Report on Secret Gospel of Mark Symposium Pt 3 by Ryan Wettlaufer (pt 1 here; pt 2 here)
By the time I made it back to the conference they were in the middle
of Pierluigi Piovanelli's paper on Morton Smith and Aleister Crowley.
Yes, I do mean that Aleister Crowley. Piovanelli seemed to be trying
to establish the events and trends in Morton Smith's life that would
both motivate him and enable him to create a forgery like sm. For
example, Piovanelli pointed out a time when Smith was studying
Clement, thus giving him the knowledge necessary to forge a letter of
Clement. The titular event, however, was when Smith became fascinated with the life of Crowley, who - as Piovanelli documented - Smith appreciated as having a certain kind of edgey realness that was missing from other religious folk. In Crowley, Piovanelli argued, Smith found an archetype of the kind of Jesus he would really like to see, and so Smith invented the sm excerpts - with their edgey sexual elements - to create that Jesus. At least I think that's what Piovanelli was arguing, he went well past his allotted time and Phil Harland, who was chairing at this point, eventually cut him off.
Next came Allan Pantuck, who, surprisingly, is actually credentialed
as a medical doctor and a urologist. I wondered then what kind of
biblical studies chops he might have, and the answer was pretty
impressive ones. His work was well disciplined, well researched, and
very well ordered. If anyone could convince me of the authenticity of
sm, I think it would be this guy. He presented - with very nice
images of photos and scans - a survey of Morton Smith's own personal
writings. The point of this survey was essentially the opposite of
Piovanelli's: he wanted to show how Smith's life would have left him
ill-equipped to create a forgery like sm. For example, Pantuck showed
several personal letters wherein Smith lamented his poor Greek skills.
He confirmed this with personal writings of other scholars who
commented on Smith's poor Greek skills. These poor skills, Pantuck
argued, mean that Smith could not have had the ability to compose a
fake letter of Clement. Over all it was a strong presentation, though
I wonder what Smith would have thought about his integrity resting on
his incompetence!
Next came Peter Jeffery from Notre Dame. He was supposed to present
on Clement, and he may have been doing that in the first half of his
paper. It was rather quiet, and so I went to look in the back in the
vain and unfulfilled hope of replenished coffee. Suddenly, though,
Jeffrey came quite alive, and the second half of his presentation was
spirited to say the least. He exclaimed with more than a little
excitement that Smith's writings were full of "bullshit! just
bullshit!" and challenged anyone in the room to take "the Jeffrey
Challenge" wherein if you could take a copy of Smith's work, spend an hour in the library checking each one of his ancient source references, and not come to the conclusion that he was a crazy charlatan, then Jeffrey would write you a glowing recommendation on official Princeton letterhead to the business school of your choice! Jeffrey repeated this challenge several times, noted that he could use Princeton letterhead because he was emeritus there, and was, well, full of twitchy glee. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure what to make of it all,
except that I might have figured out where all the coffee went.
Finally Scott Brown gave a very quiet and studious paper on the seven
veil motif in sm and how it compared to Clement. It seemed like a
fine study, though at the end Brown admitted that, as there were no
Clement scholars there, no one was really qualified to evaluate his
thesis.
That was it for the main conference. There was a public debate later
that night, but I did not attend that. What was my reaction? I
suppose I now lean towards some kind of inauthenticity. What I really
came away with, however, was a better realisation of the variety of
options outside of the "hoax or real?" binary offered by the
conference's title. It could, at one end, be a real letter of Clement
with real, secret excerpts of Mark. Or, it could be a real letter of
Clement with nevertheless fake excerpts from Mark. Or, it could be a
fake letter of Clement with fake excerpts from Mark. If the latter,
however, the forgery could have been carried out by Smith, or it could
have been carried out by someone prior to Smith - even long prior - so
that Smith's discovery was, for his part, quite sincere. Finally, all
of those options could be further mirrored into two versions: the one
that sees the sm excerpts as describing a homosexual encounter, and
one that sees it as an innocent reference to teaching at night. In
other words, the sm subject is more complicated than I'd realised.
