John Watson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and the Bible

A page from an original King James Bible (published 1611) which I got to see at the History of Science library collection at Oklahoma University

A reflection on everyone's favorite topic: hermeneutics!

Recently, I learned a couple of useful terms for analyzing literature: "Watsonian" and "Doylist" analysis. These are used in fandom spaces to refer to how people interact with the stories, indicating whether the readers are taking the perspective of the world and characters within the story (Dr. Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame) or the author's (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle).

For instance, in one of the Sherlock Holmes stories, it's indicated that Watson has an old war injury in his shoulder. In a later story, his wound is noted as being in his leg. How do people reconcile that?

From the Watsonian perspective, people talk about how John might've been injured twice, or how he might have been in a position while he was shot so that the bullet hurt both his shoulder and his leg. Some adaptations give him a psychosomatic wound to explain it away.

From the Doylist perspective, though, the answers are completely different: the most likely explanation is that Doyle simply forgot where the injury was. Or perhaps he decided to change the injury to a different location on the body for dramatic effect.

These kinds of analyses, while both valid ways of approaching a story, are very, very different. A lot of fandom discourse gets frustrating and downright ugly when people are trying to debate in one style with someone who's arguing from the other style.

So let's turn to the biggest fandom in the world, who is constantly arguing about what is fanon, what is canon, and what the stories even mean:

Christianity!

1. The Set-Up

In my evangelical upbringing, I was taught nearly nothing but Watsonian analysis. One of the basic mechanics of Watsonian analysis is to only work within the rules of the story itself, picking things apart verse by verse and creating complicated harmonizing scenarios where the stories contradict. Questions about the Bible focused on things like, "What did Jesus[Moses/Daniel/Paul/etc.] mean when he said this?" "What theology can we extrapolate from these three unrelated verses?" "How do you reconcile this seeming difference into a complicated, nuanced single narrative?" 

An example of this is the dual accounts of Judas killing himself, the one in Matthew 27 saying that he hanged himself and the one in Acts 1 saying that he plunged off the edge of a cliff (the standard explanation I've heard for that is that he hung himself over the edge of a cliff, the rope broke, and he fell to his death). 

Taking the Bible "literally" (as defined by a white western 20th-century culture), we used this analysis to conclude that the universe was created in six days, that the earth is only a few thousand years old, that homosexuality is forbidden, that genocide is okay sometimes, that prophecies are fortune-telling statements about the future, that women should not be pastors, and that there is airtight, irrefutable proof that Jesus was God and was raised from the dead. 

Watsonian analysis showed up a lot in trying to convert people. A common evangelical tactic was to ask people if they'd ever broken one of the Ten Commandments, which made them a sinner— without even considering whether the person in question thought the Ten Commandments were important in the first place. While I never did this particularly, I cringe at how I used to try to "defend my faith" or argue a point using Watsonian arguments, taking it as a given that the other person agreed that the Bible was a monologue from a singular, consistent God (that just happened to be written down by some people, who weren't important), without any thought of interpreting it any other way. 

This isn't to say that I never learned Doylist-style apologetics. I've heard many a pastor throw in a side note that even though all the heroes of the Old Testament were polygamists, actually that was a cultural thing and we shouldn't emulate that now. Same with slavery, the first Christians "having all things in common," and women wearing head coverings to church. Jesus' statements about giving to every beggar you meet and selling all your possessions to give to the poor were covered in layers of Doylist analysis of what that meant in the culture of the time and why that only applies to "those who are called," not to everyone. 

2. The Crisis

One day, I was reading one of the resurrection accounts in John's Gospel, and a question popped into my head: 

"Wouldn't the guys writing about Jesus' life and trying to get this new religion off the ground have a vested interest in writing the story so that everyone would believe the resurrection?"

It wasn't necessarily the first time I'd considered the author's personal biases, but this was the first time the idea stuck. It ended up causing a massive crisis of faith, as I began to realize, "Wait a minute, all these books of the Bible were written by human beings! Who had different ideas of the world and who had motives for writing! Who were flawed!" Maybe Judas didn't hang himself and then have the rope broke and fell off a cliff— maybe the two authors just remembered differently. Or one of them made it up. Or both of them made it up. 

I suddenly started thinking about author's motives. Before, the writers had been invisible, soulless mouthpieces for the words of God channeling down from Heaven. I'd never thought about them writing from a limited, flawed, human perspective. I never thought about how their intentions (including the New Testament writers' desire to keep this minority religion alive during times of persecution) might impact the way they told a story.

This shattering of my Watsonian perspective— of inhabiting only the inside of the story, and never the context around it— was incredibly difficult to go through. 

For a while I thought it meant I had lost my religion.

3. The Path Forward

Eventually, I learned that Biblical scholars— indeed, a majority of Biblical scholars— analyze from a Doylist rather than Watsonian perspective. I began reading books by authors who analyzed both inside and outside the stories of the Bible, treating them with respect as their various literary genres, rather than flattening them with a single hermeneutic that refused to take culture, time, history, genre, or manuscript studies into question. 

For instance, instead of seeing the contradictions in the Bible as problems to be solved, this method focus on questions like, "What did this author know about the subject? What sources were they drawing from? How did their editorial intent shape what they chose to include? What genre is this, and what purpose does the genre serve? Who were the original readers/hearers, how might they have received this, and how would it have been relevant to their circumstances? What biases or motives might they have had for interpreting these events or framing the story?"

Sometimes, reading the Bible this way wears me out— there's a definite simplicity in Watsonian analysis. But overall, I've found that I appreciate the Bible a lot more, particularly the more troubling passages about war, conquest, and monarchs! 

For some, a Doylist reading of the Bible does coincide with a loss of their faith, but for me, it's just a different way of approaching my cultural and religious heritage, one that I do eagerly (for the most part) and in good faith.

Regardless of how you read and interpret the Bible, knowing the difference between these two methods can be very helpful— for appreciating the stories both on their own terms, and within the wider world where they were created and compiled.

{Postscript 1: If you're interested in a Bible commentary that focuses on this kind of analysis, I highly recommend The New Oxford Annotated Bible, which was created through a partnership of both Protestant and Catholic scholars, along with Orthodox and Jewish input.}

{Postscript 2: Since publishing this I keep on thinking about more I'd like to say on the topic, such as how a framework of Doylist analysis has actually supported and enriched my Watsonian analysis of the text. But this post is long enough. However, if you're real excited to discuss this with someone, I'm your guy!}

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