Waxing Careless: Poirier,Derrenbacker and Downing

Our attention is helpfully drawn by John C. Poirier, ‘The Roll, the Codex, the Wax Tablet and the Synoptic Problem’, to aspects of the physical processes of writing in the Graeco-Roman world of the early Christians (Poirier 2012). Wax tablets, whose prevalence at the time he is able to show is widely evidenced, could, at least in theory, allow for more flexibility in the collation of literary sources, specifically between the Synoptic evangelists, than has been allowed for by, among others, F. Gerald Downing and Robert A. Derrenbacker. Thus, for instance, ‘The wax-tablet model, in fact, goes a long way toward explaining how a Farrerian Luke was able to arrange the so-called travel-narrative material so freely. Once Luke had recorded this material on a set of tablets, he easily could have rearranged these tablets in any order desired’ (Poirier 2012: 23). So far, so fair.

Unhappily, Poirier has dramatized his argument with serious misrepresentations of some of the writings with which he takes issue. The most egregious of these is his insistence that Downing bases an important argument on ancient writers’ supposed ‘search’ ‘apparently’ for ‘verbatim agreements’ in their sources (Poirier 2012: 5, 9). This accusation is simply false (and no supporting quotation is offered). For sure it was pointed out by Downing that Josephus found verbatim agreements in some of his ‘biblical’ texts (as a ‘Farrerian’ Luke would have in his sources, though this was noted as itself remarkable); yet what Josephus produced was paraphrases (Downing 1980a: 48; 1980b: 33). Then it was made clear in the later article to which Poirier refers that the sources which Plutarch, for instance, used were already paraphrases of their own respective sources, so that what Plutarch is sometimes able to discern and retain ‘without much very close attention to the text’, was a common ‘story line’, a shared ‘narrative logic’ (no more than that is stated; Downing 1988: 79, 81; cf. Downing 1992: 24). ¹

What was by Downing argued to be remarkable was the fact that a Luke or any evangelist writing third should refuse to include even in paraphrase some of the most closely similar matter appearing in both the others, when ancient writers in practice and expressly were content to encounter, meet with, come across (not, so Poirier’s rephrasing, ‘having searched out’) general agreement in their sources for themselves in turn to paraphrase without more ado (Downing 1988, 1992, 2004, 2011; Poirier 2012: 5). ²

Downing, it is averred, ‘has misrepresented numerous aspects of how the ancients wrote’ (Poirier 2012: 24). The foregoing rebuts and would seem to refute ‘verbatim’, ‘search’ and ‘close attention’. If there are more on Poirier’s charge-sheet, they are not obvious. Downing is, however, also accused (at pedantic length? two pages in Poirier) of ‘pedantically’ misrepresenting Michael Goulder’s talk of a ‘marker’ in a scroll, when just allowing both ends to roll in on a column would suffice (Poirier 2012: 5-7); but Goulder did specifically propose ‘a marker at 3.19’ (Goulder 1989: 346; cf. 197, 291, in Downing 1992: 18), which must denote more than just somewhere in an open column. ³ Poirier also makes much of the possible use of tables to take two rolls open together, but without then acknowledging that Downing had explicitly and at length allowed for that (Poirier 2012: 15-18; Downing 1992: 19). ⁴ (But see further, below.)

Poirier does, nonetheless, allow that Downing got some other things right; so, if Poirier had been less careless in his generalizations (well, frankly, misrepresentations) of Downing’s arguments, there might have been very little disagreement left between them. Unfortunately, however, Poirier would seem to have fallen for the quite common argumentative device of devoting most of a study to showing others in a bad light, paraphrasing their contentions to sound as vulnerable as possible, so as to leave the stage clear for the new writer’s own rather scanty main suggestion to shine more brightly, against the gloom induced. ⁵ Perhaps for the future Poirier means to elaborate the application of his insight in greater and clearer evidenced detail than the scant amount vouchsafed in the piece here in question. For the present, he seems to have offered an effective reminder of an aspect of ancient writing practice that might seem to allow for much greater flexibility for a third evangelist using the other two as sources than many commentators, including Derrenbacker and Downing, have supposed and proposed. ⁶ But that is as far as he gets. How in detail wax tablets could have been used to the end indicated, and whether anyone (other than an imagined ‘Farrerian Luke’) ever did so use them, is left not only unevidenced, but unquestioned.

