Kosh

He's attempting to create a new logical fallacy:

Argumentum ad Documentum

Koyaanisqatsi

I'm going to have to ask pretty much the same thing everyone else has. What do you mean by "textual attestation?"

Perhaps if you can clear that up, someone will be able to answer you.

BTW, Kat "C.E." means "Common Era." It's the secular version of "A.D."

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by IntenSity: What exactly does textual support mean? And why is it important? If a document is found in Greece dated 3 BC and another one is found in Rome dated 3 BC and both state that in the early part of the century, people in Jerusalem rose from the dead and tombs opened and they reunited with their families, what does that prove? That people indeed rose from the dead?

I'll try to clarify this again. The original writings of ancient philosophers, poets, and historians do not exist. They're lost. Plato wrote "Republic", but we don't have the original document on which Plato actually wrote "Republic". We only have later copies of "Republic". Are we clear so far?

Let us say (this is not actually true) that we only had one copy of "Republic", and the copy we had was written in 1000 C.E. We would have no way of knowing if it accurately reflected the original version of "Republic" (the one that Plato actually wrote) since we would have no other copies with which to compare it. Is everyone still with me?

The reason it is beneficial to have many copies of an ancient writing that date from a time close to its original composition is so that we have more copies to compare with one another in order to determine the original wording of the document. Copies from a period closer to the original composition are less likely to have errors than copies from a much later period. This is not a hard and fast rule, but a generality deduced from common sense.

To those of you who are paranoid that I'm trying to prove the truthfulness of Christianity, you can relax. The title of this forum is "Biblical Criticism and Archaeology". Textual criticism falls within both of these parameters.

Does this help?

Koyaanisqatsi

Once would have been sufficient.

Yes. We have a copy of Plato's "Republic" not the actual "Republic," which means absolutely nothing.

Yes. Not being able to compare copies means absolutely nothing since no copyist would significantly alter Plato's words. That's why they're called "copyists" and not "plagiarists."

The only result of that comparison would be typos, sinc ethere would be no motive for anyone to rewrite Plato's "Republic."

What you're talking about is paranoia; the paranoia that a copyist would deliberately and significantly alter the content of the work they are copying.

For that, there would have to be not only sufficient motive, but also anonymity, which a copyist of something like the "Republic" would not have. There was no cult of Plato and no motive to significantly redact his words in order to alter the content and meaning of the piece according to some agenda.

Only a paranoid mind and/or a guilty mind would think that a copyist deliberately and significantly altered the actual content and not just irrelevant typos.

Copies. They are copies. That means that they are the "original wording of the document."

Well, now we've finally gotten somewhere. What kinds of "errors" are you referring to, because if you're just worried about typos, don't be? They would be trivial at best.

To one who suspects that a version read today that makes no sense must have one day made sense and it was all the fault of a plagiarist who significantly altered the actual content according to an overriding agenda.

Since it isn't possible to prove the "truthfulness" of christianity, we are relaxed.

Then go ahead and criticise the texts--such as the King James Version or the ever popular NIV--since they are the texts the christian cult members of today base their programming upon.

Myths change for every generation, so while going back to earlier versions of those myths might give you some insight into the growth of the myth over time, it won't change the fact that they're fictional stories of events that never actually happened.

So you've found the original copy of Rumpelstiltskin and found out it wasn't straw that was spun into gold, it was silk. Great. Thanks for clearing it up.

Likewise, you find the original "Mark" and discover that Jesus resurrected on the fifth day. Great. Thanks for clearing it up.

Does this help?

madmax2976

By "money" I assume you mean coinage of some sort?
If so, I think it likely that they did. Such an advanced civilization would likely have minted up some coins rather than rely completely on the barter system. Smaller socieites do tend to rely on barter alone. In larger societies, coins can have practical advantages and the resources are more readily avaible by which to make them.

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by katerina2: Second, less stupid question: I like your definition of textual criticism. But what does 'textual support' prove? Historicity? Factual basis? Origins? afaik the new testament writings have durned good textual support, iirc the best relative to the rest.

The only thing textual support indicates is the degree of confidence we can have in knowing the original wording of a document.

