Fri Nov 29 10:44:48 1996

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From: "Professor L.W. Hurtado" 
Organization: Divinity Faculty
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In addition to the specific data about the mss sometimes referred to 
as "Caesarean", summarized briefly by Waltz, we also have to think of 
the associated question:  What do we mean by "text type"?  Waltz 
doesn't like Colwell's emphasis on some kind of minimal quantitative 
agreement criterion, and seems to prefer something like patterns of 
readings.  But it seems to me that Waltz presupposes what he in fact 
needs first to show--that there was a developed "Byzantine" 
*text-type* to "mix" with other influences to produce the "Caesarean 
text-type".  
I've tended to view "text-types" as the varying products of different 
scribal traditions, tendencies & purposes.  Thus, the 
"Neutral/Alexandrian" type of text seems to have been heavily shaped 
by scribes more concerned than many with careful copying, etc. 
(though no ancient scribes were *fully* consistent or infallible!).  
I emphasize the *comparative* nature of any judgment, and this means 
that judgments must be *inductively* arrived at so far as possible.  
For example, we need first to *demonstrate* a text type existed at a 
given period before we can invoke it to explain things.  And to 
demonstrate that a text-type existed, we first have to specify what 
we mean by the term "text-type".
To clarify thinking, I strongly recommend E.J. Epp's essay, "The 
Significance of the Papyri for Determining the Nature of the New 
Testament Text in the Second Century:  A Dynamic View of Textual 
Transmission," in Epp & G. D. Fee, _Studies in the Theory & Method of 
NT Textual Criticism_ (SD 45; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 274-97.

L. W. Hurtado
University of Edinburgh,
New College
Mound Place 
Edinburgh, Scotland EH1 2LX
Phone: 0131-650-8920
Fax: 0131-650-6579
E-mail:  L.Hurtado@ed.ac.uk

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