Looking for the dead amongst the living.

There's nothing particularly novel or interesting about the statement that legal interpretation and biblical interpretation have a lot in common. After all, both involve a (reasonably) closed canon -- in the best Jonathan Z. Smith sense of the term -- from which interpreters who are removed from the initial creation of aforementioned canon by anywhere from years to millennia try to wring applications to situations never contemplated, or contemplated "wrongly" by its original creators.

This is without question a nerve-racking task, regardless of whether one is trying to read 1 Timothy or the first Amendment, and the fear of "getting it wrong" is second only to the fear that there is no "right way" accessible to the interpreter. Ergo "originalism" in the realm of Constitutional Law and "inerrancy" in the realm of Biblical Interpretation (... is it any wonder that the warm endorsement of one frequently coincides with the eager embrace of the other?) The difficulty with either, of course, is that much as we would like to believe otherwise, no judge, scholar or minister approaches "the text" with a completely open mind, devoid of preconceptions or personal predilection -- gazing down the long, dark mine-shaft of history, we tend to discover that, hey, look! Paul, or, as the case may be, Thomas Jefferson, looks a lot like ME! (Thus the inimitable Ed Sanders' pictures of a couple of rather semitic-looking first-century gentlemen on his erstwhile webpage, labeled "Not Ed Sanders" -- good for him and, well, us!*)

In the field of Early Christianity, the problem of finding rather too precisely who or what one is looking for does not, of course, afflict only those looking for the historical Jesus of the historical Paul -- and the fact that we have rather more of the writings of, say, Augustine, than we do of the works of, say, Paul, tends to exacerbate the situation. In other words, having set out to find, however well-intentioned-ly and scholarly, Augustine's true views on _____, I have considerably more rope by which to hang myself and considerably more texts from which to read what, on some level, I hoped to find. This realization rouses as much unease for the historian as it does for the judge or the pastor: The future of the nation or the faith my not depend on whether Origen was truly a "heretic," but the shaky epistemological ground on which we find ourselves threatens to cave not only under our own feet but under those of our entire discipline in a veritable landslide of post-modernism.

I was reminded of this dilemma while reading Paula Fredriksen's (exceedingly fine) Augustine and the Jews. Prof. Fredriksen is, of course, an exceptional reader of texts, and excedingly careful in her conclusions; indeed, my anxiety probably reflects more on my own work of the various pro and adversus Iudaios writings of a different Father than Frederiksen's treatment of Augustine. I confess myself to be a bit too enamoured with a pro-Jewish (... or at least: less anti-Jewish ...) Augustine, Ephrem or Ambrose: Like most scholars, I harbor a good deal of affection for my subjects; without feeling the need to agree with them on everything (or anything), I nevertheless want them to be "good men" by my standards, my most stalward commitment to scholarly objectivity notwithstanding.

That's not to say that I would be any more likely to uncover "the truth" about Origen's views on homosexuality or Jerome's thoughts on women if I were hostilly inclined towards them or the larger social construct (... otherwise known as some variant of "the Church" ...) in which they find themselves: I would likely find a Father who looks rather less like his prior historical portrayal -- and that is, I think, nothing to be sneezed at -- but I would still fall short of grasping the holy grail of objectivity.

What then? Shall we throw over history as a failed venture? Perhaps -- only to the extent that we might do well to stick with the evidence (... the text, the epigraph, the icon, the architectural remains ...) and, in the words of an acquaintance, beware of grand sweeping theories. On a more modest level, though, it strikes me that the solution, such as it is, lies also with the very discomfort that historians experience when we probe our consciences and our subjects -- that it, in fact, lies in the very desire to write "Not P. Fredriksen" or "Not (Yours Truly)" under the icons or caricatures of the men and women we study.

That's my story -- and I'm sticking with it! ;)

* Courtesy of the Inter-Web, I'm told that Ed Sanders is indeed yummy. Who knew?