As for the conference, I thought it was well organized, but overall I
wasn't impressed by the level of debate. There seemed to be a lot of arbitrary back-and-forthing. One person argued that the style of sm proved authenticity because it matched the style of Mark. Another argued that the style disproved authenticity exactly because it matched the style of Mark - that's exactly what a forger would do! One argued that handwriting analysis proved that it was a forgery. Another
argued that different handwriting experts could show that it was not a
forgery. One argued that Smith studied Clement and was skilled at
Greek. Another argued that Smith did not study Clement enough and was unskilled at Greek. All told, it reminded me of a rather frank admission by the Lawyer Allan Dershowtiz that I read the other day (just don't ask why I was reading Dershowtiz!), who said "when you read opinions like this, you get the sense of philosopher-kings sitting around deciding how to arrive at the right result by a series
of inductive and deductive reasonings and analogies. In fact, that is
not how legal thinking generally occurs. People start with a
preference for having the case decided in a certain way... We start out
with points of view and then we search the literature. We search
philosophy, we search science for ways of rationalizing our
conclusion" (Thinking About Thinking, p. 15).
Other reports from the symposium:
Sarah Veale
Guestpost at Apocryphicity by Calogero A. Miceli
Tony Burke (Apocryphicity)
Idem, pt 2
Showing posts with label Ryan Wettlaufer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ryan Wettlaufer. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Report on Secret Gospel of Mark Symposium Pt 2
Report on Secret Gospel of Mark Symposium part 2 by Ryan Wettlaufer (part 1 here)
Craig Evans went after break. His argument was that there were just too many co-incidences between ideas and comments that Morton Smith made before the supposed discovery of sm, and what he discovered in sm. Evans handed out a neat, 2 page chart of these co-incidences. For example, in his 1951 Tannaitic Parallels, Evans argues that Smith interprets the phrase "mystery of the kingdom of God" in Mark 4:11 as a reference to secret sexual activities. This, Evans argues, is a thoroughly unique interpretation held by no one else but Smith. It is remarkable, then, that in 1958 Smith would find the same phrase with the same unique interpretation in sm. Two pages of such co-incidences make, for Evans, "a case of too many coincidences and too many confirmations" for the discovery of sm to be genuine.
The response came from Allan Pantuck from University of California, who said that Evans had given a very fine paper, with the exception that he disagreed with every single point! He focused on refuting only a couple, however, arguing that they are either not really parallels, or not really co-incidences. For example, Evans had drawn a parallel between Smith and a fiction novel "The Mystery of Mar Saba" published in 1940, wherein the main character visits Mar Saba acknowledging that all the important mss were either burned, lost or removed, but hoping that something important might remain. Smith, Evans points out, also describes how he went to Mar Saba knowing that all the important mss were gone, but hoping something important might remain. Pantuck, however, countered that the fiction novel was based on the life of the author, who actually did consider himself a mss hunter and actually did visit Mar Saba with a faint hope of finding a valuable remnant. Since the author and Smith were both ms hunters who both visited Mar Saba, it's not really an incredible co-incidence, Pantuck argued, that they both had similar hopes and ideas.
After mid morning break came a presentation by Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He was supposed to present on the handwriting analysis of Agamemnon Tselikas, and he did distribute a hand-out to that end. He spent most of his time, however, making a very impassioned defence of Morton Smith's character, arguing that the only people accusing him of fraud are people who never knew him. Shanks emphasized that when we talk of fraud or forgery, we are accusing a "distinguished, tenured professor" of rank deception, and not only was this barbaric, but it was illogical to think that Smith would have engaged in such self-destructive behaviour, since his whole career would have been on the line had he been caught. In the ensuing discussion, several people pointed out that professors - even distinguished, tenured ones - commit all kinds of wrong-doing, and that humans in general have a bad habit of engaging in illogical, destructive behaviour. Shanks presented his case with great emotion, but I tend to agree with the crowd that an ad hominem argument really isn't valid, even if it's a pro hominem!
After this was lunch, followed by a paper by Marvin Meyer of Chapman University. Unfortunately I missed this one, as I was still wandering aimlessly around the campus of York University, desperately lost. The campus trails, you see, run in a random, goat-trail manner, and though there are stacks of arrow-signs at every intersection, they identify only the name of the nearest building in that direction, which means that while they may be helpful for finding out what building you are standing right in front of, they are pretty useless when the building you are looking for is far away from you, as it is for me most of the times when I am lost. There were a number of "you are here" maps, but, sadly, they were all either faded beyond recognition, or missing the all important "you are here" arrow.
To be continued...
