Haran

The problem is that the ancient documents changed over time, so the fewer copies you have (in some cases we have only one medieval copy), the less you can be sure of what the original said. I don't think it is an unreasonable or necessarily apologetic claim to make.

As for independent testimonies and proximal witnesses, the NT has those in the form of Church Father's works (among other things - depending on just how proximal you mean). It would be interesting to see a comparison of this between the NT and other classical works, though.

Metacrock

Meta =>Not ture. The Diatesseron dates to 172 and it contains almost the whole of the four Gospels. That's also not counting quotations in chruch fathers. But even so it doesn't matter that so many are after 200, the point is they are all virtually identical in substantial terms (give or take syntacitcal and spelling problems).

That all indicates that we have the reading that was written by the authors to within 95% or so.

Vinnie

That is missing the point. This has nothing to do with a comparison of other works. Once the canon was official I do not see much disputing of the individual texts of the NT. The question is, what possible developmnt was there before this period?

Further, if we are "hard-pressed to find other ancient works with attestation so close to the originals" would agnosticism be a prudent course of action? Wouldn't it be dependent upon the type of material and the say, the willingness of people to edit such material?

I am going to have to dispute this. To be quite honest, we don't know how many textual alterations there actually were in the NT. What sources of Mcdowell did this information come from?

Why should a work with lacking attestation axiomatically be granted historical presumption?

I agree with not "special pleading here". Treat the NT works individually as historical documents. That is the point I am trying to stress.

By Gentile I meant Jewish convert (aka the author of Mark).

I assumed the 2ST for my comments and many 2ST advocates argue for fluid gospel composition and think Matthew and luke uses different versions of Mark.

But my overall impression of the resulting text of the NT is positive. But this is too general. Some works are better attested than others.

Personally, I think it was a waste of 5,000 hours.

That isn't the impression I got from the Raymond Brown quote:

""'Many differences among the textual families visible in the great uncial codices of the 4th and 5th centuries existed already ca. 200 as we see from the papri and early translations. How could so many differences arise within a hundred years after the original books were written? The answer may lie in the attitude of the copyists toward the NT books being copied. These were holy books because of their content and origins, but there was no slavish devotion to their exact wording. They were meant to be commented on and interpreted, and some of that could be included in the text. Later when more fixed ideas of the canon and inspiration shaped the mind-set, attention began to center on keeping the exact wording. The Reformation spirit of "Scripture alone" and an ultraconservative outlook on inspiration as divine dictation intensified that attention."""

Intro NT, p. 51

Doesn't a statement like this assume some sort of inspiration and also canonization? Who said there was a consistent doctrine in all of the NT? Compare the sayings material of GJohn with that of the synoptics. To speak of a unanimous doctrine like this comes with an implicit assumption of canonization and probably a form of inspiration. Its apologetics, not history.


I respect Metzger's work but talking about the NT assumes canoniztion and is apologetics not history. Even if a secular historian mentions the NT as such he is making an error. If not, am I to assume that the textual reliabiltity and attestation of all
27 works of the NT is the same or close enough? Or should I take the statement as being a very general statement? Historians should ignore the canonical dimension of the NT and treat the works as individual texts. You can't do good history without presciding from faith.

I have the work but I'm not digging through it. Whether or not he makes these claims explicit its the general impression a lot of people seem to have gotten out of the book (myself including).

Q is hypothetical but so is the existence of Jesus. History works in probability. I find Q to be supported by the evidence (I almost rejected that in favors of Sanders view which posits Luke knew Matthew). But my comments assumed the veracity of the 2ST.

You might be special pleading here as well. Thomas is a Christian document. Its a sayings list about Jesus and it was edited. The fact that it is not in the canon only shows that some people engage in special pleading when it comes to the NT. The canon gets no special treatment when doing history. I am listing early Christian examples of major editing. Thomas, whether accepted into the official Christian canon or not, is of direct relevance here.

My comment on the variations in Mark had nothing to do with the endings. Some scholars feel Matthew and Luke used different versions of Mark (Marcan priority). Gospel composition was a fluid process. The possibility of proto-gospels, the whole nine yards.

Note that such was a very general statement. I think some works are better supported than others. For instance, Mark is used by both Matthew and Luke. We also have the Diatessaron and its author, I think, did not merge Gospel readings but quoted the verses side by side correct?

I think attestation here is strong. I'm not convinced every work has such solid attestation.

I have a bone to pick with bad apologetics and I don't like conservative forms of inspiration. They can be dangerous.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

For crying out loud! How many times do we have to refute this nonsense claim? Ancient documents in the original abound. The greatest textual "validity" would be for those texts which we have direct from the author's hand -- letters, purchase orders, and other mundanities from papyrus hoards, or diaries and numerous other documents yanked from ancient tombs in China. Any letter of the mundane "bring home two loaves of bread with you" found at Oxyrhynchus would destroy anything in the NT for textual reliability. Ditto for the dozens of diaries and other documents pulled out of the ground in China, or the millions of characters inscribed in various ways across the Old World.

Needham, writing in 1986, noted:

• Since the end of the 19th century, no fewer than 40,000 tablets of bamboo and wood have been uneartherd from various locations in China.[lists several major sites]...all documents from Loulan belong to the Chin dynasty [3rd century]. These tablets include official documents, private letters, calendars, lexicons for beginners, laws and statutes, medical prescriptions, literary texts, and miscellaneous records.[lists numerous other finds]..and some 20,000 wooden tablets dated from c. -119 to +26, from Chu-yen in Kansu.

Now, obviously such numbers and quality blows away anything found in the NT. And if you feel like qualifying that by saying "well, that's in the East" let's recall that treaty made by the Egyptians and the Hittites long before Paul and James cursed our world with their dream of a mad eschatological savior god. There are thousands of similar inscriptions throughout the remains of numerous empires across the ancient world, not to mention surviving original documents in a variety of media.

