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Keeping clear about "transferral" and centurions

This post is about various possible interpretations of the episode of the centurion and his servant, narrated in Luke 7 and Matthew 8.

When we think about the Gospels or any historical account, or even about daily speech, we need to make careful distinctions. Unfortunately, careful distinctions are not always a hallmark of modern biblical scholarship. One place where such a distinction is not consistently made is between fact-changing “transferral” and non-fact-changing “transferral.”

If I say, “I’m building a house,” anyone who knew even a small amount about both me and current American culture would immediately know that I am not personally building the house with a hammer and nails. They would know, from my situation, that I’m hiring someone else to build it. This is obviously non-fact-changing “transferral”--I’m referring to myself as building the house while commissioning it, knowing that everyone will understand.

Another kind of non-fact-changing transferral is mere ambiguity, where the ambiguity is not even intentional. If I say that “Bob asked me to lend him $50” when Bob asked our mutual friend Joe to deliver the request on his behalf (perhaps thinking that Joe would be a good advocate), I’m merely abbreviating by not mentioning Joe’s involvement. This is potentially ambiguous, but if I realize that someone has gotten the impression that I saw Bob personally on that occasion, I can always explain: “Oh, sorry to be unclear. Bob didn’t come to me personally. He sent Joe to ask. I didn’t see Bob that day.”

But fact-changing transferral would be deliberately narrating in a way that looks like Bob came to me personally, when I know that he didn’t. It would be likely to confuse people, but not unintentionally. I would be intending to make it look like Bob came in a way that couldn’t be culturally seen (as in the first case) or merely an accident (as in the second case). My hearers might well get the wrong impression, and I would know that and be doing it on purpose.

If someone tells you that most evangelical scholars hold that Matthew “had” the centurion come to Jesus personally when he really didn’t, go back and read those they are citing and ask yourself: Is this scholar really talking about fact-changing transferral, or is a plausible reading of what he says that he is talking about non-fact-changing transferral?

I would say that a great many of those who have written on the issue of the centurion’s servant have meant non-fact-changing transferral of, perhaps at most, the “accidentally ambiguous” type. To assert, when they do not say so, that they are talking about Matthew’s deliberately having the centurion come personally when he knew that was not true is to go well beyond the evidence. Remember, too, that if Matthew was written before Luke, then readers of Matthew might very well never have heard the version of the story in which the servants came instead of the centurion. How, then, would they not have been confused if Matthew deliberately tried to make it look like the centurion came personally though he knew that this was not true? If this was a fact-changing literary device used by Matthew, it would have been difficult to detect even by a conjectural, comparative method. And even if they had already heard the version we find in Luke, why would they have concluded that Matthew’s was intentionally non-factual rather than merely having a question about precisely what happened?

Michael Licona is now “co-opting” harmonizations of these passages, though in all probability many if not most traditional harmonizers are speaking of non-fact-changing transferral in this passage. In a recent ETS paper he claimed that fact-changing transferral in this passage is the “majority” position among evangelicals and listed a number of scholars as allegedly endorsing fact-changing transferral in this passage. But several of these, such as D. A. Carson, speak of the passage in a way that very plausibly looks like they are speaking of non-fact-changing transferral. In his commentary on Matthew, Carson writes briefly about this difference in a way that is quite typical:

Probably Matthew, following his tendency to condense, makes no mention of the servants in order to lay the greater emphasis on faith according to the principle qui facit per alium facit per se (“he who acts by another acts himself”)—a principle the centurion’s argument implies (vv.8–9).

Yet Licona lists many names as though they agree with him that Matthew engaged in fact-changing transferral by deliberately having the centurion come personally to Jesus though he knew that this was not true. These would all need to be checked individually to see if they actually say this. See here for another and even more stunningly inaccurate instance of such an attempt at co-opting a well-known inerrantist harmonizer to the literary device views.

These sorts of confusions and equivocations must be avoided, as they simply make it difficult for us even to understand one another. They can thus lead us to believe that “everyone agrees” that the Gospel authors thought it was okay to change the facts invisibly when this is not, in fact, the case. (Not that popularity would make a view true anyway, of course.)

Remember: If the literary device views are just non-controversially saying what everybody already knew and thought, then where is the new, important contribution? It is extremely important not to allow equivocation to create a strange situation where we are simultaneously saying, “Hey, this is no big deal. It’s just harmless stuff that everybody already agreed” and “This is extremely helpful to give us new understanding of how the Gospels are using literary devices.”

