What if your life were your own personal The Truman Show, with cameras and everything, capturing every experience–but with your full knowledge and consent? What if everyone else did the same? Would history be perfect?
In the second section of his mammoth tome on historiography, Memory, History, Forgetting (K. Blamey and D. Pellauer, trans.; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Paul Ricoeur discusses the difficulty of gathering and evaluating testimony during the documentary phase of writing history:
The document sleeping in the archives is not just silent, it is an orphan. The testimonies it contains are detached from the authors who ‘gave birth’ to them. They are handed over to the care of those who are competent to question them and hence to defend them, by giving them aid and assistance. In our historical culture, the archive has assumed authority over those who consult it. We can speak, as I shall discuss further below, of a documentary revolution. In a period now taken to be outdated in historical research, work in the archives had the reputation of assuring the objectivity of historical knowledge, protected thereby from the historian’s subjectivity. For a less passive conception of consulting archives, the change in sign that turns an orphan text into one having authority is tied to the pairing of testimony with a heuristics of evidentiary proof. This pairing is common to testimony before a court and testimony gathered by the professional historian. The testimony is asked to prove itself. Thus it is testimony that brings aid and assistance to the orator or the historian who invokes it. As for what more specifically concerns history, the elevation of testimony to the rank of documentary proof will mark the high point of the reversal in the relationship of assistance that writing exercises in regard to ‘memory on crutches,’ that hupomnēmē, or artificial memory par excellence, to which myth grants only second place. Whatever may be the shifts in documentary history–positivism or not–the documentary frenzy too hold once and for all. Allow me to mention here from a more advanced phase of contemporary discourse (to be considered below), Yerulshalmi’s dread confronted with the archival swamp, and Pierre Nora’s exclamation, ‘Archive as much as you like: something will always be left out.’ (169)
Verifiability of testimony is a noted problem in historiography. But the rapid progress of technology has permanently changed the historiographical operation. Rather than searching through archives for a few documents on a person or event, we now have hundreds of thousands of Google hits to wade through. We used to be lucky if we had an eyewitness account of an ancient event; the Zapruder footage of the Kennedy assassination didn’t put all doubt to rest. Now, most of the developed and much of the developing worlds are filled with camera- and video-phones, so literally seconds after the shooting started at Virginia Tech or the tsunami assaulted Japan’s coast, anyone with an internet connection can watch.
It is not inconceivable–as it would have been even eight years ago when the original French edition of Memory, History, Forgetting was published–to imagine a 24/7/365 video camera on every one of Earth’s seven billion people. Yes, it is unlikely and prohibitively expensive–but it is not beyond the realm of possibility: the hardware and storage space are cheap enough.
If we had video cameras on everyone, then, wouldn’t we capture every human event from every perspective? Historiography would still exist in the writing of narrative, which “adds its modes of intelligibility to those of explanation/understanding; in turn these figures of style can be recognized to be figures of thought capable of adding a specific dimension of exhibition to the readability belonging to narratives” (276). But disputes over simple documentary facts would be obsolete, right?
Wrong.
It would be quite naïve to think that, even if the problem of forged video “testimonies” could be solved, that human beings would care “what actually happened.” Even events for which we have easily accessible testimony are mis-remembered in the minds of the public. Was it Al Gore or Dan Quayle (or neither!) who actually said, “I was recently on a tour of Latin America, and the only regret I have was that I didn’t study Latin harder in school so I could converse with those people”? I’ve received e-mails to each effect, and I’m sure the sender in each case was fully convinced that the vice-presidential candidate of the other party was stupid enough to have said it.
Speaking of VP candidates, the realization that prompted this post was an internet search (settling a bet with a coworker) on one of Sarah Palin’s more infamous quotations. As “everyone” knows, she said that Alaska and Russia were so close that she could see Russia from her back porch.
GIBSON: But this is not just reforming a government. This is also running a government on the huge international stage in a very dangerous world. When I asked John McCain about your national security credentials, he cited the fact that you have commanded the Alaskan National Guard and that Alaska is close to Russia. Are those sufficient credentials?
