Tue Apr 9 20:32:53 1996

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Date: Tue, 09 Apr 1996 17:31:10 +0000
From: Don Wilkins 
Organization: UC Riverside
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Subject: Re: Synoptic source criticism
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Stephen C Carlson wrote:
> 
> Don Wilkins wrote:
> >I did a quick-and-dirty browse of Metzger's commentary and came
> >up with POLLA in Matt 9.14, which is absent from the Markan
> >parallel (2.18). The question was whether POLLA was added by
> >Matthew or by subsequent copyists, and the committee preferred
> >the first option, while granting that POLLA does not occur  in Aleph
> >(original hand) or B. Without the assumption of Markan priority, it
> >would appear that the committee would have selected the second
> >option.
> 
> Thanks for the example.  Upon reading this over, I just don't understand
> how Markan priority fits into this.  The issue, it seems, that Aleph
> and B are alone in lacking POLLA against the witness of the Byzantine,
> Italic, Syriac, etc.  In order words, it looks like one of those places
> where the joint testimony of Aleph and B could be wrong.  

While the committee's view of the weight of Aleph and B against 
the numbers of other mss has certainly shifted (it now seems to be 
politically incorrect to say anything good about Westcott and Hort), 
they still assign a very high value to the Aleph/B combination. So 
when you say "it looks like one of those places..." you are still 
suggesting a pretty remote possibility; indeed, that is why POLLA is 
bracketed.

>What I can't get
> is how the assumption of Markan priority helps to confirm this over the
> other option that everyone else is incorrect.

I'm not sure who you mean by "everyone else," but you may be 
misunderstanding me if you are referring to the group that includes 
the byz mss. The committee is cautiously preferring this group and 
conceding that Aleph/B may be wrong. This means that in the 
committee's reasoning (given the basic assumption that POLLA was 
"added"), it is more likely that Matthew is adding POLLA than later 
copyists, and therefore Matthew is choosing to modify Mark's text. 
One could of course argue that this reasoning begs the question of 
Markan priority by favoring it either way--since if Matthew agrees 
with Mark (and does not "add" POLLA) he is merely copying 
Mark--but then the reply will probably be that Markan priority has 
previously been established, so the logic used in determining the 
reading here is legitimate.

> Furthermore, I noticed that Lk5:33 has a synonym, PUKNA.  What about the
> possibility that it could be some kind of a harmonization to the meaning
> of Luke?  If POLLA is original to Matthew, then the presence of PUKNA in
> the Lukan parallel would tend to undercut one of the foundational arguments
> for Markan priority: that Matthew and Luke do not know each other in Triple
> Tradition except through Mark.  POLLA // PUKNA could be a counter-example.

As tempting as it would be to me to make such an argument, the 
fatal flaw is in your phrase "some kind of a harmonization". While 
PUKNA is somewhat synonomous, it is an unexpected word for the 
context and far too different from POLLA to be termed a 
harmonization at this level.  If Matthew is really trying to agree 
with Luke, he should use Luke's vocabulary.

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