Subject: Re: tc-list Re: The 3 TC problems

From: Jim West <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:48:05 -0400

At 07:02 PM 8/30/99 -0400, you wrote:
>   With apologies to everyone who would like to find an autograph with the
>Western non-interpolations (by which I assume is meant the longer text in
>these instances, since obviously you can't "find" the non-interpolation,
>if you see what I mean) -- it ain't going to happen! 

Of course not.  But supposing you did find some 1st c. ms.... how would you
know it was an autograph in the first place?  What is an autograph anyway?
Is it the first copy made by the amanuensis?  What of the author's
corrections to that before its sent?  Is that the second edition?  I dont
understand the interest in autographs because autographs are like martians-
we wouldnt know one if we saw it.

Best,

Jim

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

---

From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 20:13:23 -0500

>we wouldnt know one if we saw it.

I'm not going to argue the point about autographs; indeed, I think it's
rather worse than that. What, for instance, is the autograph to
2 Corinthians? (I choose this because, of course, 2 Corinthians gives
such strong evidence of being composite.) Is the autograph the three
or four original parchment copies, or the collated version -- or,
indeed, the copy originally included in the Pauline corpus? Or,
perhaps, should the autograph be something which never existed in
print at all: The actual words Paul spoke, as opposed to those taken
down by his scribe?

Well, I said I wasn't going to get into that. I have a question instead:
What makes you say we wouldn't know a martian if we saw it? (We won't
see one, of course, as popularly conceived, as there is clearly no
intelligent life on Mars. But that's beside the point.)

I ask, with some modicum of seriousness, "What do you know about
martians that I don't know?" (It might be important. Who knows,
the Martian version might preserve the original text better than
any other extant translation. :-)

Uh-oh -- I feel a new Encyclopedia article coming on. Even if
I can only post it on April 1.... 

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

                        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)