Subject: Antiquity

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 04 Apr 1997 08:09:54 -0500 (EST)

I have taken some jabs for my suggestion that age is a primary factor in
determining reliability.  I have at no point said it is the only factor to
be taken into account.
Yet it seems to me that each person who does tc picks a criteria (or more
properly criterion) and uses it more than the others.
for Maurice, it is Byzantine priority.
For Jean, it is geographical distribution.
For me it is antiquity.
for others it is something else.

All of us, for some reason or another, choose a tool which seems to us to
fit the job the best.  The trick is learning to use the other tools as well.
I have tried Byzantine priority and found it lacking, and unconvincing.
Likewise the matter of geographical dispersion seems to me to lack a certain
reliability.  It is only antiquity of a manuscript which is compelling
evidence; for it is hard evidence and not subject to the subjective impulses
of the interpreter.
If two manuscripts of equal age conflict, then the other criteria come into
play.  If they do not, then the reading is virtually (!) assured.
What sense does it make, after all, to say that an 8th century manuscript is
more reliable than a 2nd?  This is the hurdle which I cannot leap.

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

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

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 08:21:40 -0700

>evidence; for it is hard evidence and not subject to the subjective impulses

Conceding that it is hard evidence, I can't see that that is decisive.
To take a more recent example: The earliest publications of most of
Shakespeare's plays are called the "bad folios" -- for the good and
simple reason that they are of very poor quality.

Age can give us a hint of a manuscript's quality; an early manuscript
*might* be very good. But it might be very bad. The obvious example is
p45. Colwell has offered strong evidence that this is an *edited* text --
hardly something I want to rely on to reconstruct the original text.

>more reliable than a 2nd?  This is the hurdle which I cannot leap.

I admit that this is beyond me. What matters is not the age of the
*manuscript,* but the age of the text it contains. Would you actually
claim that the minuscules 33 and 861 (both 9th century) are of equal
value? 861 is purely Byzantine, 33 ranges from about half Alexandrian
in the gospels to purely Alexandrian in Paul (outside Romans). Surely
everyone on the list will agree that they differ in value (though Maurice
would disagree as to which is more valuable :-) -- yet they are the
same age.

-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                            Robert B. Waltz
                         [email-masked]

Want more loudmouthed opinions about textual criticism?
Try my web page: http://www.skypoint.com/~waltzmn
(A very rough draft of part of the Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism)

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From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Apr 1997 13:44:04 -0500 (EST)

On Fri, 4 Apr 1997, Jim West wrote:

> It is only antiquity of a manuscript which is compelling

> more reliable than a 2nd?  This is the hurdle which I cannot leap.

So let me ask the ultimate question then: since virtually all text-critics
acknowledge that the age of the MS itself does not say anything specific
about the age of the text it contains, do you reject that principle, and
therefore say that the Western text of D is merely 5th century and no
earlier because that is the date of that vellum?  Likewise, is the
predominantly Alexandrian text of minuscule 33 merely "late", and not to
be considered, despite the fact that it's text is in high agreement with
the other early Alexandrians?  Do you simply write off all evidence after,
say, the fourth century, or what?

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