What is an original text?
Dan Wallace offers a brief critique of (especially) David Parker’s take on textual criticism. He offers three criticisms of Parker’s view that the Gospels were a living text.
First, his illustrations break down at the very point he is trying to argue for. In Shakespeare’s and Mozart’s case, the author continued to exercise control over the document. That is not the case with NT books. Second, along these same lines, every book of the NT was something that was dispatched to a locale other than where the author was. Once the courier took the letter or Gospel to its destination, the author lost control of the document. It took on a life of its own. Third, those who copied the book were interested parties in what the apostles and other leaders had to say. It was their authoritative voice that was important.
I offer the following observations on each of his points.
- Parker offers this analogy of Shakespeare and Mozart for the gospels, not for the whole NT corpus. It is not, in my view, a particularly good one. However, how does Wallace know that the author exercised no further control over a gospel once it was first written? The possibility of an afterthought epilogue to John, for example, with the idea that the gospel first ended with chapter 20 might well count as evidence for Parker’s contention.
- Again, I see no evidence that “every book of the NT was something that was dispatched to a locale other than where the author was”. This is true of the epistles, but arguing that case for the gospels is a different matter entirely. It is possible they were largely written for the community in which the the author lived, and it is equally possible that they were written for a wide range of communities. In the first case the author still retains some control, in the second case the possibility of multiple copies and even more than one edition emerges.
- I’m sure it is true that scribes had an interest in what the apostles and others had to say. That neither rules out accidental nor intentional (to “improve” it) emendation. It also fails to take account of the rewriting testified to by, say, Codex Bezae.
While I think Parker overstates his case, his case is somewhat stronger than Wallace’s summary suggests, and I think, stronger than Wallace’s counter-argument. The situation on the ground was undoubtedly more complex than any one-size-fits-all explanation.
Finally, consider this hypothetical scenario. Paul, dictating to his scribe, says:
Δικαιωθέντες οὖν ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχωμεν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (Therefore being justified by faith, let us have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ – Rom 5:1)
The scribe writes down something that sounds identical but is subtly different:
Δικαιωθέντες οὖν ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχομεν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν διὰ τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ (Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ)
A later copyist corrects his copy (either accidentally misreading, or deliberately changing) back to what Paul said, but the original scribe failed to write, and puts “ἔχωμεν” back in.
Which is the original text?
January 15th, 2008 at 10:55 pm
Doug,
Engaging thoughts. I hope you won’t mind if I add a few of my own!
1. I don’t think John 20 and 21 would be the best example of continued authorial control. If there were some point at which John’s gospel ended at chapter 20, we should expect some manuscript today to end it at chapter 20 (i.e. we should expect some sort of evidence in the manuscript record). Without any evidence, we can conjecture all we want, but that’s all it would amount to: conjecture. On the other hand, one could argue that the pericope adulterae and the long ending of Mark’s gospel do serve as evidence for Parker’s hypothesis. But then that person would also have to argue that the PA and the long ending are original (which I use to mean “from the original author”), but not first editions.
2. I share your skepticism of the statement “every book of the NT was something that was dispatched to a locale other than where the author was,” so I’ll take up only your second case. If a gospel were written for a wide-range of communities, there would be, as you stated, either multiple editions (to the various communities) or multiple copies. Of the latter, an original still exists, presumably it would be the ‘original’ from which the other copies were made. Or, if following the model of the epistles, it would be sent from community to community, with a copy being made at each stop. If the former is the case, then we might expect there to be variants representing some sort of community bias (in a neutral sense), i.e. adding places or names that would be particularly meaningful to that community but not others for that community’s edition. However, we don’t see that kind of evidence in the manuscripts, and so the ‘multiple editions’ model continues to lack much in the way of actual evidence.
3. Once again, I agree with you that nothing Dr. Wallace noted rules out either intentional or unintentional corruption. But I would note that the very fact we can recognize re-writing in Bezae is evidence of the strong (and relatively uniform) preservation in other texts.
Finally, I like your hypothetical, but I don’t think the question of what is the ‘original’ is much in dispute. What Paul spoke would be the original. Think of it another way: instead of Paul’s own personal secretary mistaking something from the mouth of Paul, we have a copyist much further down the line. This scribe introduces an unintentional error into the text (for the sake of example, let’s say he accidentally repeats a string of text of a few lines). A later scribe, copying either that manuscript or another generated from it, notes the error, and deletes the extra material from his copy. What is the original? We can see quite easily that the second scribe got it right, and the first one got it wrong, even though neither of them had anything more than the manuscript in front of them. In your hypothetical, the error comes much closer than in mine (indeed, as close as it can come), but the outcome is much the same: eventually, the original is restored in the manuscript record.
