BH

I have been reading up on the principles of textual criticism and how scholars use it to determine what was in the autograph copies of Bible manuscripts, or at least an arch type of Bible manuscript.

The theories all sound nice and sound, but no one was around today who actually observed the creation of these various manuscripts. It is also my understanding that half of the manuscripts, sections, and scraps we have of various Bible manuscripts have not been catalogued yet for textual critical studies. Also, I doubt all manuscripts or fragments of manuscripts ever made have been discovered not to mention all that are truly lost and useless for textual study.

With this in mind, how can textual criticism be falsified in a scientific sense?

Chris Weimer

It can be tested out on placebo documents in which the original is hidden?

Roger Pearse

Very much so.

Textual criticism is an art, not a science. Please forget about the bible for the moment, which is merely one text, and think of the entire classical heritage. The rediscovery of this at the renaissance created the modern world.

The driver for creating a discipline of TextKritik (='textual criticism'; would be better translated 'textual analysis') is simply that

1. we have these texts transmitted to us from antiquity.
2. they're all really interesting, and give us so much about the ancient world
3. we can see that they have been damaged in transmission to some extent
4. we want to read them!
5. we don't want to make arbitrary changes to the text, but to do it in some kind of objective, systematic manner.

I don't know if you watch Stargate SG1. If you do, imagine that some text of the ancients had been handed down on a planet by copying. You really need that data to hold off the Goauld. But you also need to get rid of copyist errors. How do you proceed?

The set of techniques which we call TC is the answer to that question.

Can we double-check it? Occasionally. As you rightly say, no-one has a good idea of what manuscripts are out there, and finds are made all the time. (Indeed when I myself went to the British Library to inspect their two medieval Tertullian mss, I found *three* mss, the third being unmentioned in any publication). So when a new one turns up, we can see if it agrees with any of the restorations made. But, ultimately, it's structured guesswork. Nothing wrong with that, of course; we live in an imperfect world.

However, some people might suppose that this uncertainty means that we have no idea whether a text in antiquity bore any resemblance to what we have. This is not so. We find, from the discoveries of papyri of Homer, that the medieval text is more or less identical to that current in antiquity, and that the Byzantine copyists really did transmit it pretty faithfully (so F.G.Kenyon). It makes sense, after all: if someone is going to copy a book, they want a copy of that book, not something else!

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Julian

Just to supplement some of what Roger said. It is true that there is quite a bit of educated guesswork involved in determining readings and that there is some art to it. However, it is not necessary for us to have all the manuscripts. We have more than enough to make statistically significant pronouncements and determinations. There are also a number of facts that can be relied on to a reasonable extent. We can determine many readings as to their time and geographical origin. We can classify types of readings in losely defined groups. Through script types we can trace the evolution of the MSS to some extent.

Some falsification is possible. If, for example, we found a clear exemplar of a Byzantine MS written on 2nd century papyrus we would seriously have to re-evaluate the Byzantine text type which currently is disdained among text critics and only used for comparison to find the odd reading that confirms the old readings in newer MSS (The Alands category system with the test passages¹, Wisse's Claremont Profiling Method², for examples). The Aland's system has been criticized by Ehrman accusing it of circularity³. Barbara Aland has defended those claims⁴. The point of such articles and many others is that there is a scientific approach and method, that serious text critics adhere to those principles and that their results, albeit slow, are valid and move us slowly closer to the autographs although we may never get all the way there.

Just like any other scientific field.

It is a complicated field that is being held back by a few unfortunate tendencies that have nothing to do with textual criticism. First and foremost, most textual critics know nothing about computers, don't trust them, don't like them. They still do a huge amount of work by hand that could be done by a computer in a few seconds. They also have no concept of the internet. There are MSS sitting all over the place but no one picks up a camera and puts the pictures on the web so that all researchers could have access to them. The TC scientists operate much as they did back in the 19th century. Some of the newer generations seem to be better at this and one can only hope that they get with the program.

Anyways, I could write about this topic all day so I will stop now while a few people out there are still awake.

Julian

Some footnotes for those who may care to read further:

1. K. Aland & B. Aland, The Text Of The New Testament: An Introduction To The Critical Editions & To The Theory & Practice Of Modern Text Criticism, 1995

2. Frederick Wisse, The Profile Method for Classifying and Evaluating Manuscript Evidence, (Studies and Documents 44, 1982)

3. Bart D. Ehrman, "A Problem of Textual Circularity: The Alands on the Classification of NT MSS," in Biblica 70 (1989) 377-88)

4. Barbara Aland and Klaus Wachtel, "The Greek Minuscule Manuscripts of the New Testament" (translated by Bart D. Ehrman, and appearing in Ehrman & Michael W. Holmes, Eds., The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, Eerdmans, 1995))

Roger Pearse

<gnashing teeth> It's not because we don't "pick up a camera" -- it's because the BASTARDS who run the libraries won't permit photography.

The British Library won't photograph their three Tertullian mss, won't let me do it, and won't let it appear online. The most they would do was allow me to pay their staff to photograph it -- charging $12,000 for this -- and allow me to place it online if I paid them $800 a year for the rest of my life. I've been niggling at them for around 3 years now, with no result.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Julian

We are in heartfelt agreement here. These ancient documents belong to all of us. They are part of the history of the human race and as such should be freely available to any and all, at least in photographic form.

I don't know what can be done. Most of the major codices are not available on the web anywhere. Of course, all things are available to the wealthy. If you have $6000 sitting around not doing anything you can have a color facsimile of Codex Sinaiticus of your very own: http://www.linguistsoftware.com/codexvat.htm



Julian

Julian

By the way, whan I said "no one" I meant "no one" with access to the manuscripts and permission to touch them. I have no doubt that people like you and I would gladly donate some time with a camera in hand.

Julian

Roger Pearse

No, I understand and agree. I wish that I could think of some way of getting past these obscurantists. If photography was freely allowed we'd have a lot of mss online by now.

I approve of the idea of a facsimile of Vaticanus -- although that's quite a price! -- but not instead of having it online. We need to get all these small-souled bureaucrats out of the way.

I'm off to Austria next month to photograph a manuscript, actually -- an abbey there has given me permission. Only 15th century, tho. It will go online as soon as I get back!

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Chris Weimer

Great to hear it Roger! Please let us know when you get them online!

BH

Do you know of such examples? I'd like to read about the results.