Subject: Re: Post-modern textual criticism

From: "DC PARKER" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 24 Jan 1997 10:47:30 GMT

Jim West wrote:

> What fun Erasmus and Hutten would have hadwith 
deconstructionists!  Would that their mighty spirits arise from the
netherworld and put to right what has been so wrongly asserted.

Actually, I rather suspect that Erasmus might be the sort of chap to 
enjoy playing with texts post-modernistically.  He wasn't altogether 
conformist in his day, and anybody who created his own 'original 
Greek' (in Rev 22) would surely appreciate the ironies.

More seriously, I have reached the conclusion that the value for 
text. crit. of the concept of an 'original text' produced by an 'author' is 
dependent on several issues:

1.  The type of text.  You can't establish a definitive text of a folk song.

2.  The intention of the possible author.  If Matthew changed Mark, is it 
not reasonable to assume that he accepted the possibility/probability 
that someone else would change his version, and so considered his 
production to be susceptible to change, and thus ephemeral?  Relation 
of oral to written tradition fits in here.  On the other hand, it's 
reasonable to assume that one could try to establish what Paul posted 
to Rome, _except_ for the problem of circular letters, multiple 
destinations, and questions of the role of the scribe.

3.  The character of the transmission.  A freely transmitted text may 
need to be treated differently from a more fixed one (and of course a 
text may be transmitted in different ways at different times).  With the 
exceptionally free early text of the Gospels, combined with the issue 
mentioned in (2), it seems to me that there are good historical grounds 
for questioning the concept of an original authoritative text.

Post-modernism makes it easier to raise these questions, and whether 
you like it or not, textual criticism will 'never be the same again'.  
Minimally, it shows that the real text critic is far more interested in the 
history of the text than in finding an original text.

I've been enjoying the exchange between Larry and Bart - thanks to 
both of you.
DC PARKER
DEPT OF THEOLOGY
UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
TEL. 0121-414 3613
FAX  0121-414 6866
E-MAIL [email-masked]