Quote:

Iirc there was no organized rich group that early on tried to preserve the sayings or texts. Christianity as a religion/movement was really quite a powerful one. But not influential in richer classes till 2C AD or so. You don't find texts on parchment till then. But--what intrigues me about religious texts is the lack of error in copying. When you do textual criticism, textual emendation is a real big deal. It's quite common and human to misread, skip a line and say something twice, etc. You get your eyes trained to pick up questionable bits of non sense that seem likely copying errors. The attention to accuracy of the OT law is really amazing to me. IIRC the stats on the NT, there is phenomenal accuracy there, too. I've never seen something that compares errors betw. nt/ot docs with code of hammurabi or something, but I'd be curious to.

Christianity had virtually no political power until the 4th century when Emperor Constantine promoted Christianity. Just prior to Constantine, Diocletian sought to destroy the writings of Christians (the New Testament) through an imperial edict.

It’s difficult to find other documents with which to compare the New Testament in terms of copyist errors because, to my knowledge, there are few writings that have more than a handful of manuscript copies in existence.

Polycarp

Quote:

Originally posted by madmax2976: By "money" I assume you mean coinage of some sort? If so, I think it likely that they did. Such an advanced civilization would likely have minted up some coins rather than rely completely on the barter system. Smaller socieites do tend to rely on barter alone. In larger societies, coins can have practical advantages and the resources are more readily avaible by which to make them.

I was replying to this statement of yours:

"Hell, lets just assume that the New Testament writings do have the best collection of manuscripts to support them. Given the power and wealth of the church I wouldn't find this all that suprising. It took a lot of resources to be able to do this before the advent of the printing press and paper."

You seemed to be implying that Christianity may have had an unfair advantage in making huge numbers of manuscripts at a very early date. I was simply pointing out that pre-Constantine Rome could have easily done the same thing with their historians.

katerina2

Why thank you, cheri, for explaining that!

Ignorance is legion.

Koy rules!

but where do you get off calling me Kat?

Jayhawker Soule

Let it go. He was just being Koy.

katerina2

Does too. Means that we don't have the original text. In a court of law, a copy of the original has less validity than the original, for example, depending on what you are trying to prove. I can't show a fax of the deed to my house to prove I own it; have to have the original.

However, Koy, you are enough of a deconstructionist to be able to say something interesting about the questionable ontological status of 'originality'.


The question of 'forgery' (not plagiarism--that's stealing text) is an interesting one. The 'Donation of Constantine,' for example, is a late 800 C.E. forgery but was used by the Catholic church to prove something or other. Textual critics in the 15C C.E. demonstrated that it was a forgery using the methodology that Polycarp is describing and debunked the Catholic church's claim to the empire. (Was that Agrippa? or Nicolas da Cusa? J'oublie) Anyway, the dude who demonstrated the forgery got quite razzed for it by the Church.

But copyists are not voluntary forgerers or plagiarists. Fallibility is a simple fact of copying. You are going to make les erreurs. More times you copy a document, more errors will creep in (statistically speaking). Like the game of telephone.

I think you are the one who introduced the problem of forgery or deliberate error, Koy.

Wull...lessee: Alexandrian neo-platonists come to mind. Seems to me that Porphyry and his friends did a pretty good job altering Plato's philosophy (if not the text). Then Horace comes to mind. You know that a very basic principle of the ethetics and moral purpose of literature that Western Civilization uses comes from a misreading of a Greek text into Latin by Horace? Didn't get untangled till the nineteenth century or mid twentieth.

But those irrelevant typos are what we are talking about.

Like, imagine there was a typo in the Bill of Rights. And lawyers spent years quibbling about what the writers meant to put there.

Well, in the roman law that got received into early modern western europe (on which a great deal of church law is based) there were found to be some very significant typos. IIRC the questions of slavery and status of women revolved around typos, as well as the status of the holy roman emporer over a monarch (princeps legibus solutus est).

Nope. It is almost physically impossible to hand-copy a text and arrive at the exact 'original wording of the document'. Even when you make a digital copy of a doc, small errors in code creep in every time you copy it. Noise.
But the typos are not always trivial. See above.


It's false to imagine intentionality. All you need is a monk with cold fingers looking up from his text when a bell rings, and skipping a line. And not seeing the error when it is proofread.