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The Liar Paradox and the Letter to Titus

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The Liar Paradox and the Letter to Titus The Liar Paradox and the Letter to Titus PATRICK GRAY Rhodes College Memphis, TN 38112 ODYSSEUS WAS, BY REPUTATION, an exceptionally good liar (Plato Hipp. min. 364C-E). His habit of telling tales is a necessary survival skill as he makes his way home from the Trojan War.1 The habit proves hard to kick when he finally reaches Ithaca. In his encounters in the second half of the Odyssey with Eumaeus the loyal swineherd and with Penelope, his long-suffering wife, he does not immediately reveal his true identity but rather claims to be a man of Crete. This disguise is fit­ ting in light of the widely held opinion that Cretans were persistent prevaricators.2 Homer's choice of disguise for Odysseus may in fact be the earliest evidence for this reputation. So pervasive is this view of Crete that it finds its way into the pages of the NT. The author of the Letter to Titus describes the local population as ''always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons" (1:12), a characterization he conveniently borrows from one of their own. Whereas the commentary tradition has paid close attention to the negative stereotype of Cretans, one other aspect of its deployment has frequently escaped notice. When the author quotes "one of their own prophets" indicting Cre­ tans as "always liars" and then proceeds to remark that "this testimony is true," he in essence reproduces one of the most (in)famous antinomies of the ancient world. 1 See Adele J. Haft, "Odysseus, Idomeneus and Menones: The Cretan Lies oí Odyssey 13-19," CJ19 (1984) 289-306. 2 In Greek, "to play the Cretan" (Κρητίζειν) means "'to lie" (Plutarch A em. 23.6: Lys. 20.2). Their claim to be the site of the tomb of Zeus leads Callimachus {Hymn. 1.8-9) and many writers thereafter to label the Cretans a race of liars (cf. Lucían Phìlops 3; Tun. 6): see also Reggie M. Kidd. 'Titus as Apologia Grace for Liars, Beasts, and Bellies," HBT 21 (1999) 185-209. esp. 191- 97. 302 THE LIAR PARADOX AND THE LETTER TO TITUS 303 If Cretans are always liars, and if the speaker—usually identified as Epimenides3— is a Cretan, then he must be a liar. And if he is a liar, then his "testimony" cannot be true. On the other hand, if it is true that Cretans are always liars, then his testi­ mony corresponds to the facts of the case and he is not lying. But this would mean that not all Cretans are lying all the time, which would mean that the beginning premise was false. So if he is lying, then he is telling the truth (when he says that Cretans are always liars); and if he is telling the truth, then he must be lying (since he himself disproves the stated rule that Cretans are always liars). Logicians refer to this state of affairs as a paradox. In various forms this particular paradox was known in antiquity as the Liar (ό ψευδόμενος).4 Is the author oblivious to the logical and rhetorical havoc he has wrought?5 3 Clement of Alexandria is the first Christian writer to identify the speaker in Titus 1:12 as Epi­ menides {Strom. 1.59.2; cf. Jerome Comm. Tit 7). The original source of the hexameter verse quoted by the author of Titus is likely the Theogony or the Chresmoi of Epimenides; see J. Rendei Harris, "The Cretans Are Always Liars," Expositor 7, no. 2 (1906) 305-17; idem, "St. Paul and Epimenides," Expositor 15, no. 1 (1915) 29-35; and Robert Renehan, "Classical Greek Quotations in the New Testament," in The Heritage of the Early Church (ed. David Neiman and Margaret A. Schatkin; Orientalia Christiana Analecta 195; Rome: Pontificium Institutum Studiorum Orientalium, 1973) 35. G. M. Lee ("Epimenides in the Epistle to Titus [1:12]," NovT22 [1980] 96; cf. G. L. Huxley, Greek Epic Poetry [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1969] 81-82), however, believes that the remark originated as a reply made to Epimenides by the Pythoness at Delphi, which later came to be included among the sayings of the Cretan seer. Jerome D. Quinn {The Letter to Titus: A new translation with notes and commentary and an introduction to Titus, I and II Timothy, the Pastoral Epistles [AB 35; New York: Doubleday, 1990] 108) believes that the author is quoting from an anthology that circulated in the Hellenistic period. For the legends surrounding the life of Epi­ menides, whom Plato calls a "divine man" {Leg. 1.642D-F), see Diog. Laert. 1.109-15. 