Part I
I used to be guilty of charging whatever research I could attempt with considerably hefty sleights of convenience. What do I mean by that? Well, I used to be guilty of making rash assumptions based on content alone (whether it was looking at variant editions of Shak[e]speare or variant scores of various operas, or whatever) at the expense of orthographical style or bibliographical/textual context, which are far more objective yardsticks. If I felt the content was inconvenient, or implausible, or uncomfortable, I would allow that perception to overtake whatever rigor I eventually learned while studying textual scholarship in graduate school. There are numerous shades of subjectivity involved in textual criticism and textual scholarship in every field. The trained specialist learns (sometimes painfully) which yardsticks have a certain degree of subjectivity entailed and which ones are relatively less perilous and relatively more objective in their application. One also learns the painful lesson that very, very, very rarely is one ever going to be dealing with anything that is capable of proof!
Now, I don't pretend to be a specialist, since life circumstances compelled me to leave off after getting my M.A., thus never managing to go back and get my Ph.D. Still, certain habits of caution have, I suppose, become inbred in me as a result of whatever portion of training I did manage to complete. That training has now made me very leery of assuming certain hypotheses once a certain foundation respecting a textual tree is more or less arrived at by consensus.
For example, consensus now pretty much agrees that because of certain characteristic spellings in a tiny clutch of manuscript leaves from an Elizabethan play called Sir Thomas More, that single scene is most probably written by the same William Shak[e]speare who is behind the Quarto texts of Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, Romeo and Juliet (the Second Quarto), and so on. By a process of different sequences of research coming from different angles, the consensus respecting the ms. leaves from Sir Thomas More can then be complemented with different research concentrating instead on, say, the generally casual tone of the stage-directions in these apparently authoritative Quartos as against the more specific, but less discursive nature of stage-directions found in the very few players' prompt-books of the period that have survived.
In addition, since these Quartos are among the few Quarto texts where the lines seem to flow relatively cleanly, it would therefore appear likely that the source behind these Quartos may -- may -- have very few layers behind it and Shak[e]speare's original manuscript. When we couple that with the odd coincidence that these Quartos all share some extremely eccentric spelling patterns and habits (spelling is much more varied and personal in Elizabethan and Jacobean times than it is now), the likelihood grows that the only plausible reason for such a common orthographical style throughout these very few Quartos is that they are among the very select and few editions of Shak[e]speare's lifetime lucky enough to have had the original manuscript, or a very faithful transcript thereof, as their source. Ultimately, one couples that startling, though provisional, conclusion with the oddly casual nature of the stage-directions in the Quartos, and an important pattern seems to be forming. Looking again at the stage-directions, they take on even higher significance, because on top of all else, certain verbal patterns in them seem to oddly reflect, now and then, the verbal patterns in the spoken text. A possibility is there that these directions, so unlike the cut-and-dried prompt-books, may also come from the author himself. From this, the same discursive casual nature in the stage-directions found in the ms. leaves of Thomas More(!) serves to reinforce a mere consensus that here we have a scene that is not only by Shak[e]speare but may be extant in his own hand as well.
At this stage, the conclusions with respect to the More fragment then assume greater importance for the editorial treatment of these Quartos as a whole. The concurrent lines of inquiry reinforce each other to the point where once a consensus develops that the More fragment comes from Shak[e]speare's own hand, the likelihood grows that the Second Quarto of Romeo, say, is at least as close a simulacrum as one can hope for of a Shak[e]speare manuscript short of being one itself (which as a printed book, it can never really be, of course). This means that in a responsible modern edition of Romeo and Juliet, the editorial treatment of the text will of necessity be far more cautious in questioning certain knotty passages in the text than would be the case in many another Shak[e]speare play where the general consensus might be that its textual "picture" is frankly a mess -- like, let's say, his Pericles. Consequently, content in the case of Romeo ultimately takes a second place, although an important one, to bibliographical and textual context, because scholarly consensus has in fact reposed a great deal of authority in the Romeo Second Quarto by dint of this painstaking mesh of interrelated analyses that I've described. On the other hand, matters relating purely to content can be allowed to sway editorial choice far more, and considerably more than bibliographical/textual context, in a case like Pericles, where the only available text seems plainly corrupted from the get-go.
