Christian Arrogance and a Rhetoric of Fiction

A braggart is defined by the dictionary as “a loud arrogant boaster.” Hence people who boast do so to give others a high opinion of themselves or of their accomplishments. Arrogance is defined as “a feeling or impression of superiority manifested in an overbearing manner or presumptuous claims.”

In the New Testament boasting and bragging arise from arrogance (Greek, alazoneia) and are regarded as evil (James 4:16). In addition arrogance is associated with access to excessive resources that support life (literally translated, “arrogance of life”). Such arrogance is “not of the Father,” but “of the world” (1 John 2:16). Arrogant boasting (alazones) is thought to be characteristic of people who have merely a “form of religion” but who actually deny its power (2 Tim 3:5). Boasting (Rom 1:30) is further described as a characteristic of “wicked people who suppress the truth” (Rom 1:18). Hence arrogance and boasting are not simple boorish behaviors, but rather they are included among an impressive array of negative behaviors condemned in biblical texts (Rom 1:28-31) that are characteristic behaviors of people whom God rejects (Rom 1:28).

Further, arrogance is associated in the New Testament with hubris (hubris), extreme pride or arrogance (Romans 1:30; hubris is translated in this verse as “insolent”). Aristotle defines hubris as doing and saying things at which the victim incurs shame, not in order that one may achieve anything other than what is done, but in order to get pleasure from it (Fisher, “hubris,” Oxford Classical Dictionary, 732-33). Instances of hubris in the ancient world were believed to draw retributive punishment from the ancient Greek Gods.

Imagine my surprise to learn that boasting is attributed to Yahweh, the God of ancient Israel, who was fond of saying: “I am Yahweh, and there is no other, besides me there is no God” (Isaiah 45:5; 43:11, 44:6, 44:8, 45:6, 45:21; compare Deuteronomy 4:35). Of course there were/are many Gods to be found in the ancient world but Yahweh was a jealous God and tolerated no rivals (Exodus 20:3, 5; 34:14). In Christianity the early Christ cults also tolerated no rivals to Jesus the anointed of the Lord: Luke writes: “There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved” (Acts 4:12).  Apparently, if one’s own God boasts, one tends to hear it as a positive statement of fact and not negatively as a boast. And if the boast concerns a tenet of one’s own religious belief, it is heard as a justification of the rightness of one’s religious belief. Thus, these two “brags” suggest that in the Bible some boasts are “good” while others are “bad”—even though arrogance and boasting as such are condemned in the New Testament.

Even the Apostle Paul boasted. For example, he boasted about some of his converts (2 Corinthians 7:14; 8:24; 9:1-3); he boasted about his own authority (2 Corinthians 10:8); and he boasted about his independence in not taking support from the Jesus gathering at Corinth (2 Corinthians 11:7-11). He boasted even when he knew that some would regard such speech as irrational discourse (2 Corinthians 11:16-33 and 12:1-10).

I am particularly interested in the claims of exclusivity in early Christianity as reflected in Acts 4:12—that there is no other way of salvation except through Jesus. Such an exclusive claim in effect completely dismisses the value of every other religion as meaningless.

What is it that allows people to gloss over disconnects like this (arrogance and boasting are acceptable in some cases but severely condemned generally) in the Bible and not even notice them. There could be many reasons, but they are basically overlooked because we are not taught to read the Bible critically. We have been misled by an effective rhetoric of fiction that touts the Bible as the “Word of God,” a claim that discourages readers from reading these ancient texts in a discriminating way.*

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

*See “Wry Thoughts about Religion” Jan 26, 2015: “When did the Bible become the Word of God?” and Jan 12, 2015: “What does the Term “Word of God” as applied to the Bible signify?”

