Subject: Re: autographs and archetypes

From: "James R. Adair" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Apr 1996 01:29:10 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 29 Mar 1996, Maurice Robinson wrote:

> > (Earlier I wrote:)
> > To assert that archetype=autograph is a faith statement.  
> 
> This is partly due to the underlying presuppositions of the eclectic 
> schools, which also are "faith" statements.

No argument here.  I'm just trying to examine a few presuppositions, in 
order to see how they affect the resulting positions we take.

> Even though the competing presuppositions underlying each text-critical
> viewpoint may be "faith" assumptions, I would argue de minorem ad majorem,
> and suggest that, since classical scholars consider their textual
> restoration, made with far less extant data than we possess for the the
> NT, to be the restoration of the autograph and not the archetype in almost
> every situation, it is only a peculiarly biased viewpoint which would not
> think the abundance of evidence would bring us closer to and not further
> away from that goal. 

Abundance of evidence is certainly preferable to paucity of evidence.  I 
would agree that it's possible to get closer to the original with more 
evidence, but as we approach the "100% original" limit, the diversity of the
evidence shows us that this limit cannot really be reached.

> > I raise 
> > again the spectre of Hort's "primitive corruptions," because they always 
> > lurk behind the text.  
> 
> I question that assumption entirely.  Why "always"?  There seems to be a 
> presumption of non-authenticity which prevails in such an assumption.  
> Why not a presumption that, unless some demonstration of inauthenticity 
> can be _proven_, the text should be considered basically "authentic" and of 
> autograph originality.  To do otherwise will make a mockery of the labors 
> of textual critics, since anyone can then argue that, even in places 
> where there are NO textual variants, that the original "could not have so 
> read."

There is no presumption of non-authenticity.  My presumption is 
non-certainty.  Textual critics can only work with the data they have, 
and NT text critics certainly do have good data in comparison with, say, 
classical text critics, but assuming that the reading of the autograph 
has been preserved in _every_ case is quite a presumption.

> Even if the "spectre of primitive corruption" is only invoked in places
> where there are variant readings and where interpretation is difficult,
> this still makes its own "faith presumption" regarding the transmission of
> the text.

Here I will have to disagree.  If I had said that primitive corruption is
definitely behind certain readings in our NT text, this would be a faith
presumption.  To say that we cannot be certain that _every_ autograph
reading is preserved in one or more extant witnesses is a statement of
caution.  It might not even be too much to say, from a purely logical 
standpoint, that it is a statement of fact, which could only be disproved 
if we had all of the autographs.

> > It is irrelevant whether someone "advocates" 
> > conjectural readings, because in some instances, admittedly probably only 
> > a small number, the "original" reading may not be recoverable, and text 
> > critics have to admit that.
> 
> Only some NT textual critics make a place for conjecture within the text 
> of the NT.  Most handbooks rule such a practice out entirely.

I don't deny that many, maybe most (I haven't checked all of them), 
handbooks rule out conjecture; certainly all caution against its 
overuse.  But let me quote Metzger, _The Text of the New Testament_: "One 
must admit the theoretical legitimacy of applying to the New Testament a 
process which has so often been found essential in the restoration of the 
right text in classical authors.  On the other hand, the amount of 
evidence for the text of the New Testament, whether derived from 
manuscripts, early versions, or patristic quotations, is so much greater 
than that available for any classical author that the necessity of 
resorting to emendation is reduced to the smallest dimensions.  It is 
perhaps chiefly in the Catholic Epistles and the Apocalypse, where the 
early manuscript evidence is more limited than for any other part of the 
New Testament, that the need for attempting conjectural emendation may 
arise with any degree of urgency" (p. 185).  Again, I am _not_ advocating 
wholesale emendation of the text; I am only saying that emendation cannot 
be theoretically ruled out as a tool of the textual critic.

> Further, as mentioned above, if primitive error can be suspected in _some_
> places where variation occurs, what is there to prevent suspicion of
> primitive error even in places where _no_ variation occurs?  There is no
> legitimate boundary which restricts such a presupposition from being
> applied anywhere once one does not happen to agree with or understand the
> text. 

