Corpus-Paul

["David Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>]

John,

>>Toynbee moved from a rigid cause and effect model for his analysis to a
'challenge and response' model to make room for human creativity in meeting
the challenges that face a civilization as it develops and is transformed. I
am suggesting that Biblical Scholarship consider a similar shift from an
enlightened trajectory of cause and effect developed on models from German
philosophy and scholarship. Instead of demythologizing the history of a
civilization, keep the elements that are integral to understanding the
civilization in place and compare the findings with that from other
civilization (i.e. the influence of Confucius and Buddha on Eastern
Civilizations, etc.).<<

Toynbee's approach is the paramount example of what is now called
"historicism," usually said with a sneer. It is the idea that universal laws
about the rise and fall of civilizations can be deduced from the mass of
historical data, and these laws can be used for the purpose of social
engineering or at least to make predictions about the direction a nation is
taking given certain historical circumstances (war, famine, disease,
environment, governmental structure, etc). However, historicism has been
severely challenged by the likes of Karl Popper. 

Sincerely,

David Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio USA


-----Original Message-----
From: corpus-paul-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org
[mailto:corpus-paul-bounces AT lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of John Brand
Sent: Tuesday, January 25, 2005 5:57 PM
To: Corpus-Paul
Subject: Re: [Corpus-Paul] Romans 1-2: Logos/Christos as Soter

 
Thanks for your response and questions, Mark. 

Mark wrote:

You have spun a story from these different interpreters spanning hundreds of
years, and from different ethnicities and cultures.  Where might it benefit
from some alteration and nuance? 
How widely was the story as you understand it understood by 1) anyone then
or 2) anyone since when reading Cicero or Paul? If you can find
corroboration, say in some elite, then I want to know if there is any
evidence that anyone other than an elite, representing some small percent of
the population, shared this understanding of the story. 
And I want to know if and how a non-elite would relate to  it.

John responds:
My answer begins by challenging the assumptions which frame the
question: Is civilization typically fragmented or organized around a central
core? We tend to look at ancient civilizations through modernist or a
post-enlightenment lens. We trim cultures of 'extra bulk' and reduce their
history according to objectives that we have developed from a
post-enlightened perspective. What I find fascinating about Dieter
Mitternacht's methodology in 'Recipient- Oriented Assessment' (_The
Galatians Debate_), is that an effort is made to understand the 'first
communication situation' and to apply criterion that have been developed in
non-biblical studies disciplines that re: rhetoric, etc. that appear to
provide us with a more objective means of getting at Paul's conscious or
unconscious strategy in bringing his hearers back from the influence that
they had succumbed to.

I would suggest a development of this type of approach for answering
questions about the Roman civilization except that I would want to widen the
scope from the 'first communication situation' as represented in the letter
to a scope that would include the work of World Systems Theory, for example
[Immanuel Wallerstein, "The Modern
World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (New York: Academic Press,
1976) and the work of Arnold Toynbee [his tour de force: A Study in History
(10 volumes)].

Toynbee's analysis of upwards of 20 world civilizations has led to his
developing a carefully constructed model for how civilizations develop. In
his study of civilizations existing prior to what the Karl Jaspers calls the
Axis Age (6th Century BCE), he found that a Type 1 civilization begins to
develop when an elite is freed up to engage in activities other than food
production, industry or commerce and is supported by 'wealth' drawn from a
surplus extracted from the common people by means of taxes or tribute. Also,
there are four basic ways in which this surplus is extracted: Coercion via
military caste, Control via a bureaucratic caste who specialize in
government, Conditioning via a priestly caste and by Commerce via a caste of
'merchant princes.

World Systems Theory builds on the same kind of foundation that Toynbee
builds upon: A core or 'metropole' becomes the region where the elite are
concentrated most strongly. Secondly, surrounding the core is the hinterland
or what is sometimes called the 'semiperiphery' from which the bulk of the
taxes are extracted. 
Surrounding the hinterland is the periphery which is the area or territory
only intermittently occupied by the civilization.

The implications for the study of Romans should be obvious: The Greco- Roman
civilization should be studied as a civilization that develops somewhere at
or about the 9th Century BCE and reaches its zenith at about the time of the
Pax Romana of Augustus. Care should be taken to note that the core around
which this civilization develops shifts from Athens to Rome but is greatly
influenced by the settling of Magna Graecia (lower Italy) in the 6th Century
BCE. The outlying colonies of the various centers around the initial
metropole (Athens et al) give rise to independent thought and, especially, a
challenge to the lore upon which the civilization gained its initial
ascendancy (i.e. the legends of Hesiod and Homer). For example, Odysseus
wanderings back to Ithaca take him out into what was at that time the
periphery of the civilization. He runs into Sirens and the challenges of the
gods. But think what happens when satellite colonies begun to form across
the seas that Odysseus met with his challenges. It would have an effect
similar to the rise of science in our own civilization. The periphery begins
to transform the metropole. 
Pythagoras settles in Italy which eventually becomes the new metropole but
his influence begins to take its effect through Socrates at the initial
metropole. The change takes time and as the metropole moves from Athens to
Rome, the influence of the periphery is slow to transform the metropole
where the elite are concentrated. 
Thus, we see a development from a 'conditioning' model to a bureaucratic
model. We move from the atmosphere of Athens which gives Socrates the
hemlock for atheist influence of the young to an adoption by the Roman
Emporer Marcus Aurelius of the very philosophy espoused by Socrates. The
influence of the Christian message similarly transforms the metropole slowly
so that we have Augustus and Virgil's Aeneid used to condition the
hinterland slowly changing through philosophy and the hybrid of Augustine
which brings together the philosophical (Cicero), the mystical or
sacramental (Mani), the pythagorean theology of neo-Platonism (Plotinus) and
the authority of the resurrected Christ.

Toynbee moved from a rigid cause and effect model for his analysis to a
'challenge and response' model to make room for human creativity in meeting
the challenges that face a civilization as it develops and is transformed. I
am suggesting that Biblical Scholarship consider a similar shift from an
enlightened trajectory of cause and effect developed on models from German
philosophy and scholarship. Instead of demythologizing the history of a
civilization, keep the elements that are integral to understanding the
civilization in place and compare the findings with that from other
civilization (i.e. the influence of Confucius and Buddha on Eastern
Civilizations, etc.).

Hopefully, the list will find this helpful in their deliberations.

Respectfully,

John Brand
B.A. (Providence College, 1980)
M.Min. (Providence Seminary, 1990)

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