jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

I think I see your point, but the situation is a bit more complicated.

The literary-critical evidence supports the textual evidence that the epistle to the Romans is a composite of independent elements. Scholars who hold the traditional view attempt to validate the unity of authorship of the epistle by the 1st century St. Paul. You mentioned Gamble. This can be illustrated by the diagram "Schema of the Development of the Textual forms of Romans" on page 141 of The Textual History of the Letter to the Romans (or via: amazon.co.uk) by Harry Gamble, Jr. This does not quite simplify to your second code example above.

The beginning assumption is that the original form of Romans was 1:1-16:24 inclusive. So Gamble started by assuming the conclusion. The rest of the chart is an attempt to explain how the disunity indicated by the various 14, 15, and 16 chapter versions (with the floating benediction and doxology) derive from the original unity of authorship.

The alternative is quite simple. The original version was the shorter, 14 chapter version. This is the earliest attested version length, that of Marcion and Tertullian. Meanwhile, textual redactions added chapter 15 and then chapter 16. The fact that the longer version was known to Origin and not to Tertullian is evidence that the redactions had not spread as far as Tertullian yet.

Marcion and Tertullian's versions ended with chapter 14. Neither Irenaeus nor Cyprian quoted from chapters 15 or 16. This is not a big deal concerning Irenaeus, but considering Cyprian's subject matter, he likely only knew a shorter version. If this is true, the redactions have still not wholly migrated to the West even by the middle of the 3rd century.

Codex Amiatinus, Capitulum L specifically refers to 14:15,17 and could denote the line of thought through 14:23. Capitulum LI refers to the doxology, now found at 16:25-27.
There is no capitula for chapters 15 and 16. This indicates that the original version could well have been 14 chapters. (The wide dispersion of the Amiatine system is decisive evidence against the suggestion that it refers to a mutilated archetype).

Additionally, in some manuscripts of the Marcionite prologue to Romans, indicated that the place of composition was in Athens. (John Wordsworth, Henry White, "Novum Testamentum Latine", ii. 1, 1913, pp. 41-42.) This is quite impossible if chapters 15 and 16 were known to the author.

The "eye of the beholder” argument, that it was impossible that the text ends with 14:23
(with perhaps a brief Marcionite doxology) because the logic extends to chapter 15 is simply not true. Chapter 15 introduces catholicizing elements to water down the Marcionite elements in the previous arguments.

It is much easier to explain the movement of the doxology from its original ending after 14:23 to the new endings after 15 and 16 respectively than it is to explain moving it from the end of 16 back to the end of chapter 14. If it is properly assumed that the doxology is the end of the letter, wherever it may be, how does it get stuck back in between 14 and 15 in Origen’s version? Well, it doesn’t make sense. That is why the doxology appears twice in a number of manuscripts, both after chapters 14 and chapters 16. A P 5 17 33 104 109 arm. And don’t forget, the floating doxology appears after chapter 15 in P46 Chester Beatty. (It is also possible the doxology was missing and the epistle did indeed end after 14:23. This would be quite abrupt. There are extant manuscripts that end with 14:23 and no doxology. G F 629 f E 26 inf. Jerome. And Marcion, but only according to Origen.)

Some scholars (I mislaid my reference ) seem to have trouble with a version ending after chapter 15, reasoning that Paul usually didn't end his epistles like that. But this is where the oldest extant manuscript of the epistle places the doxology, P46 the Chester Beatty Papyrus. 15:33 is followed by the floating doxology, so this is surely textual witness to a non-extant text that ended there. Extra weight is lent to this argument by the early date of P46.

The evidence, then, is that the epistle to the Romans was known in at least three versions, 14, 15, and 16 and the shorter versions have the earliest attestation.
The canonized text we read now in our Bibles was not the original from which all others fragmented, and then stitched themselves back together into pristine unity! This is unlikely. Instead, the epistle grew by redaction as did most texts in antiquity such as the Gospel of John. The canonized text of Romans is the result of the great normalizing recensions.

Best,
Jake Jones IV

Ben C Smith

No, of course not. Both diagrams were simplified. My point is that you described your opposition in terms that made them easier to dismantle than they really are. Your description (long, then short, then reassembled back to long) is one that I do not think describes any scholar who has chimed in on this issue. (Maybe you can point to one. That chart by Gamble certainly does not match your description. The path along the righthand side retains the entire text of Romans as it stands — with the single exception of half a verse — without having to reconstitute it at any point; maybe the this plus that format of that bottommost box is what is confusing you. It does not mean, from the argumentation of the book, that the final result was recomposed. Gamble is just summarizing the complete contents of the final result. On the chart, it means that the ending missing from the shorter version on the lefthand side of the chart was restored from the full version on the righthand side.)

Well, this is just false. Gamble gives long arguments for the conclusion. (I do not even have the book in front of me, and I can think of two very clear ones right off the top of my head.) He does not assume it.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Really? And which textual witness stands at the top of the diagram? (Underlined forms are not attested but conjectured), and you will note that 1:1-16:24 is underlined. The line on the right side of the diagram from the presumed autograph is hypothetical.