The Problem of History in Mark

One hallmark of narrative fiction, which distinguishes the writing of fiction from the writing of history, is the novelist's ability to move in and out of a character's mind and tell the reader what a character is thinking. This shift in the reader's point of view from seeing events from the narrator's perspective to seeing the situation from within a paper-character's mind is a primary feature of the rhetoric¹ of fiction by which a flesh and blood author develops characters and furthers the plot of the novel.² Historians, on the other hand, work with theories as to what constitutes the chronology of past events; in doing so they are obligated to reconstruct their historical plan by a plausible cause and effect sequence. They do not have the luxury of appealing to what a participant in an event was thinking at the time in order to further their reconstruction of events. Historians cannot read the minds of flesh and blood people who are involved in historical events; it is easy, however, for novelists to read the minds of the characters they invent.

 

            The Author of the Gospel of Mark makes extensive use of interior views of a character's thoughts; two of Mark's characters even read the thoughts of other characters in the narrative: Jesus (2:5, 8; 12:15); Pilate (15:10).

 

            A technique the author uses repeatedly throughout the narrative is the feature of registering "astonishment" by characters or groups of characters to the presence of Jesus, to something he has said, or to something he has done (1:27; 2:12; 5:42; 6:51; 7:37; 9:15; 10:26, 32; 11:18; 12:17).  Mark also employs this technique with the young man at the empty tomb (16:5, 8). When one is astonished, one is struck with sudden great wonder and surprise. Astonishment is an inner emotional response to some exterior element, and reveals what is going on in the mind of the character. Providing interior views of characters is more prevalent among primitive storytellers, but modern fiction writers are artistically more self-conscious and use a variety of techniques.³

 

            Mark uses the technique excessively, providing access to the inner thoughts of individuals and groups throughout the narrative: Jesus (1:41; 5:30; 6:6, 34; 8:12; 10:14, 21; 11:12; 12:15; 14:33), the scribes (2:6), the disciples (4:41; 6:51-52; 10:41), minor characters (5:29; 14:4; 16:8), Herod (6:20, 26); Peter (9:6; 11:21; 14:72); chief priests and scribes (11:18); chief priests, priests, scribes and elders (11:32; 12:12), David (12:36), Pilate (15:5, 15, 44), Joseph (15:43).

 

            The most extensive instance of the use of an interior view is in the case of Jesus' tortured prayer in Gethsemane (14:34-36) in which he seeks a reprieve from the crucifixion—possibly the most realistic moment in the narrative, but oddly it was not information available to Mark from an outside source.

 

            These interior views provided to the reader by Mark are not traditional lore passed forward over time to the author orally by participants in the actual events. How could anyone have known, for example, what Herod "felt" (6:20, fear; 6:26, sorrow), unless Herod specifically told them? And the prayer of Jesus in Gethsemane may have even been an audible prayer, but Mark clearly rules out the possibility that it was overheard; Jesus was alone and Peter, James, and John were asleep (14:34-41)—hence it becomes an interior view. The interior views can only be accounted for as Mark's literary creations. It might very well be true, for example, that Joseph "took courage" (i.e., had mental or moral strength) in going to Pilate (16:43), but it is not historical data. The observation only represents how Mark wanted the reader to regard his paper-character Joseph in the situation presented in the story.

 

            What should one then say about the Gospel of Mark as historical narration, in light of the fact that Mark uses the conventions and literary techniques of novelistic fiction? Several years ago, I argued that Mark's realism (i.e., how Mark views objective reality) is more akin to literary works portraying a romantic realism (i.e., to works relatively free of realistic verisimilitude) than it is to historical realism.⁴ Mark's pronounced tendency to inform readers what characters are thinking in his narrative lacks verisimilitude (i.e., lacks in the appearance of truth), because no one can actually read minds, and know precisely what others are thinking—except omniscient narrators who invent characters and have absolute control of events in the novel. Mark appears to be such an omniscient narrator (i.e., knows everything)—even what his characters in the narrative are thinking.

 

            What should a reader think of Mark's reconstruction of the dialogue in the scene where Jesus appears before the High Priest (14:55-65)? Should the dialogue be regarded as what was actually said? Or did Mark the omniscient narrator create it as dialogue readers might expect in that situation?

