Roger Pearse

I think we must have been at cross-purposes, for this is true (in general terms); once the society that had produced that literature had perished, much of it was without evident value to those who had to copy it by hand, and so perished.

Just to digress slightly: it's less than obvious what would be preserved and what would not. The school system in Byzantine Greece remained centred on the pagan literature, and on writing a good Attic style. Thus Julian the Apostate survives, and indeed letters were composed in his prose style as exercises. Likewise the Christological controversies of the 6th century required knowledge of Aristotelean dialectic; this resulted in the corpus of his works being translated twice over into Syriac, because the Syriac-speaking Christians wanted to take part in the arguments (because it was the nearest thing to politics in that despotic empire). On the other hand works written specifically to insult those who had to copy stuff had many fewer chances of survival. Then again, the 6th century pagan Zosimus' work, the New History, which insults Constantine extensively, was copied, at the Studion monastery no less.

The text transmission (only) was the issue I was concerned with, so we were probably at cross-purposes.


We know when Polybius was writing his work because he partook in the period he was writing about. We know who Polybius was and who his audience was and what his approach to history was. This helps us to locate the work of Polybius in its cultural context.
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You'll have to excuse me, but since I don't know on what data these statements rest, I can't comment on them.

I'm afraid I have to stand by my comments. That two of your three illustrations were emperors is the point I was making.

I've omitted various reiterations.

We should consider the sheer quantity of patristic literature, as compared to classical. The citations of Josephus before 325 AD are probably less than 20 all told, including 14 in the fathers. By contrast you could probably find every passage in the NT cited in the fathers by that date (I've been told it is so; but don't necessarily believe it).

'Fraid so.

I do not share your opinion, I'm afraid. Indeed looking at the historical record, the idea can only be sustained by hiding from the evidence!

I don't pretend to know anything much about the transmission of the OT, so can't really comment intelligently. My attempt to get some scholars interested in doing a companion to Texts and Transmissions: a survey of the Latin classics (a tome which lies behind some of what I have said) was a miserable failure, so I have no knowledge of the mss of Thucydides. I would imagine that it is based, like most Greek texts, on a handful of 9th+ century minuscules, probably all derived from a single uncial exemplar. I regret that I cannot find the website with a list of all the papyri of literary texts, so can't say much about those either. But papyri in general belong to 'wild' texts.

However the answer is probably 'yes'.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse

I'm not sure whom you're quoting in this 'web of historical evidence' stuff, but may I advise you to be sceptical of it? It's all fair enough as far as it goes; but to suggest that in some way it shows the biblical account to be worthless is untrue, IMHO.

Let's think of Schliemann, not of a priori reasons to ignore evidence.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

You haven't read my previous post.

I have looked into the Schliemann issue at length. We still don't know what he found. There certainly wasn't where he first looked, so he tried again. He was lucky a second time, but what did he find?


spin