2-J

Totally agree.

Solitary Man

What is an unbiased methodology on what constitutes reliability in ancient documents?

Roger Pearse

We certainly need to establish the text of all ancient works in a reliable and unbiased manner. But if we chose a method to "prove" that all those texts are imaginary, I would suggest that we have chosen the wrong method!

In reality normal text critical methods are used to heal all texts. To abuse them to suggest that the text has not survived is like a glazier using faults in a pane of glass to justify bricking up the window.

squiz

What then would be a substantive interpolation, in your opinion?

2-J

I don't have a complete outline for one - nor have I ever claimed to - but I do know it wouldn't include a provision about disregarding evidence just because the conclusions we would otherwise reach would lead us to cast doubt on the reliability of large categories of beloved ancient texts.

Sheshbazzar

A somewhat appropriate analogy to the Biblical text being like a window-glass Roger. And the problem is that we can only see through that textual glass darkly, it having became so obscured over the ages with the excrement of Christian theological contrivances and with the dried blood of all those whom they have murdered.
The glass is ancient, fragile, fogged and badly obscured, yet it still serves us as a window looking into that crime scene that is called Christianity.
This glass is too fragile to withstand harsh attempts at cleaning it, and even scraping away that patina of theological excreta leaves only a fogged and obscured glass, revealing very few details that are of any historical certainty.
In the main therefore, this glass now serves principally as the primary piece of evidence of the criminal activities of Christianity, of their attempts at tampering with the evidence, criminal extortion, and witness intimidation.
There is nothing hidden that will not be revealed, and those deeds wrought in darkness will be fully brought into the light, and be made evident to all.
Woe to those advocates for the defense, who neglecting the true import of that bloodstained piece of evidence, are foreordained to lose their case.

Solitary Man

It depends. The ending of Mark is substantive in quantity, but not in theology since it was already anticipated by Paul.

squiz

This is like pulling teeth
Why don't you find the Johanine Comma to be substantive? It causes a major doctrinal change in meaning to the text. What are your criteria then for finding an interpolation to be substantive?

Solitary Man

I'm not a Christian, so prithee, what doctrine did it change? And you are aware that the Comma was likely to be old, and some argue it to be authentic, just not to John, right?

squiz

What do your beliefs have to do with it? If that is important then there can be no such thing as a substantive change, by definition. The insertion of the text changes the meaning of the text significantly with regard to what the writer might have believed regarding the doctrine of the trinity. When I asked you whether you thought there was little evidence for it as an interpolation or whether you thought it was not substantive, you answered that it is not substantive. Yet now you return that some see it to be sort of authentic. (I assume you mean that it came from a parallel tradition that got incorporated into John, or something). It would waste a lot less of everyone's time if you just explained what you mean by substantive instead of answering questions with questions.