D&D Campaign Settings Ranked

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The Hobbit: An Overextended Journey

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was definitely too long and perhaps too ambitious, but then I wasn't expecting a masterpiece. It's barely a fresh tomato (65%) as opposed to the gourmet ratings of each of the Lord of the Rings films (92%, 96%, 94%), and while I often cut against critical consensus, the reviews in this case are a pretty reliable gauge. The film is bloated like King Kong and proof that Peter Jackson needs an editor. Yet there's a lot I liked about it, most of which doesn't even come from the book, which makes my feelings paradoxical; I'm complaining about an oversized length while commending material that by rights has no place in the story.

My favorite is Radagast the Brown, and he fits perfectly in a plot involving the Necromancer of Dol Guldur. Tolkien's story had no room for this menace. The Hobbit was written for children, and it certainly never explained why Gandalf abandoned Bilbo and the dwarves once they hit Mirkwood Forest. You have to read Lord of the Rings to learn what his "pressing business" was in the southern neck of the woods. Jackson isn't sidestepping that business, in fact, he's making Sauron the villain as much as Smaug -- an ambitious project, to be sure, one that dramatically divides our interest, and it could turn out a mess. But meanwhile I love Radagast, who keeps a watch on the Hill of Sorcery, where the Necromancer (= Sauron) rolls out his poison against the forest.

Purists, to be sure, are already howling over the way Radagast is so "disrespectfully" portrayed. In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, he is dismissed as a crank only through the scorn of Saruman, while Jackson goes out of his way to make him a half-baked lunatic who lets birds nest in his hair and shit down his beard. This last gratifies me immensely, and I can't see what the fuss is about. (Perhaps being a purist entails not only a fundamentalist worship of the text, but also an unyielding disdain for anything vulgar like feces.) I adore everything about Jackson's Radagast. We're introduced to him as he tends to a dying hedgehog while his house is attacked by giant spiders; he remains tenderly focused on the hedgehog to its last gasp. Later he rescues Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarves from a warg attack, by running tails around the beasts with a (yes) rabbit-pulled sleigh. This sleigh has already become famous, and is admittedly quite silly, but only in the same appropriately silly way that hobbits dance to frivolous songs on barroom tables.

My second favorite part is that which is actually most faithful to the book: the riddle game between Bilbo and Gollum. I retain a special fondness for the Rankin & Bass animated treatment of this scene, so it's saying something that I think Jackson's is just as good. He delivers the exact same riddles from Tolkien's story, and a flawless depiction of Gollum's schizophrenia -- his hate and desperation mixed with loneliness and a craving of the company of his own kind. It's the heart of Unexpected Journey and carries a tense introspective thrust that resonates across future decades.

The final scene of this episode even outdoes the riddle contest, in spotlighting the "pity of Bilbo" which will of course become the basis for Gandalf's sermon to Frodo. Greg Wright summarizes the lesson nicely:

"The important point is not entirely that Bilbo finds room in his heart for mercy, motivated by pity. It's that, through that merciful act, the larger Providential arc of Divine movement is worked out. Neither Bilbo, nor Frodo, nor even Gandalf, Elrond, or Galadriel, are powerful enough to save Middle-earth from great Evil. Evil will ultimately destroy itself through its own evil impulses, and Gollum is the agent of that demise -- in spite of the best intentions of others."

Bilbo's pity, here and now in The Hobbit, is what saves Middle-Earth in The Lord of the Rings -- not Frodo (who will be a foreordained failure, unable to resist the Ring when it matters most), nor Gandalf (who can only aid the Free Peoples per his charge), and certainly not Aragorn (who will rule as a mere reminder of man's past glory and not a promise of any future glory). Bilbo's compassion makes possible what no member of the Fellowship can accomplish, and Jackson foreshadows the euchatastrophe beautifully. Gollum's tortured look is heartbreaking, and carries none of the cheesy melodrama that mars some the interactions between, say, Bilbo and Thorin.

There's more that I enjoyed in Unexpected Journey, but Radagast and Gollum stole the show. The Southern Mirkwood plot involves the White Council (Elrond, Galadriel, Saruman, and Ganalf) meeting at Rivendell, another delight for Tolkien fans, even if centuries of Necromancer history are outrageously condensed into a single year. I also liked the prologue of Smaug laying waste to Erebor; we don't get to see the dragon yet, and this somehow made the fire attack even more terrifying. What I didn't like was all the self-indulgent air front-loading the story in the Shire. The return of Frodo left me nonplussed (and Elijah Wood is looking too old now), and it took too long for the dwarves to assemble in Bag End, sing songs, gorge themselves, and get Bilbo to sign their bloody contract. Mind you, I love Bag End and am not averse to lingering in the Shire per se. In the extended version of Fellowship of the Ring I savored every moment of the 40-minute first act, as none of it dragged, even when doing little more than fleshing out character moments. The theatrical Hobbit, by contrast, gives us a 45-minute Shire episode which feels twice the length it needed to be -- a hyper-extended version that wouldn't even be warranted on DVD.

Then there is Goblin Town. If Bag End made me yawn with its vacuousness, Goblin Town bored me twice as much with its ridiculous excesses. Jackson's Spielberg-sickness has plainly gotten the better of him since King Kong. Granted there's always some suspension of disbelief required in fantasy blockbusters, but once dwarves are leaping over crumbling bridges like Olympic athletes, and falling down chasms with hardly a scratch, suspension of disbelief is a non-sequitur. It's the same as Ann Darrow plummeting through hundreds of feet of tree branches while doing impossible trapeze artistry, or King Kong whipping her to and fro enough times to snap her body like a twig; or like Indiana Jones bailing out of a plane with a goddamn river raft. It's adolescent fanboy nonsense that recognizes no laws of physics whatsoever, and makes acrobatic superheroes by sheer wish-fulfillment.

And that's not all. The Goblin-King himself is a major offense, resembling Jabba the Hut and speaking like a toad out of a lame Tim Burton film. Ironically, the other orc baddie, Azog, is impressively fearsome, and he doesn't even belong in the story; in the Tolkien canon he was killed by dwarves over a century ago. But in Jackson's revisionism Azog only appeared to die at the Battle of Azanulbizar, so he can now resurface and wreak vengeance on Thorin. I enjoyed this invented storyline far more than the "legitimate" Goblin-Town drama, and I'm sure purists will hate me for approving Jackson's liberties.

Those who complain that Jackson has made The Hobbit too much like Lord of the Rings miss the point. The Dol Guldur plot involves the Lord of the Rings and is the other half of the story I always wanted to see. (Then too I have fond if brutal gaming memories of Southern Mirkwood.) In the grand scheme of things, the White Council's strike against the Necromancer is more epic than the dwarves' against Smaug. The question is whether or not Jackson bit off more than he can chew and can make these two threads mesh well. The next two films will tell. This one is really an over-extended journey, a bloated stage-setter, that simultaneously engages and divides our interest.

Rating: 3 stars out of 5.

What Makes an Asshole: Two Theories

An increasing number of scholars are using the term "asshole" to describe someone for whom no polite word suffices. Two will be considered in this post. First is Bob Sutton, whose runaway bestseller The No Asshole Rule (2007) has gone a long way in helping people cope with assholes in the workplace. Sutton offers a litmus test to determine whether or not someone is an asshole:

(1) Does the person make someone feel oppressed, humiliated, de-energized, or belittled?
(2) Does the person aim his or her venom at people who are less powerful rather than at those who are more powerful?

The second gauge is critical. One thing I always keep in mind as a supervisor is that if I'm going to get nasty, it's going to be at my equals or superiors, not the poor folks subordinate to me. Not that I do in fact behave this way towards equals or superiors. But if I had to choose, I'd go for the jugular sideways or up the ladder of command. It's telling that assholes are cowards at heart: only the weak beat up on the weak.

Sutton also identifies tactics of assholes, the "dirty dozen" as he calls them: (1) personal insults, (2) invading one's personal territory, (3) uninvited physical contact, (4) threats and intimidation (verbal and non-verbal), (5) jokes and teasing used as insult-delivery systems, (6) withering email flames, (7) status slaps, (8) public shaming or status degradation rituals, (9) rude interruptions, (10) two-faced attacks/backhanded compliments, (11) dirty looks, (12) treating people like they're invisible. (p 10)

Sometimes I'm guilty of a fair share of (1), (5), (10), and (12) (so I better watch myself), and Sutton acknowledges that everyone (including himself) acts like an asshole from time to time. But occasionally acting like an asshole doesn't make one so. The asshole is "one who displays a persistent pattern, and has a history of episodes that end with one target after another feeling belittled, put down, humiliated, disrespected, oppressed, de-energized, and generally worse about themselves" (p 11), on account of any combination of the above tactics. Sutton's book is very helpful, and one I've recommended to both managers and underdogs.