PALIN: But it is about reform of government and it’s about putting government back on the side of the people, and that has much to do with foreign policy and national security issues Let me speak specifically about a credential that I do bring to this table, Charlie, and that’s with the energy independence that I’ve been working on for these years as the governor of this state that produces nearly 20 percent of the U.S. domestic supply of energy, that I worked on as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, overseeing the oil and gas development in our state to produce more for the United States.
…
GIBSON: Let’s start, because we are near Russia, let’s start with Russia and Georgia.
The administration has said we’ve got to maintain the territorial integrity of Georgia. Do you believe the United States should try to restore Georgian sovereignty over South Ossetia and Abkhazia?
PALIN: First off, we’re going to continue good relations with Saakashvili there. I was able to speak with him the other day and giving him my commitment, as John McCain’s running mate, that we will be committed to Georgia. And we’ve got to keep an eye on Russia. For Russia to have exerted such pressure in terms of invading a smaller democratic country, unprovoked, is unacceptable and we have to keep…
GIBSON: You believe unprovoked.
PALIN: I do believe unprovoked and we have got to keep our eyes on Russia, under the leadership there. I think it was unfortunate. That manifestation that we saw with that invasion of Georgia shows us some steps backwards that Russia has recently taken away from the race toward a more democratic nation with democratic ideals.That’s why we have to keep an eye on Russia.
And, Charlie, you’re in Alaska. We have that very narrow maritime border between the United States, and the 49th state, Alaska, and Russia. They are our next door neighbors.We need to have a good relationship with them. They’re very, very important to us and they are our next door neighbor.
GIBSON: What insight into Russian actions, particularly in the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of the state give you?
PALIN: They’re our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska.
GIBSON: What insight does that give you into what they’re doing in Georgia?
PALIN: Well, I’m giving you that perspective of how small our world is and how important it is that we work with our allies to keep good relation with all of these countries, especially Russia. We will not repeat a Cold War. We must have good relationship with our allies, pressuring, also, helping us to remind Russia that it’s in their benefit, also, a mutually beneficial relationship for us all to be getting along.
Quite different! Now, I’m no fan of Sarah Palin–I think she’s egotistical, bizarre, and not nearly as smart as she would like to believe. But in this context she’s not saying that she literally believes she and Russia are neighbors, only that the proximity gives her more foreign-relations cred than most governors can claim.
Where did the “Russia from my house” meme come from?
Again, let this not be construed as an endorsement of Palin or a criticism of Tina Fey–I love Tina. But it’s disturbing that a parody of a (quasi-)serious public figure is embedded in the public memory in place of the actual figure:
All the information in the world (or of the world) will be useless unless it is consulted, digested and presented. Once it is presented in popular culture (and usually in academic culture as well), it does not matter “what actually happened”–only what is part of the collective memory.
Ricoeur thus finishes the paragraph that I quoted earlier:
Once freed of its disgrace and allowed arrogance, has the pharmakon of the archived document become more a poison than a remedy? (169)
John R. Lott, Jr., never a stranger to controversy, explains that government has grown since universal women’s suffrage, and why.
Michael Smerconish has an interesting take on Gov. Christie’s Helicoptergate scandal. (I’m not sure how I feel about Christie having to reïmburse the state for the infamous helicopter ride. He wasn’t flying a hooker somewhere–he is a busy public official trying to do his duty and also be there for his family.)
On the latest edition of Christ the Center, Camden talks with Dr. David Skeel of UPenn about Christianity in legal studies and bankruptcy law.
I just finished listening to Pride and Prejudice, one of my favorite novels. I hadn’t read it in a few years, and I’d forgotten how humorous and witty Austen was–several times I almost lost it in my cubicle.
Over at Cafe Hayek, Professor Boudreaux (not of Butt-Paste fame) channels Julian Simon, offering a 20-year bet on the number of Americans who will die from natural disasters.
