What Would Jane Austen Do?

This may seem like an odd title for my first post after returning from India. But it is closely connected to my trip, and more specifically to the way a movie such as The Jane Austen Book Club can seem more appealing and interesting on a 16-hour flight than it might otherwise.

At one point in the movie, a character (who earlier had more of an academic approach to literary criticism) finds herself asking “What Would Jane Austen Do?” The question, of course, echoes another well-known question. As put in the movie, the question is the wrong one – it is not what Jane Austen the author would do, but what her characters did and “would do”, that is the relevant subject, although presumably putting the question that way was felt to be too cumbersome.

Many assume that “What Would Jesus Do?” and other such questions depend on our ability to know what Jesus did, with a reasonable degree of historical certainty. But in fact, fictional characters regularly inspire us and challenge us to emulate them, or to change to avoid ending up where they have. And this provides some interesting opportunities for reflection on whether the obvious power of the story of Jesus to challenge us in positive ways is itself sufficient, in light of our various historical uncertainties and the limitations of historical method. If so, then Bultmann was right.

I took along a couple of books to read on the plane, and hope to say more about them in the near future: Roland Boer’s Rescuing the Bible and Peter Berger’s Questions Of Faith. I’ve also received two books for review which I’ll be reading and blogging on in the not too distant future: Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley’s The Great Stem Of Souls: Reconstructing Mandaean Origins and Deuteronomy In The New Testament edited by Steve Moyise and Maarten J. J. Menken. I’d like to thank Gorgias Press and T&T; Clark (respectively) for providing me with copies of the books for review.