There is a wonderful scene early in Agatha Christie's Lord Edgeware Dies where Lady Edgeware, upon learning that her husband has been murdered, throws herself into hysterical grief. Now, Hercule Poirot and Inspector Japp both immediately recognize that she's acting. Japp--who is already convinced that Lady Edgeware is the murderer--says "See, clearly she's guilty!" Poirot says, "No, I have interacted with Lady Edgeware before today. She is a professional actress. Her entire way of being in the world is to figure out what role others expect her to play at any given time, and playing it to the point of excess. Her grief is artificial, as I know that she hated her husband, but since everything that she does is artificial this tells us nothing about whether she committed the murder." (I am here paraphrasing: these are not direct quotes). There is, I think, an instructive lesson here for historians.
Very often I hear it said that this or that aspect of the gospels or of Acts is a "literary device" or "literary construct," and as such we can conclude that whatever event it describes never happened. When one makes such an argument one is thinking much more like poor Inspector Japp than like the astute M. Poirot. The nature of texts is such that everything in them is a literary construct; the mere observation of that fact is meaningless for the historian's purposes. What must be shown is that the aims behind this particular literary construction are such as to obviate its usefulness for those who want to reconstruct past events; that is to say, Japp must not merely suppose that Lady Edgeware's artificial grief is intended to hide her guilt but rather must show that this is the case. Now, in many cases one can show this. Returning to Dame Christie, her novels are all literary constructions, and one would be ill-advised in thinking that they describe events that actually happened. There was no Lord Edgeware who was murdered c. 1933; he had no American actress wife who flew into artificial hysterics at the news; a conceited Belgian detective did not solve the case. But we know this because we know that Christie aimed at fiction and not history; her literary constructs were all in service of that aim. By contrast, a true crime story might well use many of the same devices as she does to describe events that are well documented. (Think of such movies for instance as The Black Dahlia and Zodiac, and the point becomes evident). There is in all literature artifice; indeed, on one level all of literature is artifice; but the presence of literary artifice is not in and of itself an index of historical untruth.
Very often I hear it said that this or that aspect of the gospels or of Acts is a "literary device" or "literary construct," and as such we can conclude that whatever event it describes never happened. When one makes such an argument one is thinking much more like poor Inspector Japp than like the astute M. Poirot. The nature of texts is such that everything in them is a literary construct; the mere observation of that fact is meaningless for the historian's purposes. What must be shown is that the aims behind this particular literary construction are such as to obviate its usefulness for those who want to reconstruct past events; that is to say, Japp must not merely suppose that Lady Edgeware's artificial grief is intended to hide her guilt but rather must show that this is the case. Now, in many cases one can show this. Returning to Dame Christie, her novels are all literary constructions, and one would be ill-advised in thinking that they describe events that actually happened. There was no Lord Edgeware who was murdered c. 1933; he had no American actress wife who flew into artificial hysterics at the news; a conceited Belgian detective did not solve the case. But we know this because we know that Christie aimed at fiction and not history; her literary constructs were all in service of that aim. By contrast, a true crime story might well use many of the same devices as she does to describe events that are well documented. (Think of such movies for instance as The Black Dahlia and Zodiac, and the point becomes evident). There is in all literature artifice; indeed, on one level all of literature is artifice; but the presence of literary artifice is not in and of itself an index of historical untruth.
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