Another installment from our good friend in Berlin, Jonathan Mumme, of “Take a Theologian to Work Day” fame, that is inspired, in good Mockingbird fashion, by the release of the (seemingly) bi-annual remake of Robin Hood. Enjoy!
With some British foresight Matthew Parris host of BBC 
Radio 4’s “Great Lives” invited Clive Strafford Smith to put forward his choice of a great life for the April 14th program. So a month before Russell Crowe would bring him to the silver screen the human rights lawyer (re)introduced Robin Hood to the BBC listeners. Chosen as the hand of justice fighting for the wronged, the impoverished and the underprivileged, Robin Hood’s is for Smith the best of all personal sagas. Only one small catch for the self-described “biographical series”: Robin Hood never existed.
it’s all Geschichte. Wherever we classify him Robin Hood’s Geschichte appears to have some staying power. With over 100 TV and movie appearances Crowe will take his place in the ranks of Errol Flynn, Sean Connery and Kevin Costner, and Ridley Scott beside Mel Brooks. It all begs the question, why does Robin Hood keep coming back? Perhaps it is the little Marxist in each of us – the masses finally sticking it to the Man. Or perhaps Brooks was right and it’s just men in tights. There is however some solid honesty in hunting for the best biographies in fiction. History only presenting us with a pool of broken persons can only give us blemished heroes. If you are looking for an ideal life, best to find it among those who never lived. With the rest of us the story is at best a very mixed bag. Clive Strafford Smith joins the ranks of G. E. Lessing, who told us that something like faith can’t be grounded in the contingent truths of history but only in the necessary truths of reason, and Bultmann, who could deliver Easter faith without a resurrection, the Easter story without the history. More recently Umberto Eco (Baudolino) and the film “The Brothers Bloom” indicate that we can’t pull our story-telling and our biographies apart anymore. Reality is what you make it; the history is the story you tell. The critical space is in our heads; the decisive words, those coming out of our own mouths; our lives a mix of truth and lie (if they still exist), our histories our own self-spun stories.
faith as a faith with a date, seems to be dated. Born during the census of Augustus “when Quirinius was governor of Syria,” “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” Jesus Christ is history. But not closed up history. The Gospel according to St. Matthew ends with the promise of his presence “all the days until the completion of the age.” His teaching, his name, his chosen witnesses, telling us how it is with us, to whom we belong, and locating every last one of our days – he has written us in. If the history is still being written, still being told, does that make it story? Whatever the case, that is a Geschichte like no other. Catching us up in his his-story he frees us from the need of having to tell, or outright make our own. That may just free you to go to the theater, among other things to rejoice in the small grace that Bryan Adams is not featured in this soundtrack.
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12 responses to “The Geschichte of Robin Hood: Story and History”
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"That may just free you to go to the theater, among other things to rejoice in the small grace that Bryan Adams is not featured in this soundtrack."
Hahahaha. Very good.
To a limited extent, I think Clive Smith is right (how else can war be viewed in a pristine, idealized fashion?), yet were this absolutely the case, then there would not have been such an outcry over James Frey's inauthentic memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." Oprah took him to task on national TV.
"Christian faith as a faith with a date, seems to be dated. Born during the census of Augustus “when Quirinius was governor of Syria,” “crucified under Pontius Pilate,” Jesus Christ is history. But not closed up history…"
Amen. If we lose this,the Jesus Christ of history who personally loves us and will personally come again to "judge the quick and the dead", then we are heading toward something akin to quasi-unitarian universalism with an emphasis on death/resurrection/grace psychology…a far less angular and far more genial position, to be sure.
Hi Jady. Really nice post.
PS. I know you're in school over in Germany. And I know some of the MB folks have a big love affair with Germany and German words. But honest, back in the States, we don't really need German (e.g. “Geschichte”) to communicate. English works fine. 🙂
In particular the English word "story" is totally adequate here. It's used by journalists (a news story) and writers of fiction equally.
StampDawg, don't pick on poor Jady, who was just kind enough to post for me. 🙂 Now I will grant that the German was a bit of a foil for an introduction, a pause to ponder. My question for you though, is, how far back can we go with a "story" in the journalist sense before it fades into "story" in the fiction sense? Einhard's “The Life of Charlemagne”, is technically a biography, but the embellishment would be hard to overlook. Journalism or fiction? There is also the anecdote that the victors write the history, which suggests that their version may be simply their version. “Story” can do double duty, and perhaps for that very reason can’t do what “history” does. But next time – no German – scout’s honor.
Thanks Jonathan. You know, I saw that it was you at the beginning, and then at the end saw Jady's moniker and promptly forgot it. Encroaching senility.
If you want something fun to read, try googling "The awful german language." It's a fun essay by Mark Twain.
A much more serious essay, and right in keeping with your reflections, is "Myth Became Fact" by C.S. Lewis. In it he argues that the story of Jesus given to us in the NT is both 100% myth and 100% fact. It's one of Lewis's great essays. If you are curious you can google
LEWIS "MYTH BECAME FACT"
at books.google.com and read it.
