Tue Mar 26 19:46:48 1996

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From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Thiede's redating, James Adair's discussion points
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[ continued from part 1 ]

Timothy John Finney wrote on Tue, 26 Mar 1996:

>> Which ones were likely to survive catastrophe?

This is purely a matter of speculation. Vellum MSS would be more likely to
survive in any given natural catastrophe.  In cases of seizure due to
persecution, all MSS were fair game.  I suggest that, assuming all things
to be equal and that there was not a specific search-and-destroy for a
specific texttype or type of writing material, that MSS would be seized and
destroyed in percentages parallel to the frequency of the specific texttype
or material on which it was written, without dislocating the proportion of
the general transmissional history.

>> Which words were likely to be changed and why?

Not counting nonsense readings produced by error, the most frequent type of
variation would be alteration due to itacism, affecting individual words
and not entire passages.  Next would be omissions occasioned by
homoioteleuton which still produced "sensible" readings, as well as random
omissions of syllables, whole words, and phrases based upon line length or
scribal proclivities.

Following that, I would suggest conjunctional changes between KAI, DE, OUN
etc., followed by prepositional substitution (and the case endings of words
following altered prepositions).  After that would come changes in word
order (which may have been occasioned by homoioteleuton or other slips of
the pen), then substitution of synonymous words or phrases.  Major
additions or omissions to the text would fall under the least frequent
category, since unconscious error is always more likely than deliberate
"editorial" activity.

Statistically, one could tabulate all types of variation among all MSS to
get an idea of the relative frequency of changes, but the truth is that
individual MSS differ widely in the types of variation to which their
scribes were prone (see Colwell on P45, P66 and P75 for clear examples).
Therefore statistics will not help when evaluating any individual MSS nor
when trying to create a blanket view of scribes in general.

>> Which words were NOT likely to be changed and why?

The answer sounds facetious, but it is not: the words comprising the vast 
bulk of the text and therefore the autograph reading itself were the least 
likely to be altered by scribes.  This is precisely what the extant 
evidence indicates.  Within the 10% of the text where variation occurs, 
there simply is no hard and fast rule which can explain why a scribe would 
NOT change a word or phrase, except that the overriding assumption will 
always be that his normal trendency would NOT be to alter the text within 
the 10% area of variance from what he read in his exemplar, just as he did 
with the other 90% of the text where variation was not present.  Further 
argument as to what a scribe would likely NOT do is probably an exercise in
futility.

I would suggest that words well known from lectionary or liturgical 
practice would be less likely to be altered, as well as "proof-text" 
passages which were used regularly for apologetic purposes.  The Easter 
Sunday reading in the Orthodox church has always been John 1:1-17, and that 
very familiar passage of text has few significant variants (Codex Bezae 
being the main exception).  Note, however, that the textual base of the
Lectionary version, while Byzantine in the main, nevertheless stems from an
archetype which reflects a Byzantine sub-type.  Where Lect and Byz differ
in the UBS apparatus, the difference between the main Textform and the
Lectionary subtype can be clearly seen; yet over the centuries the
correction of Lect by Byz or vice versa rarely occurred, so distinct were
their lines of transmission.

>> How many MSS were made, and what proportion survived?

Again pure speculation, given any period within transmissional history. But
we can speculate proportionally from statistics of extant MSS, beginning
from the most recent period and working backward.

I would suspect that in centuries 11-15 we likely have a majority of MSS
surviving, perhaps as many as 70-80%, but more likely 50-60%, since fire,
flood, carelessness, etc.  could account for the loss of numerous MSS in
any era.  For the minuscules of centuries 9-10 I would suggest maybe only
about 30% survival.  For uncials of centuries 4-10 it should be obvious to
all that the vast majority copied during that era no longer exist, and I
would suspect the existing uncials to comprise no more than 5% of the total
for that period.  For the era of the papyri, I suspect the mere 100 or so
which we now possess are less than 2% of the total ever produced.


>> How many copies distant is any particular surviving MS from any other,
>> and from the archetype?

