Randal Rauser

Thom Stark says:
Saturday, June 25, 2011 at 6:19am

Good comments.

Its not so much what the redactor thought, but what he was affirming, what his speech act was, in putting the material together.

It is still not clear why we should prioritize the redactor’s speech act over any one of his particular sources. What prevents us from concluding that the redactor was wrong, while one of his sources was correct? Or further that neither the redactor nor his sources was correct? I still find the commitment to the “final product” over the voices of the individual sources to be an arbitrary commitment to just one straum among many. This may not be what you are claiming, but it seems to me that your commitment is to the final form.

But I agree with you entirely, the fact that a sensible redactor was not affirming both accounts as literally true descriptions of what happened, does not entail one is literal and the other hyperbolic. I did not mount that line of argument. My understanding is that Wolterstorff’s argument has several steps, the first is to note the tensions, the second is to note an intelligent redactor would not have affirmed both literally, the third is then to compare different literary tropes and styles in the two to figure out what they likely were doing, then the conclusion is pressed.

But it still seems to me that you would be better off adopting Douglas Earl’s position, namely, that the Joshua accounts are mythic in character, often with little to no real historical basis, that function only as hagiography. A while back, you stated to me that you thought it would be better for you to focus more on the hagiography reading than the hyperbolic reading.

I’ve shown that Judges 20-21 makes clear that herem warfare does involve the literal killing of all noncombatants. In my review of Copan (which I’m currently editing), I’ve further shown that Younger’s hyperbole material does not substantiate the claim that herem warfare in particular was intended as hyperbolic. Moreover, I’ve argued from the hyperbolic ANE texts themselves, that it is not at all always the case that they were meant to be understood by the populace as hyperbolic; often they were intended to be taken as true, despite the fact that the claims made were either hyperbolic or even altogether false.

Earl’s thesis seems to me the more reasonable route for you to take; however, I have criticized Earl’s presentation of the hagiographic message, arguing that his failure to identify the provenance of the narratives allows him to read the hagiographic message in a rosier light; whereas if we were to evaluate the message of Dtr’s product in Joshua 1-12 in light of the context of Josiah’s reforms, the intended message is less about “inclusivism” (as Earl tenuously argues) and more about conformity to the centralization reforms Josiah was instituting by use of extreme force. Rahab is then not a symbol of inclusivism so much as a part of the Dtr’s warning that faithful Israel is now defined by obedience to Josiah’s new laws. Josiah’s reforms of course completely dismantled longstanding institutions of local authority and demolished longstanding religious practices (the actual character of which is distorted by the historian’s polemic). Joshua’s violence against the Canaanites stands as a symbol of Josiah’s violence against any Judeans who fail to conform to Josiah’s new political structure, a structure which had the effect of putting extreme economic burden on Judeans outside of Jerusalem while also significantly increasing the revenue for the temple regime. Josiah did this to consolidate power in light of the recent decline of the Assyrian empire, as well as in response to mounting pressure put on him by the two great empires to his north and south, Babylon and Egypt. Today we would characterize such a reform as fascistic, increasing government control over the populace and their daily activities, destabilizing local institutions of authority, in order to “secure the borders” against an external threat. The Deuteronomy Code functioned as a religious legitimation of Josiah’s radical and novel centralization plan, and Dtr’s Joshua material functioned similarly. It was a mythical narrative that was intended to be heard as true (there are of course parallels for this sort of thing also in the ANE), and its function was propagandistic.

I am not necessarily expecting you to accept all of this, but if you were to grant this, what effect would this have on your understanding of the author’s message? The speech act would be what we would ordinarily identify as a fascistic sort of political propaganda. Could you accept this in your view? Perhaps you would allow this for Dtr, but attempt to affirm that R (redactor) “intended” something else by incorporating it in with other material.

Even still, I am yet to find an adequate accounting for the morally problematic status of the rhetoric, even if we were to grant that some redactor at some point did not intend it literally.

At any rate, I have also argued in the review that the portrait Copan wants us to accept as historical is nevertheless a portrait of genocide. Genocide describes activities a great deal broader than just the slaughter of everyone. It involves killing, yes, but also forced removal, the taking of children and integrating them into a different people group (e.g., Numbers 31). Genocide is about the destruction of a people, not just through killing, but by a combination of killing, forced migration, and the destruction of culture. Thus, what Copan in fact argues took place in early Israel is none other than genocide.

