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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 08:36:34 -0500


Doug Jantz wrote:

How can one be SURE beyond doubt the intent of the
author in writing what he wrote? We can't. We can do the best we can to reconstruct
the circumstances from what we have, but there is no completeness because we know we
do not have *everything* that there is to have from whatever period of history we are
studying.
(snip) As Ron says, we should
be able to distinguish between between the author's world and ours, but I am not
convinced we can derive black and white conclusions about the texts we study from this
alone.

I concur that there is no "black and white" certainty. We cannot even have certainty about our reconstruction of the environment in which documents were written, let alone what a particular author meant. In fact, I would not speak of recovering authorial intent, but what texts likely meant in the world in which they were written, according to our (evolving) understanding of that. The only assurance we have that we might be on a profitable track is when we can detect a culture distinct enough from ours that we perceive a difference between reading the text as a contemporaneous document and reading it as a document of a distant place and time.

Sheila McGinn wrote:
Ron, why is it a "bleak" situation to admit that one cannot be more objective than
prior scholars? Of course we strive for as much awareness of our presuppositions as
possible, so that they will influence us less in hidden ways. This does not mean we
will succeed any more or better than did our forebears. I don't see how humility
hurts scholarship, or makes the enterprise "bleak."

I don't see the admission you've specified as "bleak"; we are indeed as prejudiced by our environment as scholars who have preceded us - we have no other way to operate, and so humility is healthy. What I labeled "bleak" was the notion implicit in Zeba Crook's comments that we are simply playing out cultural presuppositions as we read the text. Under that assumption, the text is simply a mirror for our prejudices. While we certainly are indebted to our presuppositions, we must have some degree of confidence of being able to transcend those limitations if we wish to discuss what ancient documents meant in their context.

Ron Troxel

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




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