Latest / Scripture-ish / Tracking Down Sources
Transcript
- 0:01SPEAKER_00: Hi, this is Ed Gallagher, and I'm reading my essay, Tracking Down Sources.
- 0:07SPEAKER_00: I originally wrote this essay for my students at Heritage Christian University,
- 0:13SPEAKER_00: and it probably makes most sense in that context,
- 0:16SPEAKER_00: but it might provide some good advice for people outside an academic context
- 0:21SPEAKER_00: as well.
- 0:25SPEAKER_00: One of Abraham Lincoln's famous quotations is,
- 0:28SPEAKER_00: don't believe everything you read on the internet.
- 0:32SPEAKER_00: This excellent advice from our 16th president helpfully introduces our topic,
- 0:38SPEAKER_00: which is tracking down sources.
- 0:42SPEAKER_00: As honest Abe would tell us,
- 0:44SPEAKER_00: when you find an interesting quotation or bit of information,
- 0:48SPEAKER_00: you need to confirm it, trace it back to its origin, see if it's true.
- 0:54SPEAKER_00: When you are doing research on the Bible,
- 0:56SPEAKER_00: for instance,
- 0:57SPEAKER_00: a research paper,
- 0:59SPEAKER_00: one of the tasks that you have to do This is a question about
- 1:03SPEAKER_00: which some people have much to say today, and they will offer a variety of opinions.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: These opinions might be interesting, but they are not evidence.
- 1:11SPEAKER_00: What you really want
- 1:30SPEAKER_00: is information deriving from the first century,
- 1:33SPEAKER_00: first-hand information from writers in the first century,
- 1:37SPEAKER_00: or from archaeological artifacts dating to the first century.
- 1:44SPEAKER_00: A good guide to such evidence on the topic of women in
- 1:47SPEAKER_00: the first century is Susan Hyland, a New Testament professor at Emory.
- 1:53SPEAKER_00: She has several books on the topic,
- 1:55SPEAKER_00: and I have always found her works to be careful Both in its citation
- 2:01SPEAKER_00: of ancient evidence and in the conclusions drawn from that evidence.
- 2:06SPEAKER_00: I trust her to be careful because she has proven herself worthy of that trust.
- 2:13SPEAKER_00: But I do not trust her to provide the correct citation in any given instance.
- 2:22SPEAKER_00: Everybody makes mistakes.
- 2:23SPEAKER_00: Susan Hyland is great, but you still need to track down the sources.
- 2:29SPEAKER_00: Make sure that she cites Josephus correctly,
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: for instance,
- 2:33SPEAKER_00: that the paragraph number she provided is the correct one and
- 2:37SPEAKER_00: that Josephus really does say what she attributes to him and
- 2:41SPEAKER_00: that she has interpreted his meaning correctly.
- 2:45SPEAKER_00: The only way to do that is define the original passage in Josephus.
- 2:49SPEAKER_00: Read the passage and read a little bit before it and a little bit after it to get the context.
- 2:56SPEAKER_00: It has never been so easy to track down sources.
- 3:00SPEAKER_00: Most of the ancient sources are freely available online in English translation so
- 3:05SPEAKER_00: that, as the Apostle Paul might say, one is without excuse.
- 3:12SPEAKER_00: There is no reason not to look up the original passage, and it must be done.
- 3:18SPEAKER_00: Why?
- 3:20SPEAKER_00: Why should we care so much about tracking down sources?
- 3:26SPEAKER_00: Because, you know, we are people who value truth.
- 3:32SPEAKER_00: We have committed ourselves to guiding people into a deeper knowledge
- 3:36SPEAKER_00: of matters divine,
- 3:37SPEAKER_00: a sacred responsibility that should compel us to know what we're talking about and
- 3:44SPEAKER_00: to refuse to affirm things that we don't know.
- 3:48SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we are going to get into arguments that are finely nuanced,
- 3:54SPEAKER_00: that turn on the meaning of a particular Greek or Hebrew word,
- 3:59SPEAKER_00: or that are affected by the proper interpretation of some extra biblical source.
- 4:05SPEAKER_00: And we should,
- 4:06SPEAKER_00: you know,
- 4:08SPEAKER_00: look at such evidence for ourselves so that we can help people work through
- 4:13SPEAKER_00: the issues.
