Roger Pearse

It's nice to have several thousand manuscripts which one can calmly declare 'not relevant'! I wish we had that for any other text!! For Tertullian's De ieiunio adversus psychicos we have only a couple of 16th century printed editions, made from now vanished manuscripts, to work with. I do not propose to toss these in the skip. Can anyone explain why we should?

Similar arguments lead to the conclusion that we do not know what classical literature says. Is there any difference between this and obscurantism, for all practical purposes?

We all know that people make mistakes. Printed editions contain them; so do handwritten copies. But to argue that because the second edition of the Lord of the Rings differs from the first, that "we do not know what (the text) says here" would be absurd.

Let me give another example. If you go to the Tertullian Project and look at the English translation of Ad Nationes Book 2, you will see it runs to the end complete. If you look at the Latin text, you will see horrendous damage at the end, many words missing or unknown. The reason for this is that the (9th century) manuscript began to rot, and the margins were cut off at this point, losing words. Nevertheless, the English translation includes material not even present in the Latin, and is a fine translation.

How does this work? Well, because a word is not standalone. It stands with others, in clauses, and makes up part of a sentence, itself part of a paragraph, and all of it part of the thought of the writer. This means that, even if some of the words are missing, it is usually clear what they should be. That is, we can actually read a text from antiquity even tho bits of what we read now have actually disappeared in the original!

Text critics, as a profession, are about healing damage in transmission using structured common sense. Historians want to use that text, and don't frankly care much about most of those issues.

It's like standing in a garden shed looking out through a pane of glass. A glazier will look at the glass and point out all these defects. Normal people just move their head slightly if faced with a mark, and look through the glass to the garden beyond. That is how we use all ancient texts, and, for our purposes, the NT is just such a text, and better preserved than all the rest.

This sort of discussion usually arises from the unwarranted confusion of theology and history. People are thinking of the NT as a divinely inspired text, and suppose that it must be 'perfect' in some manner defined by ourselves; if any defect of any kind can be detected, then this disproves its inspiration.

Now this theological assertion is all rather dubious, but it has nothing to do with the transmission of texts. Christians have always believed that the bible copies they use may contain inadvertant defects, and don't worry about it. So the whole argument 'text criticism proves the bible is not inspired' is essentially a straw man, setting up a target which no-one in fact believes. It's a confusion between the theological question of whether a text is divinely inspired (for which none of us have a litmus test) and whether a text is preserved. This confusion serves no useful purpose, IMHO.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

yalla

Gidday Roger,
You do understand that my post relies on Richard Carrier's essay in which he points out, and gives examples, that there are major ambiguities in theological interpretations due to variations in manuscripts?
Which is contradicting Jayrocks post that there are no major discrepancies that redults in doctrinal significance.
I personally have not got the skill or knowledge to argue about this but having read Carrier I realized he directly contradicted part of the OP and so quoted from his essay.
Maybe if I had Carrier's quotes in pretty blue it would have been obvious but I don't know how to do that, I'll try to learn. Perhaps italics could help.
Anyway I thought it was obvious that I was quoting Carrier saying that manuscript variations are major and numerous and make a big difference in our understanding of the texts.
cheers
yalla

Roger Pearse

Yes, I did; sorry if I didn't make that clear.

I certainly understood this. I merely dissented from the whole proposition and approach. If this is so for the NT, then Mr. Carrier spent his entire period studying ancient history looking at texts that were hot air.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

We can declare them irrelevant because those thousands of manuscripts were written between the 10th and 15th centuries.

Similar arguments do not lead to the same problems for other manuscripts for several reasons. #1 small variations in the works of Plato, etc. aren't crucial since our understanding of Plato et al. is academic only, #2 there were not political and theological reasons to manipulate the texts of Plato.

Its more likely that what we have from other ancient writers in generally original, while this can't be said of early Christian works because the other works were surrounded by known on-going revision, infighting, doctrinal wars, and political manipulation.

JoeWallack

The Word According To Garp, Mork, Mark. An Inventory of Significant Editing in the First Gospel:

You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth


JW:
At my Blessed and Holy ErrancyWiki as well as here at IIDB The Word According To Garp, Mork, Mark. An Inventory of Significant Editing in the First Gospel I Am in the process of Inventoring Significant Editing in the First Gospel.

