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  • From: "David C. Hindley" <dhindley AT compuserve.com>
  • To: "Corpus-paul" <corpus-paul AT franklin.oit.unc.edu>
  • Subject: Mss Tradition
  • Date: Sat, 1 Apr 2000 13:29:14 -0500


On Thu, 30 Mar 2000, Mark Nanos said in response to Dave Hindley:

>>In addition, a line of the questions that arises for me in
considering your proposed method is the supposed manuscript tradition.

*Does your view suppose that all the manuscripts and parts we have or
that are attested in some way are after this interpolation took place?

*And does it suppose that there was only one copy of each of Paul's
letters at the time; moreover, that this one editor (or is there a
group collaborating on this?) possessed them and no one else?

*And that no one else was aware or objected effectively enough to bear
witness to an alternative anti-this-interpolation version?

*How do you see this working out in social historical terms? Where?
When? By whom?<<

If we assume that copies were made of Paul's original epistles for the
sake of distribution, or to be used for instruction in Christian
dogma, or for purposes of edification, these later interpolations
would then likely have created a dissonance within the Christian
community that we should find some evidence for, either textually or
in early Christian traditions.

Naturally, I did look for textual evidence for interpolations once I
thought that they appeared to be present for thematic reasons.
However, as you are surely aware, there was scant, if any, hard
evidence for my proposed interpolations on a textual level. I had to
postulate that the texts were preserved in such a way that competing
editions, if any, were not preserved in deference to the surviving
ones.

David Trobisch has done some interesting work on this question of mss
transmission. He concludes that the surviving corpus represents an
archetype that shows little, if any, influence from competing
editions. This is based on the lack of variation in titles and a
general agreement in order.

While Trobisch, I understand, himself postulates that it was Paul who
edited and published his correspondence as a corpus (less Hebrews), it
can be inferred that either the original epistles were likely not
circulating independently, or that the scribes who contributed to the
preservation of our current corpus elected not to copy them in
deference to the versions in the NT. It seems that I will have to take
a good hard look at his work as I progress.

As for traditions, I also tried to find evidence for it in the early
Christian fathers, this time with mixed results. If we use the texts
through Justin, a quick review turns up the following quotations
(compiled from the indices and English translations in vol 1 of
Donaldson's _Ante Nicene Fathers_):

WORK NT TEXT Quote Incl Int.?

CLEMENT1 COR 1 02:09 N
CLEMENT1 ROM 01:32 N
CLEMENT1 ROM 12:05 N*
CLEMENT1 TIT 03:01 N
IGN-EPH-S COR 1 01:10 N*
IGN-EPH-S COR 1 01:20 N
IGN-EPH-S EPH 05:02 Y
IGN-ROM-S COR 1 04:04 N
IGN-ROM-S COR 2 04:18 N
JUSTIN-DIA COR 1 11:19 ? (Not Chrisological)
POLYCARP COR 1 06:02 N
POLYCARP COR 1 06:09-10 Y
POLYCARP COR 2 05:10 Y
POLYCARP COR 2 08:21 N (PROV 3:4 LXX)
POLYCARP EPH 02:08a,09 N* (OMITS INT. IN V.8b)
POLYCARP EPH 04:26 N (PS 4:4)
POLYCARP EPH 06:14 N
POLYCARP GAL 01:01 Y
POLYCARP GAL 04:26 Y
POLYCARP GAL 06:07 Y
POLYCARP ROM 12:17 Y
POLYCARP ROM 14:10-12 N
POLYCARP THE 1 05:22 N
POLYCARP THE 2 03:15 N
POLYCARP TIM 1 06:07 N
POLYCARP TIM 1 06:10 N
POLYCARP TIM 2 02:12 Y

Key: The "S" after the Ignatian texts refers to the shorter Greek
(a.k.a. "middle") rescension. An "*" after a "N" means that the NT
verse contains an interpolation that was not part of the quote. The
"?" indicates that I am not sure at this point about this passage,
which deals with the role of women.

Offsetting these are the fact that neither Barnabas or "Mathetes"
directly quote Paul at all, and that three of the above four authors
also quote works that are often ascribed later dates than Paul's own
time:

CLEMENT1 ACTS 20:35
CLEMENT1 HEB 01:03-04
CLEMENT1 JAS 01:08
CLEMENT1 JAS 02:23
CLEMENT1 PET 2 03:03-04
JUSTIN-RES ACTS 01:09
POLYCARP ACTS 02:24

Polycarp, too, is so jam packed with NT quotations that I am
suspicious that it may have come from the same kind of factory that
churned out the longer Greek rescension of the Ignatian epistles.

Based on these observations, I'd say that the epistles *may* have been
circulating in circles which included the authors we know as Clement
of Rome, Ignatius and Justin, although not in an interpolated form.
The exception is Ignatius to the Ephesians, but the possibility exists
that this anomaly could be ascribed to a scribal gloss or a redaction
in its own right.

The whole issue of the authenticity of the works ascribed to these
fathers is unsettled, in my opinion. If I suspect that the Pauline
epistles have been interpolated, it is also possible that some of
these have as well (though not necessarily by the same parties). As a
result, no strong evidence exists here either way.

Regards,

Dave Hindley
Cleveland, Ohio, USA





  • Mss Tradition, David C. Hindley, 04/01/2000

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