- 4:15SPEAKER_00: Especially at Heritage Christian University,
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: an academic institution,
- 4:20SPEAKER_00: we pursue academic excellence as a facet of Christian virtue,
- 4:27SPEAKER_00: developing skills,
- 4:29SPEAKER_00: both practical and scholarly, in order to help people and to glorify God.
- 4:35SPEAKER_00: We are God's images, and we have been created in Christ Jesus unto good works.
- 4:42SPEAKER_00: And those good works are many and manifold.
- 4:47SPEAKER_00: Doing our academic work in an excellent fashion is,
- 4:51SPEAKER_00: in part, what we have been created in Christ Jesus to do.
- 4:58SPEAKER_00: We need to take this stuff seriously.
- 5:01SPEAKER_00: By the way,
- 5:02SPEAKER_00: this is the reason I cite Wikipedia so frequently on Substack and in chapel speeches
- 5:09SPEAKER_00: and even in sermons.
- 5:11SPEAKER_00: I would never, never rely on Wikipedia as an actual research source.
- 5:19SPEAKER_00: I would never cite it in an academic paper.
- 5:22SPEAKER_00: I cite it in speeches for two main reasons.
- 5:26SPEAKER_00: To let you know where to find more information about a topic.
- 5:31SPEAKER_00: And even more importantly, to tell you that I have not done research on the topic.
- 5:38SPEAKER_00: If I'm relying on Wikipedia, that means I don't know what I'm talking about.
- 5:42SPEAKER_00: I have done only the easiest, laziest, most basic amount of research.
- 5:49SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't even call it research, but poking around.
- 5:54SPEAKER_00: No, it's not even poking around.
- 5:56SPEAKER_00: That's the term I use for looking at a few books in the library
- 6:00SPEAKER_00: to see what scholars are saying on a topic.
- 6:03SPEAKER_00: It doesn't rise to the level of research because it's only a few books that I look
- 6:07SPEAKER_00: at and maybe a few primary sources.
- 6:10SPEAKER_00: That's poking around.
- 6:12SPEAKER_00: Research is when I'm actually in the pursuit of a question and I'm going
- 6:16SPEAKER_00: to be pretty exhaustive in my search for the answer.
- 6:20SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes for a Bible class or sermon or even a class
- 6:24SPEAKER_00: at Heritage Christian University,
- 6:27SPEAKER_00: I don't have time for real research, just some poking around down in the library.
- 6:33SPEAKER_00: And a lot of time I don't even have time to poke around or I don't have an interest.
- 6:38SPEAKER_00: And so I just Google something and read a Wikipedia article.
- 6:42SPEAKER_00: But I almost always tell people when I'm relying on Wikipedia,
- 6:47SPEAKER_00: when I do cite Wikipedia,
- 6:49SPEAKER_00: I don't mean to communicate that Wikipedia is a good research tool,
- 6:54SPEAKER_00: but the exact opposite.
- 6:55SPEAKER_00: Wikipedia is where you go before you start the process of research.
- 7:02SPEAKER_00: And now I give you three bad examples,
- 7:06SPEAKER_00: all from the published work of biblical scholars and theologians,
- 7:11SPEAKER_00: people who should know better.
- 7:15SPEAKER_00: First up, Hippocrates on women.
- 7:21SPEAKER_00: In the year 2020,
- 7:22SPEAKER_00: a book called Women in the Bible was published by Westminster John Knox,
- 7:27SPEAKER_00: written by Jamie Clark Souls,
- 7:29SPEAKER_00: a professor at Perkins School of Theology, the seminary attached to SMU in Dallas.
- 7:37SPEAKER_00: On page two of her book,
- 7:38SPEAKER_00: she presents a chart exhibiting eight quotations from historical sources ranging
- 7:44SPEAKER_00: from Hippocrates in the classical Greek period to Luther and Calvin in
- 7:50SPEAKER_00: the 16th century.
- 7:52SPEAKER_00: This chart is designed to illustrate,
- 7:55SPEAKER_00: in the words of Clark Souls,
- 7:58SPEAKER_00: the availability of an endless collection of choice quotations to prove
- 8:03SPEAKER_00: that women have been considered inferior to men.