This is the famous "slippery slope" argument, popularly used by many 
people on all sides of many debates, but logically of no value to the 
argument.  Of course nothing can prevent people from suspecting 
primitive error in any given location, but the real questions is whether 
other scholars will agree with their assessment.  Textual criticism, like 
other forms of scholarship, is not done in a vacuum.  Hundreds of 
emendations have been proposed over the years, but how many have met with 
widespread scholarly approval?  Only one emendation has been put in the 
text in UBS4 and NA27 (Acts 16:12, perhaps not strictly a pure 
emendation, since it does have some weak versional support), and this 
only over the objections of two of the original five members of the UBS 
committee (Metzger and Aland).  Perhaps the most popular emendation of 
the NT text has been the suggestion that ENWK dropped out of the text in 
1 Pet 3:19 due to haplography.  This emendation was accepted by Goodspeed 
in his translation (An American Translation, 1923).  All in all, 
I doubt that admitting that conjecture is a legitimate tool of the NT 
textual critic will lead to a stampede of new emendations in future 
critical editions of the text.

> On the assumption that texttype archetype would NOT equal the 
> autograph, then we would end up with the peculiar situation of being 
> quite able to restore some form of primitive archetype for the Byzantine, 
> Alexandrian, Western, and Caesarean texttypes, but would be utterly 
> incapable of going beyond that to a postulation of the autograph 
> archetype. This is highly illogical, and inconsistent with the data 
> preserved to us in the extant witnesses.

Granting for the moment the assumption that text-type archetypes could be 
reconstructed (and I'm not sure that they can, except perhaps for the 
Byzantine, as Maurice said), nothing I have said would prohibit the 
postulation of the archetype that lay behind the text-type archetypes.  
However, it would only be a _postulate_, not a _certainty_, and it begs 
the question to say that it would of necessity be identical with the 
autograph.

> > Reconstructed hypothetical "autographs" _may_ require conjectures, but 
> > these are hardly scientific.
> 
> What is unscientific about a reconstruction of the autograph based upon
> the extant data as opposed to the reconstruction of the archetype of a
> texttype based upon the extant data?  Why is conjecture or suspicion of
> "primitive error" needed in the first case, but not so in the second case? 
> There still seems to be a double standard and illogic at work, and it goes
> back to the "faith presupposition" underlying this type of theory, but not
> my own. 

What I meant was that, by their nature, conjectures are unscientific. 
That doesn't mean they're necessarily wrong, only that they rely on
reasoned argument rather than extant textual data to make their case. 
Other scholars will have to decide whether each "reasoned argument" holds
any water.

Regarding the supposed double standard here, I don't agree that every
text-type can be reconstructed with 100% assurance, especially the Western
text-type.  _Of course_ my conclusions are derived to a large extent from my
presuppositions, as are Maurice's.  He has stated that one of his
presuppositions is that the autographs were viewed with such high regard
by their initial recipients that each was copied more than once (or the
first copy was copied more than once).  He has further indicated that one
reason for thinking this is his "view of apostolic authority and the
evangelistic intent of communication transcending the single recipients of
the autograph MSS."  Fine.  I can see why he concludes that every reading 
of the autographs has been preserved.  

I, however, am not as convinced that every NT autograph was so fortunate. 
We know that other early gospels existed, and many scholars think that
other letters of Paul have been lost (e.g., Laodiceans, other letters to
the Corinthians).  This suggests to me that _some_ works that made it into
the NT may not have been copied as early or as frequently as others, such
as the gospels and the major Pauline letters.  After all, the early
Christians didn't have the luxury of knowing which books would ultimately
be in the NT (this gets into the issue of the NT canon).  I imagine that
many other works, especially letters, by lesser known early Christians
were written, but they just haven't been preserved (cf. the Egerton
gospel).  Further evidence for this presumption is the sparsity of early
mss of books like James and 2 Peter.  All this leads me to question
whether the autographs of these books, or their immediate textual
descendants, were copied more than once, or, if two or three copies were
made, whether these lines of textual descent might not have completely died
out without leaving a trace on the preserved ms tradition.  Again, all I'm
saying is that I'm not as certain as Maurice that all of the readings of
the autographs have been preserved in the extant mss.  Maybe they have
been, but I suspect that they haven't in every case.  At whichever 
conclusion the text critic arrives, presuppositions play a large role in 
his or her decision.

Jimmy Adair
Manager of Information Technology Services, Scholars Press
    and
Managing Editor of TELA, the Scholars Press World Wide Web Site
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