If Sutton's focus is on the workplace, where assholes wield their tyranny over others by way of insults (however open or veiled) and shaming strategies, then Aaron James' scope is more global. Assholes: A Theory (2012) is hot off the press, and covers all species of assholes -- boorish assholes, smug assholes, dignified assholes, corporate assholes, political assholes, reckless assholes, self-aggrandizing assholes. Many of these breeds don't necessarily have power over people in the way co-workers do. And yet they do anyway -- by the sheer outrage they cause. This is what makes them fascinating as they are infuriating. Assholes, according to James, impose small costs on people. They're not murderers or rapists; they're not criminals who need to be locked up. They are the petty offenders who cut in line, rudely interrupt, weave in and out of traffic, park in handicapped spaces, speak loudly on cell phones in the wrong places -- small-time stuff, yet so outrageously upsetting that they make even the most unflappable of us want to lash out and do them violence.

Why is this the case? The reason, says James, has to do with the asshole's mentality rather than his deeds per se. He refuses (or is unable) to register other people as morally real and worthy of consideration. The asshole basically regards himself as above the rules and all-special. "If one is special on one's birthday, the asshole's birthday comes every day." (p 16) Victims of assholes aren't so much fighting for their rightful place in line or any other minor injustice. They are fighting to be recognized, to be respected as people.

The asshole, in other words, has three critical traits according to James. He

(1) allows himself to enjoy special advantages and does so systematically,

(2) does this out of an entrenched sense of entitlement, and

(3) is immunized by his sense of entitlement against the complaints of other people.

By his threefold definition, James finds that most assholes are men. This isn't surprising. In most cultures, men are taught to be assertive and outspoken, while women are conditioned to be more circumspect and pull their punches. Then too there is plain nature: high testosterone levels and other genetic traits predispose men toward asshole behavior in later life, and gender culture channels these dispositions even more. (I think James downplays nature in favor of cultural conditioning a bit much, but he has the right idea.) That's why it's so easy to rattle off examples of male assholes (Rush Limbaugh, Michael Moore, Richard Dawkins, Hugo Chavez, Donald Trump, Dick Cheney, Steve Jobs, Simon Cowell, Mel Gibson) while only few women come to mind (like Ann Coulter).

Which isn't to say that women fall in a necessarily flattering spotlight. James makes a distinction between the asshole and the "bitch", the latter of whom only half-fulfills condition (3).

"The bitch listens to the voiced complaints of others, making at least a show of recognition. Nevertheless, what is said makes no motivational difference to what she does; once her face-to-face encounter with you is over, it is as though you never talked. She 'recognizes' you in one sense: she acts as though she feels it is important to hear you out, to entertain your concerns. But this turns out to be only for show. The bitch betrays you behind her back. The asshole fails to recognize you to your face... The asshole is especially outrageous, because, whatever his private motives, he can't even be polite. And when he is polite, or even charming, fundamental respect is not the reason why. Other motives are in play." (pp 93-94)

There is a slight problem here. I'm not sure the asshole's brazen honesty makes him more outrageous. He's probably more upsetting to most people, but others might prefer candor to deceit. It will depend largely on the circumstance. We all appreciate respect to some degree or another (however genuine or feigned), but the bitch, as defined, can be insidious and on a deeper level just as offensive as the asshole.

On James' theory, certain nations are breeding grounds for assholes. He finds the worst hells-on-earth to be America, Italy, and Brazil. For whatever reason, he singles out Canada, Scandinavia, and Japan with cleaner bills of health, which he attributes to non-capitalist and/or collectivist (group-oriented) cultural conditioning. Speaking of Japan in particular (p 100), he opines that collectivist cultures appear less likely to engender or tolerate a sense of entitlement than individualist cultures, and thus diffuse a significant amount of ass-holism in advance. This is a valid observation if we agree with James's starting point that entitlement is the chief index in gauging ass-holism. But if we return to Bob Sutton's "dirty dozen" workplace-tactics as our framework -- which focus on insults, status degradation, and shaming strategies -- then suddenly collectivist cultures look more asshole-prone, not less.

This needs unpacking. In collectivist honor-shame cultures, insults are often esteemed as fine arts; belligerence a commendable show of machismo; public degradation a staple of life; two-faced attacks (and backhanded compliments) prestigious displays of wit; and treating others as if they are invisible a proper way of snubbing inferiors and equals. And Sutton seems aware of cultural predispositions like these. In the middle of The No Asshole Rule he brings honor-shame cultures into the discussion, and also honor-shame subcultures -- like that of the southern United States

"People raised in these cultures are especially polite and considerate in most interactions, in part because they want to avoid threatening the honor of others (and the fight it provokes)... [But] once they are affronted, men raised in these places often feel obligated to lash back and protect what is theirs, especially their right to be treated with respect or honor." (pp 116-117)

He then cites an intriguing study conducted in 1996 at the University of Michigan, in which the behavior patterns of southern and northern Americans were contrasted:

"Subjects (half southerners and half northerners) passed a stooge who 'accidentally' bumped into him and swore at him. There were big differences between how the northerners and southerners reacted: 65% of the northerners were amused by the bump and insult, and only 35% got angry; only 15% of the insulted southerners were amused, and 85% got angry. Not only that, a second study showed that southerners had strong physiological reactions to being bumped, especially substantial increases in cortisol (a hormone associated with high levels of stress and anxiety), as well as some signs of increased testosterone levels. Yet northerners showed no signs of physiological reaction to the bump and insult." (p 117)

In other words, if you are from an honor-shame culture like Asia or the Middle-East -- or in this case, from even an honor-shame subculture like the southern United States -- "you will likely be more polite than your colleagues most of the time, but if you run into an even mildly insulting asshole, you are prone to lash out and risk fueling a cycle of asshole poisoning" (p 118). In this sense, the importance of being polite in these shame-based societies is a form of preventive damage control, where people are concerned every moment about their precious honor. The data cited by Sutton would thus imply that people from collectivist (honor-shame) cultures have stronger asshole potentials -- the opposite of James' findings.

In my view, both Sutton and James have the right of it. It just depends on our working definition of an asshole. If entitlement is the major index (James), then capitalist-driven individualists will indeed shine as our greatest asshole exemplars. If insults and shaming strategies are the main gauge (Sutton), then collectivists will out-asshole us in other ways. It ends up a wash. Assholes cover the globe under different permutations; they are frequently men, and share a disdain for everyone but themselves, coupled with an effortless ability to dismiss, degrade, and infuriate.

Terrence Malick: From Best to Worst

Few artists have the luxury of being able to make films at their own snail's pace, and even fewer have this clout on the strength of a small number of films. Terrence Malick's five, released in '73, '78, '98, '05, '11, are not the box-office material that make one a Peter Jackson. (I always wondered at the reason for his 20-year hiatus between the second and third films and can't help but wonder if Malick was so depressed by '80s cinema that he swore off filmmaking forever; someday I'll have to write a blogpost about the evils of '80s American films.) I think of Malick as a composer of nature's symphonies. With one exception, nature is the lead character in all his work, through which plotting and the actual characters are filtered to yield an aesthetic that's pleasing, even exciting, whether you're inclined to arthouse or not. It was a given that Malick would place in this blogathon of favorite film directors, and here's how I rank his work.

1. The Tree of Life. 2011. 5 stars. Like Kubrick's Space Odyssey, this is a picture-perfect film attaining heights out of reach to all but the most gifted filmmakers. It spotlights an American Catholic family within a macrocosm of evolution, and an implied dialectic of nature vs. grace. If there ever was a case to be made for religionless Christianity, this is it. It pivots around a man reliving his childhood (in hindsight both wondrous and grim) while reflecting on his own place in the universe (negligible one level, having everything to do with it on another). In particular, grace emerges not as something which contradicts nature (even if it's its conceptual opposite), but something inherently part of it, or complementing it, or mutating from it. It's an incredible film, with each frame depending on just the right camera angle, scoring, and particular subtleties around snippets of dialogue you can barely hear. And it ends on a spiritual apocalypse that can strike to the heart of even the most unyielding atheist: the yearning for reunion in some form of afterlife, a hopeless fantasy we cling to in order to cope with pain and loss, gelling spendidly with the evolutionary framework of the film. I've seen The Tree of Life more than any other Malick film, and have been turned by new surprises each time.

2. Days of Heaven. 1978. 4 ½ stars. Quintessential Malick, gorgeous as it is simple, Days of Heaven preserves a still in every frame that you'd be proud to hang in your living room. As with Tree of Life, it's the kind of film that takes just the right director to make work. Or least for me, because I'm big on character, and here the characters are kept at arm's length even by Malick's standards. Nature is of course the lead in most of his work, but in Days of Heaven the horses, wheat, locusts, and pastures eclipse Bill and Abby to the extent we almost don't care a whit about their story with the dying farmer, yet remain hooked to the overall tapestry. There's nothing romantic in this vision: it shows nature like it is, completely indifferent to humanity, a theme strongly revisited in The Thin Red Line. Interesting is that Malick reportedly trashed his own screen-play during the production, deciding instead to allow the actors to improvise and find the story in their own way. And it shows, because nothing feels rehearsed -- it's as if you're watching something real through a painting come to life.