Another important point: If you want to consider yourself an inerrantist and you think at the same time that Matthew wrote realistically and invisibly of the centurion as coming to Jesus personally when this was not true, how does it help for you to say that Matthew knew that what he was conveying by his writing was untrue? How does that make you a better inerrantist? How are you more of an inerrantist for saying that than you would be if you called this an error? I submit that it doesn’t help at all. See my two-part interview with Phil Fernandes here and here.

And please remember: None of this has anything to do with a readily recognizable figure of speech like, “Pilate took Jesus and scourged him” (John 19:1), an example Licona attempted to use in his recent dialogue with Richard Howe. It would be foolish to say that John is trying to make it look like Pilate personally scourged Jesus. He was precisely not trying to make it look like that, because he knew that it would be immediately well-understood that Pilate did nothing of the kind. He was not “making” or “having” Pilate scourge Jesus personally. He was not trying to lead his readers to imagine or picture Pilate scourging Jesus personally. The very fact that Dr. Licona and others have to say that Matthew made or had the centurion come to Jesus personally shows that they are not talking about a mere manner of speaking but about something that is completely different and, indeed, incompatible with such a mere, easily-understood manner of speaking.

Think clearly. Reason carefully. Then decide.

Disclaimer: I am not myself an inerrantist. But I like to think clearly about the issue. I myself, as Licona is now fond of pointing out, as if to "out" me, lean toward agreeing with Licona that Matthew portrays the centurion throughout the passage as being personally present. But (in contrast to Licona) I do Matthew the courtesy of thinking that he believed what he said. This presumably means that, if the servants really came instead as in Luke (which I'm also inclined to think), Matthew apparently made a good-faith error. I am also not entirely closed to the harmonization given by John Wesley and others according to which the centurion came at the very end but did not speak up (just to see what was happening?) and Jesus recognized him and spoke to him at Matt. 8:13. But I am somewhat inclined against this as it would make the references to the centurion at different points in the passage have different meanings, which does not seem plausible as a form of narration by a reporter. Again, if the idea that Matthew made a good-faith error here is unwelcome, that's fine, but please remember that you gain nothing by saying that Matthew inserted a deliberate, willful, invisible, realistic falsehood into the narration. At that point, you should probably go with an available harmonization such as non-fact-changing transferral involving some sort of accidental ambiguity on Matthew's part.

My new book, The Mirror or the Mask: Liberating the Gospels from Literary Devices, is available for pre-order and will be fully out on December 10. In it I discuss the many (including much more radical) fact-changing literary devices proposed by theorists and present and defend an alternative, nuanced, positive model of the Gospels' reportage. Pre-order your copy now and follow me on Facebook!

Comments (23)

Again, if the idea that Matthew made a good-faith error here is unwelcome, that's fine, but please remember that you gain nothing by saying that Matthew inserted a deliberate, willful, invisible, realistic falsehood into the narration. At that point, you should probably go with an available harmonization such as non-fact-changing transferral involving some sort of accidental ambiguity on Matthew's part.

Yup, yup, yup.

It seems much more likely that St Matthew either erred here or there is a harmonization than that some "literary device" is consciously and willfully employed.

I'd rather have to discuss why (if St Matthew made a good-faith error where in his mind he thought the centurion was physically there when in fact he wasn't) this isn't some sort of dealbreaker or thing to make us throw up our hands and claim that our religion has no basis. It's more like "yeah whatever" level sort of stuff for me.

What's really interesting is the number of people who think that if he deliberately changed it it's a "yeah, whatever" *even more than* if he made a small mistake. I'm baffled by that. It seems so obvious that deliberate change makes a much bigger difference to our view of other parts of Matthew's Gospel.

I get the feeling that people don't have a firm grasp of the fact that deliberate, invisible change is a wild card. It's far more likely, if Matthew was *that kind of author*, that there are a bunch of others lurking around that we can't see. If, on the other hand, he made a minor, good-faith error, that's much more limited in its probable other effects in the rest of the Gospel, since we know what kind of reliability you can easily get with minor, good-faith error. And we can tell a story (think of a scenario) in which he got this thing wrong, a very plausible scenario, that would not have widely metastasizing effects. E.g. He wasn't present. Someone else told him the story in more ambiguous wording than what he uses here. He accidentally got the impression the centurion was there personally.

