A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel VI: Masada

If you are staying in the Dead Sea, or even if you are not, you have to make a journey to Masada.  It's one of the richest educational experiences you can have, and if you are interested in early Judaism, it will be fascinating.

For the first-time visitor, one of the most striking things is just how strongly Herod's presence can be felt, something that might be said for several other places in Israel, Jerusalem, of course, and Caesarea in particular.  You can imagine Herod (who in my mind is always played by Peter Ustinov) feasting there, with his imported fish and his fine wines.  You can see where he bathed, Roman style, and you can see the large storehouses.  Remarkably, several of the frescos survive from Masada, and you can see good quality reproductions in situ as you walk around, and then look at the real things in the museum afterwards.

Of course the story you are going to witness is the one of the rebels and the Roman siege, and being at Masada does enable you to re-imagine elements of something that previously you've just read about, or seen in the 1981 film starring Peter O'Toole. You can see the part of the walls where the Roman siege made entry, and there are sling shots piled up not far away from the same site.

On the day we went, it was absolutely roasting up there, and the heat was enough to keep us on our toes in getting round the key sites before we passed out.  I am afraid that we did not go up and down the pathway.  I am not great with heights and it was very, very hot, so instead we enjoyed the cable-car ride with its fantastic views.  At the bottom, after pouring lots of cold liquids down our throats, we took in the museum at a leisurely pace and found it fascinating, not least seeing an original flip flop, a lock of hair and a comb from Masada.  Seeing the ostraca on which the names were scribbled, and which may have been used for the drawing of lots before the mass suicide, provides a remarkable way of imagining the events of 74 CE.

A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel V: The Dead Sea

If you are going to Israel, on no account miss out on the Dead Sea experience.  We took just a night there, but we would have loved a week.  It is quite remarkable.  That stuff that everyone tells you about floating on the Dead Sea is absolutely true.  I would have illustrated it with a photograph of me doing it, but I'd rather spare you the sight of me in my trunks.  Instead, the picture here is the view from our hotel window.

We managed without a car while we were in Tel Aviv but hired one for the second half of the trip, and this visit to the Dead Sea marked the mid-point.  We drove from Tel Aviv to the south west part of the Dead Sea, and found the drive a lot of fun -- lots of proper deserty landscapes, and the chance to do some camel-spotting.    As you approach the Dead Sea, there are signs indicating that you are getting lower and lower, and then however-many metres below see level.

There are several big resort style hotels in the Ein Bokek area.  Ours was huge, with a couple of pools, and buffet-style breakfasts and dinners on an industrial scale.  The hotel had its own beach area and doing the floating thing is a lot of fun.  The water is really warm, bath-water temperature, and the salt is everywhere, like sand where it is shallow, and then like rocks when it's a little deeper, so much so that I cut myself on it when I went out.

The advantage of staying at the Dead Sea is also the location, close to Masada, which is where we went next.

A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel IV: Jerusalem

I loved visiting Jerusalem.  Even though a day is nowhere near enough, you can do a remarkable amount in a day.  The highlight, without question, was walking through the tunnels that run along the bottom of the Western Wall of the Temple, now below ground.  We had an excellent tour guide who was knowledgeable and witty.  As he showed us the Herodian stones, he offered the memorable line, "If they spent this much time on the box, imagine how wonderful its contents".

We walked around lots of other fascinating locations.  Naturally, the ones most of interest to me were the glimpses of the Herodian / Roman era sites, including part of a road that looked like it could have been excavated in Rome itself.  We looked at "David's tomb" and the "Upper Room" above it, the latter fascinating for its little changes reflecting pre- and post-crusader activity.  We did lots of walking, and took in also the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.  We had some good nosh too -- little pizzas on the Via Dolorosa, while drinking a kind of lemon and mint concoction that we also had several days later in Galilee.

Alas, it was the day that England crashed out of the World Cup in that 4-1 defeat to Germany, but I will choose to remember it instead as a momentous first trip to Jerusalem.