If we knew this, we would be immensely helped in determining the antiquity
of the text possessed by a MS.  Here too we have only speculation, except
in the case of family groups, such as f1 or f13, where it can be
demonstrated that the members of such a family all descended from a single
lost uncial of some centuries earlier.  It would even have been convenient
had scribes noted whether the exemplar was uncial or minuscule, on vellum
or papyrus, but they did not.  A colophon like that appended to the
Martyrdom of Polycarp would have been of great help if such had been
maintained in all Greek MSS:

   "From these papers of Irenaeus...Gaius made a copy, and Isocrates used
   in Corinth the copy of Gaius.  And again, I, Pionius, wrote from the
   copies of Isocrates...after searching for them, and gathering them
   together when they were almost worn out from age..."
                                 (Apostolic Fathers, Loeb edition, p.345)

Of course, such a statement says nothing about the total number of copying 
generations or the date of each copy, but at least gives a line of descent 
and shows that, at times, a "new" MS might have been made from one which
was extremely old.  This of course merely serves to reinforce the notion
that the date of a MS does not necessarily say anything about the date of
the text it contains (which has significance in relation to the MSS
containing the Byzantine Textform).

>> But if you can dig up something that someone living in 200 AD said
>> about copying practice, or if you discover that a particular type of error
>> is far more likely to be made based on human copying tendencies, or if you
>> can work out a (fairly) mathematically rigorous way to count how many MSS
>> were made, these are the kinds of knowledge that could help us answer a
>> fundamental question: Is it likely that we can reconstruct the archetype
>> from the MSS we now have?

Birks in the 19th century attempted to create a mathematical model of
transmission (Essay on the Right Estimation of Manuscript Evidence applied
to the NT).  However, Birks' conclusion pointed mathematically to the
likelihood that the Byzantine Textform was original, and thus his
conclusions were not well received.  I personally find Birks' inflexible
model unrepresentative of the many factors which influenced transmissional
history; nevertheless, Birks does make for some interesting and challenging
reading.

We have little or nothing stated about copying practices in the early
centuries, and even very little from the later centuries.  Cassiodorus
probably provides the most detail, and even he fails to give us all that we
wish to know.  Basically, all claims regarding copying practices within MSS
must be determined by evaluating the individual habits of the scribes of
those MSS.  There is much that can be learned thereby, and such evidence is
vital to establish probabilities and proclivities within individual MSS.

As to the "fundamental question": can we reconstruct the archetype from the 
MSS we now have, the issue revolves around the degree of certainty sought.  
If you are looking for 100% certainty, then no one alive and no one MS can
offer that certainty.  If you will accept 90% certainty (i.e., for 90% of
the text we are 100% certain of the autograph reading), then that is
basically agreed upon by all text-critical schools.

I suspect that the eclectic pro-Alexandrian school considers their method
to provide about 97% certainty, based upon the weight given to their
primary MSS.  I would consider the Byzantine-priority model to produce
around 99% certainty, based upon our primary establishment of Textform
readings.  But the issue is not about the percentage degree of certainty
any given text-critical school might be able to suggest: _all_ textual
critics are attempting to reconstruct the autograph text to the highest
degree of certainty permitted within the bounds of their respective
hypotheses.

Even when all this is taken into account, the remaining passages where 
"certainty" is not present still divide into two or three primary readings 
in each case, and we all know (barring those who would advocate pure 
conjectural readings) that the autograph reading resides among those two or 
three readings; so in theory 100% certainty is "attainable", though in 
practice our attempts will always fall slighlty short of that goal unless 
one invokes special revelation.  From my own position, I am quite confident 
that my own edited text approaches the autograph quite closely; however, 
were I on a desert island with only the Westcott-Hort Alexandrian text by 
my side (sans apparatus), I would not consider myself seriously deprived.


>> Just a quick thought on questions 2 and 3: having looked at Sinaiticus and
>> Alexandrinus side by side -- 1500 or 1600 years old, it seems that age is
>> not so great a factor in (parchment) MS loss as is catastrophe.

This is my own opinion also.  Vellum endures.  So the question I would ask 
is this: where have all the vellum copies gone (long time passing)?  As 
stated above, I suspect our extant vellum uncials from centuries 4-10 
reflect only about a 5% survival rate.  So where are they or where have 
they gone?  Catastrophic occurrence might account for the disappearance of
some of them, but certainly not for 95% of them or any significant majority
of them during that era of peace and preservation.  I of course have a
solution to the problem, but that is another matter entirely.

>> From the
>> look of them they could go on for another 1000 years, catastrophes aside.

Correct.  And those of us who have worked directly with vellum MSS (as I
have at Duke), know precisely how durable those MSS are, especially when
bound and used for church-related purposes.

>> Nevertheless, a first step to answering the likelihood of survival
>> question is to plot the number of known MSS versus their estimated ages
>> and work out how probability of survival varies with age.
>> That might even give us a way of estimating how many MSS have ever
>> been made. Any statisticians out there?

Again, see Birks, though I cannot promise anyone will be pleased with his
results.  As long as statistics have to be drawn from existing data, the
conclusions will likely fall into the same pattern as claimed by Birks.


_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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