4 Modern logicians frequently use "Liar Paradox" and "Epimenides Paradox" interchange­ ably (incorrectly so, according to Christoph Zimmer, "Die Lügner-Antinomie in Titus 1,12," LB 59 [1987] 77-99, esp. 85-92). Brief introductions to the problem may be found in A. N. Prior, "Epi­ menides the Cretan," Journal of Symbolic Logic 23 (1958) 261-66; and Alan Ross Anderson, "St. Paul's Epistle to Titus," in The Paradox of the Liar (ed. Robert L. Martin; New Haven: Yale Uni­ versity Press, 1970) 1-11. Richard L. Kirkham provides an overview of the proposed solutions {The­ ories of Truth [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1992] 271-306). The most comprehensive treatment of the Liar in antiquity is that of Alexander Rüstow, Der Lügner. Theorie/Geschichte und Auflösung (Leipzig: Teubner, 1910) 17-102. For a survey of the discussion among medieval Islamic com­ mentators, see Larry B. Miller, "A Brief History of the Liar Paradox," in Of Scholars, Savants, and Their Texts (ed. Ruth Link-Salinger; New York: Peter Lang, 1989) 173-82. Paul Vincent Spade treats the problem as it appears in Christian Scholastic texts ("The Origins of the Mediaeval Insolubilia Literature," Franciscan Studies 33 [1973] 292-309). The secondary literature dealing with the Liar and with related paradoxes of self-reference such as the Burali-Forti Paradox and Russell's Paradox is enormous and still growing; see Martin, Paradox of the Liar, 135-49; and, most recently, the bib­ liography in Elke Brendel, Die Wahrheit über den Lügner: Eine philosophisch-logische Analyse der Antinomie des Lügners (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992). 5 This would appear to be the case when the psalmist, in 116:11, declares, "I said in my haste 'All men are liars'" {KJV; cf. JPS). Whereas the psalmist belongs to the class of "all men," he has indeed spoken hastily. The rendering of the RSV removes the contradiction ("I said in my conster- 304 THE CATHOLIC BIBLICAL QUARTERLY | 69,2007 Or was it his intention all along to fall into this conundrum? My aim in this essay is to test the hypothesis that the author is indeed aware of the contradiction by (1) examining the function and status of logical paradoxes in antiquity and (2) set­ ting the passage within the context of the pervasive paraenetic concerns about talk­ ativeness, taciturnity, and propriety in speech here and elsewhere in the Pastoral Epistles. I. The Liar Paradox in Greco-Roman Antiquity If the author (be it Paul or someone writing in his name) is acquainted with the paradox, there are two possible explanations: Either he has encountered it directly, in some form or other, in the course of his schooling, or the paradox has already become part and parcel of Mediterranean cultural literacy in the first cen­ tury.6 Because it would be extremely difficult—in the absence of an explicit ref­ erence—to demonstrate beyond all doubt that the author had studied the Liar in some sort of formal manner, in practical terms these two possibilities stand at two points along a common continuum. Discussions of the Liar Paradox appear frequently in both technical and pop­ ular literature produced in the Hellenistic period as well as in the centuries fol­ lowing its purported appropriation in Titus. The Liar looms particularly large in the philosophical literature. Eubulides of Miletus, widely known as a critic of Aristotle and as the teacher of Demosthenes, is said to have formulated a number of classic logic problems such as the Liar, on account of which he became the butt of jokes by the comic poets (Diog. Laert. 2.108). Aristotle's successor as the head of the Lyceum, Theophrastus, wrote three books on the Liar (Diog. Laert. 5.49).7 It was common knowledge, however, that the Stoics were the specialists in this and other paradoxes (Cicero Div. 2 A Al; Fin. 4.4.8; Diog. Laert. 7.44).8 Chrysippus, who nation, 'Men are all a vain hope"'), but the XRSV restores it ("I said in my consternation, 'Every­ one is a liar'"). 6 Contemporary examples of paradoxes familiar to the general public might include: Which came first, the chicken or the egg? If God is omnipotent, can God create a rock so big that he is unable to lift it? What happens when an irresistible force meets at immovable object? If a tree falls in the forest and no one is present to hear it, does it make a sound? Can a man travel back in time and change history in such a way (e.g., by killing his own grandfather before his grandfather met his grandmother) that he would prevent himself from being born? Some of these puzzles are not, strictly speaking, paradoxes, but they are the type of logical conundrums that are well known and that nonspecialists regard as, at best, idle curiosities. "Aristotle himself anticipates its main lines in Soph el. 180a32, 180b2-7; see Joseph M. Bochenski, Ancient Formal Logic (Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1957) 101. 8 Cicero devotes an entire treatise to the Paradoxa Stoicorum.
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