Subject: Re: Antiquity

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 18:04:21 -0500 (EST)

>>The logic is simple.  We have no proof of a document until we actually have
>>a document!
>
>This is exactly the problem. Consider:
>
>Our earliest manuscript of Herodotus dates from the tenth century.
>Does this mean that Herodotus came back from the grave fourteen
>centuries after his death and wrote the book?
>

No.  But it does prove that the mss of Herodotus we have are very far
removed from him.

>Our only copy of the Annals of Tacitus has lost the whole reign of
>Gaius. Does this mean Tacitus never wrote about that Emperor?
>

No- and this is argument reductio ad absurdam.

>Since I already used a literary analogy, let's try a biological.
>
>Assume your parents were lost at sea. Does that mean we know nothing
>about their DNA? Hardly! We can learn about it from you, and any
>siblings you may have, and perhaps ancestors or siblings of your
>parents. And so forth.

Yet you don't have them- do you?

>
>Or take crimes. The majority of crimes are solved by the police.
>Yet in many of these instances there are no eyewitnesses. The crime
>is solved through circumstantial evidence.

Indeed- but try proving to a jury that your circumstantial evidence is proof
of guilt.  Just ask OJ how that works.

>
>As long as we have no autographs, we *must* rely on some sort of
>secondary evidence. Which means we must examine it, not trust it
>blindly.
>
Indeed- but we must trust what is more reliable; and a priori evidence
closer to the time of composition is worthy of higher trust than evidence
further removed.  

>That may be of importance for dating. But that has nothing to do with
>the text.

Not so.  It has everything to do with the text; it is not just about the
material used or the penmanship of the scribe.

Jim
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
Adjunct Professor of Bible, Quartz Hill School of Theology
[email-masked]

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 23:44:20 -0500 (EST)

> closer to the time of composition is worthy of higher trust than evidence

How then does this square with the classic observation of Scrivener in the
19th century, basically repeated by Colwell in the 20th, that the worst
corruptions the NT text and its MSS have ever been subjected to were
basically during the first four centuries, and especially during the
period before AD 200?  How then does this affect the reliability of the
oldest documents in your opinion?

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