Thu Oct 31 15:41:08 1996

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Date: Thu, 31 Oct 1996 15:36:07 -0700
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From: "Robert B. Waltz" 
Subject: Re: More on 2427, family resemblances
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On Thu, 31 Oct 1996, Jack Kilmon  wrote:

[ ... ]

>	There seems to be a great parallel between textual criticism
>and palaeoanthropology.  We are examining small fossil fragments and
>speculating on a common ancestor...looking for the "Lucy" of
>manuscripts.  Everytime a new fossil is discovered, we re-examine
>the family (hominidae/Byzantine/Alexandrian) and it's genera, species
>and sub-species as well as "tribes and clans."  Textual variants are
>like genetic codes.

A biologist friend of mine commented on this: That the history of the
text is much evolution or genetic exchange. It is also like the
dissemination of folklore and folk culture. For that matter, you
can even find parallels to thermodynamic processes.

This should not be surprising: Entropy is a universal phenomenon,
and there is no such thing as perfect order.

>	I, for one, am not convinced that the common ancestor of the
>Gospels lie strictly in oral tradition.

I doubt that there are many who would say this. All information in
the gospels ultimately goes back to oral tradition (or memory), but
that is *not* the same thing. There seem to have been at least
two written sources -- Mark and Q. In addition, Matthew and Luke
probably had their own written sources.

In fact, I once proposed to Ulrich Schmidt (based on the "folkloric"
styles of some of the material in Matthew and Luke) that the two
gospels had at least *six* sources -- Mark, Q1 (parallel to the
Gospel of Thomas), Q2 (Q material not in Thomas), M1, L1, and L2.
Some were written (Mark), some oral (Q1, L2), and some I'm not
sure about.

Am I sure of this theory? No. Can I separate the sources? Not always.
But that's what the style says -- at least to a person who has been
steeping himself in folklore for most of the last twenty years.

>This seems to infer the
>redaction layer propaganda that the disciples and immediate post-passion
>Yeshuine Movement Jews were either illiterate, or wrote
>nothing.  In this respect, Aramaisms are much like mitochondrial
>DNA with direct lineage to "Lucy" documents.  The Antiochene and
>Ephesian "genetic engineers" in Hellenic Christianity seem to have
>performed some extensive gene-splicing.

:-)

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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