Subject: Re: tc-list Comfort's new book

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:27:26 -0400

At 06:05 PM 5/20/99 +0200, you wrote:
>Jim West wrote:

>A) On the one side you confess that you only looked at the "major papyri" 
>(without specification!) and on the other side you make confident claims ("the 
>vast majority of the book is quite accurate"), as if you have checked all the 
>transcriptions throughout the C/B book. What do I have to make out of this? 

Dunno.  I read the book- compared the whole of P75- and some other mss. that
I have copies of- and found it extremely reliable.  I did not write down any
results because I am not writing a review of the book.  My response is based
on an overall perception.

>
>B) I'm delighted to learn that - for the sake of comparison - you studied
ALL of 
>"the Byzantine mss", for, according to you, "the C/B book contains less
scribal 
>errors than most of" them. Even more amazing: You identified the direct 
>"Vorlage" of every single Byzantine manuscript in order to exactly ascribe
every 
>single reading in every single Byzantine manuscript to either it's
"Vorlage" (or 
>"Vorlagen" respectively) or it's scribe, having committed THE "scribal error".
>(Sorry, I couldn't resist. Your point here is utterly unsound.)  

My point has been missed.  My point is this- the Byzantine family of mss is,
on the whole, less reliable than the Alexandrian- just as the majority of
Comfort's book is reliable, in spite of the few errors.

>Probably all of us do make errors. The point is: How many errors in what
type of 
>publication? If we are dealing with a reference tool, the amount of errors 
>certainly plays a vital role. What is the C/F book intended to be?

Yes- the amount of errors do play a role.  And the errors of Comforts book
are far fewer than his accurate transcriptions.

>However, another scholar using the 19th century edition performed a comparison 
>of this (edition of the) 9th century witness (C) with a 6th century witness
(F) 
>of the same text. 
>On the basis of a list of deviating readings he concluded that C could not
have 
>been a direct copy of F. 
>Whether he was right or wrong doesn't matter for the moment, the sad truth is 
>that more than 50 percent of the readings in his list hit on errors in the 
>edition of witness C. 
>In every single case the two witnesses do NOT deviate, only their modern 
>transcriptions.
>
>That's disturbing, isnt it. 

It is very distrubing.  Equally disturbing is the notion that the baby
should be tossed out with the bathwater.  My rather general statements about
the Byzantine mss are clearly inaccurate- as are all generalities.  My point
in intentionally stating something so clearly inaccurate was to evoke a
mental image: if the Byz mss should not all be lumped together and
considered inaccurate for a few readings, why should Comfort's book?  If
Bart doesn't like the introduction to the book- why does the rest of the
book thereby become worthless?  If Comfort makes a few errors (I defy anyone
to find any manuscript of any book- ancient or modern, WITHOUT an error of
grammar, fact, or typography), then why should the whole of his book be
demonized as useless?  

My point, in sum, is that even though there are errors, the book is still
very important and very useful.  It is not infallible.  And neither is the
Bible.  Yet folk use the Bible every day as a guide for truth.  Comforts
book too can be a very useful guide to the mss of the papyri.

Best,

Jim

+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Jim West, ThD
email- [email-masked]
web page-  http://web.infoave.net/~jwest

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 12:25:17 -0500

This will be my last post on this. But this is just too baldly wrong
to be permitted.

>Comfort's book is reliable, in spite of the few errors.

I think Dr. Schmid saw your point, and refuted it twice.

There are several points here:

1) You are confusing accuracy of text with accuracy of copying.
   Most of us would agree that the Byzantine text is not as good
   a representative of the original New Testament text as is
   the Alexandrian text. But this does not mean that a Byzantine
   manuscript is a poorer *copy* than an Alexandrian; it is simply
   a poorer *manuscript.* The Byzantine manuscripts are often
   better copies -- that is, they represent their exemplars
   more accurately. A simple glance at an edition of, say,
   Aleph or Theta will prove that a manuscript can be very
   valuable and *still* be a lousy copy.

2) Let's ignore that. Even so, you are making an argument based
   on a non sequitur. The nature of the Byzantine text has nothing
   to do with Comfort's book. The Byzantine text could be exactly
   identical to the autograph, and Comfort's book would be
   unaffected. Comfort either is or is not an accurate transcription
   of the papyri. Appealing to the Byzantine text simply confuses
   the issue.

[ ... ]

>are far fewer than his accurate transcriptions.

This also raises two questions:

1) How do you know?, and

2) So what?

Every edition ever made (I venture to suggest) is more accurate than
not -- that is, the number of places where it accurately reflects
the text of the manuscripts exceeds the number of places where it
differs. By that standard, the Textus Receptus is an accurate copy
of the United Bible Societies text. (I'm serious; it *is* -- if
you accept the trivial standard that it's right more often than
wrong.) But I've seen Merk's edition roundly condemned for its
inaccuracies -- even though, testing Merk, one finds it to be
about 95% accurate overall, and better than that for the Old
Uncials.

When using an edition, we have a right to question its accuracy.
What we have seen so far is a researched set of information about
its inaccuracy, and anecdotal evidence about its accuracy. I find
this very disturbing. Particularly since the book comes from
Comfort. (I say this because, in my experience, Comfort is about
as brainless a critic as there is. His only criterion is age,
and yet he accepts age uncritically....)
Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

"The one thing we learn from history --
   is that no one ever learns from history."

