Subject: Theological tendencies of Athanasius

From: "Mark Arvid Johnson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 1997 07:40:10 -0500

To Bart Ehrman and TC-List,

Does anyone else have more information on the theological tendencies of
Athanasius and how they affected his use of the text of scripture?
Frederick Nolan, in his _Inquiry Into the Integrity of the Received Text_,
1815, claimed:

"That St. Athanasius was accused of favoring the destruction of the Arian
Bibles; that he revised the sacred text immediately after the death of
Eusebius; that his prologue, as explanatory of Ps. ii. is directed against
the errors of Arius."  p. 135

Can anyone help me document and substantiate these charges? What is the
reference for John Brogan's study of Athanasius? I would be most
interested in any further information anyone could provide.

Mark Arvid Johnson

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From: Bart Ehrman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 18:03:52 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: Qualifications, Classifications, and Progress

Ulrich,

   Yeah, actually this particular point (as opposed to the other two, I
think) *may* be more of a matter of my simply seeing things from where I
sit, since this is in fact the area that I happen to be most interested
in. But there *have* been some important and interesting studies. I'd say
that Eldon Epp's study of Theological Tendencies was groundbreaking and
got things rolling (though he had significant predecessors, of course); 
about the time I was writing there appeared important articles by Peter
Head and Mikeal Parsons (whose book on the ascension tradition in
Luke-Acts dealt with related issues as well) and even Bruce Metzger's
little piece on MSS of the Fourth Gospel with Hermeneia.  More recently
(just now, in fact) there have been two very interesting dissertations
that I'm aware of, Kim Haines-Eitzen's study of the social location of
early Christian scribes (not completed yet, but includes, e.g., a chapter
on women scribes in the Greco-Roman world) and John Brogan's study of
Athanasius, which argues for specific instances of the trinitarian
controversies affecting his text, and further for some instances in which
Athanasius's theologically related modifications entered into the MS
tradition, specifically with some of the corrections in Codex Sinaiticus
(both Kim and John, I think, are on this list). 

[ rest deleted to save space ]

- -- Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 18 Apr 97 18:23:46 +0100

>Can anyone help me document and substantiate these charges?

Athanasius was accused for a lot of things, among others for murdering a 
meletianic bishop named Arsenius, who, in fact, was found alive (c.f. Apologia 
secunda 65-67). Athanasius was accused, presumably more substantiated, for 
having oppressed meletianic groups (e.g., for destroying an eucharistic cup). 
Maybe in the course of some riots of Athanasius' monks and clergy-men against 
schismatic groups even a meletianic Bible was destroyed (I don't recall all of 
the charges from off the top of my head; it has to be found in Sozomenos, hist. 
eccl. II, 25). However, I would seriously question charges of having favoured 
the destruction of Arian Bibles. Most likely Arian Bibles did not differ from 
any other Bible. As far as I am aware of the discussions around Arius and the 
struggles after Nicea, the charge of relying on a different, even corrupted text 
of the Bible or on different (non-canonical) books was not brought forth from 
one or the other side, at least, it was not considered decisive. The debates 
were basically on the exegesis of various texts and not on different readings. 
BTW-- Equipped with most sensitive exegetical and hermeneutical tools (typology, 
allegory, etc.), noone really had to alter conciously a biblical passage to make 
it fit to whatever was required.  

Maybe John Brogan should carry on...

Ulrich Schmid, Muenster