Craig Evans went after break. His argument was that there were just too many co-incidences between ideas and comments that Morton Smith made before the supposed discovery of sm, and what he discovered in sm. Evans handed out a neat, 2 page chart of these co-incidences. For example, in his 1951 Tannaitic Parallels, Evans argues that Smith interprets the phrase "mystery of the kingdom of God" in Mark 4:11 as a reference to secret sexual activities. This, Evans argues, is a thoroughly unique interpretation held by no one else but Smith. It is remarkable, then, that in 1958 Smith would find the same phrase with the same unique interpretation in sm. Two pages of such co-incidences make, for Evans, "a case of too many coincidences and too many confirmations" for the discovery of sm to be genuine.
The response came from Allan Pantuck from University of California, who said that Evans had given a very fine paper, with the exception that he disagreed with every single point! He focused on refuting only a couple, however, arguing that they are either not really parallels, or not really co-incidences. For example, Evans had drawn a parallel between Smith and a fiction novel "The Mystery of Mar Saba" published in 1940, wherein the main character visits Mar Saba acknowledging that all the important mss were either burned, lost or removed, but hoping that something important might remain. Smith, Evans points out, also describes how he went to Mar Saba knowing that all the important mss were gone, but hoping something important might remain. Pantuck, however, countered that the fiction novel was based on the life of the author, who actually did consider himself a mss hunter and actually did visit Mar Saba with a faint hope of finding a valuable remnant. Since the author and Smith were both ms hunters who both visited Mar Saba, it's not really an incredible co-incidence, Pantuck argued, that they both had similar hopes and ideas.
After mid morning break came a presentation by Hershel Shanks, editor of Biblical Archaeology Review. He was supposed to present on the handwriting analysis of Agamemnon Tselikas, and he did distribute a hand-out to that end. He spent most of his time, however, making a very impassioned defence of Morton Smith's character, arguing that the only people accusing him of fraud are people who never knew him. Shanks emphasized that when we talk of fraud or forgery, we are accusing a "distinguished, tenured professor" of rank deception, and not only was this barbaric, but it was illogical to think that Smith would have engaged in such self-destructive behaviour, since his whole career would have been on the line had he been caught. In the ensuing discussion, several people pointed out that professors - even distinguished, tenured ones - commit all kinds of wrong-doing, and that humans in general have a bad habit of engaging in illogical, destructive behaviour. Shanks presented his case with great emotion, but I tend to agree with the crowd that an ad hominem argument really isn't valid, even if it's a pro hominem!
After this was lunch, followed by a paper by Marvin Meyer of Chapman University. Unfortunately I missed this one, as I was still wandering aimlessly around the campus of York University, desperately lost. The campus trails, you see, run in a random, goat-trail manner, and though there are stacks of arrow-signs at every intersection, they identify only the name of the nearest building in that direction, which means that while they may be helpful for finding out what building you are standing right in front of, they are pretty useless when the building you are looking for is far away from you, as it is for me most of the times when I am lost. There were a number of "you are here" maps, but, sadly, they were all either faded beyond recognition, or missing the all important "you are here" arrow.
To be continued...
Monday, May 09, 2011
Report on Secret Gospel of Mark Symposium Pt 1
This is a guestpost by Ryan D. Wettlaufer (check out his previous one here), who reports from the recent Secret Mark Symposium at York University on April 29.
On Friday April 29th I attended the Secret Mark conference at York University. I'm not a student of Secret Mark. Prior to this, my only two real experiences with it were reading Jacob Neusner's provocative summary in what was supposed to be a preface to an edition of Memory and Manuscript by Gerhardsson, and sharing a supervisor with Scott Brown. The former, I suppose, presupposed me against the authenticity of secret mark, the latter in favour, so in the end I guess you could say I was both uninformed and neutral. The perfect target audience in other words!
Tony Burke opened the conference by welcoming everyone and voicing his hope that this would allow for real discussion that would transcend that possible at the last SBL meeting. To that end, most of the papers had been emailed or posted in advance with time allotted at the conference for 15 minute summaries only, followed by generous discussion periods. I think this was a great way to do it. Confining the presentation to a 15 minute summary meant that most of the more tedious, technical data was kept in the full paper, while the presentation gave a concise version of the real meat of the argument.
Now for the papers. Note, I didn't know I'd be guest blogging this when I went to the conference, so I did not take notes, which means this is all offered as the best that I can remember it.