- 8:07SPEAKER_00: That's a quote from Clark Souls.
- 8:10SPEAKER_00: Now, let me say,
- 8:11SPEAKER_00: I have no doubt that one can easily demonstrate such a thing
- 8:16SPEAKER_00: that throughout world history,
- 8:18SPEAKER_00: in perhaps all societies, women have been considered inferior to men.
- 8:24SPEAKER_00: I agree with Clark Souls that this has been a common attitude,
- 8:28SPEAKER_00: and I join with her in condemning it.
- 8:32SPEAKER_00: I just wish she had done a better job of demonstrating it.
- 8:36SPEAKER_00: To emphasize the pedantic point that is the subject of this essay,
- 8:41SPEAKER_00: you should not rely on her chart, but use her chart as a guide to the sources.
- 8:47SPEAKER_00: By all means, go tracking down the sources yourself.
- 8:53SPEAKER_00: And you'll find that Clark Souls has not always excerpted these quotations accurately.
- 9:00SPEAKER_00: As I said, there are eight quotations attributed to the following sources.
- 9:05SPEAKER_00: Hippocrates,
- 9:07SPEAKER_00: Aristotle,
- 9:08SPEAKER_00: Josephus, Philo,
- 9:10SPEAKER_00: the Tosefta,
- 9:11SPEAKER_00: which is a rabbinic document from the third century, Origen,
- 9:15SPEAKER_00: who is a third century Christian author in Greek, and Martin Luther and John Calvin.
- 9:22SPEAKER_00: The first quotation is from Hippocrates,
- 9:25SPEAKER_00: a Greek medical writer from around the time of Socrates.
- 9:30SPEAKER_00: Clark Souls attributes to Hippocrates these words in quotation marks.
- 9:36SPEAKER_00: Quote, Males are warm, dry, and firm, and this is the norm.
- 9:43SPEAKER_00: Females are cool, moist, and spongy, these being defects.
- 9:49SPEAKER_00: End quote.
- 9:51SPEAKER_00: Now, that's an interesting statement,
- 9:53SPEAKER_00: and I have read enough about ancient views of women to say that it sounds plausible
- 9:58SPEAKER_00: that Hippocrates said it.
- 10:01SPEAKER_00: But where did he say it?
- 10:03SPEAKER_00: It would be nice if Clark Souls would tell us where Hippocrates made this statement,
- 10:08SPEAKER_00: but she doesn't.
- 10:10SPEAKER_00: Instead, she cites a scholarly article written in 1991.
- 10:15SPEAKER_00: You know what to do next, right?
- 10:17SPEAKER_00: Go get the article.
- 10:19SPEAKER_00: Under no circumstances are you to trust a scholar,
- 10:23SPEAKER_00: and in this case,
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: thou shalt not assume that Clark Souls has correctly cited the article,
- 10:30SPEAKER_00: or that the 1991 article says what Clark Souls attributes to it.
- 10:34SPEAKER_00: Best case scenario here is that the 1991 article provides a quote from Hippocrates
- 10:41SPEAKER_00: that is word for word what Clark Souls quoted and provides the reference
- 10:46SPEAKER_00: to Hippocrates.
- 10:49SPEAKER_00: That is not what the 1991 article provides.
- 10:54SPEAKER_00: It turns out that the words presented by Clark Soule's in quotation marks are not
- 11:00SPEAKER_00: a direct quotation at all,
- 11:02SPEAKER_00: and not even a quotation from the scholarly article,
- 11:05SPEAKER_00: but more of a summary from the article.
- 11:09SPEAKER_00: The 1991 article was written by Leslie Dean Jones,
- 11:13SPEAKER_00: and she shows that in the Hippocratic treatise called Glanz,
- 11:19SPEAKER_00: One, men are said to have glands that are spongy.
- 11:25SPEAKER_00: They have some glands that are spongy.
- 11:27SPEAKER_00: And in this way, the glands are different from the rest of the male body.
- 11:34SPEAKER_00: But females,
- 11:35SPEAKER_00: according to the same tractate,
- 11:38SPEAKER_00: females have glands that are spongy, just like the rest of their body.
- 11:44SPEAKER_00: So the whole female body is spongy.
