Fri Jun 7 11:04:33 1996

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Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 11:00:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: NT Interpolations
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On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> I see no better
> alternative than to seek the *earliest* from of the text.

Although I do not want to get into the "canon" debate, I do agree with 
Waltz' conclusions on this point, and regard the basic goal of textual 
criticism of -any- work (biblical or not) to be the recovery and 
restoration of the autograph (assuming that = the "earliest form" as 
Waltz states it).   
 
> 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.

I need to interject on this point that my own pro-Byzantine theory does
not require an appeal to providential preservation on this point (though
others may seek to read something like that into the matter).  Rather, my
own theory is based upon what normally would occur in the course of
transmissional history, given the historical circumstances and the number
of copies produced over the given period of manual copying.  

I would basically claim the same for other documents which have similar
attestation, including the Latin Vulgate, in which (recognizing the three
or four various stages of revision) the general 90% bulk of the documents
supporting each stage of revision would more likely reflect the archetype
of that stage than any contrary data. 

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