The first paper was by Charles Hendrick from Missouri State University. He argued in favour of the authenticity of both the Clement letter and the secret mark (herein sm) excerpts contained therein. The one point I remember, however, is that he argued strongly that despite popular portrayals, the sm excerpts did not describe Jesus having a homosexual encounter. Rather, the phrases "spend the night with" and "explain the mystery of the kingdom to" meant just that, and any sexual connotations we might read into them are purely the product of modern euphemism.
The response was from Bruce Chilton of Bard College. This was my first time hearing Chilton, and let me say, he is a phenomenal public speaker. If his topic was "the sleeping patterns of slugs" I think I would still find the lecture captivating. He was very good. In substance, he seemed to be offering his own paper more than responding to Hendrick. He spent most of this time (and a great deal of extra time) discussing the issue of provenance. He gave numerous examples of other documents, both ancient and early modern, that he has had a hand in authenticating and focused on the important role that provenance played in that authentication. The implication being, of course, that since we cannot verify the provenance of the sm material, we cannot authenticate it.
Then came morning break. I had woken up at 5AM in order to drive to the conference, and so I was happy when I saw a large urn of coffee at the back of the room. I remarked to a friend that "they better keep that coming all day!" Alas, before I could get any at first break, it was empty, never to be refilled all day long. I can't offer any compliments then to whoever is in charge of hospitality services at York.
To be continued...
On Friday April 29th I attended the Secret Mark conference at York University. I'm not a student of Secret Mark. Prior to this, my only two real experiences with it were reading Jacob Neusner's provocative summary in what was supposed to be a preface to an edition of Memory and Manuscript by Gerhardsson, and sharing a supervisor with Scott Brown. The former, I suppose, presupposed me against the authenticity of secret mark, the latter in favour, so in the end I guess you could say I was both uninformed and neutral. The perfect target audience in other words!
Tony Burke opened the conference by welcoming everyone and voicing his hope that this would allow for real discussion that would transcend that possible at the last SBL meeting. To that end, most of the papers had been emailed or posted in advance with time allotted at the conference for 15 minute summaries only, followed by generous discussion periods. I think this was a great way to do it. Confining the presentation to a 15 minute summary meant that most of the more tedious, technical data was kept in the full paper, while the presentation gave a concise version of the real meat of the argument.
Now for the papers. Note, I didn't know I'd be guest blogging this when I went to the conference, so I did not take notes, which means this is all offered as the best that I can remember it.
The first paper was by Charles Hendrick from Missouri State University. He argued in favour of the authenticity of both the Clement letter and the secret mark (herein sm) excerpts contained therein. The one point I remember, however, is that he argued strongly that despite popular portrayals, the sm excerpts did not describe Jesus having a homosexual encounter. Rather, the phrases "spend the night with" and "explain the mystery of the kingdom to" meant just that, and any sexual connotations we might read into them are purely the product of modern euphemism.
The response was from Bruce Chilton of Bard College. This was my first time hearing Chilton, and let me say, he is a phenomenal public speaker. If his topic was "the sleeping patterns of slugs" I think I would still find the lecture captivating. He was very good. In substance, he seemed to be offering his own paper more than responding to Hendrick. He spent most of this time (and a great deal of extra time) discussing the issue of provenance. He gave numerous examples of other documents, both ancient and early modern, that he has had a hand in authenticating and focused on the important role that provenance played in that authentication. The implication being, of course, that since we cannot verify the provenance of the sm material, we cannot authenticate it.
Then came morning break. I had woken up at 5AM in order to drive to the conference, and so I was happy when I saw a large urn of coffee at the back of the room. I remarked to a friend that "they better keep that coming all day!" Alas, before I could get any at first break, it was empty, never to be refilled all day long. I can't offer any compliments then to whoever is in charge of hospitality services at York.
To be continued...
Wednesday, January 05, 2011
Thoughts on Defending a Thesis
This is a guest-post in which Ryan Wettlaufer shares his personal thoughts about his recent thesis defence at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, as described more formally in a previous post. Be sure to read related posts with advices for PhD students, "Where to do a PhD" and "Theses in Textual Criticism", and other thesis defences here and here.
Thoughts on Defending a Thesis
In December I successfully defended my doctoral thesis "Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study" at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, and Tommy has very kindly invited me to guest blog about the experience.