Not to mention the fact that a "Matthew" who makes deliberate changes is not ipso facto a "Matthew" who never makes mistakes! You could have both!

Of course, in practice, what people do is just call all or virtually all the places that they would otherwise think of as mistakes "literary devices," so some who consider themselves inerrantists and are listening to Licona may think this way they *never* have to think that he made a small error. But that isn't really principled. I mean, it's not like there's some law of nature out there that says, "An author who makes deliberate factual changes is infallible everywhere that he doesn't make a deliberate factual change." So in real life terms they are just *adding* a (much less predictable) source of ahistorical material in the document!

What's really interesting is the number of people who think that if he deliberately changed it it's a "yeah, whatever" *even more than* if he made a small mistake. I'm baffled by that. It seems so obvious that deliberate change makes a much bigger difference to our view of other parts of Matthew's Gospel.

I don't get the phenomenon you describe; it strikes me as most emphatically NOT being a "yeah whatever" sort of thing if St Matthew deliberately changed things. I think this is due to a very minor error in reporting having natural bounds as to just how wrong one can be vs an unbounded possibilities if you're going to deliberately change something.

I see the whole issue as maybe the news that Matthew got was simply mistaken on that detail, and the larger thrust of things is (a) the power of Jesus and (b) the faith of the centurion. These don't seem affected by the possible error (if indeed it is an error and the attempted harmonizations in fact fail).

On the other hand, a deliberate sloppiness or changing of facts would affect the entire essence of the account. This is why you've convinced me of the whole danger of the "literary device" line of thinking, for which line of thinking I don't see much evidence.

I find the harmonization reasonable btw because people tend to be too static with the pictures of the events that their minds create. People are coming and going and moving around. It's like the people at the cross; surely they weren't standing there static the entire day and never came or went to and fro.

But what do I know? I'm just a dead Anglican bishop during the final gasps of Anglican conservatism in the late 19th century.

I don't get the phenomenon you describe; it strikes me as most emphatically NOT being a "yeah whatever" sort of thing if St Matthew deliberately changed things.

I don't get it either. But it's a real psychological phenomenon. It reminds me of a thing people used to do when they tripped or dropped something. They'd say, "I meant to do that!" It was a joke, but the idea (I guess) was that it was less embarrassing if the person meant to do it than if he tripped just because he tripped.

I think for many people it arises from a really weird notion of inerrancy: If they say that Matthew *meant* to change the facts, then they have this psychological feeling that they wouldn't call it an "error." Like the person who tripped, if he tripped on purpose, it wasn't an error, right?

Then they combine this with an equally confused notion of what Mike Licona and others mean by a "literary device"--namely, that if it's a literary device it might somehow have been *recognized* by the original audience. Actually, that isn't true. Not generally, and not on a case-by-case basis. Not even according to the theory. According to the theory, it was the *general* genre that was recognized, and then the people just held various specifics sufficiently lightly as not to be seriously misled, as we would with a biopic.

But when it's all put together, people I think comfort themselves just as you or I would if someone pointed out a bona fide figure of speech. E.g. If someone points out that "having your ears lowered" means getting a haircut (as it used to in English usage), then you can rightly decipher it if a man says, "I'm going to have my ears lowered." You know the idiom. It's just a matter of knowledge. You don't think he's made an error or done something illicit if he doesn't literally get his ears lowered.

So people who hear about these "literary devices" think they are being given knowledge of approximately *that* kind, just so that they can rightly understand the document.

And I'm one of the only people coming along and loudly saying that it isn't *remotely* like a mere figure of speech.

The thing that gets me is that this seems to indicate Licona is being decidedly unprofessional in his account of others' positions. It is one thing to say that Author A might appear to be ambiguous about how he holds forth on issue X, "but in essence he really agrees with me about X because N1, N2, and N3 reasons". It is quite another to say "Author A agrees with me" (without qualification or delimitation) not because I have thought through the ambiguities and rationally concluded with support that he really agrees me, but because he doesn't EXPLICITLY disagree with me on X. And it is worse still when Author A's explicit comments can readily be seen to be easily compatible with not-X, and only implausibly and with twisting be seen to maybe be compatible with X. (As we have here.) This is the kind of thing that really ought to get a scholar's reputation in hot water even if his theory X is considered arguable: he isn't allowed to just make up a consensus of other scholars that he wants supporting him. Other scholars should be upset about fabricatingh confirmation.

