Nazaroo

Both Ehrman's recent propagandizing, and Willker's 'Textual Commentary' are available on our site. This is not because we rate this work highly, but because intellectual honesty requires a careful examination of the work of all major players in this game of 'pull apart the carcass'.

Ehrman's work is carefully reviewed, and shown to be a series of deliberate red herrings.

See our review of Ehrman's shenanegans on the website.


Willker

Willker's work is deficient, because it is essentially an unscientific approach based upon methods of textual criticism that were practised 100 years ago. The essential flaws in Willker are these:

(1) Instead of presenting the full evidence in an unbiased manner, he slants the presentation of the evidence in a way that favours his own personal judgement. While this typical of the field, it is wholly unacceptable as 'science'. For instance,

a) Willker groups all the MSS which omit the passage together as though they were a homogenous group of equal authority, but fails to provide any dates for any of the witnesses. Yet when he lists the MSS which contain the passage, he breaks up the witnesses into subgroups and special cases, and lists the principal witnesses by century.

b) Willker is still listing 'Codex X' as though it were an ancient uncial MS omitting the passage. But actually this is a 13th century commentary which naturally skips over the passage during the public reading for Pentecost. Its not a gospel MS, its not an uncial, and its not an ancient manuscript. Even Wallace on BIBLE.ORG had corrected this boner back in 1996. Its ten years later, and Willker has revised his pamphlet (4th ed.) four times as of fall 2006, but still hasn't corrected these flaws.

c) Willker completely omits any discussion of the umlaut evidence and its significance, even though this is critically important for evaluating codex B.



(2) Willker makes several claims but fails to present his evidence for public examination. For instance,

a) he claims to have "made a reconstruction of [the missing pages of Codex A] from Robinson's Byzantine text with nomina sacra." But never produces the pages, a task that would be easy, and allow other scholars to evaluate his claim. The purpose of the measurement is to 'prove' that the missing pages could not have contained the pericope, but no actual evidence is ever offered. (pg 6)

b) he claims to have done a "Principle Component Analysis" upon all the major MSS groups, but fails to provide the text he used for each group, the MSS he considers to be in each group, or any of the calculations used to create his chart. In fact, he doesn't even provide any explanation or even an outline of his methodology, which is not a standard technique, but rather his own personal application of his own personal methodology. This is wholly unacceptable in a scientific work making a scientific claim. (pg 18-21)

c) His discussion of the 'internal evidence' is limited to the examination of single words and short phrases, a practice recognized 100 years ago as too subjective and fraught with error to be useful. (pg 14)
In every other field (for instance NT Aramaic studies) this practice was abandoned nearly 60 years ago. (see Casey, Aramaic Sources of Mark's Gospel for a good review of the problems of 19th century techniques.)


The result is that in spite of some mitigating positive features, such as his brief discussion of Ehrman's evidence on Didymus, Willker's paper is not a useful presentation of the evidence.

hatsoff

The textual evidence seems overwhelming that the pericope (which includes 7:53 by the way) is not authentic to the Gospel of John in its otherwise present form. It would seem that Petersen is wrong if he means to imply that the it may have originally was a part of that Gospel. Perhaps, though, he only means to say that, since it is not Johannine, its true origins are unknown.

Nazaroo

The statement of Ehrman here is not helped by its inherent ambiguity.

What does "an old oral tradition" actually mean? That the story was old when incorporated into the NT? Or that the story had a long oral history?

Or perhaps both... Ehrman would like to leave us with this ambiguity instead of providing any evidence of its plausibility.

However, certain aspects of the claim are not really plausible at all. Unlike the OT, which is a gradual accrual of diverse books and stories (some oral, some written) and even genres, the NT was relatively speaking 'made in a flash'. The entire NT corpus was created and put together in less than 100 years, and large portions of it are simply 'borrowed' from book to book. (e.g. the synoptics).

The NT was born in a relatively literary world, by the efforts of literary people. It began as a written tradition, ever present alongside any oral transmission. Its rituals were basic, and any oral tradition of importance found its way into written form almost immediately.

Thus for the NT there was little time for a long 'oral' tradition, and the Pericope de Adultera as we have it can hardly have been simply created out of older material. It has some general similarities and connections to contemporary (then moderately old) stories like Susanna, Esther, and Greek Jeremiah, but none of its content is really traceable in any big way to earlier material.

Add to this the story's essential cleverness, and one must acknowledge at least some originality to the author of the PA. He was 'inspired' by previous storytelling, but did not plagarize in any quantitative fashion that we know.

So the story has no real oral 'past' (pre Jesus) and no real oral future. It was already in written form in some version as early as 100-110 A.D. (Papias) and pretty much completely stabilzed by the 5th century (codex Bezae).

