Fri Oct 25 19:19:12 1996

From owner-tc-list  Fri Oct 25 19:19:12 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id TAA09324; Fri, 25 Oct 1996 19:18:01 -0400
X-Sender: vale5655@mail.arcadis.be
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
X-Mailer: Eudora F1.5.4b9
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 01:17:00 +0100
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
From: jgvalentin@arcadis.be (Jean Valentin)
Subject: a presentation of Amphoux's work
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 5083

For those of you interested in European textual criticism, here's a little
summary of the work of the Frech textual critic, Mr Christian-bernard
Amphoux.


First a little summary, then I give you some bibliography. Amphoux's work
rests on a careful investigation of the ecclesiastical history of the early
centuries, and on all the oldest citations available.

Amphoux (born in 1943) is a searcher of the great french institution, the
"centre national de la recherche scientifique" (CNRS). He teaches in
several faculties (mainly in Letters at Aix-en-Provence) and directs his
own center for the study of NT manuscripts in Lunel, near Montpellier
(France).

Amphoux sees Codex Bezae as the oldest edition of the NT. He calls it the
edition of Smyrna and is associated with Ignatius and Polycarp. This first
text of the NT needs to be read like wisdom, initiatic literature. It needs
a careful study, attentive to the smallest grammatical details, also to the
structure (number plays, rhetoric structure). Even the order Mt-Jn-Lk-Mk is
significant. The "rhetorical center" is the pericope "de adultera", and the
"long ending" of Mk serves as a conclusion of the whole tetraevangelion.
The structure of the material is very elaborated.

In 135, with the events around Bar Kokhba, came a "cultural break", and
such a text was not understood any more. So there was a need for adaptation
and the D-text was revised by the masters of the roman schools in the IInd
century: Marcion, Tatian, Valentine and others. These revisions are known
from quotations from the Church fathers.

You will notice that for Amphoux, there is no "western text" as he sharply
differenciates between D which is older, and old-latin and old-syriac,
younger.

The D-text was no longer understood, and the roman revisions were seen as
too extreme, as their authors ended their lives in break with the Church.
So at the end of the IInd century, a mixed recension was produced: the
B-text, which had an immense influence on the subsequent history.

Latin and syriac versions, palestinian greek text all represent a
compromise between the B-text and the earlier texts. The B-text survived in
Egypt, and, slightly revised in the IVth century, became the text of codex
vaticanus, the Alexandrian text.
In the Antiochian patriarchate, another recension was created form the
B-text and several paelstinian texts. This became the Byzantine text, that
became the official text of the Constantinopolitan church.

Etc.. etc... here we get back to the history of the text as it is known.

The point by Amphoux is that he (1) has put together and interpreted all
the ancient evidence about the history of the text, (2) has a global
literary and theological explanation for the shift from D to B, (3)
approaches each text-type with respect for its inner coherence and tries to
interpret it as the result of a definite project (in place of being the
fruit of the hazard of the scribes' mistakes).

A few things to read from the pen of this outstanding scholar and hellenist
(yes, he doesn't come from the theological faculties):

First, his revision of the Vagany manual has been translated into english
(and updated when compared to the french edition, you english-speaking guys
are lucky):
Leon Vaganay and Christian-Bernard Amphoux, An introduction to New
Testament textual criticism (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Chapter 3, "The history of the written text", is especially important as it
incorporates the latest of Mr Amphoux's dicoveries.

The following is in french:
C.-B. Amphoux, La parole qui devint Evangile (Paris, Editions du Seuil, 1993).
This is a popular exposition of his theories. Part 1 of the book describes
the history of the text in a way that Mr Amphoux recognizes to be quite
"romanced", but which rests for the essential on his discoveries. Part 2
gives the scholarly foundation of the hypothese.

C.-B. Amphoux, L'Evangile de Matthieu, Codex de Beze (84800
L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, L'oree de l'Isle, 1996).
A very important book. The Gospel of Matthew from the Bezae codex (accented
and normalized orthography), with a french translation. A long introduction
presents the views of the author about the history of the text, and an
interpretation of the D-text is presented in the footnotes. This book shows
that Amphoux's theories have come to maturity, as he is able to show the
global interpretation of a whole Gospel in his theory.

Two important articles about the Parable of the two sons must be mentioned:
C.-B. Amphoux, La parabole matthenne du Fils prodigue, la version du Codex
Bezae (D05 du NT) in LOAPL 1 (1988), 167-171
C.-B. Amphoux, Les contextes de la parabole des deux fils (Matthieu
21.28-32) in LOAPL 3 (1991), 215-248

LOAPL = Langues orientales anciennes, patrologie et linguistique. An annual
of the CNRS.

I hope this all can be useful for your work in the discipline,


shlomo w-shayno!

Jean Valentin - Brussels - Belgium

Ce qui est trop simple est faux, ce qui est trop complique est inutilisable.
What's too simple is wrong, what's too complicated is unusable.

Back