Photo credits: Viola Goodacre

A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel III: Bethlehem

Well, of course you have to go to Bethlehem.  It wasn't top of my list of priorities, and I did not expect to find it particularly striking, and my expectations were met.  The most interesting thing about Bethlehem is the utter contrast with everywhere around it.  You have to spend a good ten or fifteen minutes crossing the border into Palestinian territory, where border officials are slouching in their seats with big scary rifles on their laps.  On the other side of the border, you can tell straight away that you are no longer in Israeli territory.  You are greeted by a whole line of taxi-drivers, shop-keepers and others looking for your business.

We did not do a lot in Bethlehem.  We looked around the Church of the Nativity, perhaps most memorable for the tiny entrance door to the main building and the little room down some stairs that supposedly marks the spot of Jesus' birth.  Since we were there on a Sunday, there were lots of people there to worship, and we got a few dirty looks and shoves.  Remarkably, I also met a film-crew there that I knew from my work on The Bible: A History last year.

I am pleased to have visited Bethlehem, but pleased too not to have spent too much time there.  It makes a good, short visit as part of a larger visit to Jerusalem, which is how we did things.

Photo credit: Viola Goodacre

A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel II: Jaffa

While we were staying in Tel Aviv, we took a short taxi ride to Jaffa (NT Joppa), which is only a few miles down the road.  This was our first proper bit of ancient Israel site-seeing and a place steeped in Biblical history.  Not far from Aladdin's restaurant, there is helpful plaque summarizing the entire history of the port as it relates to Israel's history.  And a stone's throw from that is a little bit of New Testament history, St Peter's Church, the supposed site of the story of Acts 10-11, when Peter has his vision at Cornelius's house.

Jaffa is a beautiful place, and an ideal place to be in the late afternoon, early evening.  There are cobbled streets in the old city, and great views of the sea.  You can explore the place in a matter of hours, and then take time for some food, wine and conversation in a nice spot.  We thought about eating at the harbour, but the restaurant owner there was aggressive and unhelpful and so we relocated to a perfect place in the old city, a French restaurant with a rooftop location and views of the sea.  We had eaten an enormous lunch at a fine French restaurant called "Messi" in Tel Aviv earlier that day so I was not that hungry in the evening and just went for the fish soup.  And it might just have been the best fish soup I have ever had.  And we could hear the sounds of the wedding at the synagogue next door, with all the instruments and partying out in the street.

Photograph credit: Viola Goodacre

The Times Obituaries go behind their pay-wall

I am disappointed to see that The Times is now putting its obituaries section behind their pay-wall.  Regular readers may remember that I like to peruse the obituaries section of The Times and often add links here when a Biblical Scholar or a classicist or someone of note has their obituary there.  In fact, I once wrote a Times obituary myself.  The only consolation about the new policy is that they have kept an open archive available of older obituaries, though without pictures and comments, so links to Times obituaries here will still work.  But in future, there will be no more links to Times obituaries in this blog.

A Biblical Scholar's First Impressions of Israel I: Tel Aviv

I have always wanted to travel to Israel, of course. Until recently, I have had neither time nor opportunity to do it, to say nothing of the cost. But this summer, a family friend's bat mitzvah in Tel Aviv gave us the long-awaited opportunity to make the journey. We had ten days and decided to split the stay into three parts. We began, naturally, in Tel Aviv, staying in a so-so apartment, a kind of "work in progress" in Dizengoff St, a slightly scruffy area in the centre of the city, with cats everywhere, but in a convenient location, just a short walk from the shops, the restaurants, the beach.

For the Biblical scholar in Tel Aviv, the pressure is off. No Biblical sites to see, no piles of stones to stare at and wonder over. So it is a chance to enjoy some of the other things the city offers. As well as the previously mentioned bat mitzvah, a real highlight was an evening on the beach watching the footy. You see, everyone in Israel loves their football.  Even the small bars selling falafel have their TV screens showing the World Cup.  Apparently business would be terrible if they did not.  And on the Saturday evening, after a relaxing day at the beach, which had soft sand and some spectacular waves, we settled down in the comfortable seaside bar,  and we drank Goldstar beer (Israel's own, dark lager beer, easy-drinking and quite acceptable), ate hummus and tahini, and watched the game (Ghana v. USA) on the specially erected big screens, as the waves lapped up just behind them, with our bare feet still in the sand.

Tel Aviv, though, is really a fine hub for touring Israel, a great jumping off point for getting to other locations, and of course we did not stay put there the whole time.  I'll comment next time on Jaffa.

