Subject: getting Real

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 05 Apr 1997 14:52:33 -0500 (EST)

The purpose of Text criticism is to establish the reading most likely to
have been original.
If you could tell me how that is to be done without taking into account the
oldest manuscripts of a document I would be grateful.  
As to getting real, it seems to me that a realistic approach to textual
criticism lies in hard evidence and not in fanciful hypothetical
reconstructions.
The DSS Psalms is a millenium older than Leningrad; but we are urged to
ignore it because it would cause us to re-evaluate our standard "book of
Psalms".  So which approach is more unreal- the one which maintains that
"older is better" or the one that attaches itself to a present form of the
text in spite of a more ancient form and trys to reconstruct from the
present to the past?

As to the purpose of this forum- I believe it is the open exchange of ideas
and not the mere gainsaying of ideas which a particular author finds
discomfiting for (apparently) dogmatic reasons.

Jim

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

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From: "Mr. Helge Evensen" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 06 Apr 1997 01:52:34 -0800

> oldest manuscripts of a document I would be grateful.

Of course the oldest MSS should be _taken into account_. But it´s 
another thing to use antiquity as the sole criterion for establishing 
the original text.

> criticism lies in hard evidence and not in fanciful hypothetical

But the question still remains: _Is_ antiquity in reality "hard 
evidence" for establishing the _original_ text?? All know that it is 
evidence for the _existence_ of a certain document or text. 

-- 
- Mr. Helge Evensen