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  • From: FucciXXV AT aol.com
  • To: corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu
  • Subject: Re: Interpolations
  • Date: Sat, 3 Apr 1999 14:13:59 EST


In a message dated 4/3/99 8:40:19 AM Central Standard Time,
John.Hurd AT Squam.org writes:

> The problem with this approach is the same as the problem with the
> literary dissection of the letters (e.g., Schmithals): the idea is not
> impossible, but improbable to a degree which depends on the complexity
> of the hypothesis. Such theories are also unverifiable and lack a
> control. In my experience, if we think that the source documents need
> to be improved by editing, it means that we have not understood them
> sufficiently. One has only to look at the history of the discipline to
> see how some of the difficulties that scholars in the past have had with
> the sources smooth away with advances in knowledge and technique. (This
> is one reason why theories of interpolation were more popular then than
> now.)

Yet scribal alterations of the text are accepted as having occurred, as I
understand it. I recently read Bart D. Ehrman's "The Orthodox Corruption of
Scripture," in which he argues that particular NT textual corruptions were
the result of deliberate emendation to either bolster proto-Orthodox
Christological positions or eliminate potential proof-texts for opposing
"heretical" Christian factions.

Ehrman's arguments appear to me to be based on consistent methodology and
sound reasoning. 1 Cor 7:10 isn't addressed in his book, perhaps because the
Nestle-Aland shows no extant textual variants of that passage, but the phrase
"yet not I, but the Lord" certainly feels like the sort of interpolations
Ehrman cites. The suggestion is "unverifiable" in this case, which
unquestionably does weaken its force; but as a "hypothesis" its "complexity"
isn't such as would justify calling it "improbable."

Jim Thorn
Chicago, IL




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