Subject: Re: "Majority Text"

From: [email-masked] (Dale M. Wheeler)
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 20:27:40 -0800

Carlton L. Winbery wrote to Maurice Robinson:

>You have clearly differentiated your position here from that of Hodges and
>Farstad.  Your statement about biblical inerrancy is interesting.  I do now
>wish to open that can of worms again on this list or b-greek, but I suspect
>that it plays a greater role than you allow, but I must read your work and
>examine your textual decisions before I make such assertions.  I had hoped
>that when I finished Hodges/Farstad that I could settle back into my easy
>eclectism and be happy with my new "Textus Receptus" (UBS-N-A) and just
>read the NT.

This is a question for Maurice...would you put your position, purely in
terms of your rejection of current critical methodology, close to that of
Jakob van Bruggen ?  What I found fascinating about his critique was that it
was almost totally composed of quotes by current critics of their own
method; interspersed with quotes from Kilpatrick, Eliot.  In terms of where
he ends up as to the type of text he chooses, I can't say that I'm sure what
he holds.

***********************************************************************
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] 
***********************************************************************

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From: Charles Miller <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 12 Feb 1996 21:43:45 -0700 (MST)

Does anyone have any info on the Matthew fragment discovered at an 
English university last year? Has it been dated? Is it authentic?

Thanks.

Chuck Miller University of New Mexico Philosophy Department
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
For a philosopher there is more	  | Reality is not limited to the 
grass growing down in the valleys | familiar, the commonplace, for it 
of silliness than up on the       | consists in huge part of a latent, as 
barren heights of cleverness.	  | yet unspoken, future Word.
 --L. Wittgenstein,     	  |   -- F. Dostoevskey, _Notebooks_
          _Culture and Value_     |

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From: Andrew Gross <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 00:17:24 -0500 (EST)

> Chuck Miller University of New Mexico Philosophy Department

There's an article about it in the December 1995 issue of Bible Review.  
I read it a while ago, and so I cannot really give you an accurate 
synopsis of its conclusions.

andrew gross

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From: "James R. Adair" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 00:30:30 -0500 (EST)

> English university last year? Has it been dated? Is it authentic?

I think that you're probably referring to Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (P64)
which was not discovered last year, but rather was redated by Carsten P. 
Thiede from ca. 200 (see Colin H. Roberts, "An Early Papyrus of the First
Gospel," Harvard Theological Review 46 [1953]: 233-237) to ca. 70 on the
basis on paleography.  Thiede's arguments may be found in "Papyrus
Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland P64): A Reappraisal," Zeitschrift fu"r
Paleographie und Epigraphik 105 (1995): 13-20 and further in the Tyndale
Bulletin (I don't know the full ref.).  Thiede's revised date was 
disputed vociferously on Ioudaios last year by Stuart Pickering and, in 
greater detail, by Sigrid Peterson.  

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
---------------> http://scholar.cc.emory.edu <-----------------

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From: Sigrid Peterson <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 13 Feb 1996 12:57:27 -0500 (EST)

To the bibliography supplied by Paul.Schubert, David Parker, and Andrew 
Gross on the papy list, and by James Adair on the tc-list, let me add two 
more items.

Emile Puech reviewed Thiede's article in the October 1995 issue of Revue 
Biblique(Vol 102-4 pp. 570-584). The summary in English is as follows:

       In opposition to what some authors think, the identification of 7Q5   
    with Mc 6,52 s and of 7Q4 with 1 Tim  3, 16-4.3 are absolutely 
    impossible. The fragments of Magdalen Greek 17 = P 64 which can not be 
    attributed to the first c., do not confirm the habits of scribes 
    supposed to give a base to this wrong identification. On the contrary,
    P64 is surely the oldest witness of a reading of the most numerous 
    manuscripts in Mt 26, 22 in Egypt itself, much better than that of the
    Alexandrine text.

Jim Adair, on the TC-LIST, was kind enough to mention my detailed review 
of the article which appeared on IOUDAIOS-L. Due to the requests I 
received for copies, I've placed it on my home page on the world wide 
web. The URL  for retrieving it is 

http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/~petersig/thiede.txt.final.reply

I have a later recension, which quotes the media coverage of Thiede's 
mid-December announcement, which I will upload to the same file name in 
the next two days. It will be identifiable as such because I will prefix 
it with the critical bibliography that has begun to appear.

Sigrid Peterson  UPenn, Bar-Ilan University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem,
		 and The British School for Archaeology in Jerusalem
		 [email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 16 Feb 1996 18:19:11 -0500 (EST)

On Mon, 12 Feb 1996, Dale M. Wheeler wrote:

> >Farstad.  

> he ends up as to the type of text he chooses, I can't say that I'm sure what

I would suggest that Jakob van Bruggen (and Wm. Wisselink, who completed
his doctorate under Van Bruggen) would be far closer and more in sympathy
with my own views than would Hodges, Farstad, or Pickering.  Van Bruggen
and I differ often over interpretation of passages, which interpretation
affects our manner of internal-evidence defense of various Byzantine
readings, but we still favor almost an identical Byzantine/Majority text
of the NT (including the major differences in Revelation from the H/F
stemmatic text in that book). 

The use of a string of continual quotes from contemporary eclectic 
critics, each attempting to shoot down one or another element of internal 
evidence espoused by another is an entertaining exercise when done well.  
Van Bruggen is careful enough in this regard, and basically emulates the 
same type of critique as does Eldon J. Epp in his "Requiem" and 
"Interlude" articles.  

However, such academic "proof-texting," while demonstrating that there is 
not total peace and harmony in eclectic-land, does not of itself establish 
any alternative as better.  I myself avoid that type of proof-texting, 
since it is not a solution, but (as Epp maintained) a "symptom."

I also want to avoid any connection with the utter mess that Wilbur
Pickering made out of various scholarly quotes in his "Identity of the NT
Text" book, where he blatantly took passages out of context, misquoted
other passages, and misapplied the lot in a poor attempt to discredit the
eclectic position (and ruined the real thrust of his book in the process).

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