Subject: Re: Antiquity

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 15:38:24 -7000

> >Where then is the logic behind your assumption? 
> >
> 
> The logic is simple.  We have no proof of a document until we actually have
> a document!
> 
> Why is this so controversial?  It seems quite simple to me.  I am certainly
> not saying that these various documents did not exist; I am simply saying
> that we have no evidence to work with until we have a manuscript.
> It is because these manuscripts are our first evidence of a document's
> existence that they are so important.
> 
> Where is the logic in denying any of this?

First, it's not logical.  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.

Second and more important, this approach renders any kind of 
meaningful scientific historical investigation impossible.  If we 
don't have Julius Caesar's perforated body we have no evidence that 
he was murdered, or that he ever existed.  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.

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.

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. ;-)

---

From: Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 5 Apr 1997 23:40:21 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 5 Apr 1997 [email-masked] wrote:

> it's a 
> base our lives on it."  

This of course would be wrong, since most of us know (or should know) that
the correct answer is 42....

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