Mon Mar 25 01:08:06 1996

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From: "James R. Adair" 
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Subject: "canonical" text
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On Thu, 21 Mar 1996, Maurice Robinson wrote:

> Why was the textual divergence not greater (as with the various versions
> of the Enuma Elish)?  Simply because, as opposed to a growing and
> developing myth, the text of the NT or OT, once it had reached "canonical"
> status, became basically fixed as an entity, and a specific religious
> concern and scribal care was given to canonical texts to a degree
> different from that of other literature (though obviously the presence of
> variant readings does not eliminate the fact that perfect transmission of
> the text did not occur under human fallible agency). 

When did the NT text become "canonical," and what exactly is a canonical 
text?  My view is that the first recipients of NT documents might have 
viewed them as having some authority (even 2-3 John?), but they were not 
viewed as "scripture," much less part of a fixed list of authoritative 
documents, for at least 300 years (longer in the case of Revelation).  
The whole issue of the canon can be deabted further if there is any 
interest in that thread, but my point here is that the earliest scribes 
didn't view the works they were copying as scripture.  Important, yes; 
authoritative, probably; scripture, not at first.  Thus, they might not 
have felt as much compunction as later scribes about "fixing" the text in 
front of them.

Next, is there such a thing as the "canonical" text?  I don't think so.  
The church determined the canon over a period of time, and they finally 
arrived at a fixed list of books that were generally accepted as the 
canon (there were some exceptions, e.g., among th Syriac, Ethiopic, and 
Armenian churches).  However, the same was not done for the text.  Only 
in the case of the Vulgate has a specific text-type ever been declared to 
be authoritative, as far as I know.  My point is that without the 
presumption of a "canonical" text, again scribes might not have felt bad 
about altering the text in front of them (not to degrade it, but to "fix" 
it).  The tradition that developed among the Masoretes that involved 
counting the very letters of the text never seems to have taken hold 
among Christian copyists.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------

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