Thu Feb 13 12:47:25 1997

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From: Michael Holmes 
Subject: Re: professional scribes
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At 09:05 AM 2/13/97 -0800, Dale Wheeler wrote:

>You know, that sort of sounds like the same question I asked about whether
>we should assume that the state of the text in Egypt represents the state
>of the text everywhere for the NT ?! 

The question of whether the extant textual data from Egypt is representative
of circumstances elsewhere has been explored by E. J. Epp: "The Significance
of the Papyri for Determining the Nature of the New Testament Text in the
Second Century: A Dynamic View of Textual Transmission," in William L.
Petersen, ed., _Gospel Traditions in the Second Century: Origins,
Recensions, Text, and Transmission_ (Notre Dame and London: University of
Notre Dame Press, 1989)71-103.

Based on his investigation of the movement and transmission of secular
documents (including the documented rapid movement of literary documents
between Alexandria and Oxyrhynchus), he concludes:
"The dynamism of life in the Greco-Roman world--even in the outlying areas
of Egypt (where most of the New Testament papyri were discovered)--permitted
relatively easy travel and rather free transmission of letters and
documents, so that the earliest New Testament papyri--though they have
survived accidentally and randomly--are generally representative of the
earliest New Testament texts used by the Christianity of the time in all
parts of the Greco-Roman world." (p. 101)

Mike Holmes

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