In fact, all modern Shak[e]speare scholarship accordingly treats texts like Much Ado and the Second Quarto of Romeo with far more caution and respect than it does more questionable texts like Pericles, or the final scenes of battle in Richard III, and so on. Hypotheses of random unauthorized interpolations, or of high-handed switches in sequence, or of mis-assignments of various speeches, etc., are far more common in modern editions of these corrupted texts -- and far more plausible -- than similar suppositions for more authoritative texts like Much Ado or the Romeo Second Quarto. Above all, the application of similar suppositions for any _perceived_ tangles in a Romeo or a Much Ado are simply going to be far rarer and more exceptional in any modern edition than you'll find in modern editions of a more corrupted Merry Wives or a Pericles. Finding content odd or relatively unintelligible is not an automatic ticket to editorial emendation in the case of a Romeo. The likelihood is simply higher here that it is more worthwhile in most cases like Romeo to take the extra mile and try to make sense of what one has in front of one first, before questioning what one has in front of one too precipitately, as if one were dealing with a Pericles instead.
In a way, there is a parallel -- of sorts -- between the highly corrupt texts of Pericles and/or the final scenes in Richard III, etc., and the highly derivative nature of the seemingly Pauline letters and/or the possibly derivative (?) Gospel of John. To suppose that one is reading Pericles exactly as it was first written is pretty much as naive (unfortunately so, even though the Pericles/Marina reunion is already heartbreaking and overpowering enough in the corrupt version we have) as supposing that we are reading Jesus's remarks precisely as they were spoken in John. Re most modern scholars, we probably aren't.
What's necessary here, though, is a degree of discrimination in the way we treat texts like the inauthentic Pauline letters and John versus the way we treat earlier strata like Thomas, the so-called "Q" (an extrapolated textual layer seemingly preserved in parallel sayings material common to Matthew and Luke), and Mark (generally reckoned the earliest extant canonized Gospel. Just as the extent of hypotheses that modern scholars apply to knotty passages in a Romeo is different and more cautious than the same process when applied to a Pericles, the same calibration of greater or lesser caution should, in my view, be applied to the huge range of Jesus materials that we have both within the NT and non-canonically outside it (like the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas, and so on). Content necessarily bulks larger as a consideration when it comes to careful scholarly evaluation of seemingly derivative material like John. But once we've put aside such material, textual context and orthographical style (both the Q sayings and the Thomas ones are very conversational) start to count a great deal more than just content as a part of any final analysis. Q and Thomas may not represent as close an image of an original "voice" as a Romeo (happily) does. But they come a great deal closer to that level than anything else in the extant Jesus records and ought to be viewed in that light.
Now, of course, the Romeo text is hardly pristine any more than the record reflected in Q, Thomas and Mark is pristine. Even modern scholars do allow a tiny handful of emendations in the Romeo text, after all. The thing is, though, such instances are now few and far between. Just as pertinently, the very few emendations that are now in the most modern Romeo editions presuppose a certain modest degree of human error rather than the large-scale or even deliberate distortion or corruption, such as well may be behind the self-evidently worst tangles in Pericles!
Now let's take a look at Q. In fact, for Q, we even have two different authors, Matthew and Luke, using (and, yes, adapting) the sayings to their own (admittedly possibly biased) ends. It's lucky we have two different authors doing this, though. One can be used as a check on the other. That being the case, it probably makes sense for us -- in those cases where Matthew and Luke versions are identical -- to proceed very cautiously before treating these passages the way we might justifiably treat anything in John. John is very, very different from Q, in terms of textual derivation, just as Pericles is very, very different from Romeo. The proper treatment of a Romeo is probably a safer model for the proper treatment of a Q -- or a Thomas -- than the proper treatment of a Pericles.
Grouping Thomas, Q and Mark together doesn't really bother me. Heck, I lump Much Ado and Romeo together! But lumping a whole nexus of certain Thomas/Q sayings together -- no matter how small a nexus -- as if all were interpolationspurely because of their content -- as some recent scholars whom I've read do -- does bother me, because it reminds me of myself when I was still quite green as a textual scholar and often ignored bibliographical/textual context.
It occurred to me, then, that it might be worthwhile to look at all of the Jesus self-descriptions in Q, Thomas and Mark that might possibly link up to questions of divine paternity or the lack thereof. I've assembled here all the examples that could possibly be of relevance to any kind of analysis as to Jesus's divinity or lack thereof.
In Thomas 61, we have --
[Jesus] "Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and other will live."
