Subject: Re: Theological tendencies and the Text

From: "RONALD DAVID LARGE" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 25 Apr 1997 21:10:25 -0400

Greetings, all :-)

The recent thread regarding Brogan's work on Athanasius, and collateral
concerns about the effect of 
theological tendencies on textual transmission, bring me to posit a couple
of questions:
 	1) Has anyone suspected, as I have at times, that the hardening of
trinitarian thought, especially the development of logos-christological
concepts as expounded by, among others, Irenaeus, Tertullian and
Athenogoras, had any effect upon the transmission of the text? I am 
specifically thinking of variants such as John 1:18, Acts 20:28
and I Timothy 3:16. Is anyone aware of any studies that con- firm or
abrogate such conclusions? Thoughts or comments, anyone?
 
 	2) Conybeare wrote of Eusebius' citations of Matthew 28:19 (eighteen in
all) in works between 300-336 A.D.,and invariably found them to be in the
following form, "Go ye and make disciples of all nations, IN MY NAME,
teaching them to observe all things, whatsoever I have commanded you.".
Is anyone intimate with the evidence here? Does Patristic research shed any
light on this "variant" ?

Thoughts.... comments?
Thanks in advance, and God bless...
David Large

---

From: Bart Ehrman <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 29 Apr 1997 06:37:58 -0400 (EDT)

> Thanks in advance, and God bless...
   Scholars have indeed suspected just what you suggest.  It's the subject
of my book _The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture_ New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993; I give a full bibliography of everyone else who's
worked on the problem and deal at length with the variants you mention,
and dozens more (with every variant that I could find in the tradition, in
fact, that appeared to be related to the christological controversies). I
don't deal, though, with the suggestion of Conybeare (and K. Lake and
others) about Matt.  28:19-20 simply because there is no actual manuscript
evidence (only some interesting patristic quotations which are, though,
problematic) to support it. 

   Hope this helps.

-- Bart D. Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill