Tue Oct 22 11:54:28 1996

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From: Jeremy Duff 
Subject: Re: Textual Criticism Theories
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Kevin,

I am in no sense at all an expert on textual criticism: hence, perhaps, why
I enjoyed your summary.

One point, however,

At 19:44 21/10/96 -0400, you wrote:
>
>Part of the difficulty of the task is that we do not understand with
>certainty how we ended up with the texts that we have. Most agree that the
>majority of variants probably occurred prior to 325 CE., certainly before 500
>(?) CE. During this time, people did not understand the writings as scripture
>and there was little opportunity for comparison of MSS. 

I find this a little hard to believe. Church writers from the end of the
second century onwards at least see to have a definite conception of certain
texts being scripture. I would have thought it natural, given no evidence to
the contrary, that scribes would have also thought this. OK, there may not
be a fixed definitive canon, but that does not mean that the scribe who
copied say p46 did not think this was scripture. Indeed, various features
might point to the conclusion that he did - e.g. use of the codex form
(which seems more common for Christian scriptures than for the writings of
the church fathers, I think) and the use of the nomina sacra (can anyone
tell me if these are used in copies of the writings of church fathers? I
guess they probably are). Anyway, even without definite evidence that the
scribes did see the texts as scripture, I would have thought that their
status generally as evidenced by other writers would be enough to suggest
that scribes from the second century onwards did understand the writings as
scripture.

Yours,

Jeremy Duff





=========================================

Jeremy Duff
D. Phil. Student
Jesus College, Oxford

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