As "Matthew" and "Luke" are themselves "Significant Editing" of what was Originally written, "Mark", the whole question of whether Christianity significantly Edited what was originally written is not a serious question but a Comical one along the lines of the classic "What have the Roman Editors ever changed for us?" scene from MPHG.

When one, let me rephrase that, when an Objective reader goes through the following list she will realize that a better question is What significant Doctrine has not been changed by Christian Editing (as opposed to what has been changed).

A listing of Verses with related links to explanations is here:

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Mark_1:1

Enjoy!:

Significant Variant #1:"Matthew" and "Luke"

My favorite significant variant and one that Christianity traditionally Fails to identify is that "Matthew" and "Luke" are themselves priMarily Editing of "Mark". In my now famous Mark's View Of The Disciples Thread I Demonstrated beyond a reasonable doubt that "Mark's" primary purpose was to Discredit "The Disciples" as Witnesses to "Mark's" Jesus. "Matthew" and "Luke" Edited "Mark" to rehabilitate "The Disciples" as ''The'' Witnesses to their Jesus. In a follow-up Thread I Am going to isolate "Matthew" and "Luke" stories of the Disciples not found in "Mark" to demonstrate how few there are (showing lack of supposed historical witness and necessity of reliance on "Mark" for the basic Narrative) and that when not copying "Mark" the portrayal is Positive (showing Intent to Spin "The Disciples" The other Way).


Significant Variant #2: How is Jesus "Son of God"
Mark 1:1


Significant Variant #3: Is Jesus Prophesied in the Jewish Bible?
Mark 1:2


Significant Variant #4: Is Jesus God?
Mark 1:3


Significant Variant #5: Was there a Historical "John the Baptist"?
Mark 1:4


Significant Variant #6: Is "Mark" Separationist?
Mark 1:10


Significant Variant #7: Is "Mark" Separationist?
Mark 1:34


Significant Variant #8: Was Jesus Divine/God?
Mark 1:40


Significant Variant #9: Was Jesus imperfect?
Mark 1:41


Significant Variant #10: Where was Jesus home?
Mark 2:1


Significant Variant #11: Was "Mark" Patripassionistic?
Mark 2:7


Significant Variant #12: Who wrote "Matthew"?
Mark 2:14


JW:
Keep in mind that the Standard Christian Inventories of Textual Variation have serious limitations:

1) They only Inventory where they think a potentially significant difference in meaning is involved.

2) They only Inventory where they think a potentially significant difference in meaning is involved.

3) They do not Inventory where they think there is insufficient evidence to seriously consider an alternative.

4) They do not Inventory where they think there is insufficient evidence to seriously consider an alternative.

One Project that is desparately needed is an e-Catena Type list of early Church Father quotes not found in any extant Text. Generally, Christian Bible scholarship would not even bother to mention these in Textual Criticism discussion unless of course it supported Christian Assertian. I've previously listed two examples of Irenaeus of Lyons (yes, "Lyons") quoting Paul (a scary combination) not found in any Extant Text. In situations like this, where Provenance supported the quote as original, in my un-humble opinion such quote should supercession the Text evidence. Regrettably I have Faith that as Provenance indicates 2nd century Christianty was priMarily fighting Gnosticism, the trend for Christian Forgery was to reduce/remove actual references to Archons of this world and push them beyond Jeff's grasp into the Lower Heavens (we still have extant evidence that even ultra-Orthodox Mr. Christian Irenaeus believed in the seven heavens nonsense). But maybe Mr. Doherty, sufficiently motivated by Jeff, can find a way to work around this. And perhaps when Peter finishes GDon Jehusvonni he can co-Ordinate the desired Project mentioned above.



Joseph

EDITOR, n.
A person who combines the judicial functions of Minos, Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, but is placable with an obolus; a severely virtuous censor, but so charitable withal that he tolerates the virtues of others and the vices of himself; who flings about him the splintering lightning and sturdy thunders of admonition till he resembles a bunch of firecrackers petulantly uttering his mind at the tail of a dog; then straightway murmurs a mild, melodious lay, soft as the cooing of a donkey intoning its prayer to the evening star. Master of mysteries and lord of law, high-pinnacled upon the throne of thought, his face suffused with the dim splendors of the Transfiguration, his legs intertwisted and his tongue a-cheek, the editor spills his will along the paper and cuts it off in lengths to suit. And at intervals from behind the veil of the temple is heard the voice of the foreman demanding three inches of wit and six lines of religious meditation, or bidding him turn off the wisdom and whack up some pathos.

http://www.errancywiki.com/index.php/Main_Page

PhilosopherJay

Hi Malachi151,

Precisely. The later copies are irrelevent and the citing of the 24,000 manuscript number (most of which are fragments) is deceptive.