NT Pod 36 and 37: Epistle to the Hebrews

It's time I got up to date with posting the latest episodes of the NT Pod here also on the NT Blog. NT Pod 36 takes a first look at the Epistle to the Hebrews and NT Pod 37 asks "What is the purpose of the Epistle to the Hebrews?"

You can listen to the NT Pod online or subscribe in your preferred reader or subscribe via iTunes.  And now you can also find the NT Pod on Facebook, or follow the NT Pod on Twitter.

Larry Hurtado's Blog

I realize that I am a little behind on this one, but thanks to Larry Hurtado for letting me know about his new blog:

Larry Hurtado's Blog

Already there are nine posts in a couple of days, and all of interest. Welcome to the blogosphere.

Not the Messiah Out on DVD

Out on DVD this week is the new oratorio based on The Life of Brian and entitled (of course), Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy).  I've blogged on this before -- it's delightful and amusing, and it is great now that they have also released a DVD of the live performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Here's the official page:

Not the Messiah on Blu-Ray and DVD

These days, Monty Python has its own Youtube channel with tons of clips (and apparently all this free stuff has massively increased their sales. Others: "go figure"!). This is the original trailer (for the one day cinema release):



Here's a sing-along for "Always look on the bright side of life":



Here is a some behind-the-scenes stuff:



And here Eric Idle "responds to your fatuous comments":

Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volumes 1-14 online

Archive.org now has the first fourteen volumes of The Oxyrhynchus Papyri online in toto and in a variety of formats, for viewing and for download; Volumes 1-5 are digitized by Google Books from Harvard University Library and so should appear also on Google Books in due course.  They do not yet have my favourite format, the flip book, but no doubt that will appear in due course. Volumes 6-14 are digitized by Brigham Young University and include the flip book format. I have also noted below an alternative (and superior) version of Volume 4, from University of California Libraries, which has been online for much longer. Here are the links:

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 1 (1898)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 2 (1899)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 3 (1903)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 4 (1904) [Alternative version]
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 5 (1908)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 6 (1908)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 7 (1910)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 8 (1911)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 9 (1912)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 10 (1914)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 11 (1915)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 12 (1916)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 13 (1919)
The Oxyrhynchus Papyri Volume 14 (1920)

(HT: Wieland Willker on the Textual Criticism list)

SBL Annual Meeting 2010 Program Book Online

The SBL Annual Meeting 2010 in Atlanta, GA now has its Preliminary Program Book available.  It is traditional on these occasions for bloggers going to the SBL to outline their participation in the program and here are the two sessions I am speaking in:

Ideological Criticism
11/20/2010
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM

Theme: Panel Review of James Crossley's "Jesus in an Age of Terror"

Randall Reed, Appalachian State University, Presiding

Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (25 min)
Zeba Crook, Carleton University, Panelist (25 min)
William Arnal, University of Regina, Panelist (25 min)
Roland Boer, University of Newcastle, Australia, Panelist (25 min)
James Crossley, University of Sheffield, Respondent (30 min)

--

Finding Your “Niche” in Biblical Scholarship
11/21/2010
9:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Theme: Hosted by the Student Advisory Group

The session will be geared as a way to help graduate students find their voices as budding scholars. Often students, at both the master’s and doctoral level, have a difficult time discerning precisely the direction in which to take their scholarship. They have a passion for a general area of biblical studies or a related field, but they have not been able to find a particular focus for themselves. While any scholarly career will obviously have many twists and turns, this session is meant to address the need to find that initial “starting gate.” In order to help bring some clarity, this panel of experienced scholars will share some of their own insights (with the benefit of hindsight) in an autobiographical way.

Patrick George McCullough, University of California-Los Angeles, Presiding
Christopher B. Hays, Fuller Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Katharine Doob Sakenfeld, Princeton Theological Seminary, Panelist (10 min)
Dale B. Martin, Yale University, Panelist (10 min)
Mark Goodacre, Duke University, Panelist (10 min)
April DeConick, Rice University, Panelist (10 min)
Paula Fredriksen, Boston University, Panelist (10 min)
Discussion (90 min)

Frank Deasy's wife talks about her husband

I wrote last year about the sad death of Frank Deasy, writer of BBC1's The Passion, first broadcast in the Easter of 2008.  I only met Frank once, in February 2008, but we often talked  by email and phone before then, and a great deal of what his wife Marie now shares in The Observer rings true:

Frank Deasy's wife talks about his plea for organ donors: 'He just couldn't believe the impact his story had'
Emmy-winning screenwriter Frank Deasy's Observer article about the plight of transplant patients, written just before his death, provoked an astonishing response. As his last TV drama comes to the screen, his wife Marie talks about his lasting legacy
Tracy McVeigh

It is a moving and beautifully written piece.

