Lesson 7 | Special Cases
Stumped: Modern Imposition
A detective who digs up a cold case long after it was deemed unsolvable has got to be careful not to assume his own cultural norms apply to the past—he must avoid the fallacy of modern imposition.
The Daughter of Time, by Josephine Tey, opens with detective Alan Grant confined to a hospital bed. With time to spare, and a mind eager for engagement, he turns his attention to a historical mystery: the alleged murder of the young princes in the Tower of London by their uncle, King Richard III. Grant decides to investigate this 500-year-old case as he would any other, but quickly runs into a significant problem.
How old was More when Richard succeeded?
He was five.
When that dramatic council scene had taken place at the Tower, Thomas More had been five years old. He had been only eight when Richard died at Bosworth.
Everything in that history had been hearsay.
And if there was one word that a policeman loathed more than another it was hearsay. Especially when applied to evidence.
He was so disgusted that he flung the precious book on to the floor...
—Josephine Tey, The Daughter of Time (London: Peter Davies, 1951), Project Gutenberg Canada, accessed August 6, 2025, emphasis added, https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/teyj-daughteroftime/teyj-daughteroftime-00-h-dir/teyj-daughteroftime-00-h.html.
Grant discovers that More’s primary “account” of the murders was written decades after the events, with no firsthand knowledge of Richard, and with an abundance of political incentive to vilify him. Grant had made an assumption—a modern imposition—thinking an ancient case would provide the same evidence as a modern one and could be evaluated in the same fashion. But this is not so. Upon realizing that the historians available to him couldn’t be trusted, he shifts his entire investigative process, no longer treating them as neutral sources, but rather as eyewitnesses with biases.
Having abandoned his modern lens, he is able to frame a different picture of the past, concluding a high probability of innocence for King Richard III.
Modern Imposition in Paraphrasing
Like a cold-case detective, we have to interpret facts from an era of which we have little firsthand knowledge. If we are not careful, we may find ourselves making assumptions foreign to the original cultural context, throwing us off track as we paraphrase.
Consider the examples below. As you read each paraphrase, see if you can identify what modern assumption has skewed the paraphrase. Then read the relevant selection from The New American Commentary.
Woman, what does this have to do with me?
Jesus
Modern Imposition:
Jesus responded, ruthlessly belittling his mother, “Woman! Why are you even talking to me about this issue?!”
A Reconsideration:
“...Jesus’ mother appears in only two stories in this Gospel, here and at the cross (19:25–27). In the tender context of the cross, where at his death Jesus demonstrated his role as the eldest son and provided for his mother’s care, he again addressed her as “Woman” (19:26). For a western democratic, person-oriented society, addressing a person as “woman” seems to be an impersonal put-down. But the reader must take care lest such be attributed to Jesus or to this text.”
—Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, vol. 25A of The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), John 2:1-11.
Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.
Jesus
Modern Imposition:
“How could you be so arrogant to say that she is wrong about anything when you yourselves have done the same thing? You need to stop caring about the rules and just love people.”
A Reconsideration:
“...it is imperative to remember two matters. First, one must not overgeneralize and argue that Jesus was ruling out a critical evaluation of sin (8:11; cf. 5:14; 8:21, 24; 9:41; 15:22; 16:8–9). Second, one must remember that the context here involved self-righteous men who were full of judgment and ready to destroy a woman for their own evil ends. Jesus saw through their pseudo-righteousness and judged it for what it was. Religious people are thus here fully forewarned of the temptation to self-righteous judgment of others.”
—Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, vol. 25A of The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), John 7:53–8:11, emphasis added.
To him the gatekeeper opens. The sheep hear his voice, and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he has brought out all his own, he goes before them, and the sheep follow him, for they know his voice.
Jesus
Modern Imposition:
“Security lets him in, and the sheep are trained to respond to his commands. He sorts them out efficiently and drives them where they need to go. They follow because they’ve been conditioned to recognize his signals—maybe a whistle or some other sound.”
A Reconsideration:
“Those who have lived primarily in western world settings, where the shepherding of flocks is normally done by driving sheep with dogs, may find it hard to envisage the intimacy of the biblical shepherd passages. There the shepherd is pictured as having a personal attachment to the sheep, and the sheep are portrayed as recognizing the shepherd’s voice and responding accordingly.”
—Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, vol. 25A of The New American Commentary, ed. E. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), John 10:1-5.