Subject: Re: NT Interpolations

From: [email-masked] (Robert B. Waltz)
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 96 08:45 CDT

On Fri, 7 Jun 199, Jeremy Duff <[email-masked]> wrote,
in part:

>The final words reveal the disagreement "canonical text" - but the view
>described above denies that this exists. If I understand the view mentioned
>above correctly it would say that the church only canonized "Mark" not a
>particular text of Mark and so if we are convinced that these verses were nt
>part of the original text we should remove them from Mark, and hence we do
>end up removing them from the canon.
>
>
>Similarly Ulrich Schmid said
>
>--------------
>I do not know of any currently held concept of canon....where canon is
>related to the oldest available Textform of individual NT writings in a way
>that scholarly progress would automatically affect the shape of the canon.
>--------------
>
>But is this not (at least very close to) the concept of canon supported by
>Bob Waltz and others? For them scholarly progess in obtaining the original
>text would  affect the shape of the canon because passages identified as
>interpolations would be removed from the text and hence the canon.
>
>
>
>
>I can quite understand that there could simply be two different views of the
>goals of text criticism, each of them used by different scholars. This would
>be no great surprise to me, and the elucidation of the two viewpoints is
>useful to my own thinking. Is this the case that there really are two
>different views of the goals of text-criticism as I have described above or
>have I misunderstood one or both of these positions ?

Personal perspective only... I think that you have identified two
possible "extremist positions." I think that almost everyone falls
somehwere between these two poles. So one cannot really identify
separate camps.

But let me give my *personal* perspective.

I would agree, in principle, that if the church had approved an
interpolated text (e.g. a text of Mark which included 16:9-20),
then that we should accept that text.

But there is no reason to believe that that ever happened. The
thing to keep in mind is that the church never convened a council
to approve a canon.

Take the matter of Mark 16:9-20. Eusebius, who is our primary source
for early canon lists, obviously includes Mark. But we know that he
had encountered both long and short forms. As far as I know, Athanasius
never quoted the ending of Mark. But chances are that, as a fourth
century Egyptian, he had at least seen manuscripts that lacked it.
There are assorted versions that omit it, and others that include it.

So we cannot say *what* the church meant to canonize. In the case of
the Jews, we know what they approves: The Masoretic Text. That's their
Bible, for all its defects. Not so the Christian church. Both Old and
New testaments just evolved. That being the case, I see no better
alternative than to seek the *earliest* from of the text.

The only other alternative I can imagine is to seek the most widely
attested form of the text (this, obviously, requires some sort of
belief in providential preservation). This has a certain logic --
but I can't bring myself to like it.

As noted, this is my *personal* opinion on the matter.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

---

From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 7 Jun 1996 11:00:13 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 7 Jun 1996, Robert B. Waltz wrote:

> I see no better

Although I do not want to get into the "canon" debate, I do agree with 
Waltz' conclusions on this point, and regard the basic goal of textual 
criticism of -any- work (biblical or not) to be the recovery and 
restoration of the autograph (assuming that = the "earliest form" as 
Waltz states it).   
 
> but I can't bring myself to like it.

I need to interject on this point that my own pro-Byzantine theory does
not require an appeal to providential preservation on this point (though
others may seek to read something like that into the matter).  Rather, my
own theory is based upon what normally would occur in the course of
transmissional history, given the historical circumstances and the number
of copies produced over the given period of manual copying.  

I would basically claim the same for other documents which have similar
attestation, including the Latin Vulgate, in which (recognizing the three
or four various stages of revision) the general 90% bulk of the documents
supporting each stage of revision would more likely reflect the archetype
of that stage than any contrary data. 

