Toto

Mark Goodacre has a solution

The non-canonical Gospel of Peter has a strange scene, where Jesus comes out of his tomb, followed by a walking, talking cross. It is one of Pete's favorite passages, but he may have to give up on it.

Mark Goodacre suggests that the text is corrupted, and originally referred to the crucified one rather than the cross - possibly because the text originally used a nomen sacrum 'στα' for 'σταυρωθέντα' (crucified one) that a later scribe misread as an abbreviation for σταυρον (cross).

ApostateAbe

It does seem a little more plausible that the author of the gospel of Peter would write of a walking talking "crucified one" instead of a "cross." Unfortunately, the extra points in plausibility seem to be traded for greater points of less ad hoc, and it is not significantly more plausible (though a little more plausible) that a scribe would have a misunderstanding about the meaning of such proposed abbreviations.

Toto

Why do you think this is ad hoc?

ApostateAbe

It is a proposition that isn't directly on the face of the evidence that we can examine. For example, we have no direct evidence of these particular misinterpretations of abbreviations. Ad hoc isn't always a deal breaker--sometimes, we have no choice if we want to find the most probable explanations. I don't think this is one of those cases, though it could be.

Toto

Why would you need direct evidence someone making this actual mistake, when the letters themselves make the mistake a good possibility?

I don't think you understand ad hoc in the same way most scholars do.

ApostateAbe

OK, so how do you think that most scholars understand ad hoc?

Toto

Ad_hoc Mark Goodrich has proposed a solution based on generally recognized principles of clerical mistakes and spelling errors. He uses principles that would apply to any other document.

An ad hoc solution would be one that was not applicable to any other document, designed for that particular problem.

Just googling around for examples, there is this discussion here on "ad hoc documents"

jgoodguy

We have an assertion without evidence that the scribe made an error. We have evidence that scribal errors happened,but we have no evidence that this error ever occurred. The passages is implausible with either case.

I'd opine that the plain text trumps Toto's assertion. His evidence is weak and there appears to be no real improvement of the text using his assertion.

ApostateAbe

Thanks, Toto. How do you think that my conception of ad hoc disagrees with how most scholars think of it? My own conception, as you probably know, comes from C. Behan McCullagh.

The hypothesis must be less ad hoc than any other incompatible hypothesis about the same subject; that is, it must include fewer new suppositions about the past which are not already implied to some extent by existing beliefs.

You cited a definition that would certainly hold for the lay public, though not necessarily for scholars. The definition used among the general public is a little more specific, in that it is a label that is attached to propositions designed to defend a position, without believing it prior, which is an appropriate definition for lay debate. For scholars, the definition can be generalized a little more.

Toto

It is still not an ad hoc argument. There is almost never direct evidence of scribal error, in the sense of someone looking over the scribe's shoulder. We generally decide that scribal errors happened when passages do not make sense as written.

I don't see how you can claim that Goodrich's solution does not make a lot more sense than the bizarre story of a walking, talking cross.