Subject: tc-list Hebrews

From: Jonathan Dixon <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 22 Mar 1998 19:24:45 -0400

To the person who recently emailed me.....

I'm sorry, but in my haste I accidentally deleted your email before I could
print it off and make use of it.  If you can, could you please send it to
me again.  Thank you very much, and sorry for the inconvience.

In Christ,
Jonathan

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From: "Glenn Wooden" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 09:22:10 +0400

Jonathan,

If the message that you are looking for is one of the four answers to 
your question that were posted to TC-LIST, then I have all four. I 
can forward one or all of them to you. Let me know.

Glenn

Glenn Wooden
Acadia Divinity College
Wolfville N.S.
Canada

[email-masked]

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From: Jonathan Dixon <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 10:15:30 -0400

Glenn,
I'm from ABU in Moncton :-)  Nice to meet a fellow Maritimer.  Anyway, what
I was looking for specifically is an email that someone sent with a long
list of sources.  I think that It was sent privatly, not over the list.
However, I do want to thank all members of this list for their help... if
you have any more suggestions I'd love to here them.  Thanks again.

In Christ,
Jonathan

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If any man thinks that he knows anything, he knows not yet as he ought to
know; but if any man loves God, the same is known by him." (1 Cor. 8:2-3) 
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Jonathan M. Dixon
(Student, Atlantic Baptist University)

A.K.A. Lord Toran, Dylan-J

c/o Atlantic Baptist University
Box 6004 Moncton, NB, Canada
E1C 9L7

[email-masked]
[email-masked]

My Home Page:  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/3342/
My Online Bible Site:  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Academy/8373/
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From: Yuri Kuchinsky <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 Mar 1998 10:07:02 -0500 (EST)

Greetings, all.

First of all, I would like to thank James R. Adair who thought my recent
research on the eucharist good enough to be offered to this honoured
audience. And also thanks to Bart Ehrman and to D. C. Parker for their
helpful replies.

It is with some trepidation that I write this post, since the opinion I
wish to defend seems to go against such competent scholars as Bart and
D.C. Parker. But I still feel that my position has something to recommend
itself.

Bart wrote in reply to my article:

> For what it's worth, I have a pretty long discussion of
> this problem in the _Orthodox Corruption of
> Scripture_, where I argue that the shorter text is
> original, and the longer form was added by
> proto-orthodox scribes as an anti-docetic polemic (see
> pp. 197-209). 

And DC Parker also wrote:

> I discuss the problem as well, in The Living Text of the
> Gospels, pp. 151-7.

The full citations are as follows:

Ehrman, Bart D. _The Orthodox corruption of scripture: the effect of early
Christological controversies on the text of the NT_, New York; Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 1993.   

Parker, D. C. (David C.) _The living text of the Gospels_, New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1997. 

I have now read both of these analyses. Since DC Parker was aware or
Bart's much longer treatment, and seems to be in basic agreement with it,
I will focus primarily on Bart's treatment of the problem of the two
eucharist texts in Lk, the longer and the shorter one.

As another preliminary, I'm somewhat reassured by the fact that the
position I'm defending in fact seems like a majority position overall. As
DC Parker said in his volume, 

	"The tide of scholarly opinion has long flowed in favour of the
	longer text. Verses 19b-20 were included in Nestle-Aland 25th 
	ed. within double brackets. They appear in the 26th and 27th 
	editions without reservation as an integral part of the 
	text." (p. 155) 

(To this, I would like to add a comment that this majority opinion
apparently was formed only since about the 1950's, which indeed may be
considered as pretty long ago.)

Now, to remind, my basic position is that the longer Lk text is the
earlier one. I also think, after Jeremias [Joachim Jeremias, _The
Eucharistic Words of Jesus_ (London: SCM Press, 1966)] that this longer
Lukan eucharist does not really belong to the larger body of Lk/Acts, and
was based on a pre-existent liturgical formula. I also think that this
longer eucharistic text (ET) was imported into the body of Lk at a later
stage. 

On the other hand, Bart thinks that the shorter ET is the more original
one, and that Lk 19b-20 were the expansions imported into the text at a
later stage.

So, one may say that perhaps our positions are not really that different.
Both of us accept that a later editing of Lk took place. Except that I
think the whole of the eucharist was added up as a piece, but he thinks
only parts of it were added up.

There's also the problem of how to deal with the ET in 1 Cor 11. Since it
is so close to the longer Lk, Bart seems to think that the longer Lk was a
later assimilation to the 1 Cor eucharist. My own position on 1 Cor 11 ET
is that it is a later insertion into the Pauline epistle, that (seeing
that it is related so closely to Lk) both represent the same liturgical
tradition, and that both texts are quite late (dating at the earliest from
ca. 100).

The extended treatment Bart gives to this matter in his book is rather
impressive. He sets out in detail the arguments that the longer ET stands
apart from the larger body of Lk. I prefer to grant him this point.
(Certain parallels with Acts 20:28 is the only place where Bart's argument
may be challenged with some hope of success, but I will not try to do
this.) I'll accept that the longer ET is lacking substantial parallels in
the rest of Lukan writings.