Salome said to him, "Who are You, man, that You, as though from the One, have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?"
Jesus said to her, "I am He who exists from the Undivided. I was given some of the things of my Father."
<Salome said,> "I am Your disciple."
<Jesus said to her,> "Therefore I say, if he is <undivided>, he will be filled with light, but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness."
The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were apparently careful here in discriminating various "tones" throughout this passage rather than accepting or rejecting it wholesale. Good. So long as we understand that it behooves one to approach such discriminations with greater caution than in a more derivative text like a John, I have no problem with some of the careful conclusions they reached. Essentially, the opening exchange here was judged as more authentic than the lower two thirds, with its strange talk of the undivided, etc.
In Thomas: 99 --
The disciples said to Him, "Your brothers and Your mother are standing outside."
He said to them, "Those here who do the will of My Father are My brothers and My mother. It is they who will enter the Kingdom of My Father."
While I do associate myself with the guess that this passage references a time when Jesus's family wanted him virtually locked up (see the more detailed account of this incident in Mark), the Seminar Fellows are not entirely clear if they are concluding that Jesus really said this or not. Equally pertinently, if he really did say this, how should one take the reference to "Kingdom of My Father"? Is he merely speaking generally, in that "Kingdom of Our Father" could have expressed what he was saying just as well? Or is there some significance to the "My"? And even if there is, could he really be meant by the author to be saying that God is his fleshly father? Or is it more likely that he is merely calling God his spiritual father? Or is there yet another interpretation?
I'd have to say that since the Fellows have already dismissed the bulk of the previously cited passage as not coming from the J. "voiceprint", I'd feel that we're falling too much for the content/convenience trap outlined above re Shak[e]speare if we suppose that the "Kingdom of My Father" phrase is also not the authentic "voiceprint". One questionable example is fine, but two, especially in an early text like Thomas, would need very, very close arguing. Was it really given it that by the Fellows? Again, with respect, think back to the authoritative Romeo text. I'm bothered by the possibility that some scholars may be too ready to suppose too many coincidences in a case like this that entails such a very early snapshot of the written record, one that could well be (relatively) unfiltered, as early Jesus materials go.
(continued)
I used to be guilty of charging whatever research I could attempt with considerably hefty sleights of convenience. What do I mean by that? Well, I used to be guilty of making rash assumptions based on content alone (whether it was looking at variant editions of Shak[e]speare or variant scores of various operas, or whatever) at the expense of orthographical style or bibliographical/textual context, which are far more objective yardsticks. If I felt the content was inconvenient, or implausible, or uncomfortable, I would allow that perception to overtake whatever rigor I eventually learned while studying textual scholarship in graduate school. There are numerous shades of subjectivity involved in textual criticism and textual scholarship in every field. The trained specialist learns (sometimes painfully) which yardsticks have a certain degree of subjectivity entailed and which ones are relatively less perilous and relatively more objective in their application. One also learns the painful lesson that very, very, very rarely is one ever going to be dealing with anything that is capable of proof!
Now, I don't pretend to be a specialist, since life circumstances compelled me to leave off after getting my M.A., thus never managing to go back and get my Ph.D. Still, certain habits of caution have, I suppose, become inbred in me as a result of whatever portion of training I did manage to complete. That training has now made me very leery of assuming certain hypotheses once a certain foundation respecting a textual tree is more or less arrived at by consensus.
For example, consensus now pretty much agrees that because of certain characteristic spellings in a tiny clutch of manuscript leaves from an Elizabethan play called Sir Thomas More, that single scene is most probably written by the same William Shak[e]speare who is behind the Quarto texts of Merchant of Venice, Much Ado, Romeo and Juliet (the Second Quarto), and so on. By a process of different sequences of research coming from different angles, the consensus respecting the ms. leaves from Sir Thomas More can then be complemented with different research concentrating instead on, say, the generally casual tone of the stage-directions in these apparently authoritative Quartos as against the more specific, but less discursive nature of stage-directions found in the very few players' prompt-books of the period that have survived.