3. The Thin Red Line. 1998. 4 ½ stars. There are two films I can't avoid comparing to Saving Private Ryan, a film I never cared for. One is Kubrick's Paths of Glory, for the suicidal attempt to take the hill; it retains a brutal intensity that Spielberg couldn't match in the opening act of his overpraised film, much as he tried. The other is Malick's Thin Red Line, for the time of its release, the same year as Spielberg's but sadly overshadowed by it. This film laments warfare through naturalist philosophy, and it's horrific and uplifting in a completely organic way (as opposed to the manipulative cheap-story way of Saving Private Ryan). I maintain that anti-war films have the strongest difficulty doing right by the viewer. They must get their message across loud and clear, but without resorting to college-campus screed, political innuendo, or hollow contrivances. Bergman's Shame, Kubrick's Paths of Glory, and Malick's Thin Red Line are my trilogy of exhibits proving this is possible. What Bergman did at the level of personal intimacy, and Kubrick did along the ladder of military hierarchy, Malick expands to the broadest level possible, examining life and death in cosmic terms, finding beauty in each, yet an undeniable rage at the way the latter is reached. It's sheer genius.

4. Badlands. 1973. 4 ½ stars. Released the same year as The Exorcist, Malick's first film is in every way a '70s work par excellence, and one that only obliquely distinguishes itself as a Terrence Malick film. That's not a bad thing: the '70s were the Golden Age of filmmaking, and Badlands, like so many productions of this era, epitomizes the ideological emptiness of America after Vietnam and social upheaval of the '60s. Like many artists of the time, Malick takes an amoral stance, refusing to either condemn his delinquent killers or cheer them on as anti-heroes. The visuals of the American Midwest landscape are breathtaking -- on this point, the Malickian thumb-prints become evident -- but Badlands is the one film on this list where characters don't play second fiddle to nature. Malick is clearly trying to underscore the way characters react and relate to meaningless violence, and what I find most disturbing about it is the tone of disinterest and nonchalance; the duo don't relish killing, nor do they murder with any real purpose; it's just a way of life that came naturally to them given their circumstances. Of the umpteen Bonnie-and-Clyde films, Badlands is my choice, tied with Larry Clark's Another Day in Paradise.

5. The New World. 2005. 3 ½ stars. For all its stunning aesthetic, there's something fundamental about New World that irks me: this isn't the way I like historicals. I don't want figures like Pocahontas painted over Terrence Malick style, I want them delivered on a platter of artistic simplicity (as in A Man for all Seasons), induced documentary (as in Gospel According to St. Matthew), or even action-adventure brutality (as in Rob Roy). When nature is the main character -- as is almost always the case in a Malick film -- it distracts from what an historical epic should be about. Credit must be given for the way New World rescues Pocahontas from sissified Disney versions and portrays the love affair between her and Smith with subtle poetry. Most commendably, this isn't a slam against the White Man, nor a condescending, racist reverence for fantasy "noble savages" (who must nonetheless be saved by a whitey who grows to loathe himself -- per Dances with Wolves, The Last Samurai, Avatar, ad nauseum). Objectively, there's a lot to admire about this film. But I respect it from an emotional distance, because the historical genre is just not one I find suitable for Malick's style.

Next month: David Cronenberg.

Zeba Crook's SBL Response to Mark Goodacre

Mark Goodacre has posted his SBL critique of Zeba Crook's Parallel Gospels, which should be read before going further. Mark was one of four reviewers at the SBL session (the others being Struthers Malbon, Paul Foster, and Robert Derrenbacker), to whom Zeba responded at the end.

Zeba has given me permission to post his response-paper, but I'll just paste the Goodacre part, since the other three reviewers haven't (to my knowledge) made their papers available online. Readers of this blog know I hold both Mark and Zeba in high esteem, though on inter-synoptic issues, I obviously tend to see eye-to-eye more with Mark. But I haven't read Zeba's book and can't offer any critical assessments at this point. So read Mark's critique and Zeb's response, and weigh the wisdom of each.

________________________________________________

Zeba Crook, SBL 2012, Review Session on Parallel Gospels

[Response to Mark Goodacre]

"Goodacre suggests that word-level parallels are key to sound synopsis construction. I wholly agree, so let me explain. This is ideal synopsis construction meets real world market. I think Mark would have loved the original synopsis that OUP saw. But the synopsis OUP saw was over 500 pages, because lining up parallel words on parallel lines creates a lot of white space on the page. Now I really liked that white space; I felt it gave the student room to think. OUP didn't. They wanted a synopsis that was going to be affordable, and this one really is. Making the synopsis Goodacre wants would have been ideal, but it also would have been much more expensive.

"In the end, we (OUP and me) opted for a compromise: Words that begin a short syntactical section are paralleled. So, in the section to which Mark refers (#184; Matt 18:2//Mark 9:36//Luke 9:47b), it is true that the three instances of “young-child” are not on exactly the same line. But two lines above clearly starts a new section, beginning with the triple agreement on the aorist participle (having-summoned in Matt; having-taken in Mark; and having-taken-hold-of in Luke). So the very short section lines up at the start, and it lines up at the next stage (Matt 8:3 and Luke 9:48 == Mark doesn't have any text there), and then after Matthew’s verses 3-4, the three line up again at the start of the next section (Matt 8:5, Mark 9:37; and the continuation of Luke 9:38). A compromise had to be struck, between ideal synopsis construction and marketability, and I think this is actually a good compromise. Goodacre complains that it makes the student work harder, but I actually came to see this as an added benefit: my original synopsis was so word-paralleled that it left almost no work for the student to do!

"Next Goodacre comments on problems with clarity and readability that are the result of my one-to-one translation principle: that cuts me to the core, Mark. Everyone here needs to understand how much sleep I lost in the decade I spent on this book over the issue of readability. I don't need to be told that hupo with the genitive means 'by' not 'under.' I don't need to be told that tis with an accent can mean who AND what. But in end I had to decide that if my goal was to devise a way for the non-Greek-reading student to see what words the gospel writers shared, how they may have changed words and phrases a lot or a little, over and over again, then this was the only way. I had to accept that the goal was NOT translation, but rendition, and I had to accept that readability had to be sacrificed. But then I also realized this: if I wanted to produce a source-language translation, I had to follow through on it. The translation Goodacre wants in a synopsis already exists out there (in multiple forms), and they all show that tis can mean 'who' and they show that Jesus was baptized 'by' John, but they also produce endless false positives, false negatives, and generally create agreements where none actually exist. My goal was to create a new synopsis, not duplicate existing synopses.

"But then I realized this: synopses exist for only two reasons: to be able to compare gospels structurally and at the level of the minute detail. These details are the foundation of source and redaction criticism. The reader who wants readable 'scripture' can go to target-language translations like the NRSV or NIV; the reader without Greek who wants to be able to really see word agreements and disagreements among the Greek gospels needs this book to be able to do that. No other English synopsis book will give them that. Mark is not wrong: the translation is a challenge to read; but what the student gains from that translation is greater than the cost. I've been told on many occasions that students, after a couple weeks of grappling with the strange translation, have a eureka moment in which they both 'get' what's happening and find their eye can do the necessary skip and dance to read it somewhat fluidly.

"Finally, Goodacre suggests that giving a column for Q gives Q an unrealistic concrete tangibility, and that it forecloses this important debate. I think this is unfair. Making a column for Q no more forecloses the debate than including John and Thomas forecloses the debates about their relationship to the synoptics. Further, the reader who thinks I have foreclosed the debate on the existence of Q merely by placing it in a column has not actually read my synopsis: a) one only has to read to the second paragraph of my introduction to see me state clearly that a column for Q does not give it material status. It is there simply to give students access to what scholars think the text of Q looked like; b) I am extremely clear in my synoptic study guides that Q is hypothetical, that there is no evidence of its ever having existed, that those who disagree with the Q hypothesis are perfectly reasonable scholars; and c) there are ways, I think, in which my synopsis challenges positions of the 2DH: my translation results in way more minor agreements being visible, which are an issue for the 2DH, and there is this: one of the key planks on which the Q Hypothesis rests is that Matthew and Luke never agree on inserting double tradition into the same place in Mark, usually after Q 3:7-9 it is said. But my synopsis arrangement ends up with 8 pericope that Matt and Luke place Q at the same point in Mark (pericopae #s 17, 19, 23, 25, 89, 122, 123, 126). I was curious to know what Goodacre would think of including Q, but I expected him to be more effusive about the pro-Mark-without-Q features of my new synopsis over others."

UPDATE: Mark Goodacre responds to Zeb's response.

