Subject: Re: tc-list The ultimate goal of textual criticism

From: Jean Valentin <[email-masked]>
Date: Dim, 5 Sep 99 23:12:48 +0200

>And the Gospels *did* achieve independent circulation. P66 contained
>only John. P75 contained only Luke and John. It is likely that many of
>the other gospel papyri contained only one gospel.

Bob, just a few words because I don't want to embark on a lengthy discussion... But I can't resist addidng my few cents here. Even though you can show such examples, it remains true that, just as you say that the Church didn't canonize 2 Cor 8, but the whole of Paul, the Church canonized *the Tetraervangelion*. The situation, after all - at least for the subject discussed here - is not so different from Paul after all. It is not because a Gospel is found independently in manuscripts that the copy you discuss doesn't go back to the first edition of the tetraevangelion...

Just my few cents :-)

Jean V.

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Dites-le avec des mots. Ca coûte moins cher.
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Jean Valentin - 34 rue du Berceau - 1000 Bruxelles - Belgique
e-mail : [email-masked]
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From: "Robert B. Waltz" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 1999 17:45:19 -0500

>Bob, just a few words because I don't want to embark on a lengthy discussion... But I can't resist addidng my few cents here. Even though you can show such examples, it remains true that, just as yo…

Well -- but did the church canonize the gospels all at once? It
certainly isn't automatic. The Catholic Epistles were *not* canonized
all at once. And so we find versions with only some of these books.

Even the Gospels may not have been canonized at the same time. Marcion
used only Luke, after all. :-)

Put it this way: All four gospels were canonical (at least informally)
to Irenaeus. But in Irenaeus's time, separate copies of the gospels
still existed, as the papyri show. The same cannot be said of Paul.
It *may have been* true; I can't prove it wrong. But there is no
direct evidence.

This, of course, gets into the muddy question of "what is canonicity."
We all know that the canon took some time to evolve. But while it is
true that the church eventually recognized a four-gospel canon
(as opposed to the Diatessaron or Marcion's hacked-up edition of
Luke), the books achieved individual canonicity and circulation.
Again, this cannot be shown for Paul.

And here I thought I didn't have a big part in this discussion; I was
just trying to express someone else's viewpoint in different words. :-) 

Bob Waltz
[email-masked]

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