The Scholar's Scalpel

With a fine enough scalpel, everything is unique

Michael Goulder, Luke: A New Paradigm (JSNTSup. 20; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1989), 280.

I have been looking for this quotation for ages, and finally came across it today. I had remembered using it myself (e.g. in my review of Kim Paffenroth's Story of Jesus according to L, "In the search for 'un-Lukan' features, one cannot help thinking that with a sharp enough scalpel, everything is unique"), and I had always attributed it to Michael Goulder, but I was beginning to think that I had invented it myself. It turns out that my memory was correct and that it does come in Goulder. It's a nice line. In context, Goulder is criticizing the fine distinctions made by Schürmann on Luke 3.15, "Schürmann denies the verse to Luke by fastidious distinctions . . . "

Appeals to "the majority of scholars"

I am just finishing work on a comprehensive bibliography of Michael Goulder and came across this enjoyable footnote in an essay on the resurrection (“The Explanatory Power of Conversion-Visions”. In Paul Copan, and Ronald K. Tacelli (eds.), Jesus' Resurrection: Fact or Figment? : a Debate between William Lane Craig & Gerd Lüdemann (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity, 2000): 102).  where, in context, he is discussing the views of William Craig, who appeals to "the majority of scholars":

One should always be wary when appeal is made to "the majority of scholars," for it tends to exclude any new idea.  Where would Galileo or Darwin have got to if they had bowed to it?

And I suppose too that the point should be extended to the reception of new ideas, not just the instigation of those new ideas.  Lots of new ideas turn out to be horribly wrong, but it is rarely a good argument against them to appeal to what the majority thinks.

I wonder if it is one of those areas where we allow ourselves to be unduly influenced in our research and writing by the constraints of pedagogy.  When we teach, we naturally have to paint a picture of the majority view, even where we disagree with that view.  Perhaps our attempts to understand where the majority view is can inadvertently cause us to give value to that view and so to argue as if good scholarship is about counting heads.

Farrar on Knowledge without Common Sense

There is a mis-attributed quotation floating around on the internet that goes something like this:

Knowledge, without common sense, says Lee, is folly; without method, it is waste; without kindness, it is fanaticism; without religion, it is death. But with common sense, it is wisdom with method, it is power; with clarity, it is beneficence; with religion, it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Farrar, Austin

I won't link to the various sources of this mis-attributed quotation lest I give them additional publicity and instead I will clarify the source and accuracy of this quotation and perhaps then future googlers will find their way here. In the form above, the quotation makes little sense -- it has been garbled in transmission. Moreover, the quotation is not from "Austin Farrar", an apparent assimilation of the first name "Austin" in Austin Farrer to the true author, Frederick William Farrar. Here is a correct version of the quotation:

"You must not only listen but read, you must not only read but think; knowledge," it has been said, "without common sense is folly, without method it is waste, without kindness it is fanaticism, without religion it is death;" aye, but -— and every page of the New Testament confirms the lesson —- with common sense it is wisdom; with method it is power; with charity it is beneficence; with religion it is virtue, and life, and peace.

Frederick William Farrar, The Witness of History to Christ: Five Sermons Preached Before the University of Cambridge; Being the Hulsean Lectures for the Year 1870 (London: Macmillan, 1871), 159-60.

The piece in quotation marks is attributed by Farrar (159, n. 3) as follows:

From a speech by the late Bp. of Manchester (Dr J. Prince Lee), at the opening of the Bury Athenaeum. Cf. S. Bernard, " Ut legeret intelligendi fecit cupiditas; ut intelligeret oratio impetravit; ut impetraret vitae sanctitas promeruit. Sic cupiat, sic oret, sic vivat qui se proficere velit."

This blog entry comes by virtue of the glories of Google Books.