dog-on

I have gone back and read through this thread once again. In my original post I stated that a suspension of disbelief seemed to be a basic requirement of mainstream NT scholarship. Various posters have seemingly disagreed with that statement and have put forward arguments to contradict my assertion. From some informative posts by Bede, this is where I believe the question stands.

1.) There are no complete NT manuscripts from earlier than the fourth century.

2.) There are fragments which have been found, mostly in Egypt, and more are continuing to be found that may date back to the beginning of the 3rd century.

3.) The witnesses of early church fathers and the fragments are used as a link back to about the end of the 2nd century, but in fact the manuscript record from prior to about 250 A.D. is basically "a black hole" as Bede has pointed out.

Bert Ehrman in his book 'The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture' states as his hypothesis:

As this seems, from a purely historical perspective, to be as likely a possibility as the converse, it just seems like the critical NT establishment has simply decided to give the texts the benefit of the doubt. This, I guess, is fine as long as they do not try to draw any conclusions, based on the validity of the versions currently extant, regarding their relationship to the autographs. If they do, indeed, draw conclusions about the autographs from the extant works, they surely must be, once again, suspending their disbelief.

Roger Pearse

Does this involve a misunderstanding? -- The technology to hold all the books of the NT in a single volume (which is perhaps what is meant by "complete NT manuscript"?) did not exist before the 4th century. Does it matterthat the books were in separate volumes before then? Complete mss of individual books exist.

True; also more or less complete mss, also from Egypt.

Certainly we have about 2 centuries where there are only limited manuscript remains. Of course for most texts of the same period we have at least 9 centuries with no mss remains.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Gamera

Thank you Roger. I hope Alm reads this and revises his claim that early Christians did not engage in objective analysis of text in determining their inclusion or exclusion in the canon.

Ben C Smith

I notice that most of the specific examples listed on this thread involve making objective arguments to exclude a given text:

1. Gaius of Rome and the Alogi argued against the gospel and apocalypse of John.

2. Dionysius of Alexandria and Eusebius argued against the apocalypse of John.

3. Tertullian (and others) argued against the Acts of Paul.

4. The Muratorian canon argued against the Shepherd of Hermas.

Some of the more subjective arguments were also intended to exclude a given text:

1. Serapion argued against the gospel of Peter.

2. Some argued against the epistle of Jude.

The objective arguments to include a given book appear to depend almost completely upon usage by earlier fathers (the wider the geographical selection the better), and in a case like that of 2 Peter even that guideline was broken.

Do you find any evidence to overturn what Stephen wrote?

Or what Andrew wrote?

While it looks like you can be fairly certain that those books which were excluded were at least sometimes (maybe even usually) excluded on objective grounds, how certain can you be that those books which were included were included on objective grounds?

Ben.

Amaleq13

You've got to be kidding because nobody could actually be that obtuse.

Thanks for the laugh.

And thanks again to Ben, Andrew, and Stephen for providing the substantive response I've been requesting.

Bede

Hi Robert,

Actually, we are not quite finished yet! I've been away for the weekend.

The first point I should make is that the early evidence for the NT is better than for almost any other classical or early medieval work. For most classical authors, the earliest MSS are from the tenth century or later, at least a thousand years after they were written. Exceptions are few and far between. Virgil's Aeniad has two fine illuminated MSS from the 6th century (600 years after it was written) and the Res Gestae of Augustus is carved in stone on a temple in Turkey! But in general, the witness to the NT is much earlier than anything else. However, we do find classical works in the Egyptian papyri and they allow us to be quite confident that even after a thousand years, texts can be reliably transmitted.

So, NT scholars have better grounds to be confident than classicists or early medievalists.

Secondly, we have textual criticism of the NT. This is an inexact science, but has made substantial progress. From this, we have decided some of Paul's letters are probably not by him, that Mark was the earliest Gospel written, that Matthew and Luke share a lot of material, and many other things. It's a huge subject but by comparing texts to each other, to archeaology and to other writings we can find out a great deal about them. The army of scholars who have been going over all these things for a century or more do mean that we can have more confidence in the text of the NT than almost anything else from that period.

