Thu Jan 16 18:02:33 1997

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From: "Perry L. Stepp" 
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Subject: Re: Original Text
Date: Thu, 16 Jan 1997 16:55:56 -0600
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Jim West opined:

> 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.

Generally speaking, Graeco-Roman authors did in fact write multiple
editions of their ms.  They seem to have circulated these
editions--sometimes in toto, sometimes in bits and pieces--and invited
criticisms, suggestions, and then revised and reworked their ms in the
light of the suggestions they received.  

If this approach was as widely used as I've gathered, it throws the whole
question of "original text" (at least for the gospels) into a whole new
light: e.g., both the "Western" and the "Alexandrian" texts of Acts may
have issued from the pen of a single author, simply two different editions,
both of which that author  regarded as THE text (as did large communities
of Christians), circulated at different times.  

[Consider: if such is the case, shouldn't the aims of textual criticism be
descriptive rather than authoritative (i.e., trying to describe rather than
trying to arrive at an "original" text?  Ah, I've got a headache!]

The Status Quaestionis is described in Harry Gamble, *Books and Readers in
the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts* (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 1995), which I'm about to read for a Ph.D. seminar.  The
above opinion is gathered from papers I've heard, particularly David
Balch's offering at the Southwest Commision on Religious Studies in Dallas
last year.  If anyone has read Gamble's book, feel free to weigh in.

Perry L. Stepp

************************************************************
Pastor, DeSoto Christian Church, DeSoto TX
Ph.D. candidate, Baylor University

"A system of morality which is based on relative emotional
values is a mere illusion, a thoroughly vulgar conception 
which has nothing sound in it and nothing true."
                                Phaedo 69b
***********************************************************

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