- 11:47SPEAKER_00: According to Dean Jones,
- 11:48SPEAKER_00: it is the Hippocratic treatise called Regimen that says that women are colder
- 11:55SPEAKER_00: and moister than men.
- 11:58SPEAKER_00: So you know what to do now, right?
- 12:01SPEAKER_00: You go get the Hippocratic treatise Regimen and you see for yourself.
- 12:06SPEAKER_00: It's in the Loeb Classical Library,
- 12:08SPEAKER_00: which is easily accessible on the shelves of a good library,
- 12:12SPEAKER_00: and most of this stuff you can access online if you are an intelligent user of
- 12:18SPEAKER_00: the internet.
- 12:20SPEAKER_00: By the way, here is the entirety of the section in that treatise called Regimen.
- 12:28SPEAKER_00: Quote, This is from the Loeb Classical Library.
- 12:31SPEAKER_00: The quotation is,
- 12:33SPEAKER_00: the males of all species are warmer and drier and the females moister and colder.
- 12:41SPEAKER_00: For the following reasons,
- 12:43SPEAKER_00: originally each sex was born in such things and grows thereby,
- 12:50SPEAKER_00: while after birth males use a more rigorous regimen so that they are well warmed
- 12:56SPEAKER_00: and dried,
- 12:58SPEAKER_00: but females use a regimen that is moister and less stringent,
- 13:03SPEAKER_00: besides purging the heat out of their bodies every month.
- 13:09SPEAKER_00: End quote.
- 13:11SPEAKER_00: Take careful note that a word that does not appear in the passage of Hippocrates,
- 13:17SPEAKER_00: summarized by Dean Jones, is the crucial term defect.
- 13:22SPEAKER_00: That was in the quotation that Clark Souls presented, but the word is not used at all.
- 13:31SPEAKER_00: Indeed, the word defect appears nowhere in the article by Dean Jones.
- 13:37SPEAKER_00: So it looks like what Clark Souls has done is she has
- 13:42SPEAKER_00: She has combined a summary of the Hippocratic treatise,
- 13:50SPEAKER_00: Glands, with a summary of the Hippocratic treatise, Regimen.
- 13:54SPEAKER_00: Put them together,
- 13:56SPEAKER_00: put quotation marks around it,
- 13:58SPEAKER_00: and offered the interpretation that Hippocrates means that women have
- 14:04SPEAKER_00: a defective body.
- 14:05SPEAKER_00: So she put the word defect in there as well.
- 14:09SPEAKER_00: So, you know, yeah.
- 14:13SPEAKER_00: Okay, next up is Thomas Campbell the Calvinist.
- 14:20SPEAKER_00: Okay, Thomas Campbell, of course, is the father of Alexander Campbell.
- 14:25SPEAKER_00: Who is the most famous name in the first generation of the Stone Campbell Movement
- 14:30SPEAKER_00: or the American Restoration Movement.
- 14:34SPEAKER_00: Okay, now for a second example.
- 14:35SPEAKER_00: And this one comes from a New Testament scholar named Eugene Boring.
- 14:41SPEAKER_00: Yes, that's his last name, Boring.
- 14:44SPEAKER_00: And he died a couple of years ago.
- 14:47SPEAKER_00: I'm not taking an example from one of Boring's books on the New Testament,
- 14:50SPEAKER_00: but from a book he published with Chalice Press in 1997 called Disciples and
- 14:56SPEAKER_00: the Bible.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: And I've previously published a couple of essays on this particular book,
- 15:01SPEAKER_00: Eugene Boring's book, and I have links to them if you want to find that.
- 15:06SPEAKER_00: It's on my Substack page.
- 15:09SPEAKER_00: Eugene Boring was himself a lifelong member of the Disciples of Christ,
- 15:14SPEAKER_00: and he taught for some time at Bright Divinity School,
- 15:18SPEAKER_00: a disciples' seminary attached to Texas Christian University in Fort Worth.
- 15:25SPEAKER_00: The book itself is fantastic.
- 15:27SPEAKER_00: I highly recommend it for an analysis of the biblical interpretation practiced
- 15:31SPEAKER_00: by Alexander Campbell and J.W.
- 15:34SPEAKER_00: McGarvey and others who are probably less well-known to you.