More on the Flaw in McIver and Carroll's article on detecting copying in the Gospels

In a recent post, I attempted to explain A Flaw in McIver and Carroll's Article about detecting the existence of written sources in the Gospels. The difficulty is that they did experiments with students in English and then applied the resulting criterion (16 or more words suggests copying) to texts in Greek, a problem given the fact that Greek invariably users fewer words to convey similar material. The difference is usually substantial and sometimes overwhelming. In one case, a 24 word conjoined sequence in Greek is represented in standard English translations by a 42 word conjoined sequence (Matt. 7.7 // Luke 11.9).  In other words, the 16 (or 18) word criterion is far too restrictive as a criterion of copying, and should have been greatly reduced to adjust for differences in language.

The difficulties with illegitimate transfer between English experiments and Greek texts does not end there. In this post, I would like to draw attention to a further, related issue that is not considered by McIver and Carroll: they are comparing results from experiments using a non-inflected language (English) with an inflected language (Greek). This is important because their experiments focus specially on conjoined sequences of words. A non-inflected language like English is far more likely to retain word order across two parallels because word order is often intrinstic to the meaning. In Greek, by contrast, word order is less important in the determination of meaning. This has the effect of diminishing the likely extent of parallel conjoined sequences in Greek.

The point can be illustrated with a simple look at the Synopsis. Matt. 9.5-6 // Mark 2.9-10 // Luke 5.23-4 features an eighteen word triple agreement in English translation, the kind of agreement that would satisfy even the stricter McIver and Carroll criterion. Here's the passage in the RSV of Mark, with the triple sequential agreement of eighteen words underlined:

. . . 'Your sins are forgiven,' or to say, 'Rise, take up your pallet and walk'? But that you may know that the Son of man has authority on earth to forgive sins" --he said to the paralytic . . .

In Greek, however, there is no such lengthy agreement because of differences in the ordering of the elements translated above as "has authority" and "Son of Man" and "upon the earth". Take a look at the texts:

Matt. 9.5-6: . . . Ἀφίενταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ περιπάτει; ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι   ἐξουσίαν ἔχει   ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου   ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς   ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας, τότε λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ . . . .

Mark 2.9-10: . . . . Ἀφέωνταί σου αἱ ἁμαρτίαι, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ ἆρον τὸν κράβαττόν σου καὶ περιπάτει; ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι   ἐξουσίαν ἔχει   ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου   ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας   ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς, λέγει τῷ παραλυτικῷ . . .

Luke 5.23-4: . . . . Ἀφέωνταί σοι αἱ ἁμαρτίαι σου, ἢ εἰπεῖν· Ἔγειρε καὶ περιπάτει; 24 ἵνα δὲ εἰδῆτε ὅτι   ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου   ἐξουσίαν ἔχει   ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς   ἀφιέναι ἁμαρτίας, εἶπεν τῷ παραλελυμένῳ . . .

What this illustrates is that the chances for conjoined sequence in parallel passages is greater in contemporary English than it is in first century Greek.  Where English translations of this passage have eighteen words in conjoined sequence across all three Synoptics, the Greek has just eleven (Matthew // Mark) or five (Mark // Luke and Matthew // Luke).

The same kind of thing is easy to illustrate from elsewhere.  Take the following parallel from Matthew and Mark, for example, in which there is conjoined sequence for nineteen English words of the NRSV translation:


Matt. 26.13 (NRSV): Truly I tell you, wherever this good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”

Mark 14.9 (NRSV): Truly I tell you, wherever the good news is proclaimed in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.”


