Subject: Archetype and autograph

From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 4 Apr 1996 21:39:36 -0500 (EST)

Timothy John Finney wrote on 2 Apr 1996:

>Zuntz points out in his _Disquisition on the Corpus Paulinum_ that every
>MS of Paul's letters is a collection. 

Zuntz was speaking of extensive papyri and not of fragments.  P10 is a 
clear example of a simple schoolboy practice scrawl on the back of a 
piece of secular papyrus, with no intent to complete even the 
book of Romans with which it begins.

>agreement that Paul's letters and Hebrews were in circulation as a
>collection by 100 AD.

This is now basically granted.

>When I mentioned archtype rather than autograph in my initial post, it
>was with this in mind. No one knows what happened between the original
>composition of these writings and their collection into one corpus, but
>here is a possible scenario (the usual arguments about dating etc. aside):

The historical transmission reconstruction is appreciated, even though 
I differ from it significantly.

>1) 55 - 70 AD Paul's letters and Hebrews written and sent (copies may have
>been made for other churches, especially where the letter was addressed
>to one but instructions were given for it to be read in others).

Certainly, though I and most conservatives will put the dates earlier, 
from about 49-64, presuming Pauline authenticity of the entire corpus 
(some however excluding Hebrews, which nevertheless circulated among 
that corpus).

>2) Some enterprising early believer, probably while being reprimanded for
>wasting time on trifles, decided to collect Paul's writings. Who was it?

Why could it not have been the churches themselves, exchanging
documents and slowly building up a corpus collection? Certainly 
Colossians was read across the river in Laodicea, as well as a lost 
Pauline letter (or Ephesians as some think) being read in Colossae.  
This situation would readily be repeated as churches which had Pauline 
contact would want to know what he had written to their sister 
churches.

>As others have pointed out, this would most practically have been
>achieved by writing to the various letters' custodian churches asking for
>copies (aside from letters already at hand).

Such would be the case, but once more there is no reason to suspect a 
single individual doing this any more than a given church writing to 
another church requesting a copy of what the apostle wrote.  
Economically, it would make more sense even in the era of papyrus for a 
church to make copies which it then could read or circulate to its 
parishoners, rather than for an individual to assemble such a 
collection.  Remember Tertullian's appeal in his Prescription against 
Heretics -- you are to go to the various churches to which the apostles 
themselves wrote, and from there to assemble the "authenticae litterae" 
in order to refute heretical corruption.  The evidence certainly seems 
to point to church archives as the basis for the Pauline corpus rather 
than individuals.

>3) Copies of letters not already at hand would be made (with varying
>accuracy, I dare say) and sent to the intrepid collector. This person
>then copied all of the letters into a single collection which is the
>archtype on which all subsequent copies of the Pauline collection are
>based. Where a copy of the collection was sent back to a church holding
>one of the originals, it could have been cross-checked.

I appreciate the implication that cross-checking against the autographs
could be made, though the "varying" degrees of "accuracy" in the
existing early copies would seem to suggest that this was not done on
any frequent or systematic basis.  

My main argument against the single-corpus = archetype scenario is
again transmissional: if errors existed in the corpus-archetype, why do
they not exist among the extant MSS in significant quantity,
transcending the various texttype limits?  Cross-comparison and
correction can only go far enough to restore the ultimate archetype
postulated, and if that archetype is not the actual autograph copy of a
work, then error held in common by all MSS of all texttypes should
result.  

I suspect that even the collected Pauline corpus was subject to
cross-comparison and correction from other freely circulating MSS which
were not part of such a corpus.  Only in this way would the initial
errors which may have affected the corpus-as-a-whole be eliminated
(unless one wanted to postulate a complete correction of the corpus
against the autograph of each of the individual letters, which I think
unlikely).

>Many implications spring from this possible scenario:

>1) The autographs are (at least) one copy distant from the archtype for all
>letters in the Pauline collection, except those that were already in the
>possession of the original collector.

Agreed that the autographs preceded the corpus archetype by 
at least one generation.  However, it remains debatable whether the 
corpus archetype is a single document as postulated, or whether there 
were _many_ corpus-archetypes, each reflecting a slightly different 
text of the collection as assembled and compared by various churches.  
I opt for the latter.

>2) Production of the archtype introduced another copying step.

The same holds for multiple "corpus archetypes."

>3) Nevertheless, the collection archetype could be compared with the
>autographs whenever a copy of the collection archtype was sent to a custodian
>of an autograph.

