The front matter of my Vulgate for pleasure-reading—the
Colunga-Turrado edition from the Biblioteca de Autores Cristianos
series—includes a selection of Magisterial documents relating to
Sacred Scripture. One section includes the responses and
declarations of the Pontifical Biblical Commission (or, as it was
once known, “the Pontifical Commission on Biblical Things,”
Pontifica Commissio de Re Biblica), instituted by Pope Leo XIII on October 30, 1902. A number of the early responses are considered
infamous in exegetical
circles for their rejection
of historical-critical methods of exegesis; such methods later
received an allowance in Pope Pius XII’s Divino Afflante Spiritu (1943).
Amidst
the more famous responses, such as “On the Mosaic Authorship of the
Pentateuch” (1906), and “On the Historical Character of the First
Three Chapters of Genesis” (1909), I noticed one I hadn’t heard
of before, the very first response given by the Commission, which I
translate below (Latin original here):
Regarding
Implicit Citations Contained in Sacred Scripture
(February
13, 1905)
Acta
Sanctae Sedis
37 (1904-1905), p. 666
When,
in order to have a directive norm for those studying Sacred
Scripture, the following question was proposed to the Pontifical
Commission on Biblical Things, namely:
Whether,
in order to clarify the difficulties which occur in some texts of
Sacred Scripture, which are seen to refer to historical facts, it is
permitted for the Catholic exegete to assert that one is dealing, in
these [texts], with tacit or implicit citations of documents written
by an un-inspired author, all of whose assertions the inspired author
by no means intends to approve or make his own, which, therefore,
cannot be held to be immune from error?
The
aforesaid Commission, in response, decreed:
Negative,
except in the case in which, the sense and judgment of the Church
being preserved, it is proved by solid arguments: 1) that the sacred
writer has truly cited the sayings or documents of another; and 2)
that he did not approve or make them his own, wherefore it is
lawfully decreed that he did not speak in his own name.
What
interested me about this response is how it relates to the modern
idea of the “remix” or “mashup.” I recently read Lawrence
Lessig’s Remix,
which discusses this concept and how remix creators should be legally
protected from copyright strikes. What Lessig has in mind is
something like the music sampling, as used (most prominently) in
hip-hop music. Typically,
in sampling, the source of the sample, or citation, is obvious.
Think of how Vanilla Ice’s “Ice Ice Baby” sampled the bass line
of the David Bowie and Queen collaboration “Under Pressure,” or
how M.C. Hammer’s “U Can’t Touch This” sampled the riff of
Rick James’ “Super Freak.” Theoretically, a musical sample
need not be so obvious: Lessig gives the example of a sampler
plucking out the particular playing of a single chord in a unique
orchestral recording—quite subtle, if used on its own. A short
enough sample, or a heavy enough layering of samples, can make it
hard to pick out sources. So it is in the album Paul’s
Boutique,
by the Beastie Boys and the Dust Brothers, or in the work of Lessig’s
particular favorite, the mash-up artist Girl Talk. Such heavy
sampling is often done without copyright clearance (thus being a form
of “plunderphonics,” to use John Oswald’s term).
But
what I am focused on here is not the copyright issues, but the
concept of sampling or citation in itself. As I said, in modern
sampling or mash-ups, the original source is often quite easily
distinguishable. This is because modern audio technology makes it
very easy to sample, not just the rhythm or melody of chords, but the
original recording itself.
Sampling
need not be so obvious, though: one can sample the structure
of the word, the script,
and not just the performance
itself. This has long been the case in music:
classical music has often sample folk melodies, such as the Shaker
tune “Simple Gifts” found in Aaron Copland’s Appalachian
Spring,
or most of the melodies from Johannes Brahms’ Hungarian
Dances.
A particular favorite of mine is Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Five
Variants of Dives and Lazarus,
based on a melody best-known for its pairing with the hymn, “I
Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.” These are clear-cut examples:
others are less so. Did Antonin Dvořák actually sample the
melodies of African-American spirituals in Symphony
No. 9,
or was he simply inspired by their rhythm and melodical tendencies,
as in his Slavonic
Dances?
Even in the cases where melodical samplings are obvious, there is
still an abstraction here compared to modern digital sampling.
It is easier to incorporate a textual citation (and I consider sheet
music a text) than a recorded citation, a performance: it is easier
to make the former one’s own.
And,
of course, citations like this go far beyond music. Visual art can
cite and sample, sometimes by including literal copies of an entire
artwork (Van Gogh included miniatures of some of his portraits in his
Bedroom at Arles),
sometimes by incorporating fragments of a work, or color schemes, or
shapes and framing (as in some of Kehinde Wiley’s paintings,
replicating the stance and arrangement of famous portraits, often
regal or noble). And, in text, sampling is even more
prevalent. Think of the poets’ proverb: “Immature poets imitate;
mature poets steal.” (This is T.S. Eliot’s version, though many
others have their own spin on it, often applying to artists in
general, not just poets in particular.)
Text
is (typically) clearly structured and laid out; it is easy to
dissect, to cut up, sometimes literally, as William S. Burroughs did.
A clear example is seen in Raymond Queneau’s A
Hundred Thousand Billion Poems:
ten sonnets with each line printed on separate strips, and each line
having the same ending rhyme, so that any fourteen lines, from any
source sonnet, can be rearranged into a new sonnet, with the title of
the work giving the possible number of permutations (1014).
Most textual sampling is more judicious, though, with the writer
writing much of his own material, and then garnishing it with select
quotations; even if the quotations are more integral to the core of
the work, it is typical for the majority of the writing to be
original to the writer.
