Subject: Re: Antiquity

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 18:17:08 -0500 (EST)

>First, it's not logical.

Uh huh.
(you see, I have given up offering substance as I have yet to hear any
substance opposing the fact that the antiquity of a document is of the
utmost importance)

>  I can't see the sun today because of a 
>snowstorm, but the fact that it's not visible cannot be adduced as 
>evidence that it doesn't exist.  By this kind of "logic" we end up 
>saying that, because we don't have the autographs, there's no 
>evidence they ever existed.  That's just plain silly.
>

The sun is there whether you see it or not.  But if you do not see it- you
do not see it.  We have no autographs. Period.

>Second and more important, this approach renders any kind of 
>meaningful scientific historical investigation impossible. 

Not at all.  It simply bases investigation in what we do have- not in what
someone hypothetically reconstructs.

> If we 
>don't have Julius Caesar's perforated body we have no evidence that 
>he was murdered, or that he ever existed.

You are right- we dont have his body.  Why then would anyone argue that we
do?  ANd yet some text critics are arguing that we have good textual
evidence from the 8th century while at the same time they discount the
earliest manuscript evidence and make age of text merely one criteria among
others.

>  If we can't do historical 
>study without your so-called "hard evidence" then in the main we 
>can't do history at all.  TC is, after all, a branch of historical 
>study.  None of us was there for the events, so we have to examine 
>the history using the most scientific tools and methods available.  
>Those tools and methods are constantly being re-evaluated and refined 
>to make them more scientific and reliable.  Your approach takes them 
>all away and sends us back to the principle of blind faith.

NO!  It is blind faith I am opposing; that is why I am suggesting (!) that
of all the criteria, antiquity should be held in great importance (and yet
still no one has bothered to discuss this central issue; this crux).

>
>It's like this: the most ancient mss we have were preserved quite by 
>accident, the luck of the draw as I said before.  If we insist that 
>these have to be the most reliable because they're the oldest, it's a 
>little like tossing the dice, watching them come up with, say, 4, and 
>declaring "because this is the number that came up on the dice on 
>this particular toss, 4 must be the perfect number and we must all 
>base our lives on it."  It just doesn't work, and doesn't take into 
>account the fact that the dice will ultimately be thrown again and 
>come up with a different number.
>

Ya lost me on this one!   :)

>Dave Washburn
>http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur/home.html

>There will be times when we disagree, but that's
>good because disagreement leads to thinking, and 
>when you think you'll realize I'm right. ;-)

Perhaps so!!!   :)

Jim

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