To summartize: Both Marcion and Tertullian testified to a 14 chapter version of Romans. The oldest extant manuscript, P46, testifies indirectly—but powerfully—to a fifteen chapter version. The 16 chapter version first appeared geographically isolated around Alexandria and only slowly migrated to the West. Even in the middle of the 3rd century, Cyprian didn’t have it. If we were discussing any other texts than the Pauline epistles, this would be taken as prima facie evidence of redaction.

I can only guess, but I surmise that the desire to retain the unity of Pauline authorship is playing an unpropitious role.

Jake

Ben C Smith

Yes, really. The arguments are not on the diagram. They are in the text of the book.

Any form in that top position is going to be underlined. We are talking about a text that predates any of our extant witnesses and thus has to be argued for. Even the Marcionite version itself has to be argued for; we hardly have the original from his hand, any more than we have anything from before him.

Ben.

Ben C Smith

I was mistaken. That is not why the top position is underlined. It is underlined because it is a form that lacks the doxology yet contains 16.20b, and that exact format is not attested. IOW, it is underlined because of a difference (from the canonical version) of three and a half verses.

I think what you are doing is making the mistake of assuming that, once you remove the unattested, conjectural forms (the underlined ones), you are left with a chronological progression that starts with the 1.1-14.23 version in the top lefthand corner, right? If so, do you not see the error in that assumption? The chart is not presenting the forms according to the extant chronological evidence. Just because the 1.1-14.23 version appears high in the sequence does not mean that the actual manuscript or patristic evidence appears that early in absolute time. Gamble is placing the various versions earlier or later than each other based on his arguments for the correct stemma, not based on which ones appear first in the hard copies.

Let me put it another way. You are trying to get a hard sequence of Marcion and Tertullian, then P46, then the longer version in Alexandrian manuscripts. But that is mixing the different kinds of evidence in your favor. How do we know (or think we know) that Marcion had only 14 chapters? By later patristic comments and manuscript evidence. How do we know (or think we know) that Paul actually wrote 16 chapters? By later patristic comments and manuscript evidence. It is okay if you want to argue that the evidence for the Marcionite version is sound while the evidence for the Pauline version is not. But that is not what you are doing. You are pretending that there is no evidence for an early 16 chapter version, when in fact the evidence for it is of the same kind as the evidence for a Marcionite 14 chapter version.

Is that clear? It is a hard bouncing ball to follow sometimes. These are not easy concepts.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

Thanks for taking the time to explain Gamble's diagram. As far as I can tell, Gamble's reasoning is within the context of the assumed authenticity of the epistle.

There is no textual witness that dates a 16 chapter Romans to the traditional time of the first authograph.The earliest indications we have are for a shorter form of Romans.

True, but indeterminate.

Best,
Jake

Ben C Smith

I am not understanding how you can keep saying this. Did you read his arguments for the priority of the 16 chapter version? Two of them spring right to mind (the argument from the Pauline epistolary endings and the argument from the catholic universalizing tendency). I feel certain he offers others.

As I explained, in order to say this you have to confuse various kinds of evidence, ruling some of it out of court for reasons that should by rights rule your own preferred evidence out of court, as well.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

I don't mean to single out the oustanding work of Professor Gamble who is a fine scholar. However, he makes his arguments for the unity of authorhip of Romans within the framework of authentic first century epistles written by Apostel Paulus.

Chapter 16 doesn't even pretend to be by Paul. It is a letter of recommendation for sister Phoebe. The name of Paul is not mentioned; Romans 16:22 quite clearly states, "I Tertius, who wrote this epistle, salute you in the Lord."

The epistle to the Romans never was a particular occasional letter. It is a series of dogmatic tracts given the outward splendor of a letter. And, as we have seen, the shorter forms of the letter have fewer epistalory trappings. Gamble, and others, explains this as the longer particular letter to the Romans was chopped down into a shorter generalized tract for teaching purposes. But given the length of the document, the opposite is more likely. The epistolary endings would then be emulative of the ending of other epistles and hence not determinative for the question of the 16 chapter form.

Best,
Jake

Ben C Smith

Ah, I misread that statement of yours. You said that Gamble was assuming that Romans was authentic, but I read you to be saying that Gamble was assuming that the (long) ending of Romans was authentic. My mistake. I have no argument with you on that point; yes, to the best of my memory, Gamble does assume that at least the chapters leading up to Romans 15 are authentic.

My dispute was with the following, from earlier up:

Gamble does not assume that Paul originally wrote all of 1.1-16.24, and I think you agree with this now. You gave brief arguments in your most recent post as to why you thought the arguments Gamble makes for chapters 15-16 are weak, which assumes, in fact, that Gamble is indeed making arguments for chapters 15-16 and not just assuming his conclusion that they are authentic.

The rest I leave to others to discuss. Ciao.

Ben.

jakejonesiv

Hi Ben,

Thanks for the correcting my misunderstanding.