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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2239 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for August 8, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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There are some fun similarities between Cicero’s Rhetorica Ad Herennium (90bc), which is a treatise on rhetoric and memorization, and the Passion narrative in the gospels. Cicero explains how to craft the most memorable mental scene, one that can be recalled with fidelity in the future:

since in normal cases some images are strong and sharp and suitable for awakening recollection, and others so weak and feeble as hardly to succeed in stimulating memory, we must therefore consider the cause of these differences, so that, by knowing the cause, we may know which images to avoid and which to seek.

If we see or hear something exceptionally base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable, or laughable, that we are likely to remember a long time.

All normal stuff. Now the examples he provides next:

A sunrise, the sun's course, a sunset, are marvellous to no one because they occur daily.⁠ But solar eclipses are a source of wonder because they occur seldom, and indeed are more marvellous than lunar eclipses, because these are more frequent

We ought, then, to set up images of a kind that can adhere longest in the memory. And we shall do so if we establish likenesses as striking as possible; if we set up images that are not many or vague, but doing something; if we assign to them exceptional beauty or singular ugliness; if we dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks, for example, so that the likeness may be more distinct to us; or if we somehow disfigure them, as by introdu­cing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint, so that its form is more striking, or by assigning certain comic effects to our images, for that, too, will ensure our remembering them more readily.

These elements are all explicit in the Crucifixion:

  • the solar eclipse (the earliest manuscripts actually specify that it was a solar eclipse, rather than a darkening of the sky)

  • the crown

  • the purple cloak

  • the disfigurement (“many were astonished at you— his appearance was so marred, beyond human semblance, and his form beyond that of the children of mankind”)

  • the blood (the beating, scourge, then crucifixion)

  • the comic effect: the irony of the actual king being mocked as a fake king

  • all the things which Cicero mentions earlier, combined (and the usual subject of sermon): base, dishonourable, extraordinary, great, unbelievable

The crown and robe are also brought into the narrative in a very peculiar way in John:

Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man”

The word behold here is ἰδοὺ, can be is translated as see!, or look!, remember! and similar interjections. Essentially a call to pay attention.

A sort of problem is that the “marred more than any man” bit isn’t in the gospels, it comes from Isaiah 53. And if you’re dealing with a person who was crucified, the beating and the crucifixion would be part of the story whether or not you’re trying to create a memorable scene. Just like the ending of Hamilton being played for drama, this doesn’t change the fact that the historical Hamilton actually died in a pistols at dawn duel with Aaron Burr.

I’m not going to suggest that the prose of the text wasn’t written to highlight certain parts of the story to appeal to people reading the story. But I think the claims of skeptics that the story must not be true because it matches a rhetorical style is a bit too far. The story was told in a way that appeals to Romans of the first century.

I’m not necessarily pointing to invention here, though the similarities are pretty shocking. Re: the line from Isaiah, that’s true, but the second half of Isaiah is sometimes referred to as the “fifth gospel” because of its prophecy of the Messiah (according to the theology). In any case, it is still hundreds of years older than Ad Herennium.

But Ad Herennium was the most important book on rhetoric in the Middle Ages, which likely means it was esteemed around Christ’s time. So it’s not impossible that the authors used the go-to manual on rhetoric to emphasize certain aspects of the event. I suppose a more literalist reader can just as well say, “of course God would author the real events in line with the best rhetoric and memory advice; the only new info here is that Cicero had some Godly wisdom about rhetoric”.

I’m not demanding a literalist view of the Bible, in fact it’s a naive reading. But I don’t really think it’s a problem to suggest that certain events were highlighted or downplayed by the author to be more memorable and appealing to the audience they were writing for. It’s a narrative story, and any story humans tell will highlight and downplay elements to make the story appealing or to make heroes look better or villains look worse. I don’t find the early church reading the Bible with the kind of literalism that modern evangelical fundamentalists use in interpreting the text. Not that they don’t believe the Bible and the stories in the Bible are true, but that they are not literalists insisting that everything described is absolutely meant to be literal.

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