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

---

From: [email-masked] (Ulrich Schmid)
Date: Sat, 08 Jun 96 16:25:00 +0100

>thing to keep in mind is that the church never convened a council

Let us assume for a moment that a church council had approved not only the 
various books within the canon but also a definite form of the text of these 
books. One of the consequences would have been the appointment of a GREEK text 
only. Despite of that, various protestant low-church movements of which their 
founders had not been familiar with Greek were deeply inspired by scripture 
based on translations. But, as we all know, translations are also heavily 
dependent on interpretation. And interpretation based on interpretation would 
somehow obscure by consequence a Greek-text-only position. The only way to 
properly cope with such a position would be the exclusion of people not familiar 
with Greek from teaching and preaching the Gospel. This would not only affect 
recent protestant movements but also for example Augustine of Hippo, for in his 
teaching on the doctrine of original sin he seemed to be heavily dependent on a 
defective rendering/interpretation of Rom 5.12. 

To my mind a church council decision at least on the Textform would not have 
settled the problem of authoritative tradition in a true Christian spirit, for 
it would have replaced the ONE WORD of God (Jesus Christ) by the multiple words 
of scripture that testify to it (him). BTW--- this seems to be a constant threat 
to protestant tradition. 

>Take the matter of Mark 16:9-20. Eusebius, who is our primary >source
>for early canon lists, obviously includes Mark. But we know that >he had 
encountered both long and short forms. As far as I know, >Athanasius never 
quoted the ending of Mark. But chances are that, >as a fourth century Egyptian, 
he had at least seen manuscripts >that lacked it. There are assorted versions 
that omit it, and >others that include it.

>So we cannot say *what* the church meant to canonize. In the case >of the Jews, 
we know what they approves: The Masoretic Text. >That's their Bible, for all its 
defects. Not so the Christian >church. Both Old and New testaments just evolved. 
That being the >case, I see no better alternative than to seek the *earliest* 
from >of the text.

The above mentioned constant threat to protestant tradition is, to my mind, 
lurking behind the seeking for "the *earliest* form of the text". To be shure, 
the seeking for the earliest form of the text is a challenging scientific 
enterprise that is worth to be devoted to. It is also heavily connected to the 
interpretation of scripture which to my mind is the primary source Christian 
faith refers to. But, the cult of the earliest text to my mind suffers from some 
shortcomings, on theological as well as historical grounds. The theological 
shortcoming is that it tends to implicitely establish a canon decision on 
textual grounds (by means of judgments on earliest forms of texts as well as on 
pseudepigraphy), which the early church in fact even did not explicitely 
establish at a council. The historical shortcoming is the following:  

If the New Testament "just evolved", WHICH "earliest" form of the text should we 
look for? The earliest form of the New Testament as a whole, the earliest form 
of the various parts of the NT (i.e. the Gospel Corpus, the Pauline letter 
Corpus, etc.), or the earliest form of the individual writings? And, granted we 
could reach the earliest form of the individual writings, what, if it were 
defective? For example, if we judge the longer ending of Mark to be secondary, 
then a good case can be made (in fact the best up to my knowledge) for a 
defective "Urexemplar" of Mark's Gospel at the beginning of our textual 
transmission. BTW--- there are plenty of examples for a defective archetype of 
writings from antiquity. Even within the Bible Mark's Gospel would not be 
unique. As far as I know the masoretic text of the book of Iob stemms from the 
same defective archetype as does the Septuagint tradition with 
some 180 cases where conjecture is not to avoid, including irreparably damaged 
parts of Iob 36,16.20 (may be our OT collegues can comment on that).

>The only other alternative I can imagine is to seek the most >widely

I think there is a third alternative. Granted the point that no church council 
decision imposed a canon and/or a Textform, nevertheless some ancient church 
reports (cf. Athanasius) seemed to take notice of the somehow evolved Christian 
Bible (i.e. a somehow reached consensus). The consensus "included" the exclusion 
of various other writings lateron labelled to be apocryphal. The question 
therefore is, how was the consensus reached? BTW--- as a Presbyterian I shurely 
rely on God's providence, but not totally excluding human conditions (dei 
providentia ac hominum confusione). So, I may put the question slightly 
different: Are there some hints to describe the human part of the consensus 
reaching process probably from within NT tradition itself? 
I think there are roughly speaking two hints, one from NT textual transmission, 
and one from the redactional arrangements of NT writings. I should add that I am 
dependent, though not accepting all of it, on David Trobisch's recent study _Die 
Endredaktion des Neuen Testaments_ (not yet published).

