Subject: Re: Canons of Criticism

From: "Steve Carson-Rowland" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 18:17:37 +1000

Maurice Robinson <[email-masked]> said:
Although I am not going to continue in a debate over ridiculous matters
coming from the TR/KJV-only quarters, the point below really asks far too
much of even the most credulous TR/KJV supporter: 

On Fri, 12 Sep 1997, Mr. Helge Evensen wrote:

> It is even possible that MSS with such a text could have perished through
> extensive use. At least, it should be clear that thousands of MSS that
> were extant in the 13th, 14th, 15th centuries have perished. To my mind,
> it is even possible to regard the printed TR editions as a transmission
> of the text of MSS which now have perished. 
> (More heresy!)
> :~)

Using precisely the SAME argument-ex-silentio, it could equally be claimed
that "thousands of MSS" containing the current NESTLE 27 text "that were
extant in the 13ths, 14th, 15th centuries have perished", and "it is even
possible to regard the printed" NESTLE 27 edition "as a transmission of
the text of MSS which now have perished."  And there is nothing preventing
such a claim, except normal logic and the normal laws of evidence and
interpretation of factual data.

[snip the rest]

STEVE CR (a hitherto unknown lurker):
That's the thing about faith positions - facts and reason are irrelevant.

I enjoyed the posts on this subject.

Steve Carson-Rowland
Brisbane, Australia
"Surfing's the source, it'll change your life, swear to God", Point Break
(1991)

---

From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 12:03:14 -0700 (PDT)

On Sat, 13 Sep 1997, Steve Carson-Rowland wrote:

> > of the text of MSS which now have perished. ...

> I enjoyed the posts on this subject.

These thoughts lead me to wonder how much faith is involved in the
assumption of most text critics that the latest edition of N-A gives a
good representation of not only the earliest Gospels but of the teachings
of Jesus.  Or is this latter assumption not usually made? 

If the assumption is not made, I then wonder of what relevance is it for
the text critic to try to get the Gospel words and teachings just right as
they trace back to the 2nd century, if those were merely the distortions
fed in by the writers/redactors of the Gospels.  The work of the Jesus
Seminar is one example, of course, which leads to the conclusion that the
assumption should not be made, and that liberal redaction criticism could
claim to have obviated the need for TC.

I should add that in my own independent studies I find that the Jesus
Seminar is incorrect in a large share of its individual
red-pink-grey-black decisions, but that nevertheless it is correct in its
overall assessment that some 80% (or similar figure) of the Gospel's
teaching discourses represent redactions.  Where TC is very valuable to me
is in its reconstruction of the Gospel texts back to the earliest possible
date, complete with redactions and all, so that the redaction critic may
then attempt to sort out all the redactions from the rest of the text.

Jim Deardorff

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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 15:08:33 -0500 (CDT)

>of Jesus.  Or is this latter assumption not usually made? 

The assumption *is* usually made, at least by the churches, but I don't
really see that this is a matter of TC. Although the various editions
of the Bible (TR vs. Majority Text vs. UBS vs. WH vs. whatever)
differ slightly, there really isn't much difference that affects the
meaning of Jesus's teachings. Even the most radically different
editions (say Robinson vs. Westcott & Hort) agree 90+% of the time,
and the differences are usually (not always, but usually) trivial.
It is usually said that textual variants have no effect on Christian
doctrine. I wouldn't go that far -- but certainly the effect is
slight.

>claim to have obviated the need for TC.

I don't quite agree, since redaction criticism must start with *some*
sort of decent approximation of the text. If, for instance, someone
released an edition of the New Testament in which Jesus never said
"You shall love your neighbour as yourself," it would lead to a
*very* different view of Jesus, and with it a very different
redaction of the sayings attributed to him.

In any case, it is the belief of the Church that the Bible represents
the true teachings of Jesus, whatever he actually said. Else we would
have people clamouring to add the Gospel of Thomas to the canon.

>red-pink-grey-black decisions,

No argument with that....

>but that nevertheless it is correct in its
>teaching discourses represent redactions.

I'm simply curious: How did you come up with that figure?

I'll say frankly that I don't see it as you do. While I think that
much of the material in the gospels is not taken verbatim from
the words of Jesus (who presumably did most of his speaking in
Aramaic, after all!), I think most of them represent what one
would expect of the words of a prophet which had gone through
some decades of oral tradition. The amount of *deliberate*
redaction, even on the part of the gospel writers, was, I think,
slight.

>Where TC is very valuable to me

Well, I think most of us would agree that that is the whole point of
TC. It's to get back to the earliest *written* forms. There are
scholars who want to get back beyond that point -- but they aren't
TCers. Or, at least, they aren't TCers when they go beyond the text.

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

                        Robert B. Waltz
                     [email-masked]

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

---

From: Jim Deardorff <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 13 Sep 1997 17:55:26 -0700 (PDT)

> doctrine. I wouldn't go that far -- but certainly the effect is

This agrees with what I believe.  But don't worry, dear reader, it won't
last!

> redaction of the sayings attributed to him. ...

Yes, if scholars and others were to pay serious attention to the new
edition!

 
 
> I'm simply curious: How did you come up with that figure?

I once went through the Seminar's voting records on the teachings within
Mark and within Matthew, and the percentage of verses in black and grey
(not spoken by Jesus, or probably not) turned out to have a figure like
80%; I don't recall exactly now.  For example, the "Love your neighbor as
yourself" verses they placed in the gray category. 

In my own studies I've been assessing the apparent genuineness of a
document in Aramaic discovered near Jerusalem in 1963, which is a
candidate to have been the Logia known to Papias, if that had been a very
extensive writing of Jesus' teachings and ministry, and not just sayings. 
It indicates a similar figure of only some 20% fidelity for Matthew, which
parallels it.  However, its originals were destroyed in 1974 due to its
heresies for Judeo-Christianity, and only the translation into German
survives, plus a later retranslation into English.  For this reason (lack
of originals), plus others, reputable Biblical scholars assume it must be
a hoax and aren't interested in studying it.  I may have mentioned the
document -- the Talmud of Jmmanuel -- to one or two of you on this list
some years ago. 

Francis Beare's Commentary on Matthew also indicates a fairly low fidelity
rate for that gospel, even if his criticisms of it that are based merely
on the assumption that Mark has priority are set aside. 

> slight. ...

I think that very extensive redaction is the reason why there was no
plethora of writings describing who wrote the Gospels, when & where they
were written, and their motivations for having been written. And similarly
the reason why the Logia, about which Papias wrote five treatises, did not
survive.  If this reasoning is correct, persons like Justin must have been
a bit dubious as to who wrote the Gospels, if they came out almost a
century after the fact yet were attributed to mid-1st-century persons; and
so he avoided naming them by their kata's Matthew, Mark.... . 

In calling it deliberate redaction, I would add that the redactors were
merely following their faith, and thus simply "correcting" what they
"knew" to be wrong.  Their faith, in turn, had evolved out of Paul's
beliefs a half century earlier.

Some of this comes close to W. Bauer's hypothesis, except that I see the
Logia as having inspired the first Gospel, but not until early 2nd
century, at which time it also reenergized the Gnostic movement.  I find
it consistent that Papias trusted oral tradition rather than the written
word (in the Gospels), and that Marcion felt free to choose a gospel to
doctor up and then reject the other Gospels.

Jim Deardorff