Ben F. Meyer, on the early church’s understanding of the implications of Jesus’s resurrection:
“[Their] strictly eschatological understanding of resurrection was, of course, distinct from the idea of the revivification of the dead as met with in the Elijah and Elisha cycles or other miracle-stories. For there the terminus ad quem of the eschatological resurrection of the dead was ‘the age to come.’ Here lay the uniqueness of the resurrection of Christ: it was a step into the future. We can begin to understand the thrust of the paschal experience of the disciples only to the extent that we can grasp how the earliest church understood its already given participation in the future, i.e., today’s share in ‘the bread of tomorrow’: in forgiveness (as a proleptic realization of acquittal at the judgment), in charism (proleptic realization of the outpouring of the Spirit in the reign of God)–both of which were bound up with baptism–and, finally, in the eucharist (proleptic realization of the eschatological banquet). With respect to the risen Christ himself, the post paschal community evidences no stage of consciousness in which the exaltation of Jesus was lacking or his lordship still future. Regarded from the outset as the supreme eschatological event, the resurrection threw sudden light on the immediate past and future. As for the past, the crucified Jesus was vindicated as ho dikaios, the Righteous One; as for the future, the goal of Israel’s salvation history was on the point of attainment, for Jesus was already installed in glory as the Lord and Saviour to come. Those who called on his name were accordingly the first fruits of messianic Israel, destined for acquittal at the outbreak of the judgment. The resurrection was their clarion-call, for it grounded their hopes.” (The Aims of Jesus [San Jose: Pickwick Publications, 2002], 68, emphasis added.)
I love this paragraph, because it sums up the gospel so vividly. The early church believed that the end-time promises of God had rushed forward into their present, sounding the victory of God. Even as the Christians still lived in a world in which YHWH God of Israel was clearly not exercising his complete authority, they knew that he was the world’s true Lord, that he had been revealed in Jesus, and that he had won–even though he had not yet won.
Richard Hays discusses Paul’s use of Habakkuk’s “the Righteous One,” in an essay in The Conversion of the Imagination. Traditionally, Rom 1:17 has been read:
“For in it [the gospel] the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “BUT THE RIGHTEOUS man SHALL LIVE BY FAITH.” (NASB)
δικαιοσυνη γαρ θεου εν αυτω αποκαλυπτεται εκ πιστεως εις πιστιν καθως γεγραπται ο δε δικαιος εκ πιστεως ζησεται.
The NASB’s reading makes it sound like the gospel is about living a righteous life (“living by faith”). Hays uses 1QpHab to argue for “Righteous One” as a title, and that Paul’s use of Habakkuk 2:4b as predicting the resurrection of Jesus: “But he who by faith is righteous shall live.” The gospel is about the revelation of God’s righteousness (faithfulness to his promises) “from faith”–Jesus–“to faith”–those who believe in Jesus. The gospel vindicates Jesus as the Righteous One (cf 1:4), proves God’s future faithfulness to his promises, and means that the benefits that came to Jesus, i.e., resurrection, will come to all who believe in him.
The resurrection affects our entire present, which, as Meyer says, is “proleptic”: we anticipate God’s future in our present, because it’s already here.
There you go, Harold: that’s some real New Testament eschatology.
Here’s a wonderfully compassionate open pastoral letter from Tim Dalrymple to all those who believed in Harold Camping’s rapture prediction. An excerpt:
Tonight the Rapture Parties will go on. The atheists will gloat, the mockers will mock. Yet there’s nothing funny about this for you. You are broken and crestfallen, left abandoned in the ruins of unfulfilled expectations, among them the very highest expectations a human can have — the hope of union with God, the hope of a world made new, the hope that every tear will be wiped away. You are left disoriented. You were so sure of this. People you love and respect — perhaps your parents, your pastor, your mentor, your brother and sister — may have believed it too. You do not feel relieved that the end of the world did not arrive. You are not rid of this world yet, so all of its weight fell back upon your shoulders.
So let’s reflect on this together. First, what can be affirmed? What were you right to feel and to believe?
It’s been a few weeks since my previous travelogue post, and over a month since I returned from South Africa. A quick perusal of my posts since mid-April will show that I’ve been keeping busy, preaching, playing in the band, working on my thesis, and blogging about other things. There are quite a few more interesting things to write about the trip, though, so I’ll try to finish off the travelogue in the next week or so.