- 15:40SPEAKER_00: But one of the interesting quotations Boring provides is on page 241 of his book,
- 15:44SPEAKER_00: a quotation from Thomas Campbell in which the elder Campbell said in the year 1828,
- 15:51SPEAKER_00: I am a Calvinist.
- 15:53SPEAKER_00: And Campbell further said that he was not a restorationist.
- 15:59SPEAKER_00: Now that's interesting, isn't it?
- 16:01SPEAKER_00: Wouldn't you like to see that comment in its original context?
- 16:06SPEAKER_00: What you would like to see from Boring is a footnote citing Thomas Campbell.
- 16:12SPEAKER_00: That would make things easy.
- 16:14SPEAKER_00: You could just go get the relevant book by Campbell and see what he meant,
- 16:20SPEAKER_00: and this could be done in a good library or online.
- 16:24SPEAKER_00: Alas, Boring does not provide a reference to Campbell,
- 16:28SPEAKER_00: but again,
- 16:30SPEAKER_00: just like Clark Soles,
- 16:31SPEAKER_00: To a secondary source,
- 16:33SPEAKER_00: and this one is the 1954 book by Lester G.
- 16:37SPEAKER_00: McAllister called Thomas Campbell, Man of the Book.
- 16:42SPEAKER_00: Fortunately,
- 16:43SPEAKER_00: we have this book in our library,
- 16:45SPEAKER_00: so I walked down there from my office and found
- 16:47SPEAKER_00: that McAllister himself did not directly cite Thomas Campbell either,
- 16:53SPEAKER_00: but another book,
- 16:54SPEAKER_00: one published in By A.S.
- 16:57SPEAKER_00: Hayden in 1875 and called Early History of the Disciples in the Western Reserve,
- 17:04SPEAKER_00: Ohio.
- 17:06SPEAKER_00: Now this book was not available in the library, but it is online at archive.org.
- 17:13SPEAKER_00: There I see that the original source of this quotation by Campbell seems to be a letter.
- 17:20SPEAKER_00: Dated April 6th, 1868.
- 17:22SPEAKER_00: Written by somebody named Islet Rains to the book's author, A.S. Hayden.
- 17:29SPEAKER_00: To describe his participation in the 1828 meeting of
- 17:33SPEAKER_00: the Mahoning Baptist Association in Warren, Ohio.
- 17:39SPEAKER_00: So there is no source extant,
- 17:40SPEAKER_00: I think, directly from Thomas Campbell in which he says that he is a Calvinist.
- 17:46SPEAKER_00: What we have is an 1868 letter.
- 17:50SPEAKER_00: Written by a fellow who recalled a conversation he had 40 years earlier in
- 17:56SPEAKER_00: which Campbell made the statement.
- 17:58SPEAKER_00: Thomas Campbell himself was long dead by the time Islet Raines recalled
- 18:03SPEAKER_00: the conversation he had with him.
- 18:05SPEAKER_00: That seems to me relevant context for the source.
- 18:08SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying Islet Raines misremembered his conversation with Thomas Campbell,
- 18:12SPEAKER_00: but such things often happen.
- 18:16SPEAKER_00: In any case, it is best to know what sort of source we're dealing with.
- 18:19SPEAKER_00: Not a direct quotation of Campbell, but a remembered conversation.
- 18:26SPEAKER_00: Track down the sources yourself.
- 18:30SPEAKER_00: And finally, Hitler and Christians.
- 18:35SPEAKER_00: Finally,
- 18:35SPEAKER_00: I cite the book Mere Discipleship by Lipscomb professor Lee Camp,
- 18:41SPEAKER_00: published by Brazos in 2003, with a second edition appearing in 2009.
- 18:49SPEAKER_00: In both editions, the eighth chapter, titled Baptism, has two epigraphs.
- 18:56SPEAKER_00: The first one is Galatians 3,
- 18:58SPEAKER_00: verses 27 and 28, and the second is a statement attributed to Adolf Hitler.
- 19:04SPEAKER_00: Quote, one is either a good German or a good Christian.
- 19:10SPEAKER_00: It is impossible to be both at the same time.
- 19:14SPEAKER_00: End quote.
- 19:16SPEAKER_00: Now that's an interesting quotation from Hitler.
- 19:20SPEAKER_00: Where did Hitler say that?