NT textual transmission gives at least some evidence of a far back reaching 
consensus: the use of the codex form and the nomina sacra system. Both features, 
though looking somehow mere technical, seperate the earliest Christian 
literature from all pagan and Jewish literature of that time. Moreover, the 
codex form in itself is to my mind a striking indication to the very early 
existence of collections of writings (cf. T.C. Skeat, The Origin of the 
Christian Codex, ZPE 102, 1994, pp. 263ff). Another striking indication of far 
back reaching consensus _and_ collections are the unanimously attested 
ascriptions of the individual writings titles/authors. Why, for example, was 
"Hebrews" labelled PROS hEBRAIOYS? This title is unanimously attested and its 
place is within the Corpus Paulinum, allthough most early church fathers doubted 
Pauline authorship. The title form EYAGGELION KATA... indicates the existence of 
at least two writings of that genre. For example P66, though presumably covering 
text from only one Gospel, indicates the existence of more than one by giving 
the title EYAGGELION KATA IOANNHN.
So, to my mind, various features from within NT textual transmission heavily 
point to the very early existence of collections of NT writings. Presumably most 
second century Christians got in touch with NT writings as part of collections. 
The shape of these collections could not have differed so much, for textual 
transmission offers only few hints of differing collections (most obviously 
within the Corpus Paulinum, cf. the ending of Romans and the Ephesians' adress).
The least one can say is that NT textual transmission goes back to the well 
known collections, and only through the collections back to the autographs. One 
may differ on various points, but the collections seem to be the decisive 
bottlenecks one simply cannot ignore.
Thus, having established reasonable grounds for the significance of the 
collections, I may now turn to the redactional arrangements of NT writings.

To my mind it is remarkable that within the different collections we can find 
some texts at important places which can be viewed as a kind of covering note. 
The most prominent example in John 21.25 refers to BIBLIA and GRAFHTAI. Though 
presumably originally only referring to the Gospel of John, it can cover at its 
actual position within the fourfold Gospel "canon" the whole collection by 
indicating its definite ending in the written form. Assuming the most prominent 
place for Hebrews at the end of the Corpus Paulinum the covering note Heb 
13,22-24 may refer to the preceeding Pastoral epistles (brother Timothy) as well 
as to Romans (from Italy). Within the General epistles we have 2 Peter's 
referrences to both the Gospel tradition and Pauls letters. The most prominent 
place of Revelation within NT textual transmission seems to be at the end 
(mostly after the Corpus Paulinum). Therefore the covering canon formula (Rev 
22,18f), though presumably originally only covering Revelations, may in its 
later context cover the preceeding collections too. Note, I do not argue for 
redactional offspring of all of these notes, but rather for 
redactional/editorial arrangements of the individual writings that could well 
belong to different levels (at least for the Gospels). But, seen together, these 
notes in their actual contexts form an impressive set of hints that link 
together the various collections not only from within the collections itself, 
but also partly transcendending their boundaries. 
So, I suspect that these notes in combination with the unanimous, more 
technical, features of codex and nomina sacra gave reason for the reproduction 
of scripture collections of virtually identical shapes (save for some textual 
variation). And this laid reasonable grounds to the consensus lateron only to be 
recognized, for NT writings in the above described form had already in (at the 
end of?) the second century become a "best-seller" within Christian communities 
superseding both autographs as well as most of apocryphal literature.  

This is, believe me or not, in short, how I would describe the emergence of the 
NT canon _sub specie hominum_.

Ulrich Schmid, Muenster