The most egregious instance of that thus far was with a scholar who is dead--Norm Geisler. Who, in fact, just died this summer. And his co-author is in poor health and unlikely to respond for that reason.

I don't know if anyone will find D. A. Carson to ask him whether he was advocating fictionalizing or non-fictionalizing transferral concerning the centurion. He is (as numerous people can attest) notoriously difficult to reach by e-mail. But his other work definitely pulls against Licona's interpretation. For instance, in the very commentary on Matthew where he discusses this issue, he takes the *distinctly* minority view that Matthew does not create composite discourses. This was a view that got me what one might call "ridiculed in prospect" by Craig Evans in our debate on John, though I said repeatedly that I was *not* closed to composite discourses. Evans suggested that I *might* deny that Matthew creates composite discourses and used that supposition to insinuate unsubtly that I don't know what I'm talking about. It was only later that I discovered that someone as eminent as Carson questions that himself, which gave me both the courage and the information and the opportunity to reflect to question it myself! (See the appendix on this subject in The Mirror or the Mask.) Anyway, someone who is so definite there, simply because Matthew uses opening and closing bracket phrases for his five major discourses, is hardly likely in the *same commentary* to suggest that Matthew "made" the centurion come in person though he knew he really didn't!

In general, I agree with the point about manufacturing a consensus, especially when there are two entirely different things that can be meant by generally worded comments, as here. In fact, I found it odd that Licona *rightly* (in the talk) characterizes St. Augustine's position as "metonymy" (by which he means what I call non-fictionalizing transferral) and Carson's as transferral in his own fictionalizing sense. In what I've been able to find written by Carson on the question (which is brief) he sounds very much like Augustine. So it seems rather arbitrary.

By the way, Joe and Tony, you might want to know this: In the same paper at ETS, Dr. Licona stated that "guys" understand that other guys may *alter* (not just omit) facts in what they say to each other, because "guys" don't care.

So if you think it unlikely that Matthew *deliberately* made the centurion come personally while *knowing* that he did not, you are apparently not in touch with the insider "guy" manner of speaking. You should be informed that it is just normal for people, especially "guys," to make up dialogues with people that occurred with their messengers instead, deliberately intending to make it look like a person was present who was not present.

I figured you would want to be informed of this so that you will not be out of touch in your daily life from now on when speaking with your honest guy friends. This has been a public service announcement.

[Lydia McGrew's work] doesn’t impress me because she has this black and white thinking that’s an all or nothing. It’s troublesome. Because I don’t understand how people think that way, to be honest with you, because we just don’t communicate this way in our everyday conversations. I mean she might. She and her husband might. Sometimes I describe it in my lectures as the guy version vs. the girl version of the story. Just about every married couple can understand what I mean by that. Girls like lots of details, and they’ll want to know all the details. Guys: Just give us bullet points, get to the bottom line. When we tell a story to another guy, we will abbreviate, we’ll alter details a little bit in order to get to that bottom line, because we know the guy we’re talking to couldn’t care less about the minutiae. (laughter) We don’t think that we’re deceiving. And of course there’s a wide range and a spectrum, right? But for her there’s just no room to change, to alter details or it's deceit. I just don’t get that.

Emphasis added About minute 27

Licona's claim is so general at best and sloppy at worst.

There's "locker room talk" and guy banter where men are engaging in some (usually friendly) banter and trash-talking. There, some points may be exaggerated for dramatic effect and nobody takes those exaggerated points as a matter-of-fact accounting of truth. Somebody tells me I hit my forehand 150mph at them is really saying that I hit a hard, heavy forehand at them, not that if you took a radar gun it would say 150mph. (Nobody can hit a 150mph forehand.) I notice that some guys like to, ahem, "augment" the recaps of their romantic conquests.

But the gospels aren't "locker room talk" or guy banter or anything like that, are they? They're making claims that certain events occurred a certain way. Gospels aren't "everyday conversations" are they?

Licona's claim sounds like something he'd say on The View or on Oprah to get an applause line, but it is pretty vapid stuff. Beautiful fluffery.

On an intellectual level, Licona strikes me as one of those guys who knows a lot of facts, is well read, and probably has forgotten more NT scholarship than I'll ever learn, yet this stuff isn't about collections of facts, but is really (as I see it) common sense, and the ability to ask "Does this constitute an actual argument? Is this reasonable evidence?". (And on the critical thinking front, I'd take my own critical apparatus over that of most any NT scholar, with whatever good or bad consequences ensue.)

