Fri Jun 7 09:05:19 1996

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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 09:03:10 -0400
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From: nichael@sover.net (Nichael Lynn Cramer)
Subject: Re: "Alexandrian" Text
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Maurice Robinson wrote:
>On Thu, 6 Jun 1996, Nichael Cramer wrote:
>> But it seems to me that the flow of logic here is precisely backwards.
>It is backwards only if a presupposition regarding the "late" nature of
>the Byzantine Textform predominates.  From my perspective, there is no
>backward reasoning necessary.
> [...]

Ah, but be careful.  Here you've subtly --but critically-- shifted the
playing field.

Your argument --the argument to which I was responding-- was a
"consistency" arguement.  That is, you were insisting that the Eclectic
theory was flawed _internally_ because it did not provide a specific
mechanism which would account for the rise of the Byzantine text-type.  I,
in response, showed that this was not correct.

In turn, your response was that my arguments did not conform to (your)
model of the originality of the Byzantine text type.  This is a, actually,
wholly different point and quite off the track.

The fact that this does not fit a separate theoretical framework (in this
case yours) is irrelevant and says nothing about the consistency of the
theory, which is the question at hand.

>> As in these examples, there were certainly conventions and a certain
>> enviormental "ambience" (as it were) which would tend to reinforce certain
>> aspects and to drive out certain others.
>
>Even allowing your hypothesis, what were these factors?
>  [...]
>The question for eclectic theory is to account for precisely what caused
>that pattern of readings to be perpetuated to the point of dominance,
>while the vast bulk of other readings supposedly appropriate to the
>"Byzantine mindset" were not perpetuated. From my own perspective, I have
>no problem answering this point; I suspect modern eclectic theory will
>find this particular matter difficult if not insurmountable.

Well, one obvious force at work here --and moreover a force that we know to
have affected the text of the NT-- is that characterized in the title of
Bart Ehrman's book _The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_ (a book which,
BTW, I heartily recommend to one and all).

If we assume the existence of a Church in which the Byzantine text-type
developed over the centuries, the existence of that orthodoxy must have
been a compelling, an inexorable (if subtle) force for change in that
Church's text.

I don't recall now if the image is from Ehrman but, in short, the church
(and its scribes) already knew what the text "meant", they would simply
_tend_ --perhaps unconsciously-- to make sure that that's what it said.


Nichael
nichael@sover.net                                               __
http://www.sover.net/~nichael              Be as passersby   -- IC

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