Plotting Among Giants and Drow

The most epic D&D campaign of the old-school era is the seven-module series later packaged into four: Against the Giants (G1-G3), Descent into the Depths of the Earth (D1-2), Vault of the Drow (D3), and Queen of the Demonweb Pits (Q1). From murderous dungeon crawls, to lethal underworld domains, to the unforgiving Abyss itself, players take on a coalition of giants in thrall to a group of drow (dark elves) whose hideous cultic allegiance spells disaster for the surface world.

What's fascinating about this series is how ambiguous the plot is. Of course, as a rule old-school modules kept plotting underdeveloped so as not to stifle DMs and railroad players, but for a multiple-module campaign to pull this off cohesively is no mean feat. James Maliszewski's retrospective of the D3 module, Vault of the Drow, offers one way of looking at the plot-path of the first six modules:

"There is absolutely no plot to [D3], just as there was no plot to its precursors in the D series. The 'plot' of the series, such as it is, mostly occurred in modules G1, G2, and G3, where the drow priestess of the Elder Elemental God, Eclavdra, was attempting to organize the giants into a vast army with which to subjugate a portion of the surface world, in the process gaining power for herself and her house, Eilservs. Once that plan is defeated, though, all that remains for the PCs is vengeance and exploration of the depths of the earth. Eclavdra -- or her clone -- reappears in Vault of the Drow, but only as the leader of House Eilservs, not as 'the big bad evil guy' of the module. No such personage exists in D3, as its 28 pages are devoted primarily to describing the city of Erelhei-Cinlu, its inhabitants, and their activities."

I suspect, however, that most DMs proceed on the design that Eclavdra (or her clone) has a backup plan in reserve if the giants fall, and that most PCs will assume that a drow attack on the surface world remains a viable threat. Otherwise there would be no point in pursuing the drow to their home under the earth. I never heard of PCs invading the underworld for pure vengeance or curiosity sake, though of course either scenario is possible. For myself as a DM, the Eilservs weren't giving up, regardless of the outcome in the fire giant hall. More to the point, even granting the two factions of drow posted there, it's exceedingly unlikely that PCs will have deduced (by the end of G3) that Eclavdra's crusade is opposed by most of the drow community.

Which brings us to the question of if and how and to what degree the PCs ever learn this, once they get past modules D1 and D2 and arrive in the Vault. Joe Bloch maintains there are two possible conclusions players will eventually draw as they proceed through D3:

(1) 'We need to stop the Eilservs once and for all, to halt their ambitions against the surface world.'

(2) 'We need to stop the drow once and for all, because they are evil and are ultimately a threat to the surface world.'

"The first attitude bears with it the implication that the drow factions can be parleyed with, and used against other drow factions. The second attitude implies that the party should be looking for some way to collapse the Vault itself...[In the second case] they have effectively declared war on the entire city. Wish them luck, and I hope they have 4d6 handy to roll up new characters... The module, of course, implies the first option."

I'm not so sure. There is a third possibility which straddles these two options, and indeed the one that seems to form the premise of later campaigns developed for 3rd edition D&D: that "marauders [PCs] from the upper world assaulted not only the Eilservs estate, but also the Fane of Lolth itself" (Dragon #298, p 84), which initiated an all-out war on the upper world, this time spearheaded by Lolth (who in the G1-Q1 modules opposed such action), as well as a civil war in the Vault (the priestess wars). I never heard of PCs who went into the Vault without, in some way, striking against the Fane. Granted I had a poor understanding of how to run Vault of the Drow in my early gaming years (see here, #4), I'm dubious that players, without heavy-handed steering from a DM, can bring themselves to ascribe to any drow faction a complete hostility/opposition to the spider goddess. After all, House Eilservs still coexists alongside the other Houses, right next door to the Fane.

Furthermore, option (2) is a reasonable conclusion in any case. The feud between House Eilservs (serving the Elemental God and allied with House Tormtor) and the Fane (serving Lolth and allied with all the other noble houses) owes to local politics, namely Eclavdra's desire to set herself up as Queen of the Drow, thus undermining clerical autonomy. Her crusade against the upper world is intended to consolidate a power base more than anything, but the fact is that all drow are ultimately driven by their ancient grudge against the surface, and not least Lolth's priestesses. Subjugation of other races is hardwired in drow genes; if one house can start a crusade out of self-interest, so can another, and so (especially) can the Fane. What the Fane is opposing is not a crusade against the surface per se, but Eclavdra's crusade and her bid for power, which also promulgates the worship of a rival deity.

Only PCs with high risk-addiction complexes would likely try allying with the Fane, as Bloch suggests, even on the logic that "the enemy of my enemy is my tool". If the drow were lawful-evil oriented, that would be one thing, but they're intrinsically chaotic and poisonous like the spiders they nest with. Getting in bed with the sisterhood is arguably as much an invitation to the grave as declaring war on the Vault. Lolth, for her part, thrives on the divisiveness and backbiting of her people, and would characteristically shaft any makeshift allies (especially foreign ones) at first opportunity. All things considered, PCs would be justified in concluding that the Fane is the ultimate (if not immediate) menace, and in striking a blow against both it and the rebellious Eilservs to send a clear message.

My point is not that restricting oneself to Bloch's option (1) is necessarily misguided, just that it's not the only sane course of action open to PCs. It's possible, with enough shrewdness and care, to strike against the Fane without having to take on the entire Vault. On the other hand, I agree completely with Bloch that there isn't much reason, per the plot design of G1-D3, for players to take the audacious step of confronting Lolth on the Abyss in order to kill her. It's been widely acknowledged how disappointing Q1 was in terms of design (as Gygax bailed on the project and left it in the hands of David Sutherland), but it's seldom acknowledged how much of a non-sequitur it is. Q1 only makes sense if the PCs are overambitious hotheads or fools -- or if they just want the orgasmic thrill of trying to kill a goddess on her home plane (which perhaps makes Q1 realistic after all!). On the other hand, Q1 could become relevant at the later time, when Lolth takes over the assault on the upper world, which is the follow-up scenario designed for later editions of D&D.

The fact that the plotting of G1-Q1 remains so murky and debatable is precisely its strength. In old-school D&D, plotting was barely integral to module design, and left largely to the interactive dynamic between DMs and players. In this sense, at least, Bloch's scenarios are as credible as anything I've countered with. That's what made the game what it was. Gygax even spelled this upfront:

"While considerable detail has been given, it is up to you to fill in any needed information and to color the whole thing and bring it to life. You, as Dungeon Master, must continue to improvise and create, for your players will certainly desire more descriptions, seek to do things not provided for here, and generally do things which are not anticipated. The script is here, but you will direct the whole, rewrite parts, and sit in final judgment." (Against the Giants, p 16)

This sort of gaming philosophy is of course anathema to the script slavery and rigid plotting of later "modules" (Dragonlance and beyond), which hand-held DMs and predestined players. G1-Q1 are a healthy reminder that series modules can indeed work with minimal plotting.

Old School D&D: Simple Rules, Great Modules

If I had to sum up the attraction of old-school Dungeons & Dragons in a single phrase, it would be: "simple rules, great modules". Nowadays things are so backwards. There's a D&D rulebook, it seems, for everything under the sun, and modules aren't even close to what they used to be. You certainly don't hear gamers rhapsodizing about modules like I did back in the day, when we couldn't wait to get to the store to buy the new temple of darkness penned by Gary Gygax, or the coastal haunted house that masked a nefarious business. James Maliszewski has written extensively about the evolution of D&D modules, one of my favorite posts being Locale and Plot.

Essentially, as Maliszewski contends, the D&D modules of the late '70s & early '80s focused on presenting locales with minimal plotting. Any plot resulted from a dynamic unfolding of what happened to the PCs once they were there, not something the module authors scripted in advance. Dragonlance (in 1984) changed that focus, introducing heavy-handed plotting on prepackaged narratives, with the result that PCs became increasingly consigned to enacting preordained roles. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, it got to the point that modules weren't really "modules" anymore -- things you could pick up and drop into your own adventure with ease. They became the adventures themselves, which defeated the whole concept of interchangeability that was inherent to a "module".

And of course, by the time of 3rd edition D&D (in 2000), the term "module" had indeed been officially dropped in favor of "adventure". But that switch in terminology should have occurred sometime in the mid to late '80s, prior to the release of even 2nd edition D&D. Story supplanted design to the extent that role-playing felt more and more like script-slavery. This isn't to say (as Maliszewski emphasizes) that old-school gamers didn't create their own stories; far from it. The point is that they were their own stories, not the module authors', and more importantly, the stories grew by the spontaneity (and often unpredictability) of the players' seat-of-the-pants actions. Post-1983 modules were, to use the old-school cuss word, "railroady", meaning they forced players on too many paths or plots to make the module "work". There's obviously some degree of railroading to any D&D campaign (otherwise it could be hard to get one off the ground), but the ratio of PC free will to DM predestination was large by design in the old days. DMs were trained to expect the unexpected from their players, and to shift gears accordingly.

