Fri Jan 24 09:07:40 1997

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From: Bart Ehrman 
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Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
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On Thu, 23 Jan 1997, Ulrich Schmid wrote:
> 
> >   I guess maybe one difference could be that scribes _are_ (how's that?)
> >able to reproduce exactly what they inherit in their exemplars, whereas
> >readers, I would maintain, can never reproduce exactly the meanings either
> >of the author or of any other readers.

> 
> I wish I could do the same with respect to your example. I have no
> problems conceding theoretically that "scribes _are_ able to reproduce
> exactly what they inherit in their exemplars". However, I fail to add
> any evidence that this has happened practically. Now, if something seems
> theoretically plausible (exact copy) that has, as far as I know, not
> been practically achieved until the invention of printing, why should it
> be theoretically implausible to assume exact reproduction of meaning? To
> my mind, the crucial term in your example is "exactly".

   I'd say that your statement about scribes is categorically false.
There were hundreds and hundreds of scribes who copied John 1:1, to pick
an example, *exactly* as they found it in their exemplar.  They may have
messed up later on (and some other scribes messed up at 1:1), but they
reproduced precisely the words of this verse.  I would maintain, however,
that none of them did, or could, exactly reproduce the meaning of the
verse as it was "intended" by its author.  We don't _have_ the author, we
just have his text.  Frankly, I can conceive of no way to reach an
author's intentions except by guesswork (only a couple of my students have
guessed my intentions for starting this strand; and even they were only
approximately right.  And they know me and how I think.  Which of us is a
personal friend of any of the authors of the New Testament?)

   EVen if we did know the author, I would maintain that we couldn't know
exactly what he meant, down to the slightest nuances.  The reason I think
this has to do with the way language seems to work. On the simple level,
we learn the meanings of words through usage -- i.e., through our
experience of words, spoken and written.  Every time we hear or read a
word, it registers with us as appropriate (or not, sometimes) in the
particular context in which it has been expereinced, and these contexts in
which we hear words used (starting with when we are babies)  then
influence the way we use the words ourselves, as we imitate their use by
others.  Words mean what they do, of course, only within a context;  when
you change the context of a word, it can come to mean something completely
different, sometimes opposite.  All of these contextually based linguistic
experiences provide us with a comfortable range of meaning for a word. 
Now the problem is that none of us has experienced the words we've heard
in different contexts; necessarily, since meaning is context-generated (or
at least, I should think everyone would agree, context-related), words
sometimes mean radically different meanings to different people; but even
common words mean *slightly* different things (extremely finely shaded
nuances) to everyone, because everyone has had different experiences of
them.

    When it comes to John 1:1, it can be shown with absolutely no
difficulty that intelligent well-meaning readers, even with similar
cultural, historical, and religious backgrounds, interpret the words
differently.  They hear the words differently, even though they are the
same words.  And even those who hear the words pretty similarly, can't
possibly hear them identically.  And frankly, without the author around to
query for a few years about what he "meant" I should think we could all
agree that we are probably never really going to agree.  (I would argue
that even if he *were* around to query, we still wouldn't agree; even
more, that even then we couldn't really *know*, since the words he *spoke*
to us would have, necessarily, the same problems as the words he *wrote*.
THey would have to be construed, and each of us would understand them in
slightly -- sometimes very slightly -- different ways.)


-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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