We shouldn't forget that printing, and textual analysis both began in the East long before they began in the West. So the earliest surviving printed original documents would represent much better "attestation" than anything in the NT.

So let's see what Haran's claim really boils down to. It consists of defining "attestation" in such a way -- transmitted texts -- that only the Bible can win. It's the usual unethical Christian claim, a claim deliberately designed to give the NT some kind of halo of hoary authority. It's mere propaganda.

So let's face a few facts: the monkish copy machine was nothing but a form of group madness, half-blind celibates practicing their writing skills by practicing thought control on themselves through copying only approved works over and over again. The sheer madness of committing so much precious time and effort to making 6,000 or 10,000 or 24,000 copies of the same 27 books, when so much was lost or destroyed over the years, ought to daunt anyone who thinks that this effort somehow redounds to the credit of the NT. It doesn't. The monks were doubly damned; first for the destruction of learning they engendered in the Old and New World, and second, for wasting their energy and talent mindlessly making copies of the same document over and over like robots in a factory where the owner has gone home and forgotten to turn off the machines, when so much was crying out for preservation and is now lost.

The really ironic thing about this nonsense claim is that the number of copies decreases, not increases, "attestation." This is because as copies multiply errors creep in; while the variety of documents ensures preservation of both error and different readings of the same text. Additionally, the existence of "lines" or "families" of manuscripts implies that the NT never had any "attestation" -- it was a mess from early on. Certainly Acts and its 10% larger Western version hint at this. Thanks to the multiple copies, we know that things were moved around, deleted, redacted and otherwise messed with. What we have is a deliberate creation of men and women who were seeking to create scriptural validity for their theological and political positions.

Far from being well-attested, all evidence indicates that the NT has been extensively edited, redacted and modified to create its current version. After all, the fidelity of 13th century copyists is irrelevant if second century editors hacked up the gospels, cutting out some parts and moving others to other gospels, while other redactors were hard at work making massive insertions in John, etc. Seen in that light, the current critical text must be seen for what it is: a construction based on the assumption that there was some unimpeachable "original" source text, when in fact redacted and forged versions were already circulating early and often. The modern critical NT is not the result of textual criticism, but a creation of it.

Vorkosigan

lpetrich

In fairness, some medieval monks did have broader interests. But these were mostly:

Hymnals and the like

Largely-fictional biographies of saints, complete with numerous alleged miracles.

And where are those who consider all those miracles to be completely factual history, on the ground that all those monks wouldn't lie? Or that being skeptical of those miracles would be applying a "hermeneutic of suspicion" rather than a "hermeneutic of confidence"?

RED DAVE

It seems to me that much of McDowall and Co.'s points vis-a-vis other ancient texts are irrelevant for these reasons (among others):

1. No one, nowadays, is asserting that ancient religious texts, such as the Iliad or the Epic of Gilgamesh, are 100% accurate records of historical truth. So, the consistency or lack thereof of the texts is irrelevant. If we were only concerned with the Gospels as literature, this whole debate, in thgis regard, would be silly.

2. Most of the surviving ancient texts deal with mundane matters (receipts, letters, etc.). There are so supernatural happenings, no claims of someone walking on water or rising from the dead. Therefore, again, the question of reliability isn't relevant. No one is making a religion around some Egyptian letter about grain prices.

3. With regard to many major ancient texts, e.g. Caesar's Commentaries, there has never been an controversy about their veracity.

Once again, we get a set of hype-rational arguments about the inarguable. The question of text veractiy, a la, McDowell, to the truth of the Gospels, is irrelevant. Whether 5, 5000 or 50,000 hours were consumed, you can't make steak out of shit by adding spices or improving the recipe.

RED DAVE

Haran

[Be as nice as possible mode]

Vork, the 24,000 manuscripts was not my claim. This was the claim of Montgomery as repeated by McDowell.

My intent was to explain it. I pointed out that there seem to be methodological flaws. I even mentioned your claims about ancient documents, Vork.

Vinnie has some points about a better methodology, but I think he vastly overstates his case.

Finally, as to the hate-filled rhetoric "dangerous" fundamentalists and "unethical" Christians...a quote from the good 'ol KJV should do the job:

"And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?"

The "evil theist conspiracy" is every bit as errant as the "evil atheist conspiracy". Some of the most loving, kindest, thoughtful, and giving people that I have known in my life were fundamentalist Christians. Some of the worst people that I have known were atheists or extrememly liberal Christians. May I too generalize from these experiences? No....

I leave the 24,000 MSS discussion to those who seem to only want to beat up on things and people rather than wanting to understand where they might have come from and why.

[/Be as nice as possible mode]

MortalWombat

I don't think we actually have papyrii or other physical samples of the Diatesseron that are dated to 172 however. The dates that CX refers to with regard to attestable manuscripts are dates of the actual physical manuscripts (papyrii etc.).


See this site for the following quote:

Vorkosigan

Finally, as to the hate-filled rhetoric "dangerous" fundamentalists and "unethical" Christians...a quote from the good 'ol KJV should do the job:

Haran, the whole point of "attestation" is simply to invent a category under which Christianity can be made to seem hoary with age and the Bible properly transmitted. Since those who make that claim are well aware it is false and have deliberately constructed it, it is unethical. You did a good job of dodging that fact, though, I admit.

Vorkosigan

Jackalope

Er, are we missing part of that quote? That should be 13th century *BCE*. Makes a really big difference.

Also, the fact that both Iliad and Odyssey were written during an era when wax and clay tablets were the common writing material means that you won't have too many surviving originals.


By the way, it's *Ovid* who's works were transmitted as religious documents.