Dragonlance ushered in nothing less than a lazy breed of gaming, often justified by the insistence that DMs no longer had as much free time to develop plots on their own and prepare for counterplots. Maliszewski rightly refutes this: creating a plot/story is the easiest part of being a DM, not the hardest. It's the modular parts -- maps, room descriptions, treasures, monsters, encounter areas, game stats -- that are a pain in the ass and so bloody time consuming for the referee to develop. And it's this stuff that need to feel inspired. Dungeons, cities, and wilderness locales are where creative energy need to be poured, and where we relied so heavily on the genius imaginations of Gary Gygax, Tom Moldvay, David Cook, and Roger Moore -- and believe me, I'm the first to admit that my own self-designed modules weren't nearly as inspiring as theirs. The overarching plot and adventure, however, is more basic, and what I want to be my own. Just as I want my characters to be my own as a player. (Pre-generated characters, except in tournament settings, are as anathema to the spirit of D&D role-playing as pre-packaged adventures.)

Let's be frank: there haven't been awesomely inspiring modules like Tomb of Horrors, The Lost City, Castle Amber, and Vault of the Drow in a long time. They succeeded so well, and remain classics, because they detailed as much as they inspired, around minimal plotting. They were suitable as self-standing isolated affairs, but could just as easily be worked into larger campaigns -- adventures, that is, determined by the interactive dynamic between DMs and players.

The Best of William Friedkin

I've been excited to get to William Friedkin in this blogathon of favorite film directors, and not just because he ruined my child-psyche with The Exorcist. He practically reinvented American cinema in the '70s, but strangely, in the eyes of many, fell from grace after the '80s. Not in mine. Amidst his '90s "garbage" he crafted at least one masterpiece (even it was a remake), and in the last five years has had a serious comeback with two insanely wild Tracy Letts scripts. But even in mediocrity, Friedkin worked a magic that's hard for me to define. He reveled in documentary-style realism, '70s-style introspection, and searing intensities that remind me why I watch film: for emotional payoff to dramas that make us question the premises of our crazy world. Whether or not he's aware of it, he seems to share Tolkien's view of the "long defeat", the idea that in every generation we must face evil in some form and oppose it -- even if it's just a temporary holding action or lost cause -- while also confronting evil in ourselves. Happy endings are foreign here. Of the 20 films he's done between 1967 and this year, here are my 10 favorites. This November installment comes a day early, as the top slot demands that it be featured on Halloween.

1. The Exorcist. 1973. 5+ stars. In this year-long blogathon, you will see me awarding three, and only three, films with a beyond-perfect rating of "5+". This is one of them. It messed me up so badly when I was a kid that some nights I lay paralyzed in bed, afraid to fall asleep or stay awake. It starts out documentary-style in Iraq, then moves to the suburbs of Washington D.C., the terror building slowly -- and with patient character development so typical of '70s scripts -- until it explodes into the mother of all horror films. Somehow Friedkin came up with exactly what you'd imagine a demon to look and sound and act like, and this one proceeds to beat the shit out of a 12-year old girl from the inside out. She speaks like the damned, pukes buckets of green, and reams herself bloody with crucifixes, until two priests finally intervene with a long ritual that kills them both. The girl is saved, but the power of good over evil is far from clear. Some continue to insist that The Exorcist is an unspeakable obscenity, and in many ways it is. It couldn't have made in a decade other than the '70s, and I state for a fact there will never again be a movie so frightening and well done.

2. 12 Angry Men. 1997. 5 stars. I've seen this so many times I can recite the dialogue, which is saying something since there's nothing but, sharp and constant. It's a rare case of a remake surpassing an excellent classic; that it hasn't been released on DVD yet is insane. This time the jury room is populated by a good fraction of Afro-Americans, and better acting by all involved, to make the film more relevant. The best performance comes from Mykelti Williamson as racist juror #10, now a Muslim whose burning contempt for Hispanics and nasty put-downs draw the ire of the other black jurors. As for the two leads, George C. Scott is as good as his predecessor Lee J. Cobb, as the unyielding juror #3, and ditto for Jack Lemmon, who replaces Henry Fonda as moral crusader juror #8. Then there is Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays the shrewd intellectual antagonist, juror #4, who has always been my secret hero of 12 Angry Men. But they're all good, each and every one, and their interactions almost too real to be staged. Hot tempers and shouting matches have never been more primal.

3. Killer Joe. 2012. 5 stars. I saw this recently and as far as I'm concerned it's the film of the year. The script is by Tracy Letts, and so chock full of sex and sadistic violence that it earns the NC-17 rating that would have been slapped on The Exorcist had the label existed back then. And if The Exorcist was about a family under attack by unstoppable evil, so is Killer Joe. Opposite '80s films which saw hope in the nuclear family, this film kills that fantasy with cruelty, and it's a Fargo-like comedy to boot, so you get filthy sick laughing your ass off. The story: a gambler can't pay his debts and so hires a hit man to kill his mother for insurance money; because he can't front the advance payment, he loans Killer Joe his sister for sex; the mother gets bumped off, but it turns out she left her money to someone else; things careen out of control -- around misogynistic beatings and trailer-trash violence -- to an outrageous climax involving a forced blowjob with a chicken leg, and an unforgettable "last supper". I applaud Friedkin for sacrificing the financial payback that would have come with a censored R-rating.

4. Bug. 2007. 5 stars. Ashley Judd proves she can act for a change, and goes completely batshit in the sweaty confined setting of a motel room where her universe swiftly collapses. Tracy Letts is again the writer, adapting his own stage play about a woman who takes on the insanity of a dangerously paranoid boyfriend. Convinced that he's infected by tiny insects that spy for the U.S. government, he claws himself apart, and yanks out his teeth with pliers, in order to rid himself of the perfidious "bugs", and rants non-stop about government control, UFOs, and cult victims. The narrative crescendo builds until your nerves are screaming, and the sudden horrific ending -- Agnes and Peter pour gasoline on themselves and light up -- leaves you wondering what the hell you watched for the last two hours. Only Ingmar Bergman's Hour of the Wolf has dealt with the theme of contagious insanity so compellingly. At heart, I see Bug as a story about two lonely people trying to compensate for their miserably empty lives, until they die deliriously in the comfort of each other's arms.

5. Rampage. 1987. 4 ½ stars. [1992 version: 2 stars.] In spite of being nominated for awards, this film is almost impossible to come by, or at least the '87 version is. The '92 version is a very different film. Basically, Friedkin made a gem whose distributor went under, and by the time he could get a new one had evidently become a strong advocate of the death penalty. The original version stacks the decks on both sides of the issue; the "official" version is a right-wing sermon. Both versions are based on real-life serial killer Richard Chase, who shot people in their homes, sodomized women's corpses and drank their blood. It's a gruesome thriller that becomes a courtroom drama focusing on the question of legal insanity, and in the well-done '87 version we're really not persuaded by either the prosecution or the defense, regardless of our own views. I, for one, endorse capital punishment for people like Chase (if you want to know why, see here), but that doesn't mean I want to be preached to, even if I'm the choir. It's so unlike Friedkin to trash artistry in favor of didacticism, and my guess is that he had (understandably) become so fed up with sentimental Hollywood agendas bashing the death penalty at every turn.

6. The French Connection. 1971. 4 ½ stars. Most consider this Friedkin's masterpiece after The Exorcist, but it's a bit weak on character. Aside from that, it holds up astonishingly well. It's all atmosphere (cold New York greys) and suspense (stalking, chasing, shooting), and makes you long for the old days when filmmakers really understood suspense. Only recently did I learn the appalling reality behind the famous car chase, that Friedkin didn't get permission from city officials, that he unleashed chaos on an unprepared New York, put people's lives at risk and caused real accidents; it's a miracle he and his crew weren't arrested. The scenes of violence are well played, held in reserve until exactly the right moment, perhaps the most shocking one being the sniper shooting down at Gene Hackman's character, but missing and hitting a lady with a baby carriage. Everything about The French Connection indicts old-fashioned police thrillers where the good guys can be counted on to prevail. Friedkin worked with real cops and portrays his cop-heroes as dirty as their profession requires; they don't win in the end (the French druglord escapes) and even get punished by being transferred out of narcotics.

7. To Live and Die in L.A. 1985. 4 stars. The contemporary trappings stand out, but in a mostly good way, as they copy something decent that actually came out of the '80s: Miami Vice. In fact, Michael Mann sued Friedkin for supposedly stealing the concept for this film. Like Sonny Crockett, Richard Chance is a cop who tries too hard to be cool, an obnoxious reaction to the Reagan years, playing fast and loose with the law when it fails to bring justice to scumbags. If you never tuned in to Miami Vice, you'd think this blurring of cops and criminals was near unprecedented. It's also yet another showcasing for an exceptional car chase, this time barreling up a highway in the wrong direction. (It seems Friedkin felt obligated to push the envelope with a car chase once a decade: The French Connection in the '70s, this one in the '80s, and Jade in the '90s.) It's a revenge story at heart, as an unhinged cop does everything possible to bring down a counterfeiter who killed his partner.

