Subject: Gergesenes and tc

From: [email-masked] (William L. Petersen)
Date: Thu, 04 Apr 1996 18:21:50 -0500

On April 4, Don Wilkins asked:

<snip>
>My problem of course is that I see no way to reject 
>Gadarenes/Gerasenes using good tc principles, so that the 
>temptation is to assume there must have been a territory on the 
>shore that was known as the land of the Gerasenes, which 
>overlapped that of the Gadarenes. I should add that I hold to 
>inerrancy, so I cannot accept Dalman's conclusions that the synoptic 
>writers were mistaken. Does anyone have any thoughts about this 
>particular problem, and about the more general problem of 
>reconciling biblical archaeology/geography with textual criticism? I 
>don't see how we could simply let current archaeological research 
>dictate our choices for readings in relevant passages.

Without getting into the various issues which you raise, which might direct
your selection in a certain direction, you might find an article by Tjitze
Baarda useful:  "Gadarenes, Gerasenes, Gergesenes and the 'Diatessaron'
Traditions".  It first appeared in _Neotestamentica et Semitica_ (FS Matthew
Black), edd. E. Ellis & M. Wilcox (Edinburgh:  T&T Clark, 1969), pp.
181-197;  it is reprinted in Baarda's own book of collected articles, titled
_Early Transmission of Words of Jesus.  Thomas, Tatian and the Text of the
New Testament_ (Amsterdam: VU Boekhandel/Uitgeverij, 1983), pp. 85-101.
Baarda is one of the preeminent textual critics at work today;  he is Dean
of Theology at the Free University in Amsterdam, and took his doctorate in
Semitic languages.

Petersen--Penn State University