The set-up of the defence was interesting. As a young student you get all these wild images in your head of what the defence will look like, and most of them look something like the imposing set-up of a supreme court hearing or perhaps something out of a Masonic temple. In reality, it consisted of a very normal looking boardroom with a long table, water glasses, and an overly optimistic number of copies of my abstract for any guests. There were six professors in total, including John Kloppenborg – my supervisor – and Michael Holmes – my external examiner (who participated by speaker phone). It was interesting that the examiners, while all New Testament scholars, each had different areas of focus, such as patristics, philosophy, etc.
They began by asking me to leave the room while they discussed the agenda. Once I returned, they began the formal questioning, with each examiner being allotted 15 minutes. For the second round, each examiner was given another 5 minutes. When that was done, they again asked me to leave while, I assume, they discussed their thoughts and voted on the outcome. Or possibly they just flipped a coin. Either way, as my supervisor invited me back in he smiled and said “Congratulations.” When the committee chair complained that he had tipped their hand, I wanted to joke that he was referring to me finally getting a hair cut, but alas, the wit is never quick enough.
So what were my reactions? The first was actually disappointment. I was disappointed because it really felt like I had done a very poor job. In my memory, I had been a babbling fool, stuttering away, barely able to make a sentence. Sometimes after accomplishing something people try to downplay it with false humility, but this was not that: I really believed I had done poorly! It wasn’t till I talked with a colleague whose own defence had been just a month prior that I discovered this is a relatively common reaction. “I felt the exact same way” he explained, “I was sure I had sounded like some imbecile who could barely talk!” Fortunately, some of his colleagues had attended his defence and were able to verify that, contrary to whatever feelings he had, he had actually done a very good job. Since then, I’ve heard of many doctoral students who had this same reaction. There must be some interesting psychological phenomenon at work there, but I’ll let someone else tackle that.
My second reaction was surprise. Before the defence I had prepared by drawing up a list of all the points I thought were most important about my thesis, and made notes of all the facts that I thought needed to be discussed. Looking over that list afterwards, I was surprised that we had ended up discussing not a single one of them! Similarly, I had collected from various doctoral advice websites all over the internet several pages of common defence questions. As I looked over that list – you guessed it – not a single one of them had been asked. The questions that were asked were very surprising. A lot of them had to do with how my thesis related to their own area of focus. Some other questions poked at points that I thought were rather minor or unimportant. Other questions pointed out to me areas of the thesis that really could be improved, and I was thankful for that.
The most surprising questions, however, were the ones that demonstrated how equivocal this language really is. More than once an examiner asked a question that left me shaking my head in confusion, wondering whose thesis they could be talking about. Each time it would turn out that they had interpreted something I had written in a way completely different than I had intended. As I would review the section of my thesis in question, however, I would realise that the problem wasn’t that I had written it incorrectly, but it also wasn’t that they had read it incorrectly: the problem was that the language in question could legitimately support more than one meaning. It makes me wonder how we can ever hope to communicate here online, where our writing is usually less thought out and certainly less supported by body language or voice tone. It also made me realise how important it is to give people – especially people we disagree with – a sympathetic reading.
Finally, I was (eventually) happy! Not right away, mind you. Right away it was rather anti-climactic. I walked out of the defence and instead of feeling like I’d just accomplished something, it really felt like I had just finished a meeting. You imagine going out and having some crazy celebration, whooping and hollering with all your friends, but all I actually did was drive home, pour a cup of tea, read the ETC blog, and go to bed. Not much whooping there (some on that ETC blog, but only when they’re re-launching a journal!). After a good number of days though you suddenly realise what has happened. I think that realisation comes the first time your long-honed instinct nags you to go finish editing that draft of chapter 1, and then it dawns on you: you never have to revise chapter 1 again!
In closing, what advice do I have for those preparing for their defence? First, don’t be nervous. Really, don’t be: there’s just no need for it. For the rest of your life, at dinner parties or receptions, people will ask you what you studied and when you begin excitedly telling them about your dissertation you’ll only get to about the 30 second mark when you’ll see their eyes glaze over and you’ll realise that they were only asking to be polite! Your defence, on the other hand, will be the first and last time in your life that you will have a room full of people who both know what you’re talking about and want to hear you talk about it – for several hours at that! Enjoy this chance while you have it! Second, don’t be afraid to direct the conversation. This will be one of your best chances to get really thoughtful and in-depth critique, especially if, like me, you have the benefit of a high calibre external examiner. Unfortunately, the structure of the defence – rules about who can speak when or for how long – can really limit that critical discussion. If there’s something you really want to bring up or draw attention to, therefore, don’t be afraid to speak up and direct the discussion that way. Finally, no matter how many people you’ve had edit your dissertation, you will still get a page long list of typos and corrections from the committee. I got 5 pages! (Most of them were just errors in accenting though, so that doesn’t matter, right? [Little joke for P.J. Williams there!]). Start getting ready to accept that now, and then it won’t seem so bad when it happens.