Presenting the story as an 'oral' tradition is Ehrman's way of telling a conjectural textual history that keeps the story *out* of the written tradition, when clearly it was rooted *in* the written tradition very early.

Ehrman and others would have us believe that the story was transmitted orally (secretly?) side by side with the gospels, only turning into written form late (Middle Ages) and 'accidentally' or naively incorporated into John.

Diogenes the Cynic

What atheists and agnostics would those be? Could you list some? What do you mean when you say they want to "dethrone the authority of the Bible," and why would the pericope in question have any bearing on that so-called "authority?" What does any of this have to do with critical scholarship of the pericope?

Finally, what is your evidence that the pericope was orininally part of GJohn and what is your explanation for its absence from all early manuscripts as well as patristic commentary?

Metzger is as good as it gets when it come to textual criticism. I'm not familiar with Petersen but your cherry picked quote from him amounts to little more than a claim that the origin of the pericope is unknown. There is no argument in your selected quotations that the pericope was original to John.

hatsoff

It could have been some throwback to oral tradition. The Gospels seem to have begun that way, and in certain communities it could have continued long after the "holy quaternion" had permeated most others. However, I agree that this possibility is not supported by any evidence other than idle speculation.

Nazaroo

Unfortunately, the textual evidence against the PA is not 'overwhelming'.

It would be if the textual evidence generally was 'overwhelming', but of course its not.

We only have 4 semi-complete manuscripts of John earlier than the 5th century, and a handful of fragments.

The two earliest MSS are from the same remote location in Egypt, preserved by freak action of climate and circumstance, and they are 2nd century copies, already 100 years too new.

The two 4th century uncials are professional church productions from the Constantine period and cannot in any way be pawned off as naive or primitive witnesses to the original text.

The number of manuscripts conservatively estimated to have been written during the first two centuries is about 1,500 to 2000.

So this paltry 'sample' is near useless as a guide to the state of the text or the process of transmission for the critical early years.

The only informative evidence for the 1st two centuries of Christianity is the writings of the earliest Christian fathers and apologists, and these are fragmentary at best.

Peterson is very clear in his position that the question of the authenticity (meaning Johannine authorship) is indeterminate. And he's quite right. The current state of the evidence that he took into consideration to formulate his view is ambiguous and unconvincing for any stance.

Nazaroo

It is unfruitful to deny that many atheist and agnostic apologists have argued generally against religion, and specifically against Christian dogma.

The question of the authenticity of the PA has historically been wrapped up in arguments involving the 'inerrancy' and 'divine preservation' of the Bible, with a focus on the NT. Why deny this?

Obviously this thread and its OP (me) agree with you that this is *not* a scientific approach, and I thought the first post was quite clear about sidestepping these religious issues, and proceeding with criticism.


And this is what the thread is all about. It will take a few hundred posts (and double that to include posts from other inquirers and debators) to flesh out the actual evidences in sufficient detail for a historical investigation.


This is a truism, but can be interpreted quite fairly in prejorative way. Metzger is indeed a fair representative of the 'state of the art' generally in this field, to its shame.

One of the things on our agenda will be a quick critique of Metzger, not because he is of any importance or value, but because of his popularity in the Western English speaking world. This makes him a good starting point for people (the majority) unaquainted with textual criticism.

For you to expect a case in two posts, is unrealistic. Settle in for about 3 months or so, as we peruse and evaluate all the evidences.

Diogenes the Cynic

The pericope is clearly not a part of the earliest written traditions, so that leaves either oral tradition or outright fabrication by a copyist. I think Ehrman is being generous by assuming the former.

hatsoff

Any individual ms. has the potential for corruption. Codex Bezae is a great example of that. It is the cumulative weight of the textual evidence which makes this issue so easy to decide.

It's not a sample in a field of random data. These texts are all intended to be identical, and any deviance demands a suspicious eye. That every one of the earliest mss. omits the pericope is no coincidence.

That's just not true. Textual criticism, though indirect in its approach, can and does expose inauthentic material.

If that is what he intended to communicate, then he is, in my opinion, mistaken. Besides, I'm not sure why you would wish to agree with him since it is your contention that we should all accept the passage as authentic, as opposed to merely *possibly* authentic.

hatsoff

Agreed. On this message board, though, such things are usually discussed outside of religious bias, as most Christians (in my experience, at least) don't mind admitting that corruption took place during the Bible's early transmission.

That's not really an appropriate thing to ask, as it's a little too controlling for many. Don't worry, though; on this board, if a thread begins to get off-topic, a moderator will split it, preserving both the original discussion and the new tangent(s).