8. Jade. 1995. 3 ½ stars. Of all the sore reputations in cinema, none have confounded me like Jade. Panned as a trashy murder mystery lacking substance, it's for-God's-sake not supposed to rely on "substance", and certainly doesn't pretend to be anything more than it is -- an erotic thriller with all the Joe Eszterhas usuals. (Frankly, I think Eszterhas did better with this script than Basic Instinct's, though of course Friedkin notoriously tampered with it.) There are the obligatory blends of violence and sex; women who feed misogynist or feminist fantasies, depending on your point of view. The camera's attention to exotic masks becomes a metaphor for the deeper, invisible masks worn by everyone: the assistant DA's renegade detectives, his best friend and jealous rival, and, of course, the enigmatic Jade herself. Then there's, yes, a superb car chase, which, no, isn't French Connection worthy, but still damn impressive, and I'm tough to please with car scenes. Jade is no masterpiece, but for me it's very enjoyable, and I can understand why Friedkin calls it one of his favorite creations.

9. Rules of Engagement. 2000. 3 ½ stars. Another thriller-courtroom drama, but a more mainstream effort than Rampage. This one too has the balls to flip off Hollywood liberalism, but in the right way, unlike Rampage's later version which could only bash it through an equally problematic opposite bias. Here we are made to identify with a marine colonel who murders a prisoner of war and orders fire on a crowd of protesters, as he had good reasons for doing both. Those who accuse this film of being anti-Arab are fools. An examination of the difficulties soldiers face under threat of terrorism is in no way racist, and Friedkin was right to dismiss these accusations with contempt. He used the jihadist milieu to put ethical question marks over the U.S. military's rules of engagement in dealing with hostile civilian crowds, while at the same time skewering government officials who scapegoat soldiers instead of accepting responsibility in complex situations. He did this quite well, and Samuel Jackson plays the marine colonel under court martial superbly.

10. Sorcerer. 1977. 3 stars. This is one of those commercial disasters turned cult classic, and its release at the time of Star Wars had everything to do with it. One might even say that the two films symbolize the falling out of a certain genre (gritty '70s amorality) alongside the ascendance of another (action blockbusters). And make no mistake, Sorcerer is gritty as they come. Four high-profile criminals from different countries are hiding out in South America, living in conditions so squalid and hideous you can almost feel the reek of disease. They hook up taking a high-paying job, which involves driving trucks containing unstable explosives through impossible wilderness obstacles -- the famous sequence being the teetering off a rotten bridge (see left). I never warmed to Sorcerer as much as the cult-following has, but it is a decent film that deserved better than being overshadowed when it did. The Tangerine Dream scoring is fantastic; the characters a bit hard to care about; the fantasy title makes no sense at all.

Next month: Terrence Malick.

Music Video Pick List

In protest against Black Friday, I stayed home today and did nothing much beyond passing gas. I did use the time to compile a ranking of my favorite music videos, which I'm happy to share. Enjoy.

1. Ode to My Family, by the Cranberries. 1994. Thankful and mournful at the same time -- and God knows the Irish have a lot to mourn -- this is almost a perfect Thanksgiving video, and so tops my list. It also happens to be one of my favorite songs of all time.

2. Strawberry Swing, by Coldplay. 2008. Possibly my favorite animated video, it captures a magic that's hard to describe. From the band's best album, Viva la Vida.

3. Little Feet (Live, the Hunt Memorial Library), by Old Abram Brown. 2010. I don't know why this feels so Thanksgiving, but it does, and I place it as high as #3 since this indie band isn't known half as well as it deserves to be. Great acoustics at the Hunt Library building in my home town.

4. Skeletons, by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. 2009. I can't think of a more stunningly beautiful depiction of the morbid. I don't want a funeral when I die, but if people throw me some kind of party, I'd like this video played at the event, please.

5. Sledgehammer, by Peter Gabriel. 1986. If you remember '80s videos as being horrendously embarrassing, you're right, and that's all the more reason why this one retains the honor of being the most played MTV video in the history of the station. Peter Gabriel was ahead of his time in every way, and Sledgehammer is pure classic.

6. Where the Streets Have No Name (Live, Slane Castle), by U2. 2001. When I think of songs that have "evolved", this one comes first to mind. The live performances are always better than the studio, and always very different. Slane Castle rules them all.

7. No Light, No Light, by Florence + the Machine. 2011. It was a tough pick between this one and Spectrum -- both of Florence's videos are simply mind-blowing.

8. Closer to the Heart (with Bubbles), by Rush. 2007. This '70s classic was played as part of a fund-raiser for the Solomon Islands tsunami devastation, with Bubbles (from the vulgar hilarious Candian comedy Trailer Park Boys) playing guitar with the band members. Drummer Neal Peart hasn't lost his touch.

9. No More I Love You’s, by Annie Lennox. 1995. Graceful, creepy, and arresting in the way only Annie Lennox can be. A longtime favorite.

10. What Makes You Beautiful, by One Direction. 2011. Well, how can you possibly argue with this one? I mean, just listen to these neo-Beatles... these darling boys... and you'll fall in love... right?

Herschel Shanks and Harvard's "Cowardice"

I'm not the biggest fan of Herschel Shanks, and his take on the "Jesus' Wife" controversy doesn't surprise me. He writes:

"What is wrong...is for the Harvard Theological Review to suspend publication because of the dispute about authenticity. Dispute is the life of scholarship. It is to be welcomed, not fled from. When a professor at the Harvard Divinity School, backed up by two experts from Princeton and NYU who declare the text to be authentic, presents the case—and tentatively at that—that should be enough for HTR to publish King's article, not to cowardly suspend its decision to publish. Instead, HTR has cringed because there will now be a dispute as to authenticity. This is shameful."

No, Herschel. When a text has enough tell-tale signs of being fake, it is academically responsible to hold off; it is proper and prudent to err on the side of skepticism. If you're wrong that way, then fine, it costs nothing. But if it turns out you've entertained seriously what's indeed a fraud -- no matter what qualifiers and disclaimers you've piled on -- then you've not only wasted time and labor, you've been played a fool. People like Shanks need to read Harold Love; the punishment he calls for may be tongue-in-cheek, but the implications about academic credulity serious:

"Faking is the cancer of scholarship. The appropriate punishment for fakers should be public execution, with a last-minute interruption when a reprieve is brought to the gallows, only to be disregarded when it is discovered to be a fake. Likewise there is nothing amusing in the fact that a fellow scholar may have been misled by a fake: it is a sign of incompetence and dereliction in the individual concerned." (Attributing Authorship, pp 192-193)

Lest I be misconstrued, I'm not implying that Karen King is a bad scholar (see also Mark Goodacre), and it goes (I hope) without saying that she deserves no associations with a crank like Simcha Jacobovici. But in light of everything, Harvard's holding off her publication is simply the prudent move.

Retrospective/Review: Q, Thomas, and Killjoy Scholarship

Spring 2002: "If we were to dispense with Q, it would not be without tears. For Q has been all over the world, loved by everyone, feminists and liberation theologians, the sober and the sensational, the scholar and the layperson, a document with universal appeal. Indeed one of the keys to its success has been its ability to woo both conservatives and radicals alike. While conservatives, for example, are drawn by its early witness to the sayings of Jesus, others have seen its lack of a Passion Narrative as witnessing to an alternative stream of early Christianity, one not based on the proclamation of a crucified Christ. For those at one end of the theological spectrum, Q can give us a document of Jesus material from before 70, written within a generation of the death of Jesus. For those at the other end of the spectrum, Q aligns itself with the Gospel of Thomas to form a 'trajectory' in early Christianity that contrasted radically with emerging orthodoxy." (The Case Against Q, pp 16-17)

Fall 2012: "The idea that Thomas is familiar with the Gospels can seem unwelcome. If Thomas derives much of the material it shares with the Synoptics from the Synoptics themselves, then... no longer would Thomas be an early, independent witness to primitive Jesus tradition or to early, variant Christian ideologies. It is easy, in such circumstances, for a case in favour of Thomas's knowledge of the Synoptics to be seen as something of a recalcitrant, spoil-sport attempt to hark-back to a position that is now passé. Unless there are new arguments, and new perspectives, the case for an autonomous Thomas remains a highly attractive one to anyone interested in exploring the diversity of early Christianity. Given the difficulty in making progress in scholarship, some might feel that the last thing we want is to undo the fine work of the last generation and to set back the clock to a bland, monochrome view of Christian origins." (Thomas and the Gospels, p 3)

Mark Goodacre has become something of a killjoy in biblical scholarship, and that's cause for rejoicing. If historical criticism is supposed to be about scientific inquiry, or where evidence leads, then its results shouldn't necessarily please us. Yet it would seem that the field is often a playground for those who don't move beyond conjectures and deductions in efforts to paint things more complicated or arousingly different than they really were. The work done on Q and Thomas falls in a particularly unflattering spotlight, as the existence of one and early dating of the other enjoy remarkable followings, even by those who can only vaguely explain why they even believe such things.

