Subject: Re: tc-list Mark 16:9-20 Style

From: Nichael Lynn Cramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998 09:04:53 -0500

Ken Litwak wrote:
>  [...] My point is that, if so many scholars think that Luke and
>Acts had the same author, yet Dawsey and others can argue against common
>authorship on stylistic grounds, then "style" must be so slippery a term
>that it may be inherently unhelpful.  

However --your repeated objections not withstanding-- the simple fact that
someone can "argue against" a "common" theory doesn't, of necessity and by
itself, render that theory useless or obsolete.

Thiede has argued for the early dating of the Magdalene fragments.
O'Callaghan has argued for NT texts at Qumran.  In other fields I can show
you any number of books and papers that argue against, say, relativity or
Darwinian evolution or for a rational values for Pi.  Yet no one would
suggest that any of these objections have turned these respective debates
into slippery slopes.

Any objection should of course be examined.  But we need to be wary of the
standard, letter-to-the-editor-ish cant that _any_ objection proves that
"even the experts can't agree" and therefore we can't take anything about
the debate seriously.

In short, there is disagreement and then there is disagreement.

> ... I don't have a definition of style
>that would be helpful.  That's the point.  

Perhaps the point is that there are other folks who do.
--
Nichael Cramer
[email-masked]
http://www.sover.net/~nichael/

---

From: Ken Litwak <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 07 Nov 1998 23:27:42 -0800

Nichael Lynn Cramer wrote:
snip
> Perhaps the point is that there are other folks who do.
Fine Nichael, as I said in my post, I'd like to see someone post a
definition of style that can account for all possible data and that
deals intelligently with all the possibilities.  For example, should the
delineation of someone's style forbid the use of vocabulary not in this
constructed style?  Is Mark allowed to use words not part of his style? 
I am not arguing that one critic makes other view points null and void. 
On the other hand, is it really academically sound to make an argument
based on style but not be willing to come clean and say what that
definite is? So, if you've got a definition of style that would be
useful for academic study and applicable to TC, please by all means post
it.  Don't merely reply to me that others have useful definitions. Is it
problematic to you that I want to be academically rigourous?  If you
know of a useful definition of style, please cite it.  The fundamental
problem is that everyone here has been using style without defining it. 
I submit that this is precisely the problem that I have found in work on
my dissertation, viz., lots of scholars say they are using
intertextuality without delineating what that means and it can mean lots
of things so it does not help particularly to state that you are using
this approach.  I am asking for something pretty basic to proper
scholarship:  define your terms.  Why is that problematic for
you?????????

Ken Litwak
Trinity College/University of Bristol