Thu Jun 6 18:00:40 1996

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Date: Thu, 6 Jun 1996 17:02:02 +0400
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From: winberyc@popalex1.linknet.net (Carlton L. Winbery)
Subject: Re: NT Interpolations - request for help.
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Jeremy wrote;
>I am doing a D.Phil. here in Oxford looking at Pseudepigraphy among the
>early Christians (until about 200 A.D.). While I have been thinking about
>this, I have become interested in what I see as an anomaly in NT scholarship
>/ text criticism . I am sure that I am not coming up with anything new but
>if anyone could comment on it, or point me to suitable literature which
>discusses it, I would be very grateful. I am aware that in HB textual
>criticism there is talk of finding the "final form of the text" not the
>"autograph" and I guess there might be some insights here to help me.
>
>The anomaly is as follows:
>
>Most NT textual criticism (I think) works to try to get back to the
>autograph - removing both accidental changed to the text and also purposeful
>interpolations etc. If we think 1 Cor 14.34-35 is not by Paul - that is it
>is a later interpolation into the text - then we cut it out from the text
>and hence from the canon. Fine, but, much NT scholarship has decided that
>the whole of 1 Timothy is not by Paul - it is a later "interpolation" into
>the Pauline canon. Nevertheless most NT scholars assert that it should stay
>in the canon. We can speculate about how or why it got in there but
>nevertheless it is (by hypothesis) not 'by' Paul (I know that there is a lot
>packed into the word 'by' here but I don't think that is of the essence here
>- it is later compositions were are looking at  here not secretaries,
>fragments or the like). Why is it seen as reasonable to cut out little
>interpolations but leave in big ones?

Jeremy, there have been several studies on pseudipigrapha.  Metzger's
presidential address before the SBL, Published in JBL, 1972 was brief but
informative with good bibliography.  Metzger has a section on textual
problems and canon in his work on the Canon.  The Alands book on TC has a
brief section on the relation to the canon.  Someone else has already made
the point that no particular form of the text was canonized.  I agree with
that.

Carlton L. Winbery
Fogleman Professor of Religion
Louisiana College

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