It's all a classic motte and bailey strategy: Make a controversial claim. When challenged, retreat to a claim so boring and uncontroversial that no one can possibly challenge it--People sometimes leave out details. Not everybody cares about all the details, etc. But continue to leave a little door open for going back to the more controversial claim by slipping that in about *altering* details. Then when the coast is clear, go back to the more controversial claim.

But in point of actual fact, it is not simply common for honest people to go around telling detailed stories in which they knowingly pretend that someone talked to them personally when in fact he was not personally present. If someone told you a sober-sounding, detailed story in which he chatted personally with someone, and if you considered this person honest, you wouldn't constantly keep at the back of your mind the live possibility that he was making it up and simply chatted with someone else who was a friend or representative of the person he is naming.

But in point of actual fact, it is not simply common for honest people to go around telling detailed stories in which they knowingly pretend that someone talked to them personally when in fact he was not personally present. If someone told you a sober-sounding, detailed story in which he chatted personally with someone, and if you considered this person honest, you wouldn't constantly keep at the back of your mind the live possibility that he was making it up and simply chatted with someone else who was a friend or representative of the person he is naming.

Lord Bishop Lightfoot was here with me and read your post, and he agrees fully.

When we tell a story to another guy, we will abbreviate, we’ll alter details a little bit in order to get to that bottom line, because we know the guy we’re talking to couldn’t care less about the minutiae. (laughter) We don’t think that we’re deceiving. And of course there’s a wide range and a spectrum, right? But for her there’s just no room to change, to alter details or it's deceit. I just don’t get that.

That's just bull****.

(I am assuming that the guy is not telling a joke, meant to be taken as fiction, but is recounting an event that happened for some other reason - for a reason that means that he wants the hearer to assent to what he is saying, to accept the "point" he is making.)

Here's the truth: guys who habitually and wholly are honest, and who are 100% "guys" in the testosterone-laden sense, don't have any need to "alter details" in the sense of creating fictions - even if they are alterations that help abbreviate, help simplify, help "get to the bottom line" faster. To an extent, it is fair enough that guys DO have an urge to abbreviate to get to the bottom line, but there is nothing wrong with leaving out details to do that. It's the process of CHANGING details in order to simplify that's at issue. For a guy who is 100% habitually honest, he doesn't normally want to do that, and he will push back against the urge toward THAT KIND of simplification because it isn't upright. I know, because I admit that I have sometimes stooped to that kind of alteration in my own accounts, and afterwards pulled myself up short by the realization that "that's not just taking short-cuts, that's false".

See, the problem is that although Licona is largely correct that guys don't (much) care about each and every one of the details that might happen to lie between point A and Point Z, and we don't need all the details anyway, when you bother to give us a detail, we assume it's true. So, when a guy is in short-cut mode, he is trying NOT to include details that don't help get to the point. Heck, one of the classic elements of hard-boiled "guy" delivery is to never bother telling any of the details except THE ONES THAT MATTER. So, naturally, (with such a hard-boiled account) they (the hearers) assume that if it's a detail you included, it's one that matters. You can't then alter it without altering the bottom line AWAY from what really was so. That's just what it means for the detail to matter.

But even when it isn't such a hard-boiled account, if you (as a guy) are including plenty of details, one of the following 3 things are required: Either (a) it is a bull session, i.e. everyone knows that people are just making up stuff and anything said could be fiction, with just enough truth thrown in for spice; or (b) you have to include at least a FEW disclaimers to DECLARE the inexactness of your account: "roughly", or "something like", or "words to that effect", or (better yet), "I don't remember the exact details, but it had the same effect as..."; or (c) what you say is true, even if you leave out other stuff that is also true.

Those are the options.

In point of fact, lots of guys are NOT ENTIRELY FORTHRIGHT & HONEST in their daily lives, and ALL of us (men and women both) like to color our accounts of events to make ourselves look better than we really are. It is a relatively rare person who doesn't do this. But it isn't ADMIRED, nor ACCEPTED (simply speaking) as proper, it is TOLERATED as a common and understood small kind of bad behavior. It is tolerated but not admired, we know, because when a person doesn't stoop to this kind of painting outside the lines, we do admire them for their honesty - even if we can't quite copy them in it all the time.