But is it possible to write history at all without the influence of story or plot?
The question you raise:
"how far back can we go with a "story" in the journalist sense before it fades into "story" in the fiction sense?"
is interesting. As I understand it, it's one of the things that historians methodologically struggle with — how to make sure that when they write about the far past that they are not making stuff up.
Certainly we hope that not every story that goes back far enough in time is largely fiction — else our belief in the events of Jesus life (who precedes Charlemagne by a long shot) would be belief in utter fabrications.
A fascinating problem in talking about the actual man Jesus of Nazareth (the one who really ate and breathed and lived and died and — we believe — rose again) is that we lack a good word for this person. (Maybe there's a fix in German!)
A lot of people use the word "the Historical Jesus" or "the Jesus of History" to mean this guy. But the problem with that, to my mind, is that such a phrase suggests that the secular discipline called History can recreate a reliable portrait of him.
In other words, the phrase "the Historical Augustus" or "the Historical Charlemagne" or "the historical Lincoln" should (in my opinion) mean what we can know about these guys insofar as they can be reliably reconstructed by professional historians.
But the vast majority of the lives of most people will always remain invisible and unreconstructable to historians. There just aren't enough reliable records. For example, my great-great-great-great-great-great grandmother is so unknown that I don't think anyone will ever know even her name.
And so there is a big difference between the Historical Lincoln and the Lincoln who actually lived 150 years ago — there's a vast amount of stuff that is true about the latter that historians will never know.
Thus I see tremendous confusion in the Jesus Wars of the last 40 years, in which the phrase "Historical Jesus" is used in one way (to denote simply the man who lived 2000 years ago) and then is used in a different way (the Jesus we can reliably reconstruct via the methods of professional historians) — but typically without awareness that this shift is happening.
The C.S. Lewis essay has been incredibly helpful to me in my own adventures in Christianity. (In fact, Lewis is simply indispensable to me, period.) He sums it up, here:
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle."
Just as an aside: It occurs to me that another story that's impossible to separate from "Story" (like Robin Hood, but supposedly based in fact) is the King Arthur saga…
Hey Jonathan. What I would say for sure is that certain phrases in the Jesus Wars are used with multiple and confusing meanings, sometimes by the same people!
The phrase "The Christ of Faith" is one such ambiguous phrase, so it's hard for me to respond without sharper definition as to how someone is using it.
My own personal feeling is that the phrase "The Historical _____" or the "_____ of History" (fill in the blank with Jesus, Lincoln, Joan of Arc, Alexander the Great, my great-great-great-great grandmother, whatever) should mean what we can know about these people insofar as they can be reliably reconstructed by professional historians.
In some cases, "The Historical _____" will be an empty canvas — there just isn't enough reliable data to recreate a portrait. My G-G-G-G grandmother is an example. In the case of Jesus, there's quite a fair bit that historians can reliably tell us about him: that he really existed, that he really had a brief ministry as an itinerant preacher, that he really was executed as a criminal, that his execution was tied up with conflict with the Jewish priestly hierarchy, and so on.
I also think that history as a means of knowledge, while valuable, is sharply limited, and that a lot of people (liberals and conservatives) involved in the Jesus wars do not exhibit awareness of these limitations. A good book in my opinion on all this is Luke Timothy Johnson's THE REAL JESUS.
But a huge problem, and I just can't stress this enough, is the ambiguous use of the phrase "Jesus of History" to mean sometimes the Jesus as he can be reconstructed by the methods of professional historians, and alternately the flesh-and-blood guy who lived 2000 years ago. The latter is a person who really did exist and about whom there are gazillions of true and important things that a properly humble historian can't answer — and this is also true about almost every real person who ever lived.
Here are some of the different meanings given to "Jesus" in the various debates about Him:
(1) The real flesh and blood man who lived 2000 years ago and about whom like any human there must be millions of true facts — many of which cannot know by known.
(2) The Jesus of the Canonical Gospels — i.e. the image of Jesus that emerges from looking at all four gospels (including the witness of other NY authors and books).
(3) The Jesus of History — i.e. facts about Jesus that can be reliably inferred by historians
(4) The Living Jesus — knowledge of Jesus based on the idea that he is Alive: in heaven, in the lives of believers, in the life of the church, and so on.
My feeling is that a Christian should have his understanding of Jesus in sense #1 informed by all of senses #2-4. I think it is fine for a Christian to be interested in what sober sound historians can tell us about Him — which is some key stuff! — but which frankly isn't going to touch the things we might care about most.
PS. When I said "the witness of other NY authors" I meant NT authors. As in New Testament, rather than New York. 🙂
StampDawg and Margaret E: I'll thank you both for the Lewis and for the round of discussion. StampDawg, where you come out with the 2 and 4 to the 1 – very nice, and makes sense to me. If I am not mistaken a fair bit of the christological controversies of the ancient church occurred by separating things you are keeping together. The One who died and the One who rose are the same One, who also sits at the right hand of the Father, takes residence in His own, is present and at work in the church, as the Scriptures testify.