- 19:22SPEAKER_00: Did Hitler really say that?
- 19:25SPEAKER_00: It seems a bit too perfect, a bit too on the nose.
- 19:31SPEAKER_00: I had the impression that Hitler courted Christians,
- 19:35SPEAKER_00: that he sought to appropriate Christian themes.
- 19:39SPEAKER_00: I would have guessed that he would more likely say the opposite of this quote,
- 19:44SPEAKER_00: that he would more likely have said one cannot be a good Christian without being
- 19:49SPEAKER_00: a good German or vice versa.
- 19:51SPEAKER_00: One cannot be a good German without being a good Christian.
- 19:55SPEAKER_00: That rather than opposing Christianity to German-ness,
- 19:58SPEAKER_00: he would have equated the two in the manner of the German Christians.
- 20:04SPEAKER_00: Again, the impression I have is that Hitler thought that
- 20:07SPEAKER_00: the German Christians were useful idiots, but nevertheless useful.
- 20:14SPEAKER_00: And by saying that you cannot be a Christian and a German,
- 20:18SPEAKER_00: he seems to have explicitly said that the German Christians were just idiots.
- 20:24SPEAKER_00: So my suspicions are raised.
- 20:27SPEAKER_00: Is this a real quote from Hitler?
- 20:29SPEAKER_00: What is the citation?
- 20:32SPEAKER_00: Camp cites page 179 of the 1985 book The Believer's Church,
- 20:39SPEAKER_00: The History and Character of Radical Protestantism by Donald Dernbaugh and published
- 20:46SPEAKER_00: by Herald Press.
- 20:50SPEAKER_00: I had never heard of any of this,
- 20:51SPEAKER_00: not the author,
- 20:52SPEAKER_00: not the book,
- 20:53SPEAKER_00: not the publishing company,
- 20:55SPEAKER_00: but what was clear to me immediately is that Camp did not cite Hitler.
- 21:00SPEAKER_00: By the way,
- 21:01SPEAKER_00: the The Press,
- 21:03SPEAKER_00: Herald Press,
- 21:04SPEAKER_00: out of Scottsdale, Pennsylvania, is a Mennonite publishing company I came to learn.
- 21:11SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a book,
- 21:12SPEAKER_00: this book by Donald Dernbaugh,
- 21:14SPEAKER_00: The Believer's Church, is a book we have in our library.
- 21:18SPEAKER_00: And on page 179, we find the relevant quotation.
- 21:23SPEAKER_00: The cited source is unfortunately not Hitler, but rather a German book by H.H.
- 21:30SPEAKER_00: Schreyer.
- 21:32SPEAKER_00: Die Generation der Entscheidung from 1955.
- 21:38SPEAKER_00: Note that a book published in 1955 is a decade too late to be a primary source for
- 21:45SPEAKER_00: a quotation by Hitler who took his own life in 1945.
- 21:51SPEAKER_00: I forget how I ended up finding the original source.
- 21:54SPEAKER_00: I suspect a lot of Googling different search terms was involved.
- 21:59SPEAKER_00: At any rate,
- 22:00SPEAKER_00: I found the quotation at archive.org in a book called Voice of Destruction
- 22:06SPEAKER_00: on pages 49 and 50.
- 22:09SPEAKER_00: This book was published in 1940 by the publishing company Putnam in New York with
- 22:14SPEAKER_00: the author Hermann Rauschning.
- 22:19SPEAKER_00: I said the book was published in 1940.
- 22:21SPEAKER_00: That's during the lifetime of Hitler.
- 22:24SPEAKER_00: The book has a Wikipedia page where the lead title is not Voice of Destruction.
- 22:30SPEAKER_00: That's the alternative title, but the lead title is Conversations with Hitler.
- 22:36SPEAKER_00: And we learned that the book is a translation from
- 22:39SPEAKER_00: a German work titled Gespräche mit Hitler,
- 22:42SPEAKER_00: published in France in 1939 before the war.
- 22:49SPEAKER_00: Here is the first paragraph of the book's forward.
