Subject: Re: Theories of textual transmission / Alexandrian text / etc.

From: [email-masked] (Robert B. Waltz)
Date: Tue, 11 Jun 96 18:54 CDT

On Tue, 11 Jun 199, [email-masked] (William L. Petersen) wrote:

>As I have watched the various posts on these two subjects float by over the
>last week or so, I have been struck by one point.  It leads me to ask the
>following question:
>
>Why, in all these discussions, have NONE of the earliest witnesses to the NT
>text been mentioned?  Are they without relevance to the issue of how the
>text originated and was then transmitted?  Are they of no significance when
>discussing the "Alexandrian" or "Byzantine" or other families?
>
>By "earliest witnesses" I mean, of course, the extensive second-century
>citations which we possess:  Justin, Tertullian, Ignatius, the Didache, etc.
>Even the early third century citations in Clement of Alexandria, Origen,
>etc., are very important for the light they shed on both the text itself and
>how early "academic" Christians handled it.
>
>Quite frankly, I don't understand why one would choose to busy one's self
>with 4th cent. through 12th cent. evidence, while at the same time totally
>ignoring the 2nd through 3rd. cent. evidence.  Please enlighten me.

Let's take this in pieces.

You're right, of course, that early authors have advantages for researching
the textual tradition, since we know with fair precision *where* and *when*
they wrote.

But let's remember the caveats.

First, most authors did not cite precisely. This is particularly true of
the earliest: Ignatius, Justin, etc. But Tertullian wasn't overly precise,
either. And even Origen suffered occasional lapses of memory.

Second, the writings of these authors are often badly preserved. Irenaeus
and Origen, for instance, wrote in Greek but are preserved primarily in
Latin. And in the case of Origen, at least, Rufinus's translation was more
than a little biased.

And even when we possess the texts in the original language, our *manuscripts*
are generally recent, and often thoroughly corrupt.

For these problems, I refer you to Fee's essays in Epp & Fee. I'm not sure
I like Fee's solutions, but it shows the magnitude of the problem.

Third, remember that relatively few authors commented on entire books.
So in any given passage, we may not *know* what that author's text
read.

But suppose that, miraculously, we were to recover the autographs of
every writing by all of these authors. How does that help us? We don't
really *care* where the text-types came from. As for dates, it is
conceded that, with the possible exception of the Byzantine text,
(don't jump on me, Maurice, I said *possible*) *all* the text-types
are older than their oldest witnesses. Pushing the date back a
decade or two, or even a century or two, doesn't help much.

When we try to decide the relationship between text-types, all we
care about is the types themselves. Certain Fathers may be witnesses
to the text-types (the standard example is Chrysostom as a witness
to the Byzantine text, even though we are finding now that his text
wasn't *quite* purely Byzantine), but they do not tell us which
types are which.

If you can tell me how the use of the Fathers can resolve the
basic question ("What is a text-type?"), I'd be thrilled to hear
the proposal.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

---

From: [email-masked] (Ulrich Schmid)
Date: Wed, 12 Jun 96 20:18:47 +0100

>ignoring the 2nd through 3rd. cent. evidence.  Please enlighten me.

I too think that the earliest witnesses to NT text are highly significant "to 
the issue of how the text originated and was then transmitted". Since a good 
deal of the citations from the early fathers (and some of the early Papyri) do 
not fit very well to the framework of text-types, I suspect their significance 
is ruled down by most scholars (exceptions are for example Amphoux, 
Boismard/Lamouille, and those devoted to Diatessaron studies). I personally 
refrained from taking this type of evidence into account, because the discussion 
started with "text-types" and how to describe them. Nevertheless, encouraged by 
W.L. Petersen, I my express some textual criticism "heresy" (cf. Bob Waltz).

1.) The obstacle (in our actual discussion already emphasized by Waltz, 
Robinson, and West) concerning the reliability of citations, to my mind, is 
overemphasized. It is true that there was an uncritical use of church father 
testimonies without taking into account context, style, preferrences, etc. to an 
extend that one may well call this kind of use an abuse. But nevertheless, 
things change, and there are recent methodological contributions in order to 
evaluate the reliability of this kind of evidence (cf. for example B. Aland, 
Petersen, Clabeaux, Schmid).

2.) When reconstructing Marcion's Corpus Paulinum (mid second century, our 
oldest witness!), I found, though few, but striking _textual_ evidence (conflate 
readings!) indicating that Marcion's text antedates all our known text-types at 
least in their actual state of appearence. Our extant textual transmission of 
the Pauline epistles in fact testifies to early contamination from two distinct 
letter editions affecting all our known "text-types" ("Western", Alex., Byz.).  
Those heavily focused on text-types should take notice that for the Pauline 
epistles we are most probably NOT dealing with ONE archetype of textual 
transmission. 

3.) Therefore, theories of textual transmission based on the assumption that one 
of the "text-types" must somehow equal the autograph, or that text-types are the 
one and only decisive features do not hold water (at least not for the Pauline 
epistles). Granted this situation, the focus on "text-types" will lead us 
nowhere, at least not to the autographs. The initial stages of textual 
transmission are found beyond the "text-types".

Ulrich Schmid, Muenster