Fri Jan 24 06:09:42 1997

From owner-tc-list  Fri Jan 24 06:09:42 1997
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Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 06:03:13 -0500 (EST)
From: ANDREW SMITH 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: The function of TC
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As much as many practitioners of TC might want to classify it as a
scholarly, scientific, or academic pursuit, I would argue that it remains
primarily a religious enterprise. (I duck as bricks are thrown.)

To support this statement, I point to the lack of TC activity on
non-religious texts. For example, the Diels-Kranz collection of
pre-Socratic fragments presents us with many interesting textual
questions; yet only a handful of researchers here and there are working on
these projects. Compare this to the thousands who are working on NT
textual concerns, and the thousands who analyze the MT of the Tanakh, and
one can only conclude that they are religiously motivated, even though
they might not be aware of this motivation. (Who's more interesting: Jesus
or Thales.) This includes a large number whose religious motivation is to
"un-do" or "un-ravel" a given religion: an anti-religious motivation is
still a religious motivation. Again, the comparison to TC work on
non-religious texts hightlights this point.

Andrew C. Smith

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