The following are some at least of the issues that require attention. Reading desks that could support two scrolls are evidenced (Poirier and Downing), but from social contexts where Luke is not obviously at home, and the general use of even single-scroll reading desks (Turner 1968: 7) is itself doubted by two of Poirier’s own witnesses (Small 1997: 136, 150; Winsbury 2009: 37, 73). What seems to be demanded is a desk wide enough for at least one open and one in double-roll, as well as, perhaps, room to support ‘Luke’s’ wax tablet, if he is making his own notes (and thus at least one scroll has props of some sort either side of the column lying open to be perused). ⁷ Applications of common technologies are culturally formed, are they not? Are we now asking ‘Luke’ for cultural innovation – not in the technology of wax tablets, but in its application? Or is Alexandrian scholarly procedure common rather than in-group knowledge (for the latter, Small, 1997: 44), and is its specialised furniture available?

Then, what range of sizes of scrolls and of wax tablets is envisaged? For scrolls in general the range is known, and is very considerable (e.g., Winsbury 2009: 46; Downing 1992: 20). For wax tablets uncertainty seems to reign. If one were to imagine a close correlation between a fairly common papyrus column size and similar sized writing on wax, say, about 500 characters for each, then, on Poirier’s figure, his Luke would seem to have needed around 180-200 tablets, or at least 60-70 for each one-third successive section of his Gospel – yes, ‘a rather large stack’ as Poirer allows, but without hazarding a figure (Poirier 2012: 19-23). ⁸ Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, records that ‘some say (ἔνιοι τε φασίν) that Philippus of Opus [a pupil of Plato] copied out The Laws, which were left on wax’, and on this estimate that would have involved between 800 and 1,000 tablets, and clearly even such a stack as that is at least imaginable. ⁹ But this suggestion of ‘some’ seems to be noted as noteworthy, not what one might expect. So, is there any evidence for anyone in any contemporary socio-cultural context using so many tablets, for anything, let alone for collating two sources – better, two narrative sources – to produce a third? We have individual quite brief poems instanced, and short notes, but there is nothing in the quotations otherwise appositely adduced by Poirier to suggest any such extensive deployment prior to inscription with ink on papyrus. ¹⁰ Of course, there is much we do not know of the ancient Mediterranean world, and we may have to put up with hypotheses. But we need to be made aware of something of the extent of the uncertainties involved.

Poirier’s ‘Luke’ actually seems in practice to be taking much more detailed notes than those ancient authors cited by Poirier would have done (as Downing and he would agree, in accord with many classical scholars). ¹¹ This ‘Farrerian’ Luke is also making quite detailed comparisons, whether from memory or visually. Sometimes he will write very freely, sometimes précis and paraphrase, sometimes he will reproduce much of one predecessor. But on occasion he seems then to glance back at the other source, find both in 90 per cent or more agreement, and exclude exactly that passage: not précis it or paraphrase it, but either then exclude it (if he has noticed it in time) or erase it from his tablet (or have his secretary erase it), even though he had liked this source well enough up till then to include it in full or very nearly, and also to resume quite close reproduction immediately the two sources cease their close coincidence. ¹² And this phenomenon seems too frequent to be by chance. A Farrerian ‘Luke’ does actually seem to be doing precisely what Poirier would ridicule others for even suggesting ancient collaters might do: Poirier’s Luke is on the lookout for verbatim agreements in his sources – albeit, to omit. It does seem appropriate to ask why.

We are left with an interesting proposal from Poirier, but with a great deal of apparently unnoticed and certainly unanswered questions about it and arising from it.