In addition, since these Quartos are among the few Quarto texts where the lines seem to flow relatively cleanly, it would therefore appear likely that the source behind these Quartos may -- may -- have very few layers behind it and Shak[e]speare's original manuscript. When we couple that with the odd coincidence that these Quartos all share some extremely eccentric spelling patterns and habits (spelling is much more varied and personal in Elizabethan and Jacobean times than it is now), the likelihood grows that the only plausible reason for such a common orthographical style throughout these very few Quartos is that they are among the very select and few editions of Shak[e]speare's lifetime lucky enough to have had the original manuscript, or a very faithful transcript thereof, as their source. Ultimately, one couples that startling, though provisional, conclusion with the oddly casual nature of the stage-directions in the Quartos, and an important pattern seems to be forming. Looking again at the stage-directions, they take on even higher significance, because on top of all else, certain verbal patterns in them seem to oddly reflect, now and then, the verbal patterns in the spoken text. A possibility is there that these directions, so unlike the cut-and-dried prompt-books, may also come from the author himself. From this, the same discursive casual nature in the stage-directions found in the ms. leaves of Thomas More(!) serves to reinforce a mere consensus that here we have a scene that is not only by Shak[e]speare but may be extant in his own hand as well.
At this stage, the conclusions with respect to the More fragment then assume greater importance for the editorial treatment of these Quartos as a whole. The concurrent lines of inquiry reinforce each other to the point where once a consensus develops that the More fragment comes from Shak[e]speare's own hand, the likelihood grows that the Second Quarto of Romeo, say, is at least as close a simulacrum as one can hope for of a Shak[e]speare manuscript short of being one itself (which as a printed book, it can never really be, of course). This means that in a responsible modern edition of Romeo and Juliet, the editorial treatment of the text will of necessity be far more cautious in questioning certain knotty passages in the text than would be the case in many another Shak[e]speare play where the general consensus might be that its textual "picture" is frankly a mess -- like, let's say, his Pericles. Consequently, content in the case of Romeo ultimately takes a second place, although an important one, to bibliographical and textual context, because scholarly consensus has in fact reposed a great deal of authority in the Romeo Second Quarto by dint of this painstaking mesh of interrelated analyses that I've described. On the other hand, matters relating purely to content can be allowed to sway editorial choice far more, and considerably more than bibliographical/textual context, in a case like Pericles, where the only available text seems plainly corrupted from the get-go.
In fact, all modern Shak[e]speare scholarship accordingly treats texts like Much Ado and the Second Quarto of Romeo with far more caution and respect than it does more questionable texts like Pericles, or the final scenes of battle in Richard III, and so on. Hypotheses of random unauthorized interpolations, or of high-handed switches in sequence, or of mis-assignments of various speeches, etc., are far more common in modern editions of these corrupted texts -- and far more plausible -- than similar suppositions for more authoritative texts like Much Ado or the Romeo Second Quarto. Above all, the application of similar suppositions for any _perceived_ tangles in a Romeo or a Much Ado are simply going to be far rarer and more exceptional in any modern edition than you'll find in modern editions of a more corrupted Merry Wives or a Pericles. Finding content odd or relatively unintelligible is not an automatic ticket to editorial emendation in the case of a Romeo. The likelihood is simply higher here that it is more worthwhile in most cases like Romeo to take the extra mile and try to make sense of what one has in front of one first, before questioning what one has in front of one too precipitately, as if one were dealing with a Pericles instead.
In a way, there is a parallel -- of sorts -- between the highly corrupt texts of Pericles and/or the final scenes in Richard III, etc., and the highly derivative nature of the seemingly Pauline letters and/or the possibly derivative (?) Gospel of John. To suppose that one is reading Pericles exactly as it was first written is pretty much as naive (unfortunately so, even though the Pericles/Marina reunion is already heartbreaking and overpowering enough in the corrupt version we have) as supposing that we are reading Jesus's remarks precisely as they were spoken in John. Re most modern scholars, we probably aren't.
What's necessary here, though, is a degree of discrimination in the way we treat texts like the inauthentic Pauline letters and John versus the way we treat earlier strata like Thomas, the so-called "Q" (an extrapolated textual layer seemingly preserved in parallel sayings material common to Matthew and Luke), and Mark (generally reckoned the earliest extant canonized Gospel. Just as the extent of hypotheses that modern scholars apply to knotty passages in a Romeo is different and more cautious than the same process when applied to a Pericles, the same calibration of greater or lesser caution should, in my view, be applied to the huge range of Jesus materials that we have both within the NT and non-canonically outside it (like the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas, and so on). Content necessarily bulks larger as a consideration when it comes to careful scholarly evaluation of seemingly derivative material like John. But once we've put aside such material, textual context and orthographical style (both the Q sayings and the Thomas ones are very conversational) start to count a great deal more than just content as a part of any final analysis. Q and Thomas may not represent as close an image of an original "voice" as a Romeo (happily) does. But they come a great deal closer to that level than anything else in the extant Jesus records and ought to be viewed in that light.