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I arrived in Cape Town late on Friday, April 1. Craig, a pastor friend-of-a-friend, picked me up at the airport quite late, and I slept until 11am the next morning. Craig shares a nice house in a hip section of town with another guy. He invited me to join him at an informal birthday gathering for one of his friends from church that afternoon, and then to watch a rugby match with another group of friends later in the afternoon. I had a wonderful day getting to know some of his friends, talking to “the locals” about culture, food, religion, politics–it was great fun. Craig very graciously drove me to Stellenbosch after the match–a drive of about 30 minutes.
After checking into my hotel, I got a hankerin’ for some beef late that first night in Stellenbosch. My hotel was on the southwestern edge of town, off of Dorpstraat, so I walked east toward the centre of town. It was a walk I would learn well, since the School of Theology is at Dorp and Drostdy, and the town centre is up Bird and Mill.
Once in town, I stopped in at the first pub on Dorp, De Akker. I pulled up a stool, ordered a beer and a burger, and chatted with a couple of older folks at the bar. I was surprised to find that my burger included a fried egg on the patty! I have to say, it sort of ruined the burger for me. I wondered if this were a standard South African way of serving a hamburger, but apparently it’s unique to this pub–one of the oldest in town.
Sunday morning, I walked into town again and attended St. Paul’s Church (CESA). I expected an Anglican service with traditional music, the BCP, short homily and the Eucharist. Instead, I found a band with drums and guitars (playing worship tunes from the early ’90s–my favorites!), no kneeling pads or BsCP, and no Eucharist! It was more like the PCA church I attend than the Reformed Episcopal church I’ve visited. Not disappointing, just not what I expected.
Monday I Voortrekked about the town, trying to find the International Office. The University is sort of sprawled over the eastern half of town, so I got to see quite a bit of it before I found my destination. After checking in and getting my student ID card, I walked back south to the School of Theology to meet Dr. Jonker for the first time.
We had a pleasant lunch at a local cafe. I find Dr. Jonker to be a very earnest and thoughtful conversation partner. He told me of the history of the School of Theology and its building. Apparently, the building was originally the seat of colonial government in the town, and the grounds were made into an island by digging an alternate channel for the river so that it flowed on both sides.
He also recounted his own experiences as an undergraduate and graduate student at the University, and some of his experiences growing up under Apartheid and watching its fall as quite a young man in the early ’90s. I believe he is in his 40s, and he told me of one of his black doctoral students who was the same age and grew up in essentially the same town as he had, except in the segregated black township. Having met at university as teacher and student, they realized that they had grown up in parallel worlds: attending segregated schools and churches. Dr. Jonker’s father was a police officer, and this black fellow’s father occasionally had run-ins with the police. Both Dr. Jonker and his student are grateful for their friendship that is now possible post-Apartheid.
I spent much of Monday and Tuesday studying for my OT examination with Dr. Jonker on Wednesday. The School of Theology has its own library, and I studied there quite a bit, but I also had all the books I needed in my hotel room, so I spent quite a bit of quiet time there. Being accustomed to having internet access wherever I go, I found it quite inconvenient to have no access at the hotel and no WiFi at the University (I didn’t want to pay to have my laptop or iPod Touch configured). I spent quite a few rand at the internet cafe on Bird St, mostly video-chatting with Corrie and Daniel. I felt emotionally isolated; I didn’t really know anyone, and I didn’t feel that I could speak freely to my wife in that public setting.
I also didn’t “go out” to eat very much. First of all, I was on a limited budget, and I’m quite satisfied with a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, a mango, an apple, and a bottle of wine. An excellent meal from the grocery store could cost me R25-R30, which is about $4. The cafés and restaurants were reasonably priced, but it’s just awkward to eat out by oneself. Plus, I was somewhat panicked about next week’s Ricoeur exam, so I preferred to eat in my room where I could read.
I needn’t have worried so much about the OT exam. I passed with flying colours, and I actually enjoyed discussing the material with Dr. Jonker. It’s so nice to have reached a period in my formal education in which I don’t have to study anything I really don’t want to; just about everything I read and write is interesting to me. Looking back, I wish I had been able to get more out of the classes I didn’t really like–but now I can just study those things as far as I wish to.
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In my next (and probably final) installment, I’ll recount more of my site-seeing experiences in Stellenbosch and then in Cape Town.
