Jesus Remembered: Christianity in the Making, vol. 1

§3.1 The (Re-)Awakening of Historical Awareness
only mastery of the languages involved and command of a wider swath of classical
literature, but also substantial knowledge of the culture which formed the
original author's mind and influenced his writing. 8
These concerns and developments thus gave rise to what can fairly be described
as the first principles and methods of modern scholarly research into the
history of Christian origins. The first principle was that such ancient texts had to
be set in their correct historical setting and their language read in accordance
with the grammatical and syntactical rules of the time, if they were to be properly
understood. This constitutes in effect the first hermeneutical principle which
emerged from the Renaissance's 'revival of learning': historical texts have to be
read first and foremost as historical texts. The first modern scholarly methods
properly speaking were twofold: (1) historical philology, the careful discerning
of the meaning of words and sentences in the original language of the text by reference
to the way these words and such sentences were used at the time of writing,
and (2) textual criticism, the skill of reconstructing from the variant manuscripts
available, so far as possible, the original texts, by identifying and
correcting the corruptions caused by centuries of Christian transmission and editing.
It was this principle and these methods which enabled Humanist scholars
to expose mediaeval documents masquerading as classical authorities for the
forgeries they were. The most famous and frequently cited example is Lorenzo
Valla's demonstration on linguistic and historical grounds that the 'Donation of
Constantine', which claimed to be a record of the privileges that Emperor
Constantine conferred upon Pope Sylvester (313-35), his clergy and his successors,
could not be genuine; it is generally reckoned to be an eighth-century fabrication.
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We do well to note and acknowledge the deep and continuing indebtedness
of all students of ancient texts to the scholarship inaugurated in this period. The
enduring fruits of this scholarship are preserved in the dictionaries and lexica and
critical editions, constantly being refined in new editions in the light of further
manuscript and inscriptional evidence, and forming essential reference works on
the shelves of every library and scholar. These contain in compact, easily usable
form, the findings of generations of careful and increasingly informed scholarship
of the finest quality, magisterial judgments particularly regarding range of
word usage and individual idiosyncracies of style, such as no contemporary computer
search could even begin to rival. Twenty-first-century students of these
texts need to remember that they are standing on the shoulders of giants. Without
8. Ibid.
9. Fryde, 'Historiography' 952, with other examples. Burke cites Valla at length {Renaissance
55-58); see further on the development of a critical attitude towards evidence (7-13,
50-69).
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