Corpus-Paul

["Mark D. Nanos" <nanosmd AT comcast.net>]

on 8/29/02 1:55 PM, Eric Zuesse at cettel AT shoreham.net wrote:
> 
> Mark is here (as opposed to his opening comments that I'm not excerpting
> because they were purely ad-hominem against me) raising an authentic issue,
> namely: Is it important, if one is to interpret Paul's letters so as to
> employ them scientifically in a reconstruction of Christian origins, that
> one identify correctly the order in which they were written? Mark is saying
> no;

No, I am not saying that. It would be "necessary" if claiming "certainty,"
but I do not see how anyone could make such a claim with our present
evidence. I am not suggesting a counter-proposal, simply questioning your
failure to recognize the difference between the data that serves as evidence
and your interpretation of the data/evidence. We cannot at present "know" as
evidence, as that which anyone looking at the evidence would agree upon as
self-evident, the sequence of these documents. What you have are merely
working hypotheses, or, if your prefer, for the prevailing views anyway,
theories. As such, the payoff is inherently limited by the interpretive
basis from which it begins, which is different from being based upon simple
evidence itself.

As for the charge of engaging in ad hominem against you, I do not think I
have done so, since I explained what I found wanting in your argument. (You
are aware, I hope, that the accusation of ad hominem can constitute engaging
in one). But to any degree that I may have done so, or be understood to have
done so, I apologize. I am merely trying to communicate, well, what I will
again state in this post: you do not conform your argument to your stated
methodology, for what you call evidence constitutes its interpretation.


> I shall not comment upon Mark's other objections, because they are generally
> of the same nature: claiming that it is acceptable to reconstruct the
> beginnings of Christianity on the basis of assumptions about Christian
> history, before one makes assumptions about the order in which the
> documentary evidence itself was generated. I do not deny that Mark's
> viewpoint is respectable among scholars; but I do assert that it is *not*
> respectable among scientists.

Eric, I did not write what you assert, and it is not clear that you have a
very good idea what is scientific where the handling of texts from the past
are concerned, i.e. the science of history, historiography. Bifurcating
"scholars" and "scientists" is beside the point, employing misleading
rhetoric that fails to recognize that NT scholars seek to practice the
science of historical-criticism, and thus, are subject to criticism on the
grounds of the methods which they seek to employ. Practitioners of
historiography should be able to recognize the difference between the
evidence and their interpretation of it, or acknowledge such when it is
pointed out to them by their peers. Do you?


> The first kinds of assumptions that a scientific historian will establish in
> order to reconstruct history from an evidentiary body composed of documents,
> is to date these documents, as best as can possibly be done, paying
> attention, at this first stage of the scientific enterprise, to interpretive
> issues in those documents as little as possible, since interpretation must
> come at the last stage of this scientific enterprise. To the extent that
> interpretive assumptions are embedded into sequencing the documents, one is
> prejudicing the "history" that will be produced from them. A scientist wants
> to prejudice his findings as little as possible.

What you have written gets at the point I am trying to make you see about
your own failure to distinguish the interpretation that is inscribed in your
claims for the evidence from the evidence itself. My criticism is of your
claim to being as scientific as your proposed methodology should hold you
to; it is not a challenge to your proposed method, but to your internal
inconsistency in its application.

As we are not discussing my propositions, I do not find myself obliged to
explain my method, and it can be read and ascertained in published works.
But for the record, I am happy to employ any method available to discover
the past and understand the present, and I recognize in that process that my
interest in the past can seldom if ever be separated entirely from my
interest in the present, since my interest is conducted in the present by
definition. That is, the science of history is always "interested," once it
states anything beyond the evidence, which is evident even in the choice and
presentation of the evidence itself. I wonder if you have any sense of this
aspect of engaging the "past"; it is very humbling to recognize our
interested role as interpreters, no matter how far we may seek to know the
past on its own terms, but I do not observe the fruit of this recognition in
your tone or your statements.

> Re: Mark's reply to my:
> 
>>> We indeed know that Paul's letter was being read by a congregation who
> had
>>> heard from James's people, and that at least one member of the
> congregation
>>> had been persuaded so much by James's people as to become circumcised
>>> himself (Gal. 1:6 & 5:7).
>> 
>> We know no such thing. You have gone from earlier snipped comments which
>> were rightfully tentative about this matter, to claiming evidence of it.
> But
>> it is an interpretation. Whatever happened in Galatia, Paul never says in
>> his letter that it has anything to do with James or representatives from
>> James. It is not in the evidence, but in the interpretative spin that this
>> claim is found. Moreover, the evidence does not say a member had been
>> persuaded to become circumcised, or that it was because of Jame's people.
> In
>> addition to adding to the texts, you are conflating comments made about
>> Antioch (which also do not say way you assert)  and about Galatia, two
>> different places with different people and events at two different times.
>> That is clear in the evidence.
> 
> I gave the evidence right there, Gal. 1:6 & 5:7, but you ignored it.

This is not a scientific reply. I disputed your "interpretation" of it,
mainly, your internally inconsistent appeal that the meaning that you
conclude from this text constitutes evidence when it instead constitutes an
interpretation of the evidence; that is not the same thing as ignoring it.
You are not a very constructive conversation partner, and I do not enjoy
discussions with you because they continue to be of this (unscientific!)
nature.

> 
> 1:6 & 5:7 refer to James's agents in Galatia having persuaded one or more
> members of the Galatian congregation to become circumcised.

Excuse me, Eric, but this is precisely what I disputed, which dispute you
now ignore. Unless you have some translation or Greek manuscript of which I
am not aware, I find no reference to James' agents in either of these texts.
Or, for that matter, is their presence in Galatia stated anywhere in
Galatians. It is not in the evidence, but in your interpretation of it. That
is/was the point of my entering the conversation; otherwise I have no
interest in analyzing your proposition in this forum.

> Once Paul has
> lost one member to James, the obvious result is that either others will do
> likewise or else Paul will grab this thing before it falls entirely to the
> ground and breaks into pieces. Paul had merely been the salesman who had
> sold these Galatians on entering James's Jewish sect; Paul wasn't more than
> a salesman in James's organization; James was the leader they all looked up
> to.

And this is the kind of interpretation upon interpretation with which your
posts are filled. Fine; I don't agree with either this interpretation or the
one upon which it depends (above), but that is not the point. Please
recognize that this is what you are doing, and not something any more
scientific than those interpreters with whom you find methodological fault.
That is not a criticism of your proposition to consider the rules of
evidence in legal cases as an element of historical enquiry (which is an
interesting proposition), but of your implementation of that methodology
with these texts.

> In science, only the data (here, the primary
> sources) are evidence (some of much higher quality than others), but no
> scholar's interpretation is evidence for anything.

Yes! That is my point, but it is not what you are holding yourself to in
these posts, as in the exchange I have copied above on the textual data from
Galatians. That is my point, and all I wish to say at the moment on this
thread. Please do with it as you like.

Regards,
Mark
-- 
Mark D. Nanos, Ph.D.
313 NE Landings Dr.
Lee's Summit, MO 64064
USA
nanosmd AT comcast.net