Thus, the problem is not removed by stating that R did not intend what Dtr intended when he put Dtr’s Joshua together with P’s Joshua. We still have a picture of genocide. You’ll note that the indigenous Americans are still with us over here after several hundred years, but they are no less the victims of genocide; even to this day they are still subjected to policies that are rightly identified as genocidal.

So, I do not see how the problem is solved by pointing to R as primary over Dtr. Nor am I inclined to accept that, even if R did not intend Dtr literally, that solves the moral problem of the rhetoric itself. Further, even if R “intended” the battle accounts to be exaggerations, exaggerations are nevertheless not complete fictions. We still have to acknowledge that noncombatants would have been killed (if we’re granting a modicum of historicity to the narratives), even if the numbers are trumped up, and we still have the problem that Yahweh ordered those killings (even if Yahweh’s orders were hyperbolic).

Thus, it seems to me that inevitably you are forced back into the position of having to defend Yahweh’s right to kill children. I am still fuzzy on your exact position here.

Please don’t take any of this as a misrepresentation of your argument if you think the steps I’ve offered don’t apply to it. (I doubt they do.)

I agree, but note in the example Cluedo, the fact that movie does this, alerts us to the fact that the authors of this movie are not affirming that these endings are all true in the sense that they literally happened, it’s a fictional story used to perform some other speech act.

Yes, but now you’re pressing my analogy too far. Your next comment gets the point I was making accurately, however, so I won’t quibble.

Agreed these are all possible alternatives, but note in each case what the author of the story is doing is not affirming the stories are literally true in their details, the reason he can tell them in different ways is he is doing something else with these stories, he is affirming not the literal truth of the story but as you say the “meaning” behind the story which is appropriate for the occasion. In other words the texts are being used to assert something else.

But what if what they are being used to assert is wrong? Or immoral?

Take the David and Goliath example. The redactor who spliced in the story of David’s defeat of Goliath after the initial composition of Dtr’s Samuel, granting that he wasn’t stupid and that he had read both scrolls, certainly knew that in the second scroll a literal claim that Elhanan had killed Goliath was present. Yet we would not say that he did not intend the story of David and Goliath to be read literally; it’s quite certain that he did. Does that mean this redactor somehow unintended the Elhanan account as a literal account? I’m not stating this is what you’d say. But most source and redaction critics would simply state that the redactor was not concerned with the contradiction. The Chronicler was later, so maybe you’ll privilege the Chronicler’s alteration of the Elhanan account. But the problem is, it is not acceptable, as I’ve argued in detail in HFG. Lachmi could not have been the brother of Goliath. The Chronicler broke up the word Bethlehem and created Lahmi, and changed the direct object marker to the word “brother” to resolve the contradiction between Samuel’s two Goliath narratives. But “Lachmi” is a Semitic word, and we know that all of the names of the Philistines are non-Semitic. Thus, not only do we have two Goliath accounts in Samuel intended as literally true, we have a pious lie (or at best a pious yet factually incorrect “guess”) in Chronicles to resolve the conflict. All of these are intended literally, but only one of them, at most, can be true. Yet that is how they stand in the final redaction. We cannot just accept the Chronicler’s solution, because it is false. And to argue (not that you necessarily would) that one or more of the stories is/are somehow intended in some way other than as a factual historical account would be a move without a any basis in genre criticism.

This is one example (of many) that shows that, while redactors may often have cared to smooth out bumps in the narratives, they were not always concerned to do so and that, moreover, in the case of the Chronicler, these attempts to smooth out the redactional seams at least sometimes consisted of factual errors that were intended to be taken literally.

Ecclesiastes is another example. The editor writes a conclusion which contradicts the message of Qohelet, but the editor, far from saying that Qohelet was wrong, identifies what Qohelet said as “the words of truth.” Scholars understand this as an attempt to co-opt a popular book by bringing into line with the then-reigning orthodoxy, without at the same time impugning it (i.e., making it into a cautionary tale as we are meant to read the book of Judges, for instance). Here then are two voices in direct conflict with one another, yet both are affirmed as true. Sure, you would say that the editor obviously did not really intend Qohelet as true in the same sense as he intended his conclusion as true. But I would contend that, unless this editor was stupid, he was lying. He knew full well what Qohelet was saying, and he praised what Qohelet said as “the words of truth.” Yet his real motivation was to bring a dissenting text into conformity to his brand of orthodoxy. So, while I grant that his speech act does not intend Qohelet’s denial of an afterlife and a final judgment to be taken to be true, I am not willing to ignore the fact that the editor’s speech act was a conscious deception.