Possible, but I suspect unlikely, since I do not see the single corpus 
archetype being sent from church to church like a college yearbook to 
be autographed, nor do I see the various churches which each may have 
assembled their own "Pauline corpuses" circulating them in this manner, 
but instead simply using them within their own local church contexts. 
(This is still in the era of persecution and the uncontrolled popular 
text).

>4) These primary copying steps are a possible source of the primitive
>corruptions that have been discussed by Maurice Robinson and James Adair.

I'll let Jimmy handle that one, since I don't think we have any 
"primitive corruptions" which transcend all our extant evidence.

>Aspects of this theory may even be testable: if certain members of the
>collection have significantly less of what seem to be primitive
>corruptions than would be expected from the overall average then this may
>be due to those members having been copied less before incorporation into
>the archtype collection.

First problem: what are the "primitive corruptions" and how does one 
authoritatively recognize them?  You cannot test a hypothesis without a 
standard of comparison, and I doubt any two textual critics would agree 
on a list of primitive corruptions for even Romans, let alone the 
entire Pauline corpus.

The better way to test such a theory is genealogical, based upon 
collation data.  Evaluation of scribal tendencies must first be 
determined by examining singular readings (as did Colwell) on a 
manuscript-by-manuscript basis.  Following this, one needs to search 
for readings shared by only two, three, or even four MSS in order to
attempt a stemma for what appear to be closely-related MSS.  If, having
done all that, certain MSS appear to share readings in common with
great frequency, they are likely related.  

If shared errors begin to transcend all or nearly all MSS of the extant
tradition, one can then and only then presuppose descent from a common
archetype of the corpus or the autograph, whichever one might prefer.
My presumption is that the result of such a test will be no errors held
in the common degree necessary to postulate the intermediate archetype 
which stands between the autograph and the existing texttypes.

>(What a shame that there are no papyri which have
>the two letters to Timothy.)

There always is hope.
(I hope when such are discovered, their text will be Byzantine *;-)

>On a related matter, a couple of years ago I wrote a C program that
>simulates copying. It starts off with a row of zeroes, then introduces
>'variants' by incrementing zeroes at random with a certain (low)
>probability. There are parameters included which give the 'manuscripts'
>(i.e. rows of numbers) chances of dying of old age or by violent death.

>This is a funny program. Sometimes it seems to not work. That's because no
>copies get made because the autograph dies or is killed before it gets
>copied.

This is likely a flaw in the program based upon a faulty assumption.
If related to all documents ever written, secular, theological,
grocery lists, etc., then certainly the disappearance of the autograph
might well occur in the majority of instances.  For literary works,
however, this is not likely the case, and especially for theological
works, which intensifies with the issue of canonicity and authority
being assigned to those works.  Adjust the program to remove that
possibility, and I would be interested to see what might result.

>One outcome which I found interesting was that once a sample of the set of
>copies produced was taken, it was quite common (depending on the
>probabilities put into the program at the start) for a number besides zero
>(the original 'reading') to predominate at a particular 'variation unit'.

Did you have a parameter included which would allow for a regular or 
almost regular process of cross-comparison and correction to occur, 
including a proviso that when the exemplar differed from the second MS 
used for correction, a third copy might be sought out in at least 50% 
of the cases.  If you can reprogram with that scenario included, I 
again would be interested in the results.

>Modeling of early copying might produce some clues to help us in our
>attempt to reconstruct the development of the New Testament text. 

This principle is valid, which is why I urge you to rework your C 
program and input different parameters to see what other possibilities 
might arise.

>One phenomenon which happens in other populations is that conditions
>which adversely affect a first population but favour or don't affect a
>second, lead to a predomination of the varieties in the second
>population. On the face of it, this could explain why the Byzantine
>text became dominant after the Moslem conquest of Egypt. Whether or not
>the Egyptian or Byzantine variety is closest to the original is another
>question.

I don't think this will apply to the situation of the Moslem conquest
for reasons stated quite a while back.  Destruction of a local text
will not cause ramifications which overwhelm the dominant text, and
conversely, if the Alexandrian text were the dominant text, the Moslem
conquest would not overwhelm its continued promulgation in the
remainder of the Empire.  Removal of the influence of the Alexandrian
text elsewhere in the Empire MIGHT speed up the time necessary for the
dominance of the Byzantine Textform, but the process as a whole would
not be altered or adversely affected.

_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~