- 22:55SPEAKER_00: Of course,
- 22:55SPEAKER_00: this paragraph was written by the author of the book,
- 22:58SPEAKER_00: Hermann Rauschning,
- 23:00SPEAKER_00: and he says,
- 23:02SPEAKER_00: These conversations with Hitler took place in the last year before his seizure
- 23:09SPEAKER_00: of power and the first two years of the National Socialist Regime.
- 23:16SPEAKER_00: That's the first two years, 1933 and 1934.
- 23:21SPEAKER_00: The writer jotted them down under the immediate influence of what he had heard.
- 23:26SPEAKER_00: Much may be regarded as practically a verbatim report.
- 23:31SPEAKER_00: Here in the circle of his intimates,
- 23:34SPEAKER_00: Hitler speaks openly about his innermost ideas,
- 23:38SPEAKER_00: ideas which have been kept secret from the masses.
- 23:42SPEAKER_00: That's the end of the quote.
- 23:46SPEAKER_00: The Wikipedia article on the book is rather short,
- 23:49SPEAKER_00: but the page on the author,
- 23:51SPEAKER_00: Hermann Rauschning,
- 23:52SPEAKER_00: is much longer,
- 23:54SPEAKER_00: with a long section on this particular book and specifically whether
- 23:58SPEAKER_00: or not it can be trusted.
- 24:01SPEAKER_00: There have been lively debates about this.
- 24:05SPEAKER_00: Just like in the case of the quotation of Thomas Campbell earlier,
- 24:10SPEAKER_00: what we are dealing with here is not a direct quotation of Hitler,
- 24:14SPEAKER_00: but a remembered conversation.
- 24:17SPEAKER_00: In the case of Campbell,
- 24:18SPEAKER_00: the conversation was remembered 40 years later,
- 24:21SPEAKER_00: allowing ample opportunity for misremembering or embellishment.
- 24:26SPEAKER_00: In the case of the quotation from Hitler, the time involved is much briefer, less than a decade.
- 24:33SPEAKER_00: But the person reporting the conversation,
- 24:36SPEAKER_00: Hermann Rauschning,
- 24:37SPEAKER_00: He became a critic of the Nazis after his migration from Germany to
- 24:41SPEAKER_00: the United States,
- 24:43SPEAKER_00: so he might have reason to depict or even to remember Hitler's words more starkly
- 24:51SPEAKER_00: than they were originally given.
- 24:53SPEAKER_00: Any responsible use of this book should indicate these debates
- 24:56SPEAKER_00: about its authenticity, at least in a footnote.
- 24:59SPEAKER_00: The only responsible thing to do,
- 25:01SPEAKER_00: I think,
- 25:02SPEAKER_00: is to cite the book not as a record of what Hitler said,
- 25:06SPEAKER_00: but what he is likely to have said or may have said or is reported to have said.
- 25:14SPEAKER_00: So it is possible or plausible that Hitler said in around 1933 that you cannot be
- 25:21SPEAKER_00: a good Christian and a good German.
- 25:25SPEAKER_00: But you should also be aware of another quotation.
- 25:28SPEAKER_00: Often attributed to Hitler from a few years earlier in 1928,
- 25:33SPEAKER_00: where he apparently said, our movement is Christian.
- 25:40SPEAKER_00: According to Snopes, Hitler did indeed make this statement.
- 25:48SPEAKER_00: Drawing to a close here,
- 25:49SPEAKER_00: in all these cases,
- 25:51SPEAKER_00: the process of tracking down the sources of the information
- 25:55SPEAKER_00: that interests me It was both frustrating and educational.
- 26:01SPEAKER_00: It's the frustrating part that might make you give up along the way,
- 26:05SPEAKER_00: in which case you should leave alone the claim you haven't been able to verify.
- 26:12SPEAKER_00: Do not mention it as if you know it.
- 26:14SPEAKER_00: You only know it that Thomas Campbell said in 1828 that he was a Calvinist or
- 26:20SPEAKER_00: that Hippocrates said women are soft and moist
- 26:23SPEAKER_00: or You only know it once you've tracked it down to its root.
- 26:29SPEAKER_00: That experience is often frustrating, but it is also educational in unexpected ways.
- 26:36SPEAKER_00: The pursuit of these sources will introduce you to people and books and topics
- 26:40SPEAKER_00: that you didn't know you didn't know.
- 26:44SPEAKER_00: Tracking down the sources must be done.