Subject: E. C. Colwell--A Maverick?

From: "L. Mark Bruffey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 14:39:20 -0700

Hello Scholars!

I am reading a collection of essays by E.C. Colwell.  In many ways he
seems to have been a maverick; for instance he sharply critized Aland
and the UBS text (>>Studies in methodology . . .<<, Brill, 1969, p.
153):

	"The egregious example of the misleading nature of . . . narrowly
	restricted editions is the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament.
	Yet this is the edition that Aland refers to as a 'model'!"

I would like your comments on the strengths and weaknesses of his
propositions, and I would also like your ideas as to what factors may
have influenced his thinking.

Thank you,

Mark Bruffey
[email-masked]

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 1996 16:28:54 -0700

>have influenced his thinking.

IMHO, E.C. Colwell was the greatest textual scholar of the mid-Twentieth
century. His essays on methodology should be the basis for all subsequent
work.

He did leave several important legacies, e.g. he finally demolished the
practice of comparing manuscripts based on divergences from the TR.
He also was one of the driving forces behind the Claremont Profile
Method (though in fact his methods were much more capable than the CPM).

It's a sad fact that the one major error he made -- his 70% definition
of a text-type -- is his most-quoted statement.

As for his criticism of the UBS text -- I would have to agree with it.
UBS doesn't list enough variants, and does not offer the tools to
analyse them. It collates many manuscripts, but not all of them are
important (and the changes from UBS3 to UBS4 were not all of the
best). It cites the Byzantine text under the symbol "Byz," but most
of the time it accepts the TR as "Byz," making no effort to check
this (and not citing enough Byzantine manuscripts to let us decide
for ourselves).

And, last but not least, the scholars who edited the text did not --
at least as a group -- have a theory of the text to justify their
decisions.

The above is, of course, my opinion. But I would say that, even today,
textual criticism still has a lot to do to catch up with Colwell. So
I guess that makes him a maverick.

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 26 Oct 1996 12:29:41 -0400 (EDT)

On Fri, 25 Oct 1996, L. Mark Bruffey wrote:

> seems to have been a maverick; 

Colwell definitely was a maverick, usually correct in his views, and in
very good company with Kenneth W. Clark and Eldon J. Epp.  My own views
and positions owe a great deal to Colwell, Clark, and Epp.

> I would also like your ideas as to what factors may

Speaking from what I know, Colwell and Clark worked together for many
years, first as students at the University of Chicago, then separately
with Colwell remaining at Chicago and Clark moving to Duke.  Both were
very much evidentialists, and preferred to theorize solely upon the extant
evidence.  Neither one of them had much use for a purely eclectic approach
to NT textual criticism, believing that it led to no useful results, and
in fact tended merely to maintain the Westcott-Hort type of text by
default.

Calvin Porter (who worked under Clark) has been on this list previously;
if he is watching, perhaps he can shed some more light on what I have
stated.

_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
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