What Licona is describing is something like what tends to happen with a lot of guys, (they make up small fictions in a largely true account) because a lot of guys DON'T think they ought to be honest all of the time, and they are willing to be dishonest a bit here and there about "unimportant" things. But he errs in saying that when guys do this, when they do things like re-write a few details to "simplify" an account (the re-writing being falsifying), and WITHOUT any tells that let the hearers know he is playing fast and loose with the details; that this is fine, that his hearers concur with this as a good way to tell the story, that they are happy with the story being told that way. It is not.

Evidence that it is not: (1) (Unless the teller included a few disclaimers about accuracy), the guys who hear the story assume that they can rely on the details when THEY use the story themselves later on. They tell the story with the details mentioned, because they don't have anything else to go on that gets all the way from A to Z story-wise.

(2) They assume that they can use everything offered to assess the intelligibility of the story - and this includes not only the teller's general character, but all the details that he gave that (he thought) made the story make sense. If they can't rely on the details as given, then they are stuck in the (story-wise) bad placement where the story-teller is saying, in effect, "I want you to accept my bottom line, but I am not giving you the basis for how I got there that actually shows how Z came about." That is to say: the story-teller would be in a position of asserting "I know you guys won't truly understand why Z is the end-point, but I insist on it anyway." Well, try saying that to "the guys" a few times, and you will see them walk away mid-sentence.

(3) (Related to what I said earlier:) Guys who CAN tell a story "on the quick", in an abbreviated fashion, with just unnececcary details omitted and nothing altered, and can STILL convey the whole of the "important points", and who don't stoop to fictions, are admired as good, as being better able to tell stories well. It is, admittedly, a bit of an art to being able to craft a story that is short and sweet and to the point, which includes everything needed and no fictions, that explains the movement from A to Z well. Guys who are constantly circling back to fill in prior details that they had skipped over earlier, because (later in the story) they realize that they needed the detail after all, are not as admired because they don't know how to deliver a ready story in a single stream. Guys who tell it "short and sweet" but leave out essential details that make the hearers say "Why did you do X before Y", and "how in the world did K get there" are not admired as much, as story-tellers. Guys who make things up to explain the passage from A to Z, and who are later found to have made things up, are NOT LISTENED TO with as much attention or acceptance: other guys will give a story-teller like this less of a hearing, and less credence, and less respect AS A STORY-TELLER. They will treat such a guy as a second-rate speaker.

What Licona is doing is taking the fact that men don't necessarily make a big deal of a guy making up small fictions in a story that is mostly true, when the WHOLE STORY has a pretty minimal value, (and so whether each detail was true was similarly of low import), to a false generalization that men are FINE with guys making up details (or whole events, even whole stories) to make a point. This just isn't true.

I leave it to the reader to draw conclusions about what this says about Licona's sense of how important it is to tell the truth in the little details even when it matters, such as, perhaps, the importance of correctly noting when a scholar agrees with his thesis and when he doesn't.

So, naturally, (with such a hard-boiled account) they (the hearers) assume that if it's a detail you included, it's one that matters. You can't then alter it without altering the bottom line AWAY from what really was so. That's just what it means for the detail to matter.

That's a very good point.

I also tend to think that the notion of "details" is getting pretty stretched. The centurion example is a kind of a star of the literary device view. And I suppose it's not totally silly (as it is with many of Licona's other examples) to call whether the centurion came in person or not a "detail" of the story. But when it comes to the deliberate process (which it would have to be) of "making" the centurion come personally when he didn't really, and one knows he didn't really, the detail ceases to look so minuscule. That is to say, there is something at least a little bit distasteful about imagining someone *going to the trouble* to change that. Changing the verb number, for example, so that Jesus is saying this to the centurion in the singular ("Go your way.") Picturing to oneself the centurion coming personally while knowing that he didn't, and attempting to convey that picture to one's readers. When one has to go "round the barn," as it were, to do that, with that intention, I think it should loom larger than the word "detail" tends to communicate.