 

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

 

¹That is the art of speaking and writing effectively.

²Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (2nd ed.; Chicago: University of Chicago, 1983), 16-20.

³Laurence Perrine, Perrine's Literature (edited by T. Arp and G. Johnson; 8th ed.; Fort Worth: Harcourt, 2002), 238.

⁴Hedrick "Realism in Western Narrative and the Gospel of Mark," Journal of Biblical Literature 126.2 (2007): 345-59.

John’s Gospel, History, and Fiction

There are three types of literature that are closely related in form and style: fiction, history, and gospel.  They all are narrative—that is they tell a story.  The character of two of these genres is well known: Fiction, by definition, is about things that never happened, but if it is realistic historical fiction one would have to add the following to the definition: although these things never occurred, they could have happened (in the sense that the realistic action approximates conventional reality).  History on the other hand, by definition is about things that did actually occur.

Gospel literature, according to critical scholarship, falls somewhere between the two definitions above—it is neither history nor fiction—or better, it is both history and fiction.  Gospel literature is unapologetically propaganda literature, which is enough to compromise its reliability as unbiased history, if one pauses to think about it.  Of course what we usually think of as history and fiction can also be propagandistic.  In fact they often are, and are thereby rendered unreliable for the same reason.  The historical character of the gospels is more akin to Eusebius' Life of Constantine, which is an encomium or eulogy (4^th century) written in praise of the first Christian emperor extolling his role in establishing fourth-century orthodoxy.  The encomium is not critical history, but pietistic propaganda.

I have argued in several essays that in many ways gospel narratives have more in common with fiction than history, in that gospel and fiction share many of the same techniques and conventions.  For example, ancient Greek novels frequently digress into vivid and fulsome description. In handbooks of rhetoric of the 2^nd century and later this phenomenon is called ekphrasis, "description."  Depending on who is explaining the reason for the feature, ekphrasis either digresses from the story to enhance the enjoyment of the reader (to make the narrative more vivid) or it is used to further the plot in some way.  Historical narrative, on the other hand, should not enhance data with the goal of increasing the reader's reading enjoyment, or aiding the historian's argument in some way.  If it introduces description that is not actually part of the events themselves in order to enrich the reading experience, to that extent the history is compromised as critical historical narrative.

In making a story more vivid a fiction writer often uses sensory words—words that appeal to the five senses: hearing, seeing, touching, tasting, and smelling.

In the Gospel of John there are only a few meager instances of enhancing description appealing to a physical sense:  seeing (4:35 white), (5:35 burning and shining), (20:5-7 purple), (21:7 naked [translations vary considerably]).  In an essay on colors in the Gospel of Mark (see below) I argued such meager description in Mark was likely due to the inadvertence of the author—it was just the way the author conceived what was being written that caused him to compose as he did; the author simply wrote what was in the mind's eye, so to speak.  I argued inadvertence because Mark had simply missed too many chances to enhance the reader's enjoyment with deliberate vivid language for the few color descriptions in Mark to be considered deliberate. With the exception of one other instance in John, inadvertence of the author may explain the few instances noted above.  In John 12:3, however, the author deliberately passes over into description enhancing the vividness of the narrative.  The entire passage is laced with vivid and sensual language: "Mary took a pound of costly ointment of pure nard and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair; and the house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment" (RSV).  In this instance the author of the gospel has evidentially utilized a technique of the fiction writer and appealed to the reader's physical senses of smell and touch, as well as to an economic sense by emphasizing the quality, high cost, and amount of the ointment.

The more gospel writers can be shown to use the techniques of narrative fiction, the longer will be the shadow of doubt cast over the gospels as historical narrative.

Charles W. Hedrick

Professor Emeritus

Missouri State University

Hedrick, "Conceiving the Narrative: Colors in Achilles Tatius and the Gospel of Mark" Pp. 177-97 in R. Hock, B. Chance, J. Perkins, eds., Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative (Atlanta: Scholars Press 1998).