Subject: original ?

From: ANDREW SMITH <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 05:53:28 -0500 (EST)

If one makes the argument that "a word which is in every manuscript will
be taken as having been in the original," one is dealing with the
arbitrary and contingent fact that one has discovered some manuscripts and
not others. One would have to revise whenever a new MS was unearthed
(which is good), but one runs the danger and the probability that some MSS
will never be unearthed (and thus one will not be able to revise according
to them). Must we resign ourselves to the capriciousness of the selection
of MSS available to us?

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 16:57:31 -0500 (EST)

> to them). Must we resign ourselves to the capriciousness of the selection

And where would this line of thought then take us if strictly applied?
That nothing is certain, and we therefore might well declare to be the
"original text" words and phrases which have never appeared in any known
MS?  I certainly would hope not.  Far better is it to recognize that
statistically the representative sample of antiquity which we possess in
our extant MSS (of all eras and of all texttypes) _do_ provide sufficient
and adequate information so as to proclaim "autograph certainty" at least
for those portions where all or virtually all such witnesses concur.

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