Biblical Hebrew Forum

["Dave Washburn" <dwashbur AT nyx.net>]

I haven't commented so far, but this caught my attention:

> > Liz, how can we, objectively and concretely demonstrate that redactors
> > always add and never subtract? There are all sorts of problems with this
> > (common) assertion, not the least of which is that not everyone can agree
> > upon which portions of a given biblical text belong to which "layer" of
> > redaction.
> >
> > So, please elaborate/defend this assertion.
> 
> I don't have much to contribute to this discussion.
> It's based on the assumption that texts are holy.

But did these redactors consider it holy?  Since we don't really 
know when the texts achieved this status, this doesn't seem like a 
very solid assumption to me.

> They get added to, commented upon, the comments,
> the glosses, the additions get added to the text by the
> next copiest. Stuff is lost through haplography,
> but stuff is not usually considered omitted purposefully.
> This is suggestive when you consider the relationship between
> Kings and Chronicles. It's usually assumed that the Chronicler
> deleted stuff in Kings. This to me doesn't seem likely. More
> likely to me is Auld's hypothesis whereby each added to a common
> source, the common source being that which is common among them.

It seems much more likely to me that the Chronicler would 
deliberately leave out things like the Bathsheba episode, and I tend 
to think the reasons are fairly obvious.  Nevertheless, the fact that 
one can make a case either for addition, deletion or reworking of a 
common source illustrates just how "iffy" this whole field of source 
criticism is.

> I think the same reasoning is used in the NT. Isn't this why Mark is
> assumed to have preceeded Luke and Matt? Otherwise you'd have to
> argue that Mark deleted stuff. People get uncomfortable with that idea.

I'm not sure who these "people" are, but it doesn't make me 
uncomfortable in the least.  Yes, the assumption is that the 
shortest one came first and others added to it, but that's all it is, an 
assumption.  My own view is one of Matthean priority and it doesn't 
upset me at all to say that Mark left some things out for his own 
purposes.  That's what writers drawing from sources do, and I 
doubt the situation was any different with writers of the first century 
than it is with writers today.


Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever
tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be
violated."  C. S. Lewis