That’s my thoughts! And much thanks again to Tommy Wasserman for this invitation, and this venue.
Ryan Wettlaufer
Thoughts on Defending a Thesis
In December I successfully defended my doctoral thesis "Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study" at the University of St. Michael’s College, University of Toronto, and Tommy has very kindly invited me to guest blog about the experience. The set-up of the defence was interesting. As a young student you get all these wild images in your head of what the defence will look like, and most of them look something like the imposing set-up of a supreme court hearing or perhaps something out of a Masonic temple. In reality, it consisted of a very normal looking boardroom with a long table, water glasses, and an overly optimistic number of copies of my abstract for any guests. There were six professors in total, including John Kloppenborg – my supervisor – and Michael Holmes – my external examiner (who participated by speaker phone). It was interesting that the examiners, while all New Testament scholars, each had different areas of focus, such as patristics, philosophy, etc.
They began by asking me to leave the room while they discussed the agenda. Once I returned, they began the formal questioning, with each examiner being allotted 15 minutes. For the second round, each examiner was given another 5 minutes. When that was done, they again asked me to leave while, I assume, they discussed their thoughts and voted on the outcome. Or possibly they just flipped a coin. Either way, as my supervisor invited me back in he smiled and said “Congratulations.” When the committee chair complained that he had tipped their hand, I wanted to joke that he was referring to me finally getting a hair cut, but alas, the wit is never quick enough.
So what were my reactions? The first was actually disappointment. I was disappointed because it really felt like I had done a very poor job. In my memory, I had been a babbling fool, stuttering away, barely able to make a sentence. Sometimes after accomplishing something people try to downplay it with false humility, but this was not that: I really believed I had done poorly! It wasn’t till I talked with a colleague whose own defence had been just a month prior that I discovered this is a relatively common reaction. “I felt the exact same way” he explained, “I was sure I had sounded like some imbecile who could barely talk!” Fortunately, some of his colleagues had attended his defence and were able to verify that, contrary to whatever feelings he had, he had actually done a very good job. Since then, I’ve heard of many doctoral students who had this same reaction. There must be some interesting psychological phenomenon at work there, but I’ll let someone else tackle that.
My second reaction was surprise. Before the defence I had prepared by drawing up a list of all the points I thought were most important about my thesis, and made notes of all the facts that I thought needed to be discussed. Looking over that list afterwards, I was surprised that we had ended up discussing not a single one of them! Similarly, I had collected from various doctoral advice websites all over the internet several pages of common defence questions. As I looked over that list – you guessed it – not a single one of them had been asked. The questions that were asked were very surprising. A lot of them had to do with how my thesis related to their own area of focus. Some other questions poked at points that I thought were rather minor or unimportant. Other questions pointed out to me areas of the thesis that really could be improved, and I was thankful for that.
The most surprising questions, however, were the ones that demonstrated how equivocal this language really is. More than once an examiner asked a question that left me shaking my head in confusion, wondering whose thesis they could be talking about. Each time it would turn out that they had interpreted something I had written in a way completely different than I had intended. As I would review the section of my thesis in question, however, I would realise that the problem wasn’t that I had written it incorrectly, but it also wasn’t that they had read it incorrectly: the problem was that the language in question could legitimately support more than one meaning. It makes me wonder how we can ever hope to communicate here online, where our writing is usually less thought out and certainly less supported by body language or voice tone. It also made me realise how important it is to give people – especially people we disagree with – a sympathetic reading.
Finally, I was (eventually) happy! Not right away, mind you. Right away it was rather anti-climactic. I walked out of the defence and instead of feeling like I’d just accomplished something, it really felt like I had just finished a meeting. You imagine going out and having some crazy celebration, whooping and hollering with all your friends, but all I actually did was drive home, pour a cup of tea, read the ETC blog, and go to bed. Not much whooping there (some on that ETC blog, but only when they’re re-launching a journal!). After a good number of days though you suddenly realise what has happened. I think that realisation comes the first time your long-honed instinct nags you to go finish editing that draft of chapter 1, and then it dawns on you: you never have to revise chapter 1 again!