Another example where Licona pooh-poohs the change he alleges is that (he thinks) Luke geographically moved Jesus' first post-resurrection appearance to the male disciples to Jerusalem when it really took place in Galilee. But Luke's narrative is *chock-full* of specific details placing the narrative in Jerusalem. He even notes how many stadia away Emmaus was from Jerusalem, and specifies that the two men on the road to Emmaus hurried back to Jerusalem to tell about their experience and that it was while they were speaking with the others that Jesus first appeared. Is it really an itsy-bitsy little matter, much less something all normal people ("guys"?) nowadays would think a mere matter of "minutiae," to imagine Luke as going through and *putting all of that in* in order to "make" the event happen in Jerusalem when he believed it really happened several days' journey to the north, and therefore under completely different circumstances (in the very nature of the case) in Galilee?! That's some pretty highly deliberative "guy alteration" going on there! It has to be. There's certainly no way to do that unconsciously!

That is to say, there is something at least a little bit distasteful about imagining someone *going to the trouble* to change that.

That's another aspect of the detail actually mattering. If it is a small little point that doesn't matter, then there is no need to change it. That's the point of declaring that it is immaterial. But if it is immaterial, then there is nothing to be gained from changing it, right? The fact is, Licona is trying to have his cake and eat it too: it's too little a point for accuracy to matter, but it wasn't too minor a detail for the author to consciously decide to change for the sake of his account. How does that happen? No, it just doesn't work: if the author needs to knowingly change the item ("needs" being said hypothetically), it's because the actual detail doesn't serve his purpose, it isn't readily compatible with what the author is intending to say. All that means, then, is that the author is trying to hold forth on a point that just isn't so. That's what it means to say "what actually happened is incompatible with the point I am making" unless you can dredge up instead (as support) some OTHER event (with its actual details) that really does conform with the point you are making.

Which is what we have been saying all along: if we were to hold that the Gospel authors intentionally made up stuff, and didn't include tells that allow us to realize that they made up stuff, then we would be unable to rely on them for the theses that they are actually asserting are true: that Christ rose from the dead, that Christ is God and man, that Christ founded the Church... Saying that the authors made stuff up (whether or not there was a social convention "allowing it") undermines our reliance on it - and insisting on calling that still "inerrant" is just turning words on their heads, it doesn't affect the reality.

[Lydia McGrew's work] doesn’t impress me because she has this black and white thinking that’s an all or nothing. It’s troublesome. Because I don’t understand how people think that way, to be honest with you, because we just don’t communicate this way in our everyday conversations. I mean she might. She and her husband might. Sometimes I describe it in my lectures as the guy version vs. the girl version of the story. Just about every married couple can understand what I mean by that. Girls like lots of details, and they’ll want to know all the details. Guys: Just give us bullet points, get to the bottom line. When we tell a story to another guy, we will abbreviate, we’ll alter details a little bit in order to get to that bottom line, because we know the guy we’re talking to couldn’t care less about the minutiae. (laughter) We don’t think that we’re deceiving. And of course there’s a wide range and a spectrum, right? But for her there’s just no room to change, to alter details or it's deceit. I just don’t get that.


Emphasis added About minute 27

o.O
I come away from reading this with two things. 1. Licona doesn't seem to hang around honest people, and thus makes himself appear highly dishonest himself. 2. Either Nick Peters grabbed the "black and white thinking" being an attack on anyone who disagrees with him from Mike Licona, or the other way around.

Anyway, I'd prefer black and white thinking to the complete mess of unintelligible
"shades of grey" that we get from this kind of thinking.

Unfortunately other people are picking up the phrase "black and white thinking" and passing it around to refer to my objections. The fact that it is not an argument does not seem to occur to them. Who got it from whom is hard to say.

Yet I saw one person refer to the few minutes of drive-by negative talk about my work in Licona's approx. 40-minute (total, including long Q & A) presentation as "addressing" my work. Despite the fact that he admits openly, right there, that he has read very little of it! Yep, I guess I've been "addressed," then.

I wonder if Licona (and his co-"scholars") have ever read much in the Fathers on how to read the Scriptures. One of the essential, indeed critical facts is (as they say it) that much of the meaning and force of the spiritual and anagogical senses unequivocally rest on the primary sense being, simply, true. Their entire stance is that God, being all knowing and all powerful, is able to write these spiritual and allegorical and typological truths into ACTUAL HISTORY, so that REAL EVENTS in the Old Testament constitute prefigurements of Christ and the Church. This facet of Scripture washes away if you allow the seemingly historical account to be a fictional story (or story element) that the (human) author devised to "make a point" - the point being made cannot be the point God had in mind in writing the real history differently. To the Fathers, this would defeat half (or more) of Scripture.