I'm not exempt from this charge. I once believed in Q, for over a decade in fact, despite fleeting initial misgivings. As an undergrad in '91 I remember being taught the way Luke faithfully preserved Q as contrasted with Matthew's spiritualizing agenda, the classic point being "blessed are the poor" (Lk 6:20) which became "blessed are the poor in spirit" (Mt 5:3). Yet I had also just been taught that Luke had a social agenda for the poor and outcasts. Doesn't it make better sense, I asked, that the agenda worked in the opposite direction? That Luke socialized a spiritual saying? Well, came the answer, Q was concerned about the poor too.

And that was that. On the strength of scholarly consensus, assurances from a professor I held (and still hold) in high regard -- and because my introduction to the New Testament didn't even seriously entertain the idea that Luke could have known Matthew -- I accepted the phantom Q: a mysterious lost source which Matthew and Luke used independently of each other. I bought into this business with ease, and wouldn't seriously confront the Farrer theory¹ until Goodacre's user-friendly defense of it in 2002.

I was not, however, on fast friendly terms with The Case Against Q. I was nonplussed by it at first, admiring its aesthetic (Goodacre is a good writer) while hating its content. It was an irritation and meant the great historical-Jesus scholars of the '90s -- and I mean the mighty ones like Meier and Allison as much as fantasists like Crossan and Borg -- were speaking the wrong language. It meant that so much scholarly labor on early Christian origins relied on a mirage. True, there was always Sanders, and yes, many a thesis would have pressed home the same with or without Q to lean on, but for purposes of academic dialogue, Q had been (and I think still is) a major common denominator. And I liked Q, or the idea of it: a tantalizing "gospel behind the gospels", which hinted at more primitive ideas.

Thomas is a different matter. I never bought into ideas about its early dating and literary independence, and so Goodacre's sequel is an immediate validation of what I always knew: that Thomas was familiar with the Synoptics, he used Matthew and Luke quite clearly, and his gospel is significantly gnostic (though Goodacre avoids the term: see further below) and can be comfortably dated to around the 140s. Lest I wax too smug, Goodacre does include a chapter on orality that gives me pause, as I've been somewhat guilty of caricatures he complains about when contrasting oral and print cultures. But more on that in a later post.

Back to Q: On second reading of Goodacre's book (in 2004), it emerged for me as what it is, becoming -- not to sound too dramatic -- a summons. What would happen, I asked myself, staring dully at the blue-and-white cover with its overbloated "Q", if I did not skim the uncongenial arguments this time, but gave myself to them, if I truly lowered the plow through the surface crust? Chapter seven's "How blessed are the poor?", in particular, pointed an accusing finger; it voiced my own nagging objection from way back in '91. But it wasn't just the specific point about Luke's social agenda that began turning me. The Case Against Q is one of those books that compels on every page with its even-handed candor and muscled interdisciplinary approach. Like the hot-off-the-press Thomas and the Gospels, it shows how the science of historical criticism can truly be at one with the humanities, when employed by aesthetic writers and shrewd thinkers.

Today, in retrospect, it actually stuns me how flimsy the basis for Q is. Its defenders have manufactured problems where none exist. That Luke doesn't reproduce Matthean elements within the triple tradition is unsurprising, as Goodacre notes, since those elements conflict with Luke's interests;² we don't suddenly pretend we've never heard of redactional criticism in trying to prove a case for Q (p 51). More importantly, this claim isn't even true; there are very clear cases in the triple tradition where Luke looks more Matthean than Mark does. Yet when this happens, the Q advocates appeal to "Mark-Q overlaps", an astounding heads-I-win-tails-you-lose argument (p 54). Even worse is the "argument" that Luke doesn't reproduce Matthean elements only found in Matthew (M material), silly at the most basic level, since that's the way M material is defined, but even on a more detailed level doesn't hold up to scrutiny (p 55). As for the so-called "distinctive character of Q", which favors issues of poverty, the Gentiles, debates about the law, Jesus' relationship to wisdom, and the spirit, these are (of course) precisely the sorts of "Luke-pleasing" issues we would expect to see co-opted from Matthew on the assumption that Luke copied him (p 68). It's the same reason that M material, by definition, was ignored on grounds of it being "Luke-displeasing" (p 70).

A better argument is the one of alternating primitivity: that if Luke were copying Matthew, we'd expect Matthew more often to preserve the more original form of the saying. But this only spotlights how Q advocates have gone about assessing original forms (p 60), based in no small part on the assumption that Matthean expressions are typically not primitive, nor distinctive of "Q", which Goulder long ago showed to be false. Assuming its existence, Q's style is in fact quite Matthean at times (p 61). But more generally, the whole befuddlement over alternating primitivity ignores the oral dimension to the way texts are handed down and received. No reasonable scholar denies that Luke was aware of oral Jesus-traditions -- he tells us himself that he was working with both oral and literary sources in Lk 1:1-4 -- and we should obviously "distinguish properly between direct use of a prior text and knowledge of oral traditions, both of which are key in the composition of Luke's Gospel" (p 66). "Alternating primitivity" is one of those hands that seem monster but show air when the cards are flipped over.

Goodacre is at his best, however, in demolishing assumptions about order and rearrangement. Three whole chapters of The Case Against Q are devoted to the question of Matthew's implied aesthetic. Far from the disorderly scattering charged by Q-advocates, Luke's reworking of Matthew is a huge improvement. The reason Luke's gospel has the biographical verisimilitude appreciated by all scholars owes precisely to his "unscrambling" of Matthew which makes the material flow more smoothly. For those who have any doubts about what is obvious -- or what should be obvious when we look at the gospels literarily as much as theologically -- Goodacre's "bonus" chapter on the celluloid Christ pays dividends. Modern filmmakers evidently agree with Luke that Matthew's Sermon on the Mount is too long and unwieldy -- too much to keep the audience interested, compromising the narrative flow, and weakening the literary impact of the gospel narrative (p 126). Even Pasolini's slavishly faithful Gospel According to St. Matthew abbreviates, truncates, and rearranges the sermon with a vengeance (pp 125, 130). It doesn't take a literary genius to see that Matthew's discourses interrupt his narrative all around, while Luke cleans him up so that the sayings complement and grow out of the narrative (p 129). Put bluntly, Matthew's sermon is not the masterpiece implied by some Q-enthusiasts, and indeed his literary skills are a liability -- the clever five-block infrastructure notwithstanding.

Fast-forwarding to today, Goodacre is still on target about ordering. Thomas' rearrangement of the Synoptic sayings are no more a problem than Luke's rearrangment of Matthew. This is especially true in view of his agenda aiming at shock, surprise, even disorder. "It is not just the sayings themselves that shock and surprise, but also the bizarre juxtaposition of apparently contrasting ideas, side by side... Thomas' Gospel is aiming at enigma, and this is why it announces itself as an enigma from the beginning (Incipit, 1), and why it orders sayings in this apparently incomprehensible way. If there is one thing that is clear about Thomas, it is that it is not clear. Modern interpreters with their bright ideas about Thomas's arrangement run the risk of attempting to explain what the author wishes to leave unexplained." (Thomas, p 16) There are bizarre ideas that take on near axiomatic status in biblical scholarship, and the one which assumes gospel writers are so unlikely to scramble and reorder their source material is among the most bizarre.

But you could almost throw all of this out. The most imperative point relates to realistic expectations about verbatim agreement. In the case of Q, Goodacre echoes Goulder: the minor agreements between Matthew and Luke against Mark (which are at least acknowledged by Q advocates, unlike the major ones which are circularly attributed to Mark-Q overlaps) remove the very reason to postulate Q (Case, p 168). After all, Q's existence is predicated on the assumption that Luke didn't know Matthew at all. All that is needed to demonstrate Luke's knowledge of Matthew is exactly that. The minor agreements aren't so "minor" when you stop and think about what constitutes evidence for familiarity, and to ignore this point is to also ignore Occam's Razor.

In the case of Thomas, Goodacre invokes the "plagiarist's charter" against those who similarly demand unreasonably large amounts of verbatim agreement. Stephen Patterson's standards would excuse a lot of unethical behavior:

"When students are accused of plagiarism, it is no excuse for them to point to the amount of material that they have not taken over. No reasonable disciplinary body would accept the lack of copying in parts of the paper as an excuse for the copying in other parts of the paper, or as evidence that the copied parts are not copied. Nor is this just the case in relation to student plagiarism. The relevant legal judgement on the topic is clear: 'No plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate.'" (Thomas and the Gospels, p 55)

Again, all that is needed to establish Thomas' use of Matthew and Luke is exactly that. Goodacre establishes this beyond a reasonable doubt. The Greek fragment of Thomas shows the same kind of verbatim agreement with the Synoptics (as between P. Oxy. 1:1-4 (Thom 26) and Lk 6:42/Mt 7:5), as the Synoptics do with each other; and no one seriously thinks that agreement between synoptic texts like Lk 6:42 and Mt 7:5 are due to oral tradition (pp 30-33). That Thomas knew both Matthew and Luke is pretty clear.