In closing, what advice do I have for those preparing for their defence? First, don’t be nervous. Really, don’t be: there’s just no need for it. For the rest of your life, at dinner parties or receptions, people will ask you what you studied and when you begin excitedly telling them about your dissertation you’ll only get to about the 30 second mark when you’ll see their eyes glaze over and you’ll realise that they were only asking to be polite! Your defence, on the other hand, will be the first and last time in your life that you will have a room full of people who both know what you’re talking about and want to hear you talk about it – for several hours at that! Enjoy this chance while you have it! Second, don’t be afraid to direct the conversation. This will be one of your best chances to get really thoughtful and in-depth critique, especially if, like me, you have the benefit of a high calibre external examiner. Unfortunately, the structure of the defence – rules about who can speak when or for how long – can really limit that critical discussion. If there’s something you really want to bring up or draw attention to, therefore, don’t be afraid to speak up and direct the discussion that way. Finally, no matter how many people you’ve had edit your dissertation, you will still get a page long list of typos and corrections from the committee. I got 5 pages! (Most of them were just errors in accenting though, so that doesn’t matter, right? [Little joke for P.J. Williams there!]). Start getting ready to accept that now, and then it won’t seem so bad when it happens.
That’s my thoughts! And much thanks again to Tommy Wasserman for this invitation, and this venue.
Ryan Wettlaufer
Tuesday, January 04, 2011
"Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study"
In the end of December Ryan D. Wettlaufer successfully defended his thesis "Conjectural Emendation in New Testament Textual Criticism with the Epistle of James as a Case Study," submitted at the University of St.Michael’s College, University of Toronto. Six professors were present at the examination including supervisor John Kloppenborg and the external examiner Michael W. Holmes (via speaker phone). Below is the abstract. I have invited Ryan to share his thoughts about the occasion in a separate post which will follow tomorrow.
Congratulations Dr. Wettlaufer!
Congratulations Dr. Wettlaufer!
Abstract
This dissertation is a study of conjectural emendation as it relates to the text of the New Testament. Unlike many other ancient documents upon which textual criticism must be practiced, the New Testament has a rich and full textual history. Over the last two millennia it has inspired thousands of generations of copies, through which an astonishing amount of corruption has accumulated. Many counts suppose the total number of variants to be over 350,000. At most points it appears that the correct reading can be found in one of the close to 6000 manuscript copies that survive to this day. At a not-insignificant number of other points, however, none of the extant readings appears to be authentic. Such cases therefore call for resolution by conjecture, but in the history of New Testament scholarship the method has often been rejected, and modern printings of the text usually settle for the least inferior of the surviving readings. Why has this situation developed, and what should be done about it?
This dissertation will answer these questions by looking more closely at a number of different subjects. In chapter one it will engage in a more theoretical study of conjectural emendation. It will describe the nature and practice of the method in more detail, survey the history of its use and abuse within New Testament studies, and discuss its use by textual critics in other classical fields. It will then delve into three common reasons why New Testament critics have often rejected the method: 1) the hypothesis that the large number of surviving manuscript copies ensures that the correct reading necessarily survives somewhere among them; 2) the theological belief that God has providentially preserved the original text in one or more of the surviving manuscripts; 3) the philosophical position that textual critics should not privilege any one “original text,” by conjecture or otherwise, but should value instead the narrative revealed in the history of variation. It will then conclude with more practical instructions on when and how to make conjectures. The remaining chapters will move the discussion into concrete terms by engaging in several case studies from the epistle of James. In chapter two it will look at Jas 3:1 with its curious command that μὴ πολλοὶ διδάσκαλοι γίνεσθε. and subsequently argue that the text should be emended to read μὴ πολύλαλοι διδάσκαλοι γίνεσθε. Chapter three will turn to the famous conjecture of Erasmus, who proposed that the text of 4:2 be emended to read φθονεῖτε instead of φονεύετε. Chapter four explores how a long lost scriptural quotation can be rediscovered by emending πρὸς φθόνον to πρὸς τὸν θεόν. Finally, chapter five will look at what not to do by examining a farreaching conjectural proposal that would omit as interpolations the references to Christ in 1:1 and 2:1. Through these case studies, many of the ideas and truths that were explained in chapter one only in abstract will be seen to flow naturally from the texts themselves. In the end, all of this should work to restore in New Testament studies the place of conjectural emendation, and in so doing work to restore the text of the New Testament itself.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)