian?
  • Date: Mon, 18 Sep 2000 07:05:03 -0500


Zeba Crook wrote:
Interpretation does not happen independently of the social context of the interpreter.
This means that Stendahl's conclusions may well have been guided by social forces, but
so were the pre-war interpreters who never questioned the picture of an anti Jewish
Paul (a picture that was easily exaggerated into a Jew hating Paul). Likewise, recent
scholars who claim that Paul was in fact anti Jewish (or at least had a problem with
Judaism) are able to do so only because of social forces, either because they
themselves are Jewish (like Boyarin), who are less vulnerable to charges of
anti-Semitism, or because as we get further away from the holocaust its control
diminishes, or because anti-Semitism is so uncommon now (in most sectors of society).
Either way, recent scholarship is no less and no more objective historically than is
previous scholarship; we simply are working under new presuppositions.

As true as it is that we work out of cultural environments that condition our reading, if the situation were as bleak as you've depicted it, I would turn in my cap and gown. By this philosophy of reading, scholarship is simply about identifying the cultural influences on a given reading or (worse) revelling in our inevitable anachronisms.

I'm not arguing for "objectivity," but for the ability to distinguish (to some significant but unquantifiable degree) between the author's world and ours. If that is truly impossible, then let's give up the charade of trying to reconstruct Christian origins or to talk about what Paul "meant."

Ron Troxel

--
Ronald L. Troxel, Ph.D.
Senior Lecturer
Dept. of Hebrew and Semitic Studies
University of Wisconsin-Madison




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