Now contrast this with the Greek texts (NA27) of Matthew and Mark:


Matt. 26.13: ἀμὴν, λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅπου ἐὰν κηρυχθῇ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον  τοῦτο ἐν  ὅλῳ τῷ κόσμῳ,   λαληθήσεται   καὶ ὃ ἐποίησεν αὕτη   εἰς μνημόσυνον αὐτῆς.

Mark 14.9: ἀμὴν δὲ, λέγω ὑμῖν, ὅπου ἐὰν κηρυχθῇ τὸ εὐαγγέλιον  εἰς ὅλον τὸν κόσμον,   καὶ ὃ ἐποίησεν αὕτη   λαληθήσεται   εἰς μνημόσυνον αὐτῆς.


The differing position of λαληθήσεται ("will be told") in Matthew and Mark generates a shorter conjoined sequence of words in Greek than one sees in English translation, only four words in the comparison with the nineteen in the English of the NRSV.

In other words, English is more likely to feature a lengthy conjoined sequences of words given that it is a non-inflected language with fewer options in relation to the ordering of words.  This should have been factored into McIver and Carroll's attempt to transfer their contemporary English experimental results to ancient texts written in Greek.

Unreliability of Eye-witnesses of Doctor Who

I posted yesterday on Doctor Who and the Jesus Tradition in response to James McGrath and Judy Redman. James now has More on TV and the Jesus Tradition and I would like to pitch in with a good example of the unreliability of eye-witness testimony in relation to Doctor Who.

Recently, Alex Kingston reappeared on the new Doctor Who, reprising her role as the mysterious River Song, a character from the doctor's future first seen a couple of year's ago in the tenth doctor story "Silence in the Library" / "Forest of the Dead".  She reappears at an earlier point in her timeline but a later point in the eleventh doctor's, in "Time of Angels" and "Flesh and Stone".  As part of the associated publicity with her return, she did several interviews about Doctor Who and in one widely quoted interview she reflected on her memories of watching the series as a child.  She has a vivid memory of one episode when the daleks appeared on the London Underground, and she explains it in this short video from BBC America:



Alex Kingston's contribution starts at the 37 second point. This is my transcription:

There was an episode many, many, many, I mean decades ago, where the daleks took over the London Underground, and I still, if I'm travelling by the Underground train system in London, I will look down that dark hole and sort of expect to see a dalek coming out of it and so it did something to my psyche.

So there we have it -- an eyewitness reminiscence of an episode watched on television from back in the day.

Except that there is no such episode. No episode of Doctor Who exists in which the daleks take over the London Underground. What Alex Kingston is remembering is probably "The Web of Fear", a second doctor story broadcast in six parts in February and March 1968. Only the first episode is now extant, from which this is taken:



The characters on the London Underground are the Yeti and not the daleks. Alex Kingston may have conflated this episode in her mind with the second Doctor Who film Daleks' Invasion Earth: 2150AD, which was often on television back in the day -- I remember it well from my childhood. The daleks appear in that film, as does the London underground, but not together.

It turns out that others also have this false memory -- a comment on the page "My Life as a Dalek" from a certain Allan Jennings reports something very similar to what Alex Kingston says:

I saw the daleks 40 years ago and I still feel uncomfortable travelling on the London Underground. Every time the wind blows ahead of the train, I expect a dalek to come out onto the platform. My children consider I am mad but how do you get rid of the feeling of fear? I went to an exhibition a few years ago and just to be in the same room as a dalek was enough to make the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

It is interesting to see the same false memory occurring in different witnesses; perhaps they have both heard it suggested and have found it plausible, subconsciously working it into their own vague memories of the actual episode, "The Web of Fear".

Doctor Who and the Jesus Tradition

OK, I admit it.  Mention Doctor Who alongside the Jesus tradition and you will drag me in.  What Judy (Doctor Who as a test case for human memory?) and James forget, though, is that the doctor could help us out with the Jesus tradition, or at least what happened at the first Easter. 2009's "Planet of the Dead" made it clear that the doctor was there at the first Easter (and isn't it odd seeing David Tennant again, as the tenth doctor? Only so many months ago and already it feels like ancient history). If only he had not got interrupted. The relevant bit of dialogue is about four and a half minutes in:



While we are being a little frivolous, I might add that I also brought up Doctor Who in this context to the following effect back in December 2008 (More SBL Dating discussions).  This was in reaction to April DeConick's discussion about the importance of contemporary memory experiments with undergraduate students recounting materials in English:

