Wed Aug 21 22:14:16 1996

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Date: Wed, 21 Aug 1996 22:09:17 -0400 (EDT)
From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: Manuscripts
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On Wed, 21 Aug 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> It seems to me that the theory that scribes conflated when confronted with
> two variants has been pretty well demolished. Westcott and Hort's examples
> are far too few to mean anything. 

However, my citing of Metzger is from his Text of the NT, and still is
maintained in print by him, as well as other eclectics such as D.A.Carson
and Gordon Fee, so the news of any "demolition" of such a concept
apparently still needs to be communicated to at least some modern
eclectics. 

> I would say that scribes, when faced
> with conflicting readings, will tend to choose the reading they think
> *most appropriate* -- but how they decide what is "most appropriate" is
> frequently beyond *my* understanding. :-)

I would agree, depending on what the definition of "most appropriate" 
might be in any given case.  If transmissional history were merely
haphazard and purely chance-oriented, there would be a 50-50 chance of any
reading being perpetuated at any given time, but of course in most variant
units where conflation _could_ have occurred, such in fact did _not_
occur, including the 2 Cor.2.17 passage noted, where only a single MS
actually conflated the two readings.

I suspect most times that the scriptorium/scribal solution to the problem
of exemplar document 1 reading one way and the correction (diorthotes)
document 2 reading the other way would be to call for a document 3 and
simply go with the 2 out of 3 reading (which of course will generally
tend toward the Byzantine Textform, since it would have the best odds of
being the "majority" reading in most such cases in the era following the
legitimization of Christianity under Constantine.

Only in cases where the corruption would have occurred extremely early
would the results tend to closely approximate 50%-50% as in the "loipoi"
vs "polloi" case of 2Cor.2.17.

> See, folks, even Maurice Robinson and I agree on some things. In this
> instance, we agree at all points.

But certainly for _very_ different reasons! *;-)

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

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