His dependence on Matthew is seen most clearly by the phrase "kingdom of heaven" (Thom 20, 54, 114), which is not, as has been claimed, an avoidance of the term "kingdom of God" -- for that phrase is found in the early Greek fragments of Thomas if not the complete Coptic version (pp 66-69). Then there is the "out of the mouth" phrase (Thom 14), in which Thomas follows Matthew's redaction of Mark about what truly defiles a person (pp 70-73). There is also the curious case of Thomas' reworking of the Tares (Thom 57), which in turn is probably a redactional expansion of Mark's Seed Growing Secretly, which Thomas also knows (Thom 21). Goodacre underscores the missing antecedent in the missing middle of the parable, as well as the glaring apocalyptic allegorical Mattthean residue which opposes Thomas vision; indeed, the only reason Thomas seems to have used this parable at all owes to his love affair with everything in Mt 13 for the agricultural imagery (pp 73-80).

His dependence on Luke is also evident. In the "nothing that is hidden that won't be made manifest" saying (Thom 5), he parallels the Lukan rephrasing of Mark (pp 82-84). And the saying about a prophet in his home country (Thom 31) follows Luke's theme of acceptability in place of Mark's theme of honor (pp 84-86). There is also special Lukan material: the Rich Fool (Thom 63) and the "womb and breasts" passage (Thom 79), rather glaring instances of dependence, even if it's not as easy to see redactional work when there are no parallels in Matthew and/or Mark; we don't suddenly suspend redactional-criticism when we run into Sondergut material (pp 87-96).

Then there is the classic "blessed are the poor" saying (Mt 5:3/ Lk 6:20/Thom 54). What we have -- and what I glimpsed immediately in '91 but wouldn't see until a second reading of Goodacre's Q book in 2004 -- is a spiritualized saying in Matthew, which got truncated to a social one in Luke, and then both of them co-opted by Thomas. The common wisdom that Q (preserved in Luke) and Thomas both preserved the early form of the saying independently of each other, and that Matthew, knowing Q, spiritualized it, is not only an unnecessary complication invoking phantoms and unwarranted downward dating, but embarrassingly ignores both Thomas' use of the distinctly Matthean "heaven", and Luke's glaring agenda for the poor and outcasts. "Perhaps," says Goodacre, "we are all too eager to discover a message more palatable in a secularized society, in which 'spiritualizing' represents a secondary, negative development of material originally more conducive to a social gospel." (Case, p 147; cf. Thomas, p 51) There is simply no solid objection to the idea that Luke used Matthew, and that Thomas used both of them in turn; these schemes offer the most plausible and economical solutions; they are completely believable.

Unlike Q, Thomas existed; it is real. But it doesn't testify to some primitive variant of Christianity grounded in wisdom. If some of us can't whiff its gnostic fragrance (I can), the nose isn't necessarily at fault:

"That some insist on Thomas' Gnosticism while others vigorously deny it illustrates the success of Thomas' project. Thomas reinvents Jesus as the mysterious, enigmatic Living One who sometimes sounds suspiciously like the Synoptic Jesus but who, in the end, is not the same man. He preaches but he does not heal; he speaks in parables but he is not the Son of Man. He uses familiar metaphors but he does not quote Scriptures; he speaks of the kingdom but he does not expect the end. Thomas' Jesus does not speak about the passion, and his disciples do not witness the resurrection. The Gospel of Thomas' genius is that it conveys its radical difference from the Synoptic Gospels by hiding its theology in words and images it derives from them." (Thomas and the Gospels, pp 191-192)

But eschewing the term gnosticism altogether (see p 176) is perhaps overly cautious on Goodacre's part. Everything he demonstrates in his last chapter confirms essentially what scholars like Meier and Ehrman have been saying all along. Thomas uses Synoptic sayings to invest his new esoteric material with an older authenticity (p 172), and that esotericism certainly reads as gnostic, and is confirmed as such by Goodacre's own dating of the gospel to around the 140s.

That dating is based on secure data -- the witness to the temple's destruction (Thom 71) and presupposition of the Bar Kochba revolt (Thom 68) (see pp 166-171) -- and makes perfect sense of not only a strategy that relies on co-opting the Synoptics rather than audaciously replacing them, but the striking mention of Judas Thomas. Goodacre underscores a trajectory in the gospel traditions which moves from no authorial self-representation (Mark and Matthew), to hints of authorial self-representation (Luke and Acts), to a definite but unnamed authorial presence (John), to finally an explicit self-representation (Thomas) (p 176). It's a trajectory which reflects increased claim of apostolic authority in a world of unusual gospels. A world, in other words, where the likes of Irenaeus and Valentinus warred on each other through their own writings.

It's also a trajectory which results in a fairly traditional, even boring, picture of early Christianity. But scholarship demands a bit of the killjoy, and we should be thankful for those like Goodacre who don't fear a "spoilsport" branding. I think there's a tendency to expect too much out of historical criticism, that our biblical experts can somehow unlock arsenals that will arm us against the orthodox and open progressive paradigms. The New Perspective on Paul is exhibit A in this regard, for having turned Paul into a modern anti-apartheidist. There's no denying that Judaism has been woefully misrepresented, and the Gentile issue underappreciated (if not ignored), by the Lutheran scholars of old, but the specter of nationalism can be just as intrusive as legalism. Paul's Christology was a radical and complex and harshly alien one that isn't done justice by simply praising ancient Judaism, criticizing Luther, and emphasizing the apostle's concern for Gentile rights.

The scholarly love affair with phantoms (Q) and late heresies made early (Thomas), not to mention hoaxes (Secret Mark), owes to the same kind of romance. It's exciting to tunnel into the past and find countercultural surprises. Sometimes this even genuinely happens. But it requires more than loosing our imaginations and concocting scenarios. Part of me would enjoy setting Calvin on the devotees of Q and early-Thomas, with his famous diatribes against "vain speculation". The other part of me -- the wiser part, I hope -- prefers light over heat, or the radiance of a cold uncaring scientific method which simply takes us where the evidence leads. And as Goodacre has demonstrated, there is no good evidence for Q or an early Thomas.


Endnotes

1. For complete details on the Two-Source Theory (which depends on Q) and the Farrer Theory (which dispenses with Q), see Stephen Carlson's website on the Synoptic puzzle.

2. John Kloppenborg ("On Dispensing with Q?: Goodacre on the Relation of Luke to Matthew", New Testament Studies 49, pp 210-236), unfortunately, doesn't always have the best handle on Luke's interests. He objects to Goodacre's treatment of Matthew's additions to Mark in Mt 3:15 and Mt 16:16-19 as follows: (a) Regarding Mt 3:15, he says that Luke would have had no reason to alter Matthew by putting John in prison at the time of Jesus' baptism, since Matthew solved the problem implied by Mark, by having John call Jesus his superior and by having Jesus describe his baptism as fulfilling righteousness rather than eliminating sin. I can't believe this objection, for Matthew has not in fact solved these embarrassing problems. Jesus is still being baptized by John, as in Mark, and everyone knows what that implies, declarations and appeasements notwithstanding. This is precisely why Luke (like John after him) came up with a better solution. It's very easy to see why Luke altered Matthew in this case, and that's the whole point behind the criterion of embarrassment: there is a trajectory from Mark->Matthew->Luke->John, each of whom controls the damage better than the one before. (b) Regarding Mt 16:16-19, Kloppenborg provides an arsenal of passages which show that Luke holds Peter in higher esteem than Goodacre allows; Peter is sanitized in Luke's gospel and a key preacher and apologist in the first half of Acts, and only recedes in the second half because of the shift of focus to Paul, not out of any low regard for Peter; so had Luke used Matthew and seen Mt 16:16b-19, we would expect to him to have rephrased some of it. It is perhaps true that Goodacre has underestimated Luke's esteem for Peter, but that esteem is a complicated point. The most obvious response is that in Acts the leadership of the church passes from Peter to James, so that no matter how high Luke's esteem is for Peter, Mt 16:16b-19 simply goes too far. But there's more. Luke's esteem is for a fantasy Peter: he has co-opted the historical Peter (who is no friend to Luke) against those like Matthew who were (correctly) invoking him as an authority against certain law-free practices. That Luke felt compelled to claim the support of Peter by reversing his historical role says a lot about this opposition (see Philip Esler, Community and Gospel in Luke-Acts). Given the ugly tension between the two images of Peter, it's not at all surprising to see Luke claiming Peter's glory on his own terms rather than on the terms of the source who holds him in high regard for the wrong reasons. Luke's censorship of Mt 16:16-19 is thus not only again understandable, but wise.