2 Kings 17 describes the destruction and captivity of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE:
In the ninth year of Hoshea, the king of Assyria captured Samaria, and he carried the Israelites away to Assyria and placed them in Halah, and on the Habor, the river of Gozan, and in the cities of the Medes….Therefore the LORD was very angry with Israel and removed them out of his sight. None was left but the tribe of Judah only….And the LORD rejected all the descendants of Israel and afflicted them and gave them into the hand of plunderers, until he had cast them out of his sight….The LORD removed Israel out of his sight, as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day. And the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, and Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the people of Israel. And they took possession of Samaria and lived in its cities. (2 Kgs 17:6, 18, 20, 23-24)
I’m going to offer three biblical reasons why this Southern portrayal of Israel’s complete destruction and exile should not be taken at face value.
1. The wording of 2 Kgs 17:23b and 25:21b is nearly identical:
17:23b: “So Israel was exiled from its land to Asshur, to the present day.”
וַיִּגֶל יְהוּדָה מֵעַל אַדְמָתוֹ
25:21b: “So Judah was exiled from its land.”
Yet, 2 Kgs 25 is clear in the verses preceding and following this contention that there were Judahites left in the land after 587 BCE (vv 12, 22-26). (This contention is supported by archeological evidence, but that is beyond the scope of this argument.) This gives us textual warrant to doubt Dtr’s contention that all the ethnic Israelites were deported from Samaria.
2. The Chronicler’s emphasis on kol yisra’el (“all Israel”; over 40x) in the Persian period makes little sense as a vision of restoration if ten of the twelve tribes are irretrievably lost in the East. Similarly, the DtrH’s emphasis on the inclusion of the Northern tribes[1] makes little sense unless Judah integrated some Northern refugees after 722. Nowhere in scripture, archeology or other historical record is there any evidence of a Northern return from Assyrian captivity.
3. The preservation of at least some members of the Northern tribes is confirmed by Luke 2:36, which records that the prophetess Anna is of the tribe of Asher. Even if this claim does not seem credible to modern historians, it indicates that some Jews in the first century CE at least claimed descent from the Northern tribes, a claim that their contemporaries considered plausible.
For these reasons, I think we can safely say that not all the ten tribes were lost, at least by the period described in Ezra-Nehemiah. Whether they were integrated into Judah prior to 587, or remained in the land alongside the imported peoples, Israelites remained in the land and continued Yahwistic worship, albeit in a form that was not acceptable to the Southern perspectives preserved in scripture.
I’ve tried to show from the text of scripture that this is so. I don’t think this undermines the true meaning of 2 Kings 17, which is that the Assyrian invasion was brought on by syncretism and other disobedience to God’s Law. By comparing scripture with other scripture (the whole counsel of God) and what we know from history, we can discern the true theological meaning of this individual chapter.
[1] This explains the presence of strongly pro-Judah and lesser pro-Northern strains in the DtrH, especially Judges. Judges values the primacy of Judah (Jdg 1:2, 19) and points to the needs for a Judahite-king (David), but also values the inclusion of Benjamin (Jdg 20-21) and the leadership of the prominent Northern clans (Deborah, Barak, Gideon, Samson, etc.).
Lester L. Grabbe, Ezra-Nehemiah (New York: Routledge, 1998).
Part of a holistic reading is not just to see how the text is structured and the parts fit the whole but also to recognize that sometimes a purely literary reading of the final form of the text does not do justice to what lies before us. A full analysis of the text may require one to ask how it came about—about its history, evolution, redaction, compilation. The emphasis in some of the literary approaches has been on how the work is structured and how the various elements within the narrative contribute to the message of the book; that is, they emphasize unity and integrity of the narrative. Such analyses have often been very helpful in appreciating the literature, have brought previously unrecognized meanings to the surface, and have corrected an earlier over-emphasis on tradition-historical criticism. However, a close reading does not always show literary skill; on the contrary, it may well disclose textual disharmony, bad writing, and clumsy editing. It may raise questions about the use of earlier traditions (which is, of course, a form of intertextuality), and it may well call into question the matter of authorial competence. (2)
think hard, think well 