I sympathize with the desire for memory experiments but I am highly sceptical of our ability to recreate the necessary conditions for providing useful information on the way that memory worked in the first century. As I mentioned in the session, one of my favourite television programmes is Doctor Who, and in a recent episode, the doctor and Donna went to Pompei in 79. I would have loved to have joined them and to conduct some experiments there. But as I also mentioned in the session, there are indeed useful experiments that we can do, using the texts that we have. As some of my readers will know, I have been an advocate for developing tests on Synoptic (and other related) theories with a view to seeing whether they work or not. Given our current state of knowledge, and tools available, serious work on the ancient texts we have is preferable to experiments on our contemporaries.

What James McGrath's and Judy Redman's posts provide, though, is a reminder of the importance of the interpretative community in the discussion and remembering of key materials, the fan community in Doctor Who, the first tradents in early Christianity. The tough thing with the comparison, though, is the cultural difference between a community that can check their facts via the DVD collection and a community whose only major consultative process is to remind themselves of what they think they know by looking at the Hebrew Scriptures and talking.

Update (01.37): here is a further thought.  Perhaps one could do experimental work on the lost episodes, i.e. the episodes of the first and second doctors' eras, in the 1960s, that were wiped by the BBC.  We could allow people to listen to reports on the episodes, to talk to those with memories of them, but not to listen to the surviving audio. That might provide an interesting analogy for the oral period, avoiding contamination from fresh viewings of the old episodes.

A Flaw in McIver and Carroll's Article about detecting the existence of written sources in the Gospels

I've recently found myself thinking again about Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll, "Experiments to Develop Criteria for Determining the Existence of Written Sources, and Their Potential Implications for the Synoptic Problem", Journal of Biblical Literature 121/4 (Winter, 2002): 667-687, partly because it is briefly discussed in James R. Edwards's recent book (James Edwards on McIver and Carroll), partly because it came up in Judy Redman's recent post on Speeches of Jesus (3) -- human memory experiments, with which I have been interacting over there on Judy's blog.

I have always been uncomfortable with McIver and Carroll's article, in part for reasons explained in John Poirier, "Memory, Written Sources and the Synoptic Problem: A Response to Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll", JBL 123/2 (2004): 315–322.  But today I was able to locate the source of my discomfort  and it relates to an important flaw in the way that McIver and Carroll apply the results of their experimental data with students to the texts of the Synoptic Gospels.  The mistake that they make is simple but important: their experimental data is in English whereas the Synoptic Gospels are in Greek.

Now one may well say at this point, "So what?" and "Well, of course their experimental data is in English! Contemporary undergraduate students do not speak fluent first century Koine Greek!"  But here is the problem:  McIver and Carroll make no adjustment for the differences between the English student experiments and the Greek texts of the Gospels.  Their criterion for the determining the presence of a copying from a retained written source in English is 16 words in conjoined sequence (later adjusted in a subsequent article to 18).  This criterion for English material is then transferred without analysis or comment to the Greek Gospels.

This is important because it takes many more words to say something in contemporary English than it takes to say the same thing in Koine Greek. Therefore, 16 (or 18) words in English correlates to fewer words in Greek, and so the 16 (or 18) word criterion is much too high for Greek.  The point can be illustrated by looking at English translations of McIver and Carroll's list of passages in that feature 16 or more words in conjoined sequence.  Notice the kinds of difference between expression in Greek and expression of the same thing in English:

• The 18 Greek words in conjoined sequence in Matt. 8.2-3 // Luke 5.12-13 (miscounted by McIver and Carroll as 17) are 26 words in the RSV.
• The 31 Greek words in Matt. 10.21-22 // Mark 13.12-13 becomes 49 words in English translation. 
• The 24 words in Matt. 3.9-10 // Luke 3.8-9 becomes 29 words in English translation.
• Matt. 6.24 // Luke 16.13 goes from 26 Greek words in conjoined sequence to 33 in English translation.
• Matt. 7.7 // Luke 11.9 goes from 24 Greek words in conjoined sequence to 42 in English translation.
• Matt. 8.9-10 // Luke 7.8-9 goes from 25 conjoined Greek words (miscounted by McIver and Carroll as 21) to 37 in English translation.