Now, the editor may be correct about the final judgment (we’ll find out), but that does not resolve the problem standing behind his speech act. His conclusion doesn’t change the meaning of Qohelet; it nullifies it. The central message of the book and the constant refrain is that all is vanity because there is nothing after this life. In all the world there is nothing of lasting value; the best one can do is find simple pleasures and enjoy them until one dies. The editor’s conclusion doesn’t change this central message; it contradicts it while at the same time calling it “true,” speaking out of both sides of the mouth. If the editor did not say that Qohelet’s words were the words of truth, then I could see this fitting in with your approach. The editor is not affirming Qohelet’s words; he is correcting them. But that is not what we have. What we have is the editor both affirming and denying Qohelet’s message at the same time, while doing nothing at all to alter the meaning of Qohelet’s words. (This is why the rabbis were debating the canonicity of Qohelet even into the second century CE. It was of course only salvaged because of its attribution to Solomon.)

I’m not sure how you would fit this within your paradigm.

In the context of my article and Pauls book, I am not sure these observations help the critics.

Well, my intention is not to “help the critics,” but your presentation is very different from Paul’s.

My article is a criticism of people who claim the bible teaches God commanded Genocide and so teaches immorality. Paul is responding to new atheists and others who claim the bible which Christian recognise as Gods word teaches all sorts of immoral things. If these stories are not literally true, then they are not intended to teach that God commanded Genocide, they rather serve to perform some other speech act, and to use the medium of story to teach something else, which may well be appropriate.

I’ll grant all the premises (even though I argue they are untenable in most cases; for instance, Paul actually argues that genocide occurred in Canaan, he just doesn’t realize it), but I’ll focus on your last statement: “to use the medium of story to teach something else, which may well be appropriate.”

But even if it is not intended literally, as you seem to concede here, that does not automatically mean that what is intended is “appropriate.” By which standards anyway? I argue that genocidal language is morally “inappropriate” whether it is intended literally or not. It is totalizing rhetoric meant to divide and reinforce not just holiness but real enmity. The effect it had on Ezra, for instance, was that there was no such thing as a good Canaanite. I think we’ve heard this somewhere before.

That depends on what you mean, if two people offer an argument for a contradictory view they cannot both be correct, so the question arises as to what the message of the whole is. Consider a (very loose) analogy Plato’s dialogues, he has different voices arguing, and that makes the dialogues rich, to try and harmonise the different peoples positions would decimate this richness. However, no one thinks Plato was affirming each different voice as true, that would make him a very confused person. Plato rather was using the dramatic dialogue to present his own position, he was showing the flaws in some positions, the strengths in others and using the dialogue to push the reader to the conclusion he thinks is correct and that is what he is using the text to teach.

Yes, but, migrating your analogy back to the Bible, which one of the many strata is the voice of Plato? I think you privilege the final redactor but I could be mistaken. Which stratum represents the voice of God? Who is the one affirming or determining which of the various voices is the true one? Where is our Plato? The Bible doesn’t have a Plato, unfortunately.

I argue that we are Plato. The Bible is all the different voices Plato is considering. And the divine discourse only takes place as Plato sits down to listen to the voices. The process of Plato’s considering the different voices is the process through which God speaks. Plato is not a voice in the text. We are Plato, and we have to use our reason, guided by the Spirit, to hear God’s voice (the voice of truth) in the text. And God’s voice may be found in a stratum which final R did not very much like at all, or it may found in final R, or it may be found in both (on different issues), or in both (in different ways).

The book is not then a definitive word: to be a people of the book is not to come to the book as one comes to the Word, but to come to the book to argue with it, to be corrected by it, and to correct it (on some issues, no voice in the Bible is right), and in the process of that argument–that is where the Word emerges.

So while there are discordant voices in the text, the text is not being used to affirm all these discordant voices as true, the characters in the text give different views but the author of the whole is not using them to affirm different voices. If we thought Plato was affirming all the different voices, that would detract from the dialogues. we could not consider Plato a profound thinker but a deeply confused fool.

I hope I am clear here.

Well, up until the last part, yes. I understand that in your view Plato is God, but clearly no one is saying that God is affirming “all the voices.” The question is how to know which voices God is affirming, and I think we need to be Plato in order to figure that out. God wouldn’t have to deliberate anyway.

So I’m still not sure if there is a single stratum in the text that you identify as God’s voice (like final R or something). Or if you think that God could speak through any of the strata. Perhaps an earlier stratum is more correct than a later attempt to reconfigure it, for example. Right now I can’t see how you’re not able to avoid, functionally, representing my and Randal’s position.

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