Fri Jan 24 12:03:03 1997

From owner-tc-list  Fri Jan 24 12:03:03 1997
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (SMI-8.6/SMI-SVR4)
	id MAA19625; Fri, 24 Jan 1997 12:01:12 -0500
Date: 	Fri, 24 Jan 1997 11:55:58 -0500 (EST)
From: Bart Ehrman 
X-Sender: behrman@login2.isis.unc.edu
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism
In-Reply-To: <199701241542.QAA45342@mail.uni-muenster.de>
Message-ID: 
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
content-length: 2547

   Well, of course it's simply not true that there were never "real"
scribes who simply copied one verse here or there rather than an entire
manuscript.  Any church father quoting a solitary verse or two did
precisely this -- and sometimes, as we have reason to believe, they
actually consulted an exemplar before doing so; moreover, there were
amulets, etc. with very small portions of scripture on them, copied just
for the purpose.  So I'm not sure that I see your point.  Of course it's
not absolutely impossible for a scribe to reproduce a text accurately;
it's just extremely difficult for long texts. 

   BTW, are you saying that John 1:1 by itself is not a "real" text?  If
so, then I'd like to know what you yourself understand a text to be. 

-- Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
> 
> [Ehrman]
> >   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.
> 
> If someone can give evidence that there once existed an "exemplar" that solely 
> "inherited" John 1:1, I would agree. The point is that when talking about 
> "scribes" and "what they inherit in their exemplars" we are dealing with 
> physical evidence. As long as we focus on physical evidence, we have to say that 
> there is no indisputable evidence that GJohn ever was "reconstructed" in bits 
> and pieces by scribes. Or to put it the other way, scribes who had to copy John 
> 1:1 usually copied John 1:2ff too. And, if they did, they for sure would have 
> altered the text they had to copy sooner or later. This is due to human nature 
> and, as far as I can see, the main reason for the existence of TC, and it does 
> not affect the theoretical assumption of the one perfect scribe, who not only 
> resisted to add further errors to the text, but also refused to correct the 
> errors of his forerunner(s) ending up with "reproducing exactly what he/she 
> inherited in his/her exemplar". 

> 
> 	Now, everyone, of course, is free to isolate any concatenation
> of symbols (e.g., John 1:1) out of a much larger concatenation of
> symbols (John 1:1-21:25) claiming both to be "texts" (plural). But this
> enterprise can not be paralleled with what real scribes did when they
> copied real texts. Therefore, I find John 1:1 as counter-example to real
> scibal activities not very compelling. Quite to the contrary, I suspect
> therein some categorical confusion. 
> 
> Ulrich Schmid, Muenster
> 

Back