Yet
even this “original” writing is not free from sampling. Every
writer unknowingly samples as he writes: as he reads and listens to
those around him, his mind unwittingly snips phrases and sayings and
hides them away in the treasure-house of the mind. When he pulls
them out later, in the course of his writing, he often doesn’t even
know he’s doing it. Unconscious
plagiarism is commonplace. And when we broaden beyond mere identical
strings of words to structures, to arrangements of phrases, the
borrowing becomes even more frequent.
But
is sampling—voluntary or involuntary—merely plagiarization, a
copying of another’s work and claiming it as one’s own?
Absolutely not.
When
the “mature poet steals,” he is not doing so in order to pawn off
stolen goods. He is no mere forger. (Though some would even argue
that forgery can be artistic and original: see the interesting
discussions in Byung-Chul Han’s Shanzai:
Deconstruction in Chinese.)
Where a mature artist steals a jewel, he does so to put it in his
own setting; even if he stole the setting as well, by selecting those
two distinct pieces and joining them together, he has made his own
piece of art. That selection is itself an artistic process. That is
why Francis Palgrave’s Golden
Treasury
is more than just a pile
of stolen poems: it is a curated
treasury,
and that curation is itself an original work. (Whether Palgrave’s
curation was good or not is a separate issue.)
The
citing artist is thus making the citation part of his work. If the
citation is clearly framed, he could be using it as a counterpoint,
and not necessarily part of his own view; if the citation is subtler,
maybe even unwitting, then the citer is often making
it his own.
Thus,
after this journey of a thousand steps, we are back to the stodgy
Vatican document with which I began. For the question that was asked
of the Commission was—reworded—this: “When the sacred author
cites, do the words become his own, or do they remain another’s?”
The Commission declares that the presumption should be, “The words
are his own”: “owned until proven quoted.” The sacred authors
were men: we do not believe in dictated inspiration, the Holy Spirit
whispering the exact words in the author’s ear, as He does with
chant in many icons of St. Gregory the Great. We believe in dual
authorship: Scripture is truly God-inspired and God-written, but it
was written by
(or through,
as Scripture itself often says) the human authors as well. These men
wrote in their own, distinct ways (hence why Julius Wellhausen and
his descendants have some rationale for their attempts to divide up
the Pentateuch by various author); they used their own wits to write.
This means that, like all writers, they will have some citations,
voluntary or involuntary. The
Book of Proverbs, for instance, has many passages that are
startlingly close to an ancient Egyptian work, the Instruction
of Amenemope
(c. 13th-11th
centuries BC). Did the sacred author (traditionally Solomon)
knowingly copy down parts of this text, thinking them worthy of Godly
wisdom? Or did these old proverbs he’d heard in his youth hide in
his mind and come forth when he began to write out proverbs of his
own?
The
Commission says that citations can only be considered as citations
proper if they are 1) directly known to be the words of another and
2) set in contradistinction by the sacred author. Nietzsche says,
“God is dead.” My
citation makes it clear that
the words belong to another (#1); but have I made the
contradistinction clear? The
Commission said that “it must be proved...that [the author] did not
approve or make them his own (sua
facere).”
An unwitting citation is a case where the author “makes them his
own”; if he declares the author that he’s citing from, then we
should generally assume the words have not “been made his own.”
Yet that is not enough to exempt them from inerrancy: if the sacred
author cites without
disapproving,
then the citations are covered under inerrancy. Jude’s Epistle
references some apocryphal work discussing a debate between Michael
the Archangel and the devil over the body of Moses (v. 9): though St.
Jude is clearly citing someone else (“Michael the
archangel...said”),
thus fulfilling #1, and, since the citation is distinct, I would say
he is clearly not making the words his own (#2.2), yet
there
is no indication that he disapproves
(#2.1); thus, per the Commission’s criteria, it seems this
quotation would still fall under inerrancy.
(Interestingly,
scholars aren’t sure which
apocryphal book Jude is citing: Origen said he was quoting the
Assumption of
Moses,
but we only have a partial Latin translation of the work. Other
scholars think he is conflating or misremembering episodes from the
Apocalypse of
Moses,
the Book of Enoch,
or Zechariah 3.)
To
try to wrap all this up, I think the Commission’s response
translated above is a recognition of the ubiquity of sampling, of
citation, in artistry. (And Scripture is a collection of sacred
artworks.) The artist often so merges the sample—frequently
through unwittingness—into his work that he truly “makes it his
own”: the sample becomes part of his own artwork. Even a clear,
distinct sample, though, is not because of that a negation of
artistry. The Commission says that if the author does not clearly
disapprove
of a sample, then it is such a part of the artwork that it acquires
the work’s inerrancy. Inerrancy is what the Commission is
focused on, so, if a sample is distinct and disapproved, then the
sample in itself is not inerrant. Yet that
does not exempt it from being part of the artwork.
The disapproval itself is incorporated into the work; the
oppositional structure is part of the artist’s artistry. The
manifesto of the ungodly men in Wis 2 is part of the artwork; it is
included so that it can be refuted: “Thus they reasoned, but they
were led astray, for their wickedness blinded them, and they did not
know the secret purposes of God, nor hope for the wages of holiness,
nor discern the prize for blameless souls” (Wis 2:21-22 RSV-CE). A
similar case is found in the friends’ speeches in the Book of Job;
so, too, is the nihilism found in much of the Book of Ecclesiastes.
Sampling
is not always approval, but sampling is always artistry,
in the secular as in the Scriptural.
Note: Fr. E.F. Sutcliffe's English translations of the early responses of the Pontifical Biblical Commission can be found at Catholic Apologetics Information.
Text ©2024
Brandon P. Otto.
Licensed via CC
BY-NC. Feel free to redistribute non-commercially, as long
as credit is given to the author.