Bart also adduces quotes from Irenaeus and Tertullian that stress the
importance of the realistic understanding of the eucharist; both authors
use this view as a weapon against docetists. This, so Bart, provides the
motive of why the later additions would have been made, viz. in order to
counter the docetist opponents of these "proto-orthodox" authors. All I
can add to this is that these arguments may be reinterpreted also to
provide support for my hypothesis. See below.

But the crux of Bart's case, as I understand it, is the lack of a
plausible scenario for how and why the ostensibly more original longer
text may have been abridged.

	"In point of fact, no one has been able to provide a convincing
	explanation for how the shorter text came into existence if the 
	longer text is original." (p. 207)

Bart surveys the reasons that have been offered so far, and finds them
wanting. Perhaps they are, at least the ones that he surveyed. And yet
there's another other reason that he didn't mention. If indeed nobody has
offered it before, then I would like to claim it. (Although I may have
read something similar in one of the works of Alfred Loisy who was very
interested in the problem of eucharistic texts in the later part of his
career. I'll have to check about this.)

Here's my explanation. I believe 19b-20 were omitted from the longer Lk
because the idea of drinking blood and eating human flesh were a problem
for Jewish-Christians who were probably members in the congregations where
this shorter text was used. In other words, the longer Lk was simply "too
radical" for some Christians, and that is why the shorter Lk came into
being. 

I have offered the above reason already in a related discussion on
Synoptic-l. But now, after I've read Bart's analysis, I would like to show
how the information he provides about the antidocetic agenda of Irenaeus
and Tertullian can be reinterpreted also to support my thesis. To wit, if
docetists were such a problem at the time, i.e. if they were so widely
attested among early Christians, one can easily suppose that Lk/Acts as a
whole was, at an early stage, a gospel circulating among Christians
influenced by docetism. This, after all, seems to be the editorial
tendency of Lk, in which the idea of atonement through the death of Christ
on the Cross seems so singularly lacking. Bart demonstrates the latter
rather convincingly in his analysis. Thus, in my view,

- 	the first stage: antidocetic Lk.
-	second stage: a longer Lk, including the "antidocetic eucharist".
-	after some resistance among some congregations, an abridged Lk,
including a shorter ET.

And it seems to me that these two explanations I've provided here cannot
be seen as mutually exclusive. To the contrary, they may reinforce each
other. After all, the earliest Lk may have been current among
Jewish-Christian docetists...

And now for some idea when these developments may have been occurring. (In
fact, I think that the events that both I and Bart postulate may have been
happening at a similar historical period.)

J. M. Van Cangh, in PEUT-ON RECONSTITUER LE TEXTE PRIMITIF DE LA C`ENE?,
[in _The Corinthian correspondence_, edited by R. Bieringer, Leuven,
Leuven University Press: Uitgeverij Peeters, 1996 (pp. 623-637)] argues
that the ET of Lk/1Cor would not have been the earliest stage of the
eucharistic liturgy. He gives very strong arguments for the temporal
priority of Markan eucharist. This is good evidence for the general
lateness of the longer Lukan/1 Cor ET. As Van Cangh suggests, this version
of the eucharist probably arose among the Hellenistic Christians who were
most likely based in Syria, especially in Antioch. Thus, these
developments could not have been taking place too early on in the history
of the canon creation. As I said, the period ca. 100 seems likely to me.
Perhaps Bart may wish to correct me about his own view of this chronology.

The close parallel between the Lukan ET and the ET in the 1 Cor may be
seen as providing further support for my position. Let's take a look at
this for a moment. Indeed, if one sees that even the shorter Lukan ET
contains so many parallels to the 1 Cor ET, isn't it much more sensible to
suppose that whoever inserted the ET into Lk has borrowed the pre-existent
liturgical tradition _as a whole_? I think it is much less likely that
this inserter would have inserted an abridged version of the tradition
right from the beginning, only to add the missing pieces of this
traditional liturgy later.

Finally, the strongest arguments for my position seem to come from the mss
evidence that goes very strongly in support of the longer Lk.  

The textual evidence for each position is as follows [I'm using in the
following some materials from the website I've referenced previously]:  

In favor of the shorter reading is the following: D a d ff2 i l syh (and
perhaps c r2 d). The longer reading is attested by the following: 

1) all the Greek manuscripts, including p75 (AD 175/225); 
2) all the versions with the exception of the Old Syriac and part of the
itala and 
3) by all early Christian writers beginning with Marcion, Justin and
Tatian. 

Therefore, the bulk of the manuscript evidence supports the longer
reading. 
                                                                         
Also cf. Pierson Parker, "Three Variant Readings in Luke-Acts,"  Journal
of Biblical Literature 83 (1965): 165-170.                               
                                                                         
He says, "the textual evidence for rejecting vss. 19b, 20 is so scanty
that it is hard to see why it should be taken seriously. Against the
[driblets of support for the shorter reading] is the overwhelming mass of
evidence from all the great uncials and cursives, Byzantine, Caesarean,
and Alexandrian, that Luke 22 19b, 20 is authentic."

Best wishes to all,

Yuri.