---

From: "Nelson D. Roth" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 15:15:19 -0400

Jim:

As a more-than-casual reader of the TC-List I have found the list to be quite
inforative in many respects. As I read a segment of your message I wondered if you
would elaborate upon the term "infallible" in relation to Biblical literature and
also share your perspective on the concept of inspiration. The quote that I'm

> book too can be a very useful guide to the mss of the papyri.

Hope this doesn't take us too far off the list.

Nelson Roth

---

From: "Dave Washburn" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 15:51:20 -0700

Jim,
> grammar, fact, or typography), then why should the whole of his book be

The point is not whether the book has transcriptional errors; the 
point is that we don't know where they are, and a scholar who 
depends on a book with this kind of inaccuracies in it may, and 
probably will, end up with some erroneous conclusions that render 
all his/her work, if not useless, then severely flawed.  As a 
researcher who uses reference works profusely, I naturally expect 
those works to have been proofread at least several times, checked 
against the primary sources, and corrected to the highest possible 
accuracy before being released on the unsuspecting research 
community.  At the very least I expect an errata page to correct the 
errors that were discovered post-printing.  If this hasn't been done 
then, yes, for all practical purposes it does render the book virtually 
unusable, because we don't know where the errors are or how 
badly they are going to affect what we're doing with the book.  For 
those of us on a severely limited budget (i.e. me) this kind of book 
with this percentage of transcriptional errors would be, frankly, a 
poor investment.  Knowing what I know from Maurice's post, I 
wouldn't give the book a second glance.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
A Bible that's falling apart means a life that isn't.

---

From: Troy DeJongh <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 20 May 1999 18:46:17 -0500

> http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur

In a way, this discussion reminds me of computer book publishing.
Typically, very popular computer science texts with many source code 
examples are in their umpty-umth printing before 99% of the typos and
errors are eliminated.  Several prolific authors offer $1.00 per
legitimate error/typo, plus an acknowledgement in the errata (either on
the book's or author's web page or in the book itself).  This seems
like a good idea for publishing works like Comfort's as well, except 
for the fact that many scholarly volumes only _have_ one printing 
because of the significantly smaller audience.  :-)

On a slightly different note, I remember a time when I picked up a copy 
of Metzger's _The_Text_of_the_New_Testament:_Its_Transmission,
_Corruption,_and_Restoration_ from my local Barnes and Noble, and I 
had to return it because every other page was missing in the first 
few chapters.  The clerk at the return counter got a kick out of 
that, given the book's title.  :-)

-- 
Troy DeJongh                                       http://pobox.com/~troyd

---

From: M A Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 23:30:08 EDT

On Thu, 20 May 1999 12:27:26 -0400 Jim West <[email-masked]> writes:

>If Bart doesn't like the introduction to the book- why does the rest of 
>the book thereby become worthless? 

> why should the whole of his book be demonized as useless?  

It is not a matter of "like", but of facts versus errors. The case
obviously becomes cumulative if there are clear errors of fact in the
introduction as well as clearly identified errors in the transcriptions.
The errors in the introduction might not nullify the transcriptions, nor
would the errors in the transcriptions nullify the introduction. But when
a pattern of error tends to emerge in both cases, I would have serious
concerns about the accuracy of the whole. To this end Dave Washburn's
concise summary statement is quite well expressed:

>poor investment.  

On a positive note, let me say there are two good uses to which this book
can be put: 
(1) It will serve excellently in the classroom as a tool by which to
train beginning collators before they tackle the more
difficult-to-decipher photographs first-hand. The book does reflect the
scribal habits which appear in the MSS themselves, with extra errors from
C/B typical of the same types of scribal blunder. So long as no one uses
the book  to make "exact" collations of an ancient MS and then use those
results as sufficient to establish a reading, then no harm will be done
(the danger is that this is precisely what most people will assume the
book is intended for).

(2) Students also can then be asked to collate the text against the
photographs or _editio princeps_ of the various MSS and compile a list of
all the differences between C/B and the actual MSS or editor's original
readings. Eventually this would result in the deisred list of errata
necessary for proper scholarly use of the volume.

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

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 08:08:24 -0500

>necessary for proper scholarly use of the volume.

This brings up the strong suggestion that somebody make up a web site
containing these lists of corrections. As noted, the good thing about
this volume is its compact collection of all the data. By supplying
a compact collection of errata, we might actually make it useful. :-)
-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-

                        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: Vincent Broman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 24 May 1999 16:37:57 -0700 (PDT)

> containing these lists of corrections.

The entmp.org site would be a natural, except that it hasn't been
maintained for the last few years.  I could put stuff up on my
WWW site, if someone else does the maintainance effort.
I'm afraid shepherding responsibilities have crowded a number of
things off my to-do list in the last year.

Vincent Broman                                       San Diego, California, USA
Email: broman at sd.znet.com (home)       or spawar.navy.mil or nosc.mil (work)
Phone: +1 619 284 3775                       Starship: 32d42m22s N 117d14m13s W
=== PGPv2 protected mail preferred. For public key finger me at np.nosc.mil ===