This essay from Richard Bauckham is hilarious. If you’re a Biblical Studies buff you must read it....
New Testament research is a field which has much to learn from comparative study—
from observing the trends and results of research in parallel fields of study. So I begin
my lecture this evening with an excursion into just such a parallel field—an excursion
from which we may be able to return to recent trends in research on the Gospel of
John with a fresh angle of vision.
Probably most of you will be familiar with the Winnie-the-Pooh stories—the
popular children’s books traditionally attributed to A A Milne. But you may not all be
familiar with recent developments in Winnie-the-Pooh scholarship, which has been
revolutionized in recent years as a result of one major methodological breakthrough
which virtually all Pooh scholarship now takes for granted. This is the seminal insight
that the Winnie-the-Pooh stories can be read on more than one level. Ostensibly, of
course, they are the story of a group of animals living in a forest, who are in some
sense identified with the soft toys belonging to Christopher Robin. But on another level
they are the story of the community behind the books, that community of children for
which the books were written. In the Winnie-the-Pooh books one specific community
of English children early this century—now generally known to scholars as the Pooh
community—has encoded for us a wonderfully revealing account of itself. With this
methodological key it is possible to a large extent to reconstruct that community: its
character, its history, its passions, its factions. For example, this community of children
is clearly situated in a rural and rather isolated context—a small English village, one
should assume. All the action of the story takes place in a forest, and the small caste
of characters seems to live entirely in a world of its own. The outside world never
impinges. Awareness that other children exist beyond the inward-looking circle of
the Pooh community is indicated only by the very generalized and vague references
to Rabbit’s friends and relations.
Clearly the Pooh books were written for a specific community with a strong sense
of its distinctive identity—a closed, one might even say sectarian group which prided
itself on its special insider knowledge. We can see this in features of the writings which
would have baffled any outsider but provide the insider with confirmation of their
special status as privy to a kind of esoteric knowledge. Several times we find alleged
explanations which to the outsider would not be explanations at all. For example:
When I first heard his name [Winnie-the-Pooh], I said, just as you are going to say,
‘But I thought he was a boy?’
‘So did I,’ said Christopher Robin.
‘Then you can’t call him Winnie?’
‘I don’t.’
‘But you said—‘
‘He’s Winnie-ther-Pooh. Don’t you know what
“ther” means?’
‘Ah, yes, now I do,’ I said quickly; and I hope you do too, because it is
all the explanation you are going to get.”
(Winnie-the-Pooh
[London: Methuen, 1963] p 1)
Or again:
Nobody seemed to know where they came from, but there they were in
the Forest: Kanga and Roo. When Pooh asked Christopher Robin, ‘How
did they come here?’ Christopher Robin said, ‘In the Usual Way, if you
know what I mean, Pooh,’ and Pooh, who didn’t, said ‘Oh!’ Then he
nodded his head twice and said, ‘In the Usual Way. Ah!’
In that passage, Pooh, the bear of little brain, fails to understand, but the readers can
pride themselves on their own superior understanding. Clearly we are dealing with
sectarian literature which not only belongs within the group but bolsters that group’s
sense of superiority to the world in general—the general reader who cannot begin to
understand what ‘the usual way’ would be. Click below to read the rest!
