Fri Jun 7 09:50:13 1996

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From: waltzmn@skypoint.com (Robert B. Waltz)
Subject: Re: NT Interpolations
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On Fri, 7 Jun 199, Jeremy Duff  wrote,
in part:


>The final words reveal the disagreement "canonical text" - but the view
>described above denies that this exists. If I understand the view mentioned
>above correctly it would say that the church only canonized "Mark" not a
>particular text of Mark and so if we are convinced that these verses were nt
>part of the original text we should remove them from Mark, and hence we do
>end up removing them from the canon.
>
>
>Similarly Ulrich Schmid said
>
>--------------
>I do not know of any currently held concept of canon....where canon is
>related to the oldest available Textform of individual NT writings in a way
>that scholarly progress would automatically affect the shape of the canon.
>--------------
>
>But is this not (at least very close to) the concept of canon supported by
>Bob Waltz and others? For them scholarly progess in obtaining the original
>text would  affect the shape of the canon because passages identified as
>interpolations would be removed from the text and hence the canon.
>
>
>
>
>I can quite understand that there could simply be two different views of the
>goals of text criticism, each of them used by different scholars. This would
>be no great surprise to me, and the elucidation of the two viewpoints is
>useful to my own thinking. Is this the case that there really are two
>different views of the goals of text-criticism as I have described above or
>have I misunderstood one or both of these positions ?

Personal perspective only... I think that you have identified two
possible "extremist positions." I think that almost everyone falls
somehwere between these two poles. So one cannot really identify
separate camps.

But let me give my *personal* perspective.

I would agree, in principle, that if the church had approved an
interpolated text (e.g. a text of Mark which included 16:9-20),
then that we should accept that text.

But there is no reason to believe that that ever happened. The
thing to keep in mind is that the church never convened a council
to approve a canon.

Take the matter of Mark 16:9-20. Eusebius, who is our primary source
for early canon lists, obviously includes Mark. But we know that he
had encountered both long and short forms. As far as I know, Athanasius
never quoted the ending of Mark. But chances are that, as a fourth
century Egyptian, he had at least seen manuscripts that lacked it.
There are assorted versions that omit it, and others that include it.

So we cannot say *what* the church meant to canonize. In the case of
the Jews, we know what they approves: The Masoretic Text. That's their
Bible, for all its defects. Not so the Christian church. Both Old and
New testaments just evolved. That being the case, I see no better
alternative than to seek the *earliest* from of the text.

The only other alternative I can imagine is to seek the most widely
attested form of the text (this, obviously, requires some sort of
belief in providential preservation). This has a certain logic --
but I can't bring myself to like it.

As noted, this is my *personal* opinion on the matter.

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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