Rubén Gómez at the Bible Software Review Weblog (now added to my blogroll) commented on my entries on on Lukanisms and Mattheanisms:

If you are into the whole field of statistics, you won't want to miss Stephen Carlson's blog entries on Lukanisms and Mattheanisms. It's interesting reading, but one has to be very careful when it comes to interpreting the data. IMO, the use of distinctive or frequent words to try to establish literary dependence is problematic, at best. It would be nice to know what 'tool of the trade' Stephen made use of in order to collect the data... hint, hint...

I fully agree that the "use of distinctive or frequent words to try to establish literary dependence is problematic, at best"; the purpose of my exercise, however, is somewhat more preliminary to that question, which is to begin to set up some criteria for distinguishing words that are actually more relatively frequent from those that are apparently so due to our limited samplings of the vocabulary of each of the evangelists. The Chi-Squared is one tool for assessing that, though more thought should go into whether its assumptions are appropriate for the task.

As for what "tools of the trade" I used to process the data, I got the word statistics out of an earlier version of BibleWindows, whose name I believed is now changed to Bibloi, and the Chi-Squared statistics were calculated by a short C program I wrote based on bits and pieces I found on the web.

For those morbidly curious, here's a streamlined version of the C code with a lot of irrelevant cruft removed, which I'm placing into the public domain, so anyone can do what they want with it (but see warnings/disclaimers below):

/*
	x2 - Compute Chi-Square probabilities
*/

#include <stdio.h>
#include <math.h>

double ChiSqP(int, double);

#define TOT 0
#define MT 1
#define MK 2
#define LK 3

double Totals[] = { 0, 18346, 11099, 19482 };

/* Pearson's Chi-Square */
double
pear3(double w[])
{
	int i;
	double chi2 = 0.0;

	for (i = MT; i <= LK; i++) {
		double e = Totals[i] / Totals[0] * w[0]; 
		double o = e - w[i];
		chi2 += o*o/e;
	}

	return 1.0 - ChiSqP(2, chi2);
}

main()
{
	char buf[80], *s;
	double w[4], p;
	int i;

	for (i = MT; i <= LK; i++)
		Totals[TOT] += Totals[i];

	while (s = gets(buf)) {
		int flds;

		flds = sscanf(buf, "%lf %lf %lf %s", &w[MT], &w[MK], &w[LK], s);

		w[0] = 0.0;
		for (i = MT; i <= LK; i++)
			w[0] += w[i];

		p = pear3(w);
		if (flds < 4)
			printf("PEAR:p=%.3lg\n", p);
		if (p > 0.05)
			continue;

		printf("%s (%lg/%lg/%lg)\n", s, w[MT], w[MK], w[LK]);
	}
	return 0;
}


/* Convert Chi^2 to P */
double ChiSqP(df, x2)
int df;
double x2;
{
   /* found on a web page */
   double  p, t, k, a;

   p = exp( -x2 / 2 );

   if ((df & 1) > 0)
         p *= sqrt( (x2+x2) / (atan(1.0)*4) );

   k = df;
   while (k >= 2) {
         p *= x2 / k;
         k -= 2;
   }

   t = p;  a = df;
   while (t > (1.0E-7 * p)) {
         a += 2;
         t *= x2 / a;
         p += t;
   }

   return p;
}

Warnings/disclaimers: I didn't test whether the code would compile after removing the junk from my program, so some massaging may be necessary. The code uses gets(), which can only be used with absolutely trusted input sources. Since this code is being provided without any consideration, I disclaim any warranties of merchantibility or fitness. Use at your own risk.

... continued from Part 1

As for reports of the film's historical inaccuracies, perhaps I missed earlier claims by the movie’s producers and therefore lack some of the context, but many of the criticisms strike me as not only superficial but also strangely forgetful what is being taught in academic contexts. No human interpretation of history can be entirely objective, and it always and necessarily involves a mixture of the interpreter’s present. In fact, that is what is being taught about the gospels in university settings. The Passion is no different. Gibson did not create a movie for first-century film-goers in Jerusalem, Rome, or anywhere else; his movie is directed to a twenty-first century audience. Gibson's task is not to pass a final exam in an introductory New Testament course but to paint a canvass that a twenty-first viewer will believe. In film, there is only a very limited amount time to engage the audience, and to do this, Gibson did what any other film-maker would do: incorporate elements that powerful enough to conjure up the past to his present-day audience even if those elements are technically anachronistic. Thus, certain things like the fact that Gibson dressed the members of the Sanhedrin in full, formal regalia even at the midnight hearing and throughout the movie, including the crucifixion scene, can be criticized as historically implausible but a useful technique for enabling the audience to identify the Temple leadership quickly from among the crowd and other characters, especially in a subtitled film that depends heavily on visual, rather than verbal, elements.