In other words, attention to this important point about the difference between English and Greek would have resulted in a vastly greater number of passages that satisfy McIver and Carroll's 16 (or 18) word criterion. They have derived a criterion from work with one language (English) and have applied it to texts in another language (Greek), in spite of the fact that it takes many more words to say the same thing in English than it does in Greek.

And there is a further, related difficulty that I will deal with in my next post.

Sea of Galilee out of fish

This morning's Times reports on the worrying situation in the Sea of Galilee about fishing stocks:

Sea of Galilee is out of fish, and miracles
James Hider and Yonit Farago

Were Jesus to return and fish the Sea of Galilee today he might tell a parable, not of prolific catches and the sated crowds of biblical times but of empty nets and a hefty fine.

Israel’s parliament is poised to impose a two-year ban on fishing for the famed St Peter’s fish — a type of tilapia indigenous to the Sea of Galilee in the north of the country.

For thousands of years fishermen here have been pulling in the tasty white fish, grilled as a speciality in the restaurants of Tiberias and the villages dotted around the shores of the lake.

Stocks have dropped drastically in the past decade because of environmental and human factors. Annual catches of the St Peter’s fish, which takes its name from the New Testament story in which Jesus’s disciple, Peter, netted a fish with a gold coin in its mouth — and paid his taxes with it — have dropped from 300 tonnes to only 8 . . . .

There is, of course, a minor error about the New Testament here. The passage in mind is Matt. 17.24-27 in which Peter takes a stater (στατήρ) out of the fish's mouth, which is a silver and not a gold coin.

James Edwards on Andrew Gregory on the Gospel of the Ebionites

In my previous post, James Edwards on McIver and Carroll, I mentioned that I am reviewing James R. Edwards, The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009) and that I don't have space there to deal with all the detail.  In this post, I would like to touch on the question of Edwards's treatment of an article by Andrew Gregory, "Prior or Posterior?  The Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of Luke," NTS 51 (2005): 344-60.

Gregory's article is important because it provides a clear critique of Edwards's own earlier work on the Hebrew Gospel, "The Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of Luke," NTS 48 (2002): 568–86.  In the article, Gregory argues persuasively that the Gospel of the Ebionites, as witnessed in quotations in Epiphanius's Panarion, is best understood on the consensus theory that it is a post-synoptic harmony, against Edwards's theory that it is one of Luke's sources.  Now in Edwards's book, Gregory's article is given scant attention.  Rather than engaging with Gregory's critique of his earlier work, Edwards deals with it in a footnote to the following effect:

In response to my article . . . . Gregory . . . seems to concede 1) that all but two of the excerpts of the Gospel of the Ebionites that are found in Epiphanius are more closely related to Luke than to any other Gospel, and 2) that the Lukan parallels usually appear in Luke's single tradition (349).  Gregory dismisses the weight of this evidence, however, and in a chain of reasoning that is neither entirely clear nor compelling concludes that the Hebrew Gospel was a compilation from Luke and the other Synoptic Gospels (p. 66, n. 65).

Edwards's 1) and 2) here are poor summaries two sentences in Gregory's article to the following effect:

Of the seven excerpts of the Gospel of the Ebionites that are found in Epiphanius, five include details that are paralleled in Luke. As Edwards notes, many of these parallels come from Lukan single tradition.

In other words, Gregory points out that "five [passages] include details that are paralleled in Luke", which is quite different from saying that they are "more closely related to Luke than to any other Gospel".  Gregory's comment that "many of these parallels come from Lukan single tradition" does not translate into "the Lukan parallels usually appear in Luke's single tradition".

Aside from the misreading, it is disappointing that Edwards does not take Gregory's critique seriously.  It is not the case that Gregory's reasoning is "neither entirely clear nor compelling".  On the contrary, Gregory applies the well-established criterion of looking for evidence of Matthew's and Luke's redactional activity in the material that is paralleled in the Gospel of the Ebionites.  The point of this kind approach, which is common in discussions of the relationships between Gospels, is that the presence of redactional activity signals use of the Gospel in question rather than its source material.

James Edwards on McIver and Carroll

I have recently finished working through James R. Edwards, The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009). I am reviewing the book for CBQ, but I have quite a lot to say about it and there are several things I won't have space for in the review, so I will let them overflow here in the blog.