Now, it is true that there are gaps in our knowledge and all scholars have to make assumptions, but that is the nature of history. My best advice would be to stop passing judgement on NT scholars and read some of their work.

Best wishes

James

Chris Weimer

My, James, I'd never thought we'd agree! Now...which NT scholars do you have in mind?

dog-on

James,

Regarding your first point. What do you suppose the motivation would be for scribes to modify the literary works, (here I assume you are referring to literary fiction or secular histories and not to theological works), of classical authors? If they did edit them, is there an impact on the daily lives of entire populations because of it? In other words, does it really matter?

Where I find fault with your argument is that it seems you want to compare apples and oranges. These classic works do not represent the foundation of a world dominating socio-political doctrine. To dismiss the distinct possibility that the NT texts could have been, (and probably were), "edited" for doctrinal purposes as the early (pre 200 C.E.) church evolved, seems more like apologetics than history.

I guess the best one could say is that as of a certain time (ca. 200 C.E. or later) this is what the texts showed. Anything prior, based on your own admission, is purely conjecture and per Ehrman, that due to issues of infighting between various sects of early Christianity (as can be evidenced by the various apologies of the early fathers), the likelihood (indeed the high probability) of interpolation/redaction of what were to become the canonical scriptures should not be, a priori, dismissed.

To your second point, I agree that the art of textual criticism has greatly improved and that there are new finds occurring that may, one day, help to clarify this issue. I am not trying to "passing judgement". I am, however, simply making an observation regarding the seeming tendency of mainstream NT scholarship to give the extent texts the benefit of the doubt regarding their relationship to the autographs by (what can be best described as) the suspension of their collective disbelief.

Which works would you suggest I read?

Regards,

Robert

Bede

Hi Robert,

Firstly, I never used the word 'dismiss'. I am fully alive to all the issues of redaction and interpolation. I just demand evidence for our conclusions. Please don't put words into my mouth.

Second, before 330AD, Christianity was not a 'world dominating socio-political doctrine'. The fact you believe it is now makes no difference to how we treat the historical evidence from the early days. To do so would be anachronistic and admit we were being driven by present day concerns when we did history.

Third, there were obviously pressures to change other texts. There was an entire industry in Alexandria devoted to editing the text of Homer so that we are in the dark about what this text looked like before 300BC. The Judeo/Claudio dynasty used history to legitimate its hold on power and had court poets (Virgil) and historians (Livy) to write the official propaganda. It is extremely naive to imagine that Christians were more likely to interpolate than anyone else.

Fourth, Ehrman says there were changes where he has evidence of changes. As one of the worlds leading textual critics he would be horrified to hear you saying that he was 'suspending his disbelief' when he worked on the NT text.

Fifth, mainstream (by which I mean non-evangelical) scholarship does not give the NT text any more or less benefit of the doubt than other ancient sources. Saying that they do is 'passing judgement' and inaccurate judgement at that.

I recommend reading Bruce Metzger's The Text of the New Testament and the Canon of the New Testament. I also suggest actually reading Ehrman and seeing how he marshalls evidence for his ideas. Where he suggests an interpolation he has reasons for it. Where there is no reason, he accepts the text.

Best wishes

James

dog-on

Didn't mean to. It just seems we have different requirements regarding an acceptable starting point.

Quite correct, but the point of this discussion is the way that "the historical evidence from the early days" has actually been treated by the mainstream. I'll read some newer "mainstream" works and see if my opinion changes.

As you have previously admitted that you are "in the dark" regarding the original autographs of the Christian texts, is it any more unlikely that the early Christians would have been capable of doing the same basic thing with their texts in order for a particular sect of the religion to legitimate itself and allow itself to begin to consolidate its own power and authority? They of course also put out a bit of "official propoganda" (Justin, Ireneaus, Tertullian,...) to support their position.

The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture:

I think Ehrman speaks for himself. If anything, his tendency seems to be towards an unwillingness to suspend disbelief, I'll let you know when I finish the book.


Thanks for the suggestion, I'll see if I can get a hold of a copy of Metzger. I am currently reading The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture.

Regards,

Robert