Corpus-Paul

[Loren Rosson <rossoiii AT yahoo.com>]

I had written:

>>Whether we like it or not, “complicated stories” are
the ingredients of reality. Simple explanations are
preferable in some cases, but not all. . . If someone
were to attempt reconstructing my own travels in
Africa, based on personal correspondences and using
only the “simplest explanations”, the results would be
pretty bad.<<

Richard responded:

>> When we are offered two rival hypotheses which both
fit the facts, the one with the lighter weight of
assumptions is ALWAYS the more probable. It’s a simple
matter of probability factor. It matters not at all
that “complicated stories are the ingredients of
reality”. When the reality behind a body of data was
complicated, it is highly unlikely that the data will
lend itself to rearrangement into a compact simple
scheme without contradictions.<<

Bob MacDonald then wrote:

>>A good model of the historical situation should take
into account as many known facts and inferences as
possible. It should not be judged as good if it makes
things simpler that are not, by definition, simple to
begin with.<<


I’m not sure where other list-members stand on this
issue, but I want to clarify briefly the perspective I
come from as an historical novelist, which entails the
onerous “privilege” of working in both professions. As
we know, historians and novelists bring different sets
of priorities to the table, and the historical
novelist experiences a clash between these sets -- a
clash, for instance, demonstrated in the following
interchange:


[Loren]
>>My assumption is that during the painful visit (55),
Paul left Corinth in a hurry, and upon return from
Ephesus, wrote the tearful letter (II Cor. 10-13) in
which he expressed his intent to visit again (II Cor.
12:14, 13:1) – and soon! – to set everything to
rights. . . But after “cooling off” he reasoned that a
follow-up visit would result in only more pain and
sorrow (II Cor. 1:23, 2:1-2).<<

[Richard]
>>This is yet another change of mind which you have to
assume in order to make the pieces of your jigsaw fit
together. It is a weighty and unnecessary assumption.
Paul wrote the tearful letter with confidence, so to
suggest that he became anxious after sending the
letter is uneconomical.<<


Far from “uneconomical”, to suggest that Paul became
anxious after sending the tearful letter only makes
him human. I’ve known of a few “tearful letters” that
resulted in subsequent anxiety for the authors, and
these writers had robust and confident personalities
to boot. 

Here’s the upshot: Good novelists incorporate
complexity -- even paradox -- in dealing with what
motivates their characters, while good historians aim
for simplicity in a way that accounts for evidence
smoothly. Historical novelists walk the tightrope,
trying to do both. And so I put thoughts, emotions,
and motives into characters like Paul, and I try to do
it honestly and with the kind of integrity my own
experiences inform me might have applied in them. The
result may not always be the most “probable”,
mathematically speaking, but it is not thereby
rendered “unlikely”. . . especially when we
acknowledge, with Bob, that historical issues are
“never simple to begin with”.

Loren Rosson III,
Nashua NH
rossoiii AT yahoo.com



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