B. H. Manners

We all know that there are variant texts to the Bible books. However, do the writings of the church fathers show an inclination to have various textual discrepancies too like disputed variants, extra chapters, forgeries? The reason I ask is because apologists use the fathers as a source to decide which bible verse variants are legitimate or not based upon them being qouted in an early father's work. If it can be proven that people have tampered with the church fathers then that argument for the apologists will fall flat.
I know the donation of Constantine was a fraud so I could not help but ask about other works.

[ April 21, 2002: Message edited by: BH because of poor spelling ]

[ April 21, 2002: Message edited by: BH ]</p>

Sojourner553

(1) It can be proven that the original texts of the New Testament were tampered with (ever hear of a fellow named Constantin Tischendorf?)

See Section III, Chapter 3:
<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/index.html</a>

(2) If you want to see infighting among the early Christian sects and attacks against science (leading into the Dark Ages)

see Section V, Chapter 1,

(3)to see examples of early religious forgeries,

see Section V, Chapter 3

(4) how the other Christians (except for the Orthodox/Catholics) were persecuted out of existance, then later the pagan and Jews,

(5) were these internal purges probably the REAL cause of the Dark Ages?

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE4.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE4.TXT</a>

Hope this helps. As you will see -- the answers can be more complex than your thesis suggests.

Sojourner

[ April 21, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

B. H. Manners

Thanks Sojouner for the information and reminder to always be humble in pursuit of things like this.

Peter Kirby

The main problem with using the patristic writers as evidence for the original text is that our manuscripts for the church fathers are late as a rule -- ninth century or later. By that time, scribes will often have amended the texts to match the wording of the Old or New Testament passages with which the scribe was familiar. There was not necessarily any sinister motive in this, but it does make it difficult to rely on Church Fathers for the exact wording of the biblical texts. I do not know of any specific examples of such scribal assimilation right off the top of my head, but I know that this is the most commonly voiced concern of scholars in the question of using the church fathers to establish variants.

Then, there is also the problem that the text may have become corrupted by the time that the church father wrote. Consider the case of the longer ending of Mark (16:9-20). This passage was certainly used by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 180) and probably by Tatian for his Diatessaron (c. 170). A good number of scholars think that the passage was also known to Justin Martyr (c. 155) and to the Epistula Apostolorum (c. 145). Yet, for all the patristic witness to this passage, it is believed to have been added to Mark to fix the unsatisfactory conclusion of the Gospel.

There definitely could be problems with interpolation in patristic works. Consider the case of Ignatius of Antioch. The seven epistles attributed to Ignatius are known from a shorter recension, a longer recension, and a Syriac recension of just three epistles. Scholars today tend to think of the shorter recension as original, which the Syriac recension abridged and the longer recension expanded. But there was some textual tampering going on no matter what you think. And then there are some who would say that the epistles of Ignatius were not written by Ignatius in the first place (they say forgery).

I do not know of very many cases in which the writings of post-apostolic Church Fathers were deliberately forged; if someone needed an authority, it must have seemed best to pick an apostle for that purpose. But there are documents that were written anonymously and came to be falsely ascribed to Church Fathers. This literature includes Second Clement and Justin's Discourse to the Greeks.

Hope this helps.

Peter Kirby

CX

Peter Kirby's comments here are quite good, but I wanted to add one point regarding the editorial process involved in the critical greek texts (like NA27). Patristic citations are the lowest order of witness to variant readings in the critical apparatus. First order witnesses include the greek MSS (papyri, uncials & minuscules in that order). The second order witnesses are the so-called "versions" (Latin, Coptic, Syriac etc. translations of the Greek texts from antiquity). Finally, Patristic citations are listed as third order witnesses. I'm not aware of any case in NA27 (there could be one) where a Patristic citation that disagrees with the first and second order witnesses is used as the basis of the critical text. Patristic citations are listed for historical context only.

[ April 22, 2002: Message edited by: CX ]</p>

Haran

Forgive me if I just missed this being mentioned...

The early church fathers wrote many phrases that seem very similar to Bible verses, but not quite the same. Many scholars speculate that this may have been the result of oral tradition and/or memorization. Many times they simply conflated their sources to make a point.

For these reasons and the above by Peter and CX, scholars have always urged caution in using the writings of the church fathers as proof of NT text, though thy are definitely used.

Haran

B. H. Manners

Thanks guys. Down in Rants, Raves, and Preachings we have a Church of Christ minister friend named Booty who decided to come pay us a visit at my invitation. Why down you all come on down and join the fray and make him feel welcome. <img src="graemlins/boohoo.gif" border="0" alt="[Boo Hoo]" />

cloudyphiz

Sojourner553-

thanks for the links, that is an excellent, excellent site.
is it yours by any chance?

i'm at work, but i've hardly done a thing but read it all day

-gary

Roger Pearse

I run a site devoted to Tertullian
<a href="http://www.tertullian.org" target="_blank">The Tertullian Project</a>, so anything I say is based on this.

Tertullian's text is badly preserved; no MS earlier than the 9th century, but in some cases no MS at all any more, just 16th century printed texts. His language is very concise, and all his own. 'As many ideas as words', as Vincent of Lerins put it. This means that textual damage is particularly likely, and particularly likely to damage.

The works preserved in more than one MS do come with variants. I have online an edition of Adversus Valentinianos with critical apparatus, so you can form your own opinion. Many of his works are lost, while works not by him acquired his name in the MSS (normally quite innocently). However it might be interesting to wonder how works by Novatian came under his name. A collection of Tertullian's works, including his heretical works, and including two works of Novatian, came into being at some point. Perhaps a 5th century Novatianist group was responsible.

Tertullian's works show no signs of interpolation in the interest of a doctrine, although occasionally a gloss has found it's way into the text. At one point a prophecy by Priscilla is missing from one group of the manuscripts (it ends a chapter) - perhaps that was omitted for ideological reasons? But really we cannot tell.

Extra chapters: These do exist, and how. Tertullian rehandled his material. Initially he wrote an apology in two books, called Ad Nationes. This survived only in 1 MS, and parts of the pages have been cut off! Nevertheless you will find that text in the ANF, since it is fairly obvious what words the sense requires. This was in the style of the Greek apologists. He then reworked it into the Apologeticum, the main product of his genius which altered the whole way Christians looked at paganism. There are 38 MSS known to me of this. However, a different version once existed, which had 1000+ real variants, and in ch. 19 a huge additional piece. (The only MS we know of was destroyed in the 30-years war, but variants were recorded first). No-one knows if these are two editions, or whether some Carolingian scribe cut down and simplified at points into slightly less angular Latin - not much, mind you, as it's arguable. The upshot is that every edition of this work contains page after page of hestitation. But the text isn't realy unknown, even so, and we know what Tertullian is saying.

He did 3 editions of his Adversus Marcionem. The first was short; the second was stolen by a brother who then apostasised and put out a version for money. We have the third.

I don't know if this is helpful to you. But yes, the fathers have a textual tradition like everyone else. If this lot sounds bad, try some of the classics - they're worse! Other than the bible and works by big patristic writers like Augustine, most MSS traditions are a bit like this.

Tertullian's biblical quotations were not really normalised with the Vulgate. Not least because he tended to roll his own, and it wasn't always obvious what he was quoting.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

spin

You lost Booty back on page 12 of the thread. The rat pack is still babbling on though.