This artistic reason was probably also a factor in the choice to use ecclesiastical Latin (with its Italianate pronunciation that is at least a century or two later) rather than the classical pronunciation most likely in effect at the time. For many of those in Gibson's intended audience who were used to hearing the Latin spoken at mass, the classical pronunciation would have been jarring and, as a result, would have ruined, not enhance, the historical verisimilitude of the film. As such, ecclesiastical Latin is an effective way for much of Gibson’s audience to be drawn back into the first century. On the other hand, that technique has quite the opposite on scholars who know that Greek was the lingua franca in that area among the educated merchant and upper classes. They are jarred by the anachronism and the technique has the opposite effect.

Stepping back from and studying scholar's reactions to the movie, it is really interesting to see how intertextuality might explain the very different reactions by scholars and laymembers of the audience: they have different intertexts, and Gibson's approach to recreating a historical setting works very well with one set of intertexts (e.g. the spoken texts of the old Latin mass) and very poorly with another set of intertexts (e.g. the Greek New Testament). I suspect that intertextuality also explains why professors who have studied the genre of Jesus films seem to have a different impression of the film than biblical scholars who have not studied that sub-specialty to such an extent.

Nevertheless, a certain amount of pointing out of the film's inaccuracies has its place and many of the criticisms have been fair, yet I am concerned that some of the complaints are so superficial as to reduce scholarship to nitpicking. For example, the Passion was criticized for using Latin, instead of Greek. As a general matter, the charge is true but overblown. For one, most of the dialog in the movie is in Aramaic not Latin, so criticism involves a small percentage of the film's dialog. And among that dialog, at least some of the dialog would have been Latin. Surely Pontius Pilate and wife would have spoken to each other in Latin, not Greek? Surely Pilate's most trusted bodyguards (I presume hand-picked from home) would also be Latin speaking? In other words, wouldn't Pilate want to populate an elite sub-unit with those from his homeland, whose loyalty he does not doubt, even though the bulk of the Roman troops would have been mustered out of places like Syria (hence the ability of some in the film to speak Aramaic is not in error)? This leaves only a little of the movie’s dialog problematic. I doubt that Pilate and Jesus would have conversed in Latin or that Pilate and the Temple leadership would have spoken to each other in any language other than Greek, unless through interpreters (a feature often omitted in films for pacing reasons).

Another mentioned inaccuracy was whether the nail was driven through the palm, as depicted in traditional iconography and in the movie, or through the wrist, which, unlike the palm, can support the weight of the body. However, the movie clearly portray the crucifixion with Jesus’s wrists being lashed to the beam for support; thus, the nails through the palms are merely for additional torture. The Gospel accounts lack a full set of details on exactly how Jesus was crucified. Though we don't have enough evidence to say that Gibson's interpretation on the mechanics of the execution is what probably happened, to his credit, Gibson did weave our understanding of the physics of the cross and traditional iconography of the cross in a plausible manner by including ropes for tying Jesus’s wrists to the cross.

Next part: The Passion and Anti-Semitism.

Although recent attention has been on the James Ossuary and the Joash Inscription, there are actually quite a few fakes out there that have attracted the attention of scholars, and some of them are still controversial. One of them is the Kensington Runestone, and the Language Log has an entry about it, New Evidence Against the Kensington Runestone, which begins:

According to news reports, new evidence has emerged supporting the view that the Kensington Rune Stone is a forgery. The stone, now housed in the Runestone Museum in Alexandria, Minnesota, was allegedly found in 1898 by Swedish-American farmer Olof Ohman on his farm in nearby ????????? (Kensington).

. . .

The new evidence is the discovery of documents written in 1885 by a Swedish tailor in runes, which had long since passed out of use as the usual means of writing Swedish. These documents provide examples of a secret variety of the runic alphabet used by tradesmen in the 19th century. Some of the unusual runes on the Kensington Rune Stone turn out to belong to the secret tradesmen's version of the alphabet. Since Scandinavian scholars believe that this version of the runes did not exist in the 14th century, the use of these runes favors a 19th rather than 14th century origin.

The new evidence is interesting in that it ties up a couple of loose ends about the artifact, explaining not only how could its alleged discoverer or a peer could have competence in the script but also the script's pecularities. In other words, the new evidence makes the artifact's 19th century origin the most parsimonious explanation.

For a flavor of the debate, the Kensington Runestone Home Page is an enthusiast's site presenting rebuttals to certain objections to the artifact. Some of them, however, are not in the least persuasive, such as asking why the discover didn't ask for more money. The problem with arguing from a forger's motive is that the motives of forgers are varied, ranging from a prankish hoax that got out of hand to personal gain to malice. This question assumed that the runestone was created mainly for pecuniary gain, rather than as a prank, say. Furthermore, fakers may often be working with mixed motives or their motives may shift as time goes on. For example, Hans van Meergen originally did his Vermeer forgery to dupe a critic of his but started forging more of them when he found that his fake was so good as to fetch a lot of money.

Dr. Armin Daniel Baum, Dozent for New Testament at the Freie Theologische Akademie (English: Free Theological Academy), is one of the few scholars currently publishing articles on Papias. Baum has a homepage with CV at FTA and a list of publications.

One of his publications, "Die Diskussion der Authentizität von Herrenworten in altkirchlicher Zeit" [The Discussion of the Authenticity of the Lord's Words in the Times of the Early Church], is available among FTA's articles for download.