The situation may be compared to Erich Von Stroheim's "Greed"
In Dec. 1923, he showed a 45 reel, ten hour version of the film to friends and associates. He cut this down to 42 reels which he sent to the MGM studio. They demanded further cuts. He cut it to 24 reels, 4 hours and hoped the studio would release it in two parts. The studio took it away from him and cut the film to 10 reels, two hours. Apparently the other reels of Greed were burned in a fire. In 1999 Turner Movie Classics, using still photos, and descriptions of Von Stroheim's 4 hour cut, produced a four hour version similar to Von Stroheim's four hour version.

Now there have been DVD copies of the two hour 1925 released version, probably a million of them. We can say that they are 99.95% the same. We can say that therefore there is no descrepency between what we watch and the people in 1925 watched.

But this obscures the real problem that we don't have Von Stroheim's 4 hour, 8 hour or 10 hour versions of the film. We can say that the earlier versions of the film were tremendously different experiences, but we can't produce them.

We know that the early versions of the biblical manuscripts have the most descrepancies in them as opposed to later manuscripts. Based on these early manuscripts and the different readings that the Church Fathers give us, we can say that the earlier manuscripts were significantly different from what we now possess, whether 99.5% different or only 50% different is hard to say.

Warmly,

Philospher Jay

Roger Pearse

Surely I addressed this, with my point about De ieiunio? Do you know just how many ancient texts are only extant in manuscripts of that date? Or later?

How is this different in practical terms from saying that if we do not care about a text then we will allow it to be sound, right up to the point at which we find a reason that it is inconvenient?

This is of course special pleading. Surely we must treat all texts alike, as far as their nature as texts is concerned.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Malachi151

But its not the same. Taking the whole mass of manuscripts that we have, from the 4th century to the 15th century, where 90% of them were written after the 10th century, and then saying that the variation among all these manuscripts is small is completely deceptive.

The major variation is between the manuscripts from the 4th to 8th centuries, and who knows what variations there were prior to that, we only have hints in the writings that say things like there being a 14, 15, and 16 chapter version of the Letter to the Romans, and a totally different version of Luke, etc., none of which we have access to anymore.

If you remove the manuscripts from after the minuscule explosion, the rate of variance goes way up I would be more than willing to bet, though I don't have those stats on hand to know. Among the early manuscripts the variation was high, that variation was later weeded out and drowned out by large numbers of sanitized manuscripts.

No it's not, we do this all the time.

We don't treat documents handed over to us by Enron the same as a report on honey production in Texas. We don't treat Soviet Era documents the same as copies of Curious George.

We know, for example, that Stalin's regime edited documents and photographs to remove references to Trotsky and others to diminish their role in the Revolution and to elevate Stalin's role. Stalin was actively rewriting history, therefore we don't take documents from Stalin's archive and treat them blindly as authentic.

Surely we can say the same thing for the documents of early Christianity.

gstafleu

Texts are generally written for an audience, so perhaps we can treat them alike in so far as their audiences viewed them alike. Let us compare Ovids Metamorphoses with a gospel. Do you think that the readers of Metamorphoses viewed it the same as Christians reading a gospel? Have you ever seen a book "Against all metamorphology heresies" by a Metamorph Father?

Gerard Stafleu

Roger Pearse

There are many assertions in all this, and few of them seem right to me.

Few texts are extant in manuscripts earlier than the 9th century. Very few of those have more than one copy of that date. So quite how what you write can be known I do not know.

The idea that scribes somehow got better after the 9th century is an interesting one, but I'd want to see some evidence. I can't imagine why they would, myself.

I wonder who you got that from? It sounds highly unlikely to me, as a rule.

No doubt. But objectivity is the casualty.

All the best,

Roger Pearse