Eons ago, when I was in college, books by the British humorist Stephen Potter were all the rage. The best one was entitled One-upmanship, but they all had the same theme—how to be regarded as intellectually superior the easy way. To be known as a chess expert, simply walk around with a copy of The Chess Review under your arm, sport a chess tie and manage to get through the first three moves of a match. Then sweep all the pieces off the board and announce to your opponent: “Brilliant! You win in 23 moves and there’s absolutely nothing I can do about it.”
But that gambit can be used only in limited situations. The most broadly applicable of Potter’s ploys was a conversation stopper: Walk into any conversation, listen for a few moments and then confidently assert, “But not in the south.” There could simply be no response to this devastating observation, no put-down that would top it. You would just walk away puffing your pipe (obviously this was a book for men).
As I survey the scholarly scene with which this magazine is concerned, it has a occurred to me that Potter’s conversation stopper is more profound than perhaps even he realized. In its way, it summarizes scholarly progress, but it can also serve as a ploy in scholarly one-upmanship.
“Not in the south” even has a peculiar applicability to the archaeology of ancient Israel. The material culture of the northern kingdom of Israel is often different from the southern kingdom of Judah. There is even a darom lamp; darom means south and refers to a peculiar style of clay oil lamp found at sites in southern Israel.
Of course some adaptation of the remark may be required. But this is easily accomplished. For example, “But not in Galilee.” The scholar is calling attention to the distinction between Jerusalem and the very different area to the north. But by now that’s really too obvious and doesn’t score many points. Instead try “But not in upper Galilee.” The lovely thing is that the finer the distinction, the more broadly applicable it is—and the more impressive. I am not the first to notice this; the ploy even has a name: It is called “regionalism.” It is an increasingly popular and effective ploy—oops, I mean methodology. Better yet: an increasingly popular and effective hermeneutic. I have known scholars who have built an entire scholarly career on regionalism.
This hermeneutic is by no means limited to geographical areas. It can be used for smaller and smaller time periods and for all kinds of other distinctions. I recently heard a paper that distinguished among five different kinds of rosettes on jar handles.
To get serious for a moment, scholarship proceeds by becoming more refined, more nuanced—and, yes, more complicated. Distinctions are necessary. Sometimes they must be made just to test them—to see if they might have explanatory significance. That, of course, is the question: Is the distinction significant? Does it really explain variations in the data? Or is it just a distinction for distinction’s sake?
Then at some point some great scholar must put all this together, must look for the similarities among “regions” and find the things that connect them rather than divide them. This is the harder task. It is something scholars should begin to do by age 60, surely by 65. “But not in the south” may still work, but be careful not to use it as a crutch.
Eons ago, when I was in college, books by the British humorist Stephen Potter were all the rage. The best one was entitled One-upmanship, but they all had the same theme—how to be regarded as intellectually superior the easy way. To be known as a chess expert, simply walk around with a copy of The Chess Review under your arm, sport a chess tie and manage to get through the first three moves of a match. Then sweep all the pieces off the board and announce to your opponent: “Brilliant! You win in 23 moves and there’s absolutely nothing […]
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