Today’s Jesus and Mo strip, called “dizzy 2,” is labeled “a resurrection today from 15 years ago.” And it’s a good example of the real use of “begging the question,” often misunderstood to mean “raising the question.”
Jesus ‘n’ Mo ‘n’ question-begging
February 7, 2024 • 8:45 am
Oh, they’re right! I mean, back then, it was way different from now – that’s just how it went, to know what is true or not. There had to be something to note that – the writing itself suggested it wasn’t an accident, because writing itself would take so much work, back then.
I mean, “truth” itself was practically brand new! How could they write anything else?
Nowadays, life is epistemologically decadent, fallen, even, from that utopia of Eden…
/apologia
Thanks for:
‘And it’s a good example of the real use of “begging the question,” often misunderstood to mean “raising the question.””
Another example of the general deterioration of culture is the misuse of that phrase. Gets under my skin.
I have come to an age and a wisdom that it is the uneducated and uncultured that shape the use of language, spelling and grammar.
I used to feel the same way. But the cunning linguists at Language Log have convinced me to take a more magnanimous view:
Yes, I never use the phrase myself for precisely that reason. And I can’t really blame the people who use it wrongly because it does look like it is “begging to ask the question…”
+1
Very clear – could also use “presuming the conclusion” etc.
vide infra for additional note.
I wrote a peer-reviewed essay that dealt with, among other things, these two passages (Luke 1 and John 21). One of the things that is routinely overlooked is this:
The prologue of Luke is a complaint that many have written about Jesus, but those writings are not reliable, and so this author claims to have produced an “orderly” account. The rhetoric is typical of the era, and essentially condemns all Jesus-traditions to the trash except this one. We know from evidence that Luke was dependent on (at least) the Gospel of Mark. Luke was not trying to supplement Mark. He was trying to replace Mark. (Some researchers believe Luke was also dependent on Matthew, in which case Luke was also trying to replace Matthew.)
Likewise, the passage in John admits that “we” have misunderstood some of this beloved disciple’s testimony. Even if this fellow really existed and wrote something (but most researchers believe the beloved disciple is a symbolic fictional character), he is not the “we” who is speaking in John’s Gospel, and the “we” admit that they can at times get it wrong.
Can you provide a link to your article? I for one would like to read it!
The essay is called “Investigating earliest Christianity without Jesus,” and appears in a volume titled Is this not the carpenter? The question of the historicity of the figure of Jesus (Sheffield: Equinox, 2012). You can access it through my academia.edu page (K. L. Noll).
I discuss Luke in more depth in a chapter called “What was ‘history’ in the perception of the ancients?” from the revised edition of my book Canaan and Israel in Antiquity (Bloomsbury 2013). (This chapter does not appear in the first edition of that book.)
In both cases, Luke and John are not my main point, but are topics to be covered to fully defend a larger point. Shalom.
Thank you; very interesting. I will have a look at your references.
Richard Carrier suggests that “it’s as likely that Luke invented his patron Theophilus, the conveniently named “Godlover,” as a pose to frame his own missionary propaganda, than that any real Theophilus paid Luke to produce a new Gospel”. Would you agree?
The handicap we historians of the ancient world suffer is limited data. Difficult to speculate about Theophilus in the absence of external data. We have only the text.
Researchers in recent years have developed a thesis, defended by data from the text, that Acts was not composed by the authors (plural) who composed Luke. If that is correct, the Theophilus of Acts is almost certainly a fiction designed to make Acts seem to be a second volume of a two-volume work, Luke-Acts.
Then, also, a number of researchers have defended the thesis that the version of Luke used by Marcion was an earlier stage in this narrative’s evolution. Other data, from variant manuscripts and from redaction-analysis, suggest that Luke underwent a long evolutionary process.
My hunch is that the prologue was a late addition to the text. But that is a hunch. I cannot defend it as a thesis.
Unfortunately, “begs the question” now actually does mean “raises the question.” The original, “correct” usage is simply too obscure for most people to understand, much less to use in the proper context (to mean “assumes the conclusion”).
That’s why, like it or not, the expression has evolved to include the new meaning—which has superseded the old meaning. To inveigh against it is futile. The phrase has become, as they say in linguistics, skunked. I agree with linguist Mark Liberman’s recommendation:
“Never use the phrase yourself — use “assume the conclusion” or “raise the question”, depending on what you mean — and cultivate an attitude of serene detachment in the face of its use by others.”
I’ve been reading about dialectics lately – and was also looking for the BtQ etymology – and found this :
[quoting Wikipedia]
“The original phrase used by Aristotle from which begging the question descends is τὸ ἐξ ἀρχῆς αἰτεῖν, or sometimes ἐν ἀρχῇ αἰτεῖν, ‘asking for the initial thing’. Aristotle’s intended meaning is closely tied to the type of dialectical argument he discusses in his Topics, book VIII: a formalized debate in which the defending party asserts a thesis that the attacking party must attempt to refute by asking yes-or-no questions and deducing some inconsistency between the responses and the original thesis.”
[ end quote]
… I suspect BtQ is a particularly archaic expression, so, frankly, in a pinch I’m going with Ken Kukec’s suggestion/Language Log :
“Assuming the conclusion”