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Albertinelli, The Creation of Adam (Courtauld Galleries, London)
Much of the debate about the crisis in scholarly publishing
has centred around trust and authority. Research integrity looks at these
issues, but they are crucial for the assessment of any text. In their
specialist subject, a researcher may be able to make an expert judgement on an
article, and decide for themselves about the truth or otherwise of the article.
But, of course, scholars don’t only read in their specialist area; I would
guess (and hope) that a large proportion of scholarly reading will be in areas
where the researcher has only limited expertise. Understanding, after all,
requires context, and most of our reading, however many PhDs we may have will
be outside our area of expertise. How then do we make a judgement that we are
to trust the author, and to trust their claims, when we are not a
subject-matter expert?
A case study
Robin Lane Fox, in his The Unauthorized Version: Truth
and Fiction in the Bible (1991), gives us the tempting prospect of a
scholar revealing his working, as it were. Lane Fox is a classical historian,
and so (I imagine) familiar with the challenge of dealing with an ancient
writer such as Herodotus, the historian, and trying to ascertain how much of
what Herodotus writes is history, and how much is simply a folk tale (Herodotus
includes a lot of both). Using this knowledge, Lane Fox then applies similar
standards to the books of the Bible, to see if we can apply a historical
evaluation to a book that is usually judged on very different terms. After all,
the opening words of his book are: “The Unauthorized Version is a
historian’s view of the Bible … I write … as an ancient historian who is
accustomed to reading the Bible narratives like other narratives which survive
from the ancient past.” And later, he writes: “It is as a historian that I will
explain it [the Bible], accustomed to putting Pilate’s question to written
evidence from the distant past.” [p14]. Pilate’s question, of course, is “What
then is truth?”
Of course, the Bible is a particularly challenging example,
because, unlike other ancient texts, it is frequently read by believers, who will
all have some adherence to the text for reasons of faith. Lane Fox’s first chapter reveals pretty much his
entire position; he then uses the same method to examine both the Old and New
Testaments of the Christian Bible, in considerable detail. and considers the
claims any of the authors might have to be a historian. I will concentrate,
therefore, on an example early in his book.
Incidentally, I ask myself who the intended reader is, if
not Lane Fox himself. To read The Unauthorized Version, I found I needed
to have a working knowledge of early Jewish history, plus a good knowledge of
the main Bible narratives. I found I had to refer to a list of all the books of
the Bible and Apocrypha, ordered by date of narration, as well as by order of
composition, to be able to keep up with the author. Including these tables
would have been helpful to this reader, at least.
For me, the key question is to know what Lane Fox means by “history”
and “historian”. He first distinguishes “faith” from facts:
The Bible is not always a text of
[faith]. It does also refer to events and persons … it narrates, refers, and prophesies.
It therefore invites the question of truth.” [p14]
With such statements, Lane Fox uses terms such as primary
and secondary, but there is more to it than that. Nowadays, authority derives
from a historical writer writing from personal experience, which makes him or
her a primary source. This also is Lane Fox’s view. But with most of the
Biblical books is that we have little or no choice to validate what has been
written – we have few, if any, comparable sources. We have therefore to try to
work within the limitations of the source we have.
As we know, The Bible contains many well-known
inconsistencies and contradictions. There are two separate tales of the
Creation in Genesis, for example. Many Enlightenment writers, such as Voltaire,
made long lists of such discrepancies, and used them as ammunition to attack
established religions. After all, if God’s instructions are so unclear, by
transmitting them to poor mortals in such a confusing and ambiguous way, such that
they require an army of textual scholars to decide what is meant, it is
difficult to state “all you have to believe is the Bible”. A further
complication is that there is a substantial gap between the orthodoxy of the
established churches, and the scholars.
What is a historian?
Lane Fox uses the term “historical” in several senses, it
would appear. For example, he describes the author of Kings as “a historian
whom we can understand without ever needing to believe” [[195]
In contrast, he has no respect for the accuracy of the
author of Chronicles: “When was this splendid liar write and who was
he?” [p196] I dutifully assumed that this author would be struck off the list
of accepted history, only to be stunned when I subsequently read:
His work is patently secondary,
with a strong historical bias, a pleasant gift for fictitious monologues and
little value as historical truth. The enterprise, however, was the work of a
historian, even if we can rarely trust him further than we can throw him. [chapter
13, p197]
This leaves me thoroughly confused. Is the author of Chronicles
a historian like Herodotus? Or just a liar?
How to determine quality historical writing
Lane Fox’s views are nowhere stated explicitly; they have to
be pieced together from his use of the term throughout the book. For Lane Fox,
a historian adheres for the most part to
the current consensus of scholars’ interpretation of the text. Thus, for
example, the two accounts of Genesis are explained very clearly:
The first story, we now know, was
the second in time. It was written by a Jewish priestly writer who took the
sabbatical view of Creation. [p21]
“We now know” means that the scholarly community have
broadly (although never entirely) agreed on this interpretation of the text.
Using the first person plural (“we”), as in academic articles, emphasises this
collective understanding. The text alone
does not reveal enough to clarify which of the two narratives comes first. Both
of the two creation myths are contradicted by science, but we can establish
some facts about the statements.
A good historian, emphasises Lane Fox, looks at the context
of a statement or object, which equates to the text scholars trying to know
about the period and place where the text was composed. But a historian is also
described simply as an author who is “trying to record the past” [p162]. This is
a very broad description!
Poetic truth
Even if untrue, the creation myths in Genesis are
fascinating to read. The creation myth continues to reverberate today, because
the story is so haunting. Let’s call this “poetic truth”. Lane Fox always has
room for poetic truth, if it is well enough written.
Many of the Bible stories we are familiar with from our
childhood are stories of this kind, or “Just So” stories, as Lane Fox aptly
puts it. Unsurprisingly, these tend to be the stories that are depicted in
medieval and Renaissance church paintings.
Factual truth
When The Bible states facts, it can potentially be proved to
be wrong. For example, in the Gospel of Luke, there is a mention of a “decree
from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed”. According to Lane Fox
(or to the scholars whose work has been endorsed by him) in the time of
Augustus, Jews were not part of the Roman world, so this statement cannot be
correct. Errors like this are explained by the author writing much later than
the events related taking place. Lane Fox also states that one of these errors
“has not grown up from history” [p35] which suggests an external reality which
is only partly captured in any textual account. Lane Fox, as a historian, can
detect what has or has not “grown up from history”.
The Lane Fox synthesis
Historical study “has to assess the use which
fundamentalists make of its own evidence Historians and on a wider, more
challenging front it has to try to appreciate scripture for what it is.” This
would appear to be responding to the text as a literary object – just as the
plays of Shakespeare might be at odds with history but great literature for all
that. For my part, I find it easier not to reconcile the two at all; if this
composite text is so full of errors and inconsistencies (and Lane Fox takes 417
pages to show this), I find it difficult to “appreciate scripture for what it
is”. When I read social media, I find that factual inaccuracies and false
statements tend to incline me against the argument of the writer. Is this so
unusual? Why, then, do we give religious texts so much leeway?
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