Now, of course, the Romeo text is hardly pristine any more than the record reflected in Q, Thomas and Mark is pristine. Even modern scholars do allow a tiny handful of emendations in the Romeo text, after all. The thing is, though, such instances are now few and far between. Just as pertinently, the very few emendations that are now in the most modern Romeo editions presuppose a certain modest degree of human error rather than the large-scale or even deliberate distortion or corruption, such as well may be behind the self-evidently worst tangles in Pericles!
Now let's take a look at Q. In fact, for Q, we even have two different authors, Matthew and Luke, using (and, yes, adapting) the sayings to their own (admittedly possibly biased) ends. It's lucky we have two different authors doing this, though. One can be used as a check on the other. That being the case, it probably makes sense for us -- in those cases where Matthew and Luke versions are identical -- to proceed very cautiously before treating these passages the way we might justifiably treat anything in John. John is very, very different from Q, in terms of textual derivation, just as Pericles is very, very different from Romeo. The proper treatment of a Romeo is probably a safer model for the proper treatment of a Q -- or a Thomas -- than the proper treatment of a Pericles.
Grouping Thomas, Q and Mark together doesn't really bother me. Heck, I lump Much Ado and Romeo together! But lumping a whole nexus of certain Thomas/Q sayings together -- no matter how small a nexus -- as if all were interpolationspurely because of their content -- as some recent scholars whom I've read do -- does bother me, because it reminds me of myself when I was still quite green as a textual scholar and often ignored bibliographical/textual context.
It occurred to me, then, that it might be worthwhile to look at all of the Jesus self-descriptions in Q, Thomas and Mark that might possibly link up to questions of divine paternity or the lack thereof. I've assembled here all the examples that could possibly be of relevance to any kind of analysis as to Jesus's divinity or lack thereof.
In Thomas 61, we have --
[Jesus] "Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and other will live."
Salome said to him, "Who are You, man, that You, as though from the One, have come up on my couch and eaten from my table?"
Jesus said to her, "I am He who exists from the Undivided. I was given some of the things of my Father."
<Salome said,> "I am Your disciple."
<Jesus said to her,> "Therefore I say, if he is <undivided>, he will be filled with light, but if he is divided, he will be filled with darkness."
The Fellows of the Jesus Seminar were apparently careful here in discriminating various "tones" throughout this passage rather than accepting or rejecting it wholesale. Good. So long as we understand that it behooves one to approach such discriminations with greater caution than in a more derivative text like a John, I have no problem with some of the careful conclusions they reached. Essentially, the opening exchange here was judged as more authentic than the lower two thirds, with its strange talk of the undivided, etc.
In Thomas: 99 --
The disciples said to Him, "Your brothers and Your mother are standing outside."
He said to them, "Those here who do the will of My Father are My brothers and My mother. It is they who will enter the Kingdom of My Father."
While I do associate myself with the guess that this passage references a time when Jesus's family wanted him virtually locked up (see the more detailed account of this incident in Mark), the Seminar Fellows are not entirely clear if they are concluding that Jesus really said this or not. Equally pertinently, if he really did say this, how should one take the reference to "Kingdom of My Father"? Is he merely speaking generally, in that "Kingdom of Our Father" could have expressed what he was saying just as well? Or is there some significance to the "My"? And even if there is, could he really be meant by the author to be saying that God is his fleshly father? Or is it more likely that he is merely calling God his spiritual father? Or is there yet another interpretation?
I'd have to say that since the Fellows have already dismissed the bulk of the previously cited passage as not coming from the J. "voiceprint", I'd feel that we're falling too much for the content/convenience trap outlined above re Shak[e]speare if we suppose that the "Kingdom of My Father" phrase is also not the authentic "voiceprint". One questionable example is fine, but two, especially in an early text like Thomas, would need very, very close arguing. Was it really given it that by the Fellows? Again, with respect, think back to the authoritative Romeo text. I'm bothered by the possibility that some scholars may be too ready to suppose too many coincidences in a case like this that entails such a very early snapshot of the written record, one that could well be (relatively) unfiltered, as early Jesus materials go.
(continued)