January 15th, 2008 at 11:10 pm
Thanks, Tim and all good points. A couple of quick rejoinders. On John, I think I would argue that there seems to be internal stylistic evidence for John 20 being an ending, and John 21 being a later addition. Then the absence of external evidence might be best explained by the knowledge that this second ending was the author’s second edition of the gospel.
Also, the manuscript evidence of Romans (and especially the place of chapter 16) does seem to show evidence of multiple editions.
I think the most likely picture of affairs lies somewhere between Parker and Wallace, and I think the relationship of text and community remains a complex one down the centuries. Some of your examples, such as the pericope adulterae and the long ending of Mark’s gospel testify to relatively early versions of that complexity, and others like the Johannine comma to later ones.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Doug, What do you think of Daniel’s suggestion that Paul’s text (and / or his scribe’s and later copyist’s text) might be reminiscent of qualities of goddesses (if not the demon deities themselves)?
July 30th, 2008 at 10:56 pm
Er, Kurk, I’ve no idea what you’re talking about, since that link leads to a comment, but doesn’t show the original post.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Sorry Doug. It’s http://speakeristic.blogspot.com/2008/07/after-fall-friends.html, but what Daniel says (rather cryptically perhaps) is in the comment:
“Speaking of Dike, this [following] verse [i.e., the first few words of Rom 5:1] is interesting given that Eirene is Dike’s sister. δικαιωθέντες οὖν ἐκ πίστεως εἰρήνην ἔχομεν”
If anything from the original post, Daniel is picking up my quotation of Pindar that “Hesykhia (Tranquility), [is] goddess of friendly intent, daughter of Dike (Justice).” Daniel’s implication is that Paul’s reference to Justice and to Peace, in Greek, is a kind of (unwitting) pun on the goddesses Dike (Justice) and Eirene (Peace). I think Daniel’s hinting at the fact that the Greek legal system and theology is so much a part of the cultural literacy of Rome that the language unwittingly invokes more than mere Hebrew meanings of Law and of what the Scribes teach about G-d.
July 30th, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I tend to think that you need evidence of a pattern of allusiveness and play (such as we see in John and which I don’t think Paul displays) to entertain the idea, which, given Jewish polemic against idols (cast notably in Greek rhetorical and philosophical form in Wisdom) is prima facie unlikely.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:29 am
I am the Daniel that J.K. Gayle referred to in his comment.
I’m not sure Paul would have thought of Dike and Eirene as idols. Every culture has its way of looking at Justice, Peace, Righteousness. For the Greek, they were ideals that which were personified as goddesses, along with Dikaiosune. Paul redefines these words for his own purposes, but he would have been familiar with the Greek way of looking at them. As J.K. Gayle says, it would have been part of his and his reader’s cultural literacy. We shouldn’t dismiss the influence of Greek culture because Paul spoke against idols. When we talk about justice in our culture part of the context of the concept is Lady Justice of whom many statues (idols) are made.
Having said all that, I wouldn’t want to make too much of the idea of Dike and her sister. I just thought it was interesting to think about in light of J.K. Gayle’s posts (and some previous conversation we had) even if it is completely wrong. J.K. Gayle and I often talk about ideas (sometimes far fetched) in a playful, exploratory way.
By the way, I liked your critique of Wallace’s critique.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:13 am
One of the reasons I like Bauckham’s work is that he can patiently unpick a lot of 20th century assumptions (mainly from Bultmann and his school) about the Synoptics. His little collection ‘The Gospel for all Christians’ casts a lot of doubt on the hypothesis of separate hermetically sealed ‘communities’ of Christians not talking to each other but having their ‘own’ gospel. His ‘Jesus and his eyewitnesses’ is another swim against the tide of form criticism, and it seems to me to be reviving 18th C. orthodox arguments against the Deists.
We also have to reckon with the fact that the Gospels derived their authority from their assumed (direct or indirect) apostolic origins - not an easy thing to challenge or change.
I doubt ‘let us have [peace]‘ is the correct version of Romans 5.1 - the context is more declarative than exhortative.