In no particular order, the first of these is a discussion of Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll, "Experiments to Develop Criteria for Determining the Existence of Written Sources, and Their Potential Implications for the Synoptic Problem", Journal of Biblical Literature 121/4 (Winter, 2002): 667-687. Edwards brings up McIver and Carroll's work in order to corroborate both Marcan Priority and the notion that "Matthew concludes and consummates the Synoptic tradition" (251), though it is not quite clear what he means by this given that elsewhere "double tradition" is retained as a source for Matthew's and Luke's non-Marcan material (Chapter 7; cf. the diagram on p. 262 in which Matthew and Luke are independent of one another).

Edwards reviews one of the key conclusions of McIver's and Carroll's study, quoting with approval their comment that "Any sequence of exactly the same 16 or more words that is not an aphorism, poetry or words to a song is almost certain to have been copied from a written document" (681; Edwards, 250; italics original). Edwards then draws attention to the 23 parallel passages listed by McIver and Carroll as including 16 words or more in verbatim agreement. He notes that three of the pairs are Mark // Luke, nine are Matthew // Mark and eleven are Matthew // Luke. He then writes:

Of a total of 23 pairs shared by Luke and Mark, or Luke and Matthew, or Mark and Matthew, Matthew shares 20 of them. Matthew, in other words, is almost twice as likely to share material in common with Mark, or in common with Luke, as either Luke or Mark is to share material in common with the other. This statistic suggests that Matthew is either the source of material for Mark and Luke; or, conversely, that Matthew is the recipient of material from either Mark or Luke. (251).

The deduction from the data is puzzling. McIver and Carroll's data clearly show that there is literary dependence of some kind in these passages, but the data tell us nothing in themselves about the direction of dependence. Edwards goes on:

The theory of Markan priority supplies solid and repeated evidence for the assumption that Matthew has been the recipient of Markan material (251).

I am sympathetic with this view, but it cannot be deduced from McIver and Carroll's data. What the data demonstrate is copying of some kind, but there is no indication of direction of dependence.  If there is one thing that might be deduced from their data with respect to Marcan Priority it is that Matthew and Luke are unlikely to have used Mark independently of one another. Two of the eleven Matthew // Luke pairings are actually in triple tradition, Matt. 8.1-4 // Luke 5.12-16 and Matt. 16.21-28 // Luke 9.21-27, i.e. they feature Minor Agreements that generate extended conjoined sequences of verbatim agreement, which suggests that if Matthew and Luke used Mark, there is also a direct link of some kind between Matthew and Luke.

Incidentally, McIver and Carroll appear unaware of this themselves. They list one of these passages, Matt. 8.1-4 // Luke 5.12-16 (Leper) among their pared down list of nine passages that "almost certainly contain copied material" without noticing that this runs contrary to the Two-Source Theory that elsewhere they apparently assume (683, "perhaps Q?"; see further John C. Poirier, "Memory, Written Sources, and the Synoptic Problem: A Response to Robert K. McIver and Marie Carroll", JBL 123/2 (Summer, 2004):  315-322 (316-7).)

But back to Edwards.  His discussion of McIver and Carroll concludes:

The foregoing arguments, and especially the list of examples on pages 249-50 above, argue the same, that Matthew is the recipient of Lukan material. The work of McIver and Carroll seems to supply further statistical evidence that Matthew concludes and consummates the Synoptic tradition. (251).

The "list of examples" on pp. 249-50 of the book consists of suggestions that Matthew is a later Gospel than Luke, itself something I may return to in due course.  But the conclusion here, that McIver and Carroll's work supplies statistical evidence in favour of Matthean posteriority, is not self-evident.  It is simply asserted.

There are several minor issues that are also worth mentioning: (1)  Edwards also speaks of "46 passages" (250), but the figure should be 45 -- he has counted Matt. 16.21-28 twice; (2) McIver and Carroll do not weight these 45 passages equally.  They eliminate 14 pairs because they are aphorisms and distinctive sayings and they put stress on only 9. (3) McIver and Carroll are only dealing with conjoined sequences of words; this work needs to be supplemented with other Synoptic data; (4) The points made in Poirier's perceptive critique (citation above) need to be taken seriously rather than ignored.