Thu Jan 16 15:13:48 1997

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From: Jim West 
Subject: Re: Original Text
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Jim,
At 02:48 PM 1/16/97 -0500, you wrote:
> To use a modern analogy, let's say that someone
>writing a book writes a first draft, then substantially modifies his own
>work in subsequent drafts, until he finally has a version that he wants to
>send to a publisher.  Which is the "original text," the first draft or the
>final, publishable version? 

This is a useful analogy where pen, paper, and word processors make it quite
inexpensive to toy with a manuscript.  But where papyrus could cost an arm
and a leg it is not likely that an author would write two or three versions
and then decide which one to send in.  He would most likely have well in
mind exactly what he (or she) wished to say and then it would be written down.

At any rate, if an author did write a first draft- it is the first one!
Then other editions or drafts were made.  And we are back to my original
premise that there had to be a first.

> In a similar way, if we think in terms of
>copyist/authors who are transmitting the text, is the real original their
>_Vorlage_ or their final, substantially modified product?

Again, this modern editorial methodology simply does not apply to an ancient
enviroment where, if mss were corrected or changed, we still today can see
that change (as is evident by all the scribal notations, corrections, and
erasures we are all very familiar with).  For instance, changes were clearly
made to the scroll of Isaiah found at Qumran.  We can see them clear as day.
They are additions or corrections to a document which preceded them.

>  When authorship
>overlaps with transmission, 

I suppose this is the Achilles heel of the whole situation we are
discussing; for what exactly does it mean to say that authorship and
transmission overlap?  Does it mean that the author with his right hand
writes a document and with the left simultaneously copies it? (the good old,
redutio ad absurdam- but I fail completely to see how transmission and
authorship can overlap at all).

>as in the case of numerous OT books, as Gene
>Ulrich has noted, the identification of a single "original" does become
>problematic.

Only if one presupposes (pace Bultmann!) that such an event as
transmission/authorship has taken place.


Jim

  
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Petros TN

jwest@sunbelt.net

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