Sat Jun 8 10:26:28 1996
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Date: Sat, 08 Jun 96 16:25:00 +0100
From: schmiul@uni-muenster.de (Ulrich Schmid)
Subject: Re: NT Interpolations
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On Thu, 6 Jun 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:
>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.
Let us assume for a moment that a church council had approved not only the
various books within the canon but also a definite form of the text of these
books. One of the consequences would have been the appointment of a GREEK text
only. Despite of that, various protestant low-church movements of which their
founders had not been familiar with Greek were deeply inspired by scripture
based on translations. But, as we all know, translations are also heavily
dependent on interpretation. And interpretation based on interpretation would
somehow obscure by consequence a Greek-text-only position. The only way to
properly cope with such a position would be the exclusion of people not familiar
with Greek from teaching and preaching the Gospel. This would not only affect
recent protestant movements but also for example Augustine of Hippo, for in his
teaching on the doctrine of original sin he seemed to be heavily dependent on a
defective rendering/interpretation of Rom 5.12.
To my mind a church council decision at least on the Textform would not have
settled the problem of authoritative tradition in a true Christian spirit, for
it would have replaced the ONE WORD of God (Jesus Christ) by the multiple words
of scripture that testify to it (him). BTW--- this seems to be a constant threat
to protestant tradition.
>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 above mentioned constant threat to protestant tradition is, to my mind,
lurking behind the seeking for "the *earliest* form of the text". To be shure,
the seeking for the earliest form of the text is a challenging scientific
enterprise that is worth to be devoted to. It is also heavily connected to the
interpretation of scripture which to my mind is the primary source Christian
faith refers to. But, the cult of the earliest text to my mind suffers from some
shortcomings, on theological as well as historical grounds. The theological
shortcoming is that it tends to implicitely establish a canon decision on
textual grounds (by means of judgments on earliest forms of texts as well as on
pseudepigraphy), which the early church in fact even did not explicitely
establish at a council. The historical shortcoming is the following:
If the New Testament "just evolved", WHICH "earliest" form of the text should we
look for? The earliest form of the New Testament as a whole, the earliest form
of the various parts of the NT (i.e. the Gospel Corpus, the Pauline letter
Corpus, etc.), or the earliest form of the individual writings? And, granted we
could reach the earliest form of the individual writings, what, if it were
defective? For example, if we judge the longer ending of Mark to be secondary,
then a good case can be made (in fact the best up to my knowledge) for a
defective "Urexemplar" of Mark's Gospel at the beginning of our textual
transmission. BTW--- there are plenty of examples for a defective archetype of
writings from antiquity. Even within the Bible Mark's Gospel would not be
unique. As far as I know the masoretic text of the book of Iob stemms from the
same defective archetype as does the Septuagint tradition with
some 180 cases where conjecture is not to avoid, including irreparably damaged
parts of Iob 36,16.20 (may be our OT collegues can comment on that).
>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 think there is a third alternative. Granted the point that no church council
decision imposed a canon and/or a Textform, nevertheless some ancient church
reports (cf. Athanasius) seemed to take notice of the somehow evolved Christian
Bible (i.e. a somehow reached consensus). The consensus "included" the exclusion
of various other writings lateron labelled to be apocryphal. The question
therefore is, how was the consensus reached? BTW--- as a Presbyterian I shurely
rely on God's providence, but not totally excluding human conditions (dei
providentia ac hominum confusione). So, I may put the question slightly
different: Are there some hints to describe the human part of the consensus
reaching process probably from within NT tradition itself?
I think there are roughly speaking two hints, one from NT textual transmission,
and one from the redactional arrangements of NT writings. I should add that I am
dependent, though not accepting all of it, on David Trobisch's recent study _Die
Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments_ (not yet published).
NT textual transmission gives at least some evidence of a far back reaching
consensus: the use of the codex form and the nomina sacra system. Both features,
though looking somehow mere technical, seperate the earliest Christian
literature from all pagan and Jewish literature of that time. Moreover, the
codex form in itself is to my mind a striking indication to the very early
existence of collections of writings (cf. T.C. Skeat, The Origin of the
Christian Codex, ZPE 102, 1994, pp. 263ff). Another striking indication of far
back reaching consensus _and_ collections are the unanimously attested
ascriptions of the individual writings titles/authors. Why, for example, was
"Hebrews" labelled PROS hEBRAIOYS? This title is unanimously attested and its
place is within the Corpus Paulinum, allthough most early church fathers doubted
Pauline authorship. The title form EYAGGELION KATA... indicates the existence of
at least two writings of that genre. For example P66, though presumably covering
text from only one Gospel, indicates the existence of more than one by giving
the title EYAGGELION KATA IOANNHN.
So, to my mind, various features from within NT textual transmission heavily
point to the very early existence of collections of NT writings. Presumably most
second century Christians got in touch with NT writings as part of collections.
The shape of these collections could not have differed so much, for textual
transmission offers only few hints of differing collections (most obviously
within the Corpus Paulinum, cf. the ending of Romans and the Ephesians' adress).
The least one can say is that NT textual transmission goes back to the well
known collections, and only through the collections back to the autographs. One
may differ on various points, but the collections seem to be the decisive
bottlenecks one simply cannot ignore.
Thus, having established reasonable grounds for the significance of the
collections, I may now turn to the redactional arrangements of NT writings.
To my mind it is remarkable that within the different collections we can find
some texts at important places which can be viewed as a kind of covering note.
The most prominent example in John 21.25 refers to BIBLIA and GRAFHTAI. Though
presumably originally only referring to the Gospel of John, it can cover at its
actual position within the fourfold Gospel "canon" the whole collection by
indicating its definite ending in the written form. Assuming the most prominent
place for Hebrews at the end of the Corpus Paulinum the covering note Heb
13,22-24 may refer to the preceeding Pastoral epistles (brother Timothy) as well
as to Romans (from Italy). Within the General epistles we have 2 Peter's
referrences to both the Gospel tradition and Pauls letters. The most prominent
place of Revelation within NT textual transmission seems to be at the end
(mostly after the Corpus Paulinum). Therefore the covering canon formula (Rev
22,18f), though presumably originally only covering Revelations, may in its
later context cover the preceeding collections too. Note, I do not argue for
redactional offspring of all of these notes, but rather for
redactional/editorial arrangements of the individual writings that could well
belong to different levels (at least for the Gospels). But, seen together, these
notes in their actual contexts form an impressive set of hints that link
together the various collections not only from within the collections itself,
but also partly transcendending their boundaries.
So, I suspect that these notes in combination with the unanimous, more
technical, features of codex and nomina sacra gave reason for the reproduction
of scripture collections of virtually identical shapes (save for some textual
variation). And this laid reasonable grounds to the consensus lateron only to be
recognized, for NT writings in the above described form had already in (at the
end of?) the second century become a "best-seller" within Christian communities
superseding both autographs as well as most of apocryphal literature.
This is, believe me or not, in short, how I would describe the emergence of the
NT canon _sub specie hominum_.
Ulrich Schmid, Muenster
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