Subject: Re: Collation against MT vs. TR

From: [email-masked] (Dale M. Wheeler)
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 11:19:43 -0800

>  Isn't that the point?  H&F believe in an omnipotent God who has
providentially
>preserved the text and that conviction has led them to try proving the
"Majority
>text" position with their stemma, etc.   

I'm not trying to defend H&F or their theory here, but this again is another
misconception about their view.  There are those who start from providential
preservation of the text, but H&F do not.  The real issue in interacting
with their work is whether they are correctly using stemmatics and whether
their stemmatic reconstructions are valid, nothing more and nothing less.
At the heart of Hodges' criticism of the way "stemmatics" is done nowadays
in NT TC is that the maxim used is "community of agreement implies community
of origin."  But normally the maxim is "community of error implies community
of origin."  The latter is more difficult for most of us to track since the
"blemishes" of the papyrii and uncials are not readily visible in the NA
footnotes (even less so in UBS).  I note as an aside that this is a standard
argument presented by Eclectics, Equal Prioritists (Sturz), and Byz
prioritists against current textual theory and practice, based on the
observations of Zuntz, Colwell, etc.  Whether it is a valid concern is again
difficult to tell since (electronic ??) copies of the earliest texts are
still not easily available for side by side comparisons at each point of the
text to see the nature of their errors.

>Likewise, Pickering's belief of
>inerrancy leads him to pick and chose a text that supports his beliefs.

I'm not sure that Pickering should be lumped in with H&F anymore either.  He
has, as far as I can tell, rejected the stemmatic argument.  I was under the
impression that he had moved closer to Maurice's position...but maybe not.
At any rate, while I think that he would still agree (??) with H&F on much
philosophically, I don't think his conclusions can be used to define or
understand their position.  I must admit that I'm not totally current on all
the moving around, but I think this is fairly accurate.  Maurice, I'm sure,
would know.

***********************************************************************
Dale M. Wheeler, Th.D.
Chair, Biblical Languages Dept                  Multnomah Bible College
8435 NE Glisan Street                               Portland, OR  97220
Voice: 503-251-6416    FAX:503-254-1268     E-Mail: [email-masked] 
***********************************************************************

---

From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 6 Dec 1995 21:45:10 -0500 (EST)

On Wed, 6 Dec 1995, Dale M. Wheeler wrote:

> > providentially preserved the text and that conviction has led them to 
> > try proving the "Majority text" position with their stemma, etc.   
> 
> preservation of the text, but H&F do not.  

I again would differ slightly.  Hodges is the stemmatician.  Farstad 
basis his position squarely on providential preservation as a primary 
criterion.  Even with his stemmatic approach, I think Hodges still makes 
far too much of the "theological argument" regarding providential 
preservation than should be the case.  It is far easier to simply 
acknowledge that, IF providential preservation has occurred, it is 
reflected in the sheer quantity of data preserved in MSS, Versions and 
Patristic writings.  No questions should be begged as to "which texttype" 
or "which MS" reflects the one and only "providentially preserved" autograph.

Pickering, however, especially takes pains to declare that ONLY the 
"majority text" is the true text, and that precisely because it is the 
majority -- that is why I object to his hypocrisy in arguing for a 5% 
minority reading in Acts 12.25, merely because the majority in that case 
"cannot be correct" since it violates his theological views regarding 
inerrancy.  He can't have it both ways.

Further objection can be made to even Hodges' approach when he declares 
openly that readings with 80% or more support MUST be original on the 
basis of statistics, and then turns around and defends at least 30 
readings in Revelation which possess only 19% support versus the 
remainder.  Neither statistics nor theological presuppositions can 
absolve them from gutting their own theoretical position by their 
methodological practice.

> The real issue in interacting

I would suggest their own internal methodological contradictions as the 
place to begin, not with their stemmatics.  I do object to the stemmatic 
approach as they implement it, because (as I have interacted with them in 
private correspondence) they automatically accept both Von Soden's 
stemmatic data in the Pericope Adultera and Hoskier's stemmatic groupings 
in the Apocalypse, both of which are questionable (Hoskier deliberately 
arranged his groupings to help "prove" that the autograph of Revelation 
was trilingual -- Greek, Latin, and Syriac!  Von Soden left no real data 
to prove the validity of his m-groups in the Pericope Adultera).  

Also, they misuse stemmatics in that they consider agreement in reading to
be evidence of relationship whereas a proper stemmatic approach (cf.  Dom
Henri Quentin, for example), would establish stemmatic interrelationships
on the basis of shared agreement in plain and clear error.  If the
classical approach is rejected, I have little doubt that any stemmatic
relationships claimed based upon mere agreement of reading will be
invalid.  You have the point correctly stated below, but the fact is that
H/F DO base their stemmatic conclusions precisely on the "community of
agreement" principle and make NO attempt to seek out "community of error"
(which would require detailed study of Hoskier's collation data beyond
what H/F chose to do): 

> footnotes (even less so in UBS).  

Again, the hard data is there in Hoskier.  The problem is that no one 
wants to dig it out and seriously deal with it.  I hope eventually to 
have a student do a thesis or dissertation utilizing Hoskier to attempt a 
new stemmatic grouping based solely upon the agreement in error principle.

> has, as far as I can tell, rejected the stemmatic argument.  

Although he should not be lumped in with H/F, Pickering has not actually
rejected the stemmatic approach, but has chosen to follow other subgroups. 
E.g., in the Pericope Adultera, he favors Von Soden's m7 group, where H/F
favor the m6 group; in Revelation, he favors the Mc group rather than
H/F's Ma group.  He supplements the stemmatic approach with his
theological interpretative criteria and also lays great stress on the
"reading which best explains all of the other readings" approach.  He thus
ends up a blend of electicism, stemmatics, and theological bias -- which
in my opinion is no way to do textual criticism. 

> I was under the

As described above -- not. *8-) As last related to me during a visit this
Fall, he basically has decided for the remainder of the NT (outside of the
Revelation and Pericope Adultera) to favor the Kr subgroup, which is a
very small group of about 200 later Byzantine MSS from about the 12th-14th
centuries.  His rationale for favoring such is based upon a "continual
purification" model of MS transmission, in which he assumes (wrongly) that 
"the later the MSS, the closer they will return to the autograph." 

My own position would be closer to that of Scrivener in that I could
personally dispense with all MSS after the 10th century, with my basic
theory remaining unaffected.  I do argue that the Byzantine text in the
later MSS does reflect a "restoration" of the autograph by natural
processes of cross-comparison and correction, but the result of this
process (which began shortly after the legitimization of Christianity
under Constantine) was already mostly complete by the end of the 5th
century. 

> the moving around, but I think this is fairly accurate.  Maurice, I'm sure,

I definitely do not think H/F and Pickering see eye to eye on much
anymore, just as I do not see eye to eye with either party (for the
record, I have never in any way been dependent upon them in the
development of my own views, nor have I ever been a member of their
"Majority Text Society"; my own text-critical training came from Kenneth
W. Clark in the period 1972-1977, and I progressed from there).

=========================================================================
                       Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.
            Associate Professor of Greek and New Testament
              Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
                      Wake Forest, North Carolina
                   <[email-masked]>
=========================================================================