renassault

Yes. The parts of the New Testament where interpolations are cited, such as the doxology in Romans 16, or the "en Efesos" in Ephesians are all based on textual evidence, without which it is not really possible to maintain there is one.

By the way I'm interested in that German article you said you could give. If you could give it somehow, it'd be greatly appreciated

hjalti

And why is that not possible?

Here you go: http://rapidshare.com/files/373273503/1kor15.pdf.html

renassault

The record can't cover up an insertion/deletion from the text in both Eastern and Western codices/manuscripts within 150-200 years. For example, Codex D has 10% more material for Acts, with numerous changes, but this never went into all of the manuscript copies, and is thus known as the "Western Acts" (it's inauthentic).

Thanks a lot

hjalti

renassault, you need to be more specific.

If this is so clear, then I find it strange that people can publish articles in journals like CBQ and argue for exactly this position.

renassault

What position? The articles I've read in CBQ that argue about this do so in the OT (understandable), and there are disputes as to the wording of small portions (words/phrases), but not nearly something such as the forgery of 1 Cor. 15:3-11.. such a large corruption would have certainly left a trace in the textual record. The reason there isn't 100% certainty as to the text of the NT is because the manuscripts that are considered highly reliable are not that many. Large deviations occur late in the textual record such as the Byzantine codices, and they are detectable, whereas Price argues for a large deviation that is undetectable.. which is impossible no matter when it was inserted.

hjalti

The position that there is an interpolation in a Pauline epistle althought there isn't any evidence in the textual record.

Well, we have articles like this:

Is first Corinthians 13 a non-Pauline interpolation? WALKER, JR., WILLIAM O.
Catholic Biblical Quarterly; Jul98, Vol. 60 Issue 3, p484, 16p (his answer is "Yes")

and

1 Corinthians 15:29-34 as a Non-Pauline Interpolation. Walker, Jr., William O.
Catholic Biblical Quarterly; Jan2007, Vol. 69 Issue 1, p84-103, 20p

You might find the second chapter in Walker's book, Interpolations in the Pauline Epistles, interesting. The chapter is called "The absense of direct text-critical evidence for interpolation" and you can read it here

Well, Walker shows that that's just not true.

renassault

I just read that chapter and.. this is the same plagued view he has as Price, who apparently summarized him: "Absense of evidence isn't evidence of absense".. umm in this case it is. He cites C.K. Barrett's statement that the mss. can't tell us anything about the state of the Pauline literature prior to publication, which I find completely untrue, if that's how Barrett intended it. He cites Ehrman's mistaken idea that Christian literature was in a "state of flux" prior to the late 2nd century.. that may be true for the canon but not the content of the letters. If Ehrman is correct that various scribes changed the mss. from what they "said" to what they intended to "mean" there would be no families of mss. at all. If Ehrman is correct that all/most textual variants originated during 2nd and 3rd centuries, it then makes you wonder how the changes became universal in the manuscript tradition.

The rest is just an explanation of the motivations and occasions there were for "corrupting" the corpus, all of which is in my opinion unlikely (e.g. texts did not have canonical status and thus were changed, yet see 2 Thess. 2:2, which clearly condemns forgeries, even if it itself is a forgery, nevertheless sees Pauline letters and other apostolic writings as not to be forged), not to mention that the above doesn't explain how they got into the mss. tradition.

He compares the fact that there are no mss. of 10-Pauline letter collections or individual books around with the textual record of the individual Pauline letters. But that's the whole point: the 10-Pauline letter collection survives in the 14-Pauline letter collections that we have, and the individual letters in those, in the same way that early errors would make it into some of the manuscripts.

Finally he maintains that the other "extraneous" copies were neglected/suppressed due to the "standardized" copies of the collection. This runs into three huge problems. First, no one had that kind of power. Second, apparently they had enough power to bust this book burning but decided to include a couple of interpolations for fun's sake (Romans 16:25-27, Ephesians, 1 Cor 14, etc). Third, other lengthy deviations such as the Western Acts completely destroy this theory, not to mention that the East and West had different canons up until the 4th century! My, the Church had the power to universally wipe out deviations to 98.5% in the Pauline letters in the 2nd century but not unite on the canon until the 4th. Surely, you can see something's wrong in claiming that the text was originally "in a state of flux".

spamandham

The is not reasonable certainty that any portion of the epistles are authentic, and even less so for 1 Cor 15. There is only unreasonable certainty.

hjalti

Well, Walker points to an excellent example: The Marcionite version of the Pauline epistles. That surely is a "state of flux". This seems to show that people who say "We don't like forgeries." can create them!
But that's his whole point: We don't know how faithfully the individual letters or these collections have survived in our fourteen letter collection:
Here's a scenario for you: An editor collects the Pauline letters and adds in some interpolations to create a collection of fourteen Pauline letters. Then that collection goes around and get's copied to give us all of our manuscripts. But the individual letters disappear. You would not find traces of this editorial activity in the textual record.

An excellent example of this is the theory that 2 Corinthians is a composite letter. Where in the textual record can we find traces of this editorial activity?

renassault

There would be too many mss. by the time this new collection of 14 letters spreads to disappear. As mentioned, no one had the power to make that happen mechanically, and it would never happen naturally. Marcion's version of Paul's letters is clearly known and reflected in the mss.'s, some of them have the doxology after chapter 15 which was Marcion's redaction.

That was likely done by the Corinthians themselves, if it's true. You think they made a ton of revisions to Paul's letter as well? That's speculative beyond proof and highly unlikely, as Paul was alive and the letter would have been copied and known for the 10 years until he died probably enough times to reflect it in the record. It just shows that in order for there to be a multitude of hidden redactions, one has to really will it.