Unfortunately other people are picking up the phrase "black and white thinking" and passing it around to refer to my objections. The fact that it is not an argument does not seem to occur to them. Who got it from whom is hard to say.

Yet I saw one person refer to the few minutes of drive-by negative talk about my work in Licona's approx. 40-minute (total, including long Q & A) presentation as "addressing" my work. Despite the fact that he admits openly, right there, that he has read very little of it! Yep, I guess I've been "addressed," then.

I have been encountering a mindset where merely labeling a persons arguments, without actually addressing them, seems to be regarded like some kind of magic incantation that refutes said persons arguments automatically.

I have been encountering a mindset where merely labeling a persons arguments, without actually addressing them, seems to be regarded like some kind of magic incantation that refutes said persons arguments automatically.

It's a variant of Bulverism, where there explaining peoples' psychological or social motivations for making an argument is viewed as a legitimate response or even rebuttal to them.

In my entire adult life, I've been driven crazy by people who smugly dismiss anything I say as being too "black and white". Well ok then. What's the argument that it's a "grey area"?

If I play the role of speculator, I guess the idea is to label Lydia as a "black and white" thinker to conjure up the image of some rigid fundie-type who doesn't have to be taken seriously. "Black and white" is for people who refuse to get with the modern scheme of things, whereas all the sophisticated, urbane people have "shades of grey".

The whole problem with Licona's position is, in my opinion, that he, implicitly, calls God a deceiver or at least an incompetent God, who can't seem to get His poor apostles and Gospel writers to be consistent. Yet, the Act of Faith, which could apply indirectly, here, says:

. I believe these and all the truths which the Holy Catholic Church [in interpreting Scripture, my comment] teaches because Thou [God] have revealed them, who can neither deceive nor be deceived.

Good cannot deceive, saying one thing, but meaning another. His truths are understood by the merest children. God cannot be inconsistent (contra the Moslem understanding of God) and He will not countenance His teachings to be implied to be inconsistent, which would undermine His clarity.

I don't know why anyone listens to Licona, who forgets who the ultimate Author of Scripture is, or so it seems from what I have read of his writing. He seems to be starting from the humanity of the Gospel writers and working upwards to the supernatural, instead of starting with the supernatural and understanding how it forms and elevates the humanity of the authors. He is insulting the Gospel writers, by implying by innuendo, that they are just telling any old story, where, "guy talk," and literary cuteness is expected, instead of the One story that has to be gotten right.

Sometimes, free speech can be used badly. I hope Licona can disenthrall himself from his pet notions.

The Chicken

It's a variant of Bulverism, where there explaining peoples' psychological or social motivations for making an argument is viewed as a legitimate response or even rebuttal to them.

In my entire adult life, I've been driven crazy by people who smugly dismiss anything I say as being too "black and white". Well ok then. What's the argument that it's a "grey area"?

If I play the role of speculator, I guess the idea is to label Lydia as a "black and white" thinker to conjure up the image of some rigid fundie-type who doesn't have to be taken seriously. "Black and white" is for people who refuse to get with the modern scheme of things, whereas all the sophisticated, urbane people have "shades of grey".

I've encountered similar. Actually asking said people to explain their arguments usually ends up in me reading long self contradictory mishmashes of ideas that don't go anywhere. I once pointed out how one person's ideas were logically contradicting each other, and he said something along the lines "logic can't be applied to God". I did previously post the following a while back, but I find the quote seems to be rather fitting, so I went and dug up the post from back then.

While doing some reading elsewhere I found a quote related to the literary device theorist topic I thought some here might find interesting if they don't already know about it.

“In battling against people who would subject historical studies to the dictates of literary critics we historians are, in a way, fighting for our lives. Certainly, we are fighting for the lives of innocent young people beset by devilish tempters who claim to offer higher forms of thought and deeper truths and insights—the intellectual equivalent of crack.”

Given what I've ready on the subject, it seems an apt comparison.

I don't have the book, but this is supposed to be page 49 of G.R. Elton's "Return to Essentials. Some Reflections on the Present State of Historical Study". The book was written in 2002, but it says this is the text of lectures he gave in 1990.

I wonder if Licona (and his co-"scholars") have ever read much in the Fathers on how to read the Scriptures.

Yes, Origen. :-) He seems to be a fave.

Augustine and his harmonizations, not so much. (Except when misreading him.)

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