Breaking It Down: Evaluating Complicated Theories

When you encounter a theory about unstated authorial intentions in a narrative work, how can you evaluate it correctly? Too often, scholars give epistemic value to their own ingenuity, counting a highly complex theory of hidden authorial meaning as plausible merely because someone thought it up and because other scholars take it seriously. This approach means that interpreters are coming to the document with the unargued assumption that the author is creating a literary work rather than a more straightforward work of narrative history. These literary theories, then, aren't subject to sufficiently rigorous scrutiny or made to carry the due burden of proof.  I suggest what I call "breaking it down" in order to evaluate a theory about some subtle authorial intention in the Gospels, using the theory that John moved the Temple cleansing as an example. For more on the Temple cleansing, see the playlist, here:  https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLe1tMOs8ARn0QhpT_JgxzoxmUolEg9d3K

Originally uploaded to YouTube Mar 20, 2022