Re: Who axed Acts 8:37?
Posted: Tue Sep 04, 2018 2:37 pm
What about the use of nomina sacra in the earliest surviving manuscripts? Does that not suggest the texts were considered holy from the beginning (or very close to it) ?
Investigating the roots of western civilization (ye olde BC&H forum of IIDB lives on...)
https://earlywritings.com/forum/
What about the use of nomina sacra in the earliest surviving manuscripts? Does that not suggest the texts were considered holy from the beginning (or very close to it) ?
I think we have to distinguish between the text itself and the subject matter. The figures the text talks about were certainly considered holy, thus the nomina sacra. However, there's a reason why the Jewish custom to write holy texts anonymously (and sometimes attribute them later to some larger-than-life figures) exists. If a text was just written, even worse, if you know the author, it's hard to see the text itself as something worth being venerated. It's the poster child of TMI. If you know some "colleague" of yours wrote something about a matter dear to your heart, it's only today's idea of copyright that prevents us from fixing a few things we see as "off" or needing better explanations when we use the text for our purposes. Or we just write commentaries in the margins, which also happened in those times. I'm sure that different kinds of edits with different motivations were what happened to all these texts in the beginning.
Yes, the texts were massaged, and source texts were amalgamated and borrowed from to produce new anonymous texts. Clearly that happened.Ulan wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:38 amI think we have to distinguish between the text itself and the subject matter. The figures the text talks about were certainly considered holy, thus the nomina sacra. However, there's a reason why the Jewish custom to write holy texts anonymously (and sometimes attribute them later to some larger-than-life figures) exists. If a text was just written, even worse, if you know the author, it's hard to see the text itself as something worth being venerated. It's the poster child of TMI. If you know some "colleague" of yours wrote something about a matter dear to your heart, it's only today's idea of copyright that prevents us from fixing a few things we see as "off" or needing better explanations when we use the text for our purposes. Or we just write commentaries in the margins, which also happened in those times. I'm sure that different kinds of edits with different motivations were what happened to all these texts in the beginning.
My ignorance. Can you explain "how this works in Irenaeus"?
I think those questions are closely related. I see Irenaeus as turning point for a reason. That's the point where we turn from a kind of nebulous early Christianity that didn't bother much with record keeping or exact quotations (disclaimer: if Justin did indeed use exact quotations, he used different texts, which I consider a non-zero probability) to a real attempt at trying to get a grasp on church history (whether real, fabricated or a mix of both doesn't matter for the argument). He is basically the first to define the fourfold gospel canon, give them the traditional names, and he is treating the texts as sacred enough that they should not be changed anymore. According to David Trobisch, the 4 gospel collection must have been already published at that point, and this assumption seems reasonable to me. This also means that radical text shuffling with huge edits, like we see in the synoptic gospels and the text that is described to having been used by Marcion, must have come to a close around that time in the line of tradition that led to extant Christianity. The formative years of Christianity must have been before 160 CE or so, and I guess you know that the manuscript evidence for that time is pretty much non-existent. We have to use extant texts and the writings of the church fathers to dig into this.gmx wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:16 amYes, the texts were massaged, and source texts were amalgamated and borrowed from to produce new anonymous texts. Clearly that happened.Ulan wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:38 amI think we have to distinguish between the text itself and the subject matter. The figures the text talks about were certainly considered holy, thus the nomina sacra. However, there's a reason why the Jewish custom to write holy texts anonymously (and sometimes attribute them later to some larger-than-life figures) exists. If a text was just written, even worse, if you know the author, it's hard to see the text itself as something worth being venerated. It's the poster child of TMI. If you know some "colleague" of yours wrote something about a matter dear to your heart, it's only today's idea of copyright that prevents us from fixing a few things we see as "off" or needing better explanations when we use the text for our purposes. Or we just write commentaries in the margins, which also happened in those times. I'm sure that different kinds of edits with different motivations were what happened to all these texts in the beginning.
However, from the surviving ancient manuscript evidence of the NT, given the number of copies of each document likely to have been in circulation by 400 CE (arbitrarily chosen), and given the length of the major NT documents, does the manuscript record indicate a "free for all" attitude to adding / modifying the source material, or does the manuscript record indicate a high degree of reverence for the text itself and a reluctance to modify it en masse?
I am genuinely interested in that question.
My ignorance. Can you explain "how this works in Irenaeus"?
I agree pretty much point for point with what Ulan wrote. I have been working intermittently on this issue, and I have on my hard drive a text file full of apparent gospel quotations both from the so-called Apostolic Fathers and from the NT epistles which one day I may whip into shape as a post for this forum. Each quotation I give a grade of 0, 1, or 2, based on how close they are to the gospel texts that we know and love. 0 = quotation not found in our extant texts; 1 = quotation found, but in a different form or order or with added material; 2 = quotation found pretty much as written in at least one of our extant gospels. Obviously there is some degree of subjectivity here, but once I have all the data laid out the reader will be free to give his or her own grades to each quotation and see how it all comes out.gmx wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:16 amHowever, from the surviving ancient manuscript evidence of the NT, given the number of copies of each document likely to have been in circulation by 400 CE (arbitrarily chosen), and given the length of the major NT documents, does the manuscript record indicate a "free for all" attitude to adding / modifying the source material, or does the manuscript record indicate a high degree of reverence for the text itself and a reluctance to modify it en masse?
lol [how many Jesuses were established for how many churches? /rhetorical]Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:02 am0. Barnabas 7.11: 11 ... This is a type of Jesus established for the church ...
There is a comprehensive 150 page+ 1967 manuscript by AJ Bellinzoni, titled The Sayings of Jesus in the Writings of Justin Martyr (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Brill; Leiden), available via Scribd, at least.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:02 am ... most (but not all) of what we find Justin attributing to the "memoirs of the apostles" can be found in our extant gospels, but not always in the same forms or combinations ...
I am familiar. I have another text file chock full of cross references between Justin and the gospels from that book. Every so often I do some work to organize them all, but it is verrrrry slow and tedious going.MrMacSon wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:29 pmlol [how many Jesuses were established for how many churches? /rhetorical]Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:02 am0. Barnabas 7.11: 11 ... This is a type of Jesus established for the church ...
There is a comprehensive 150 page+ 1967 manuscript by AJ Bellinzoni, titled The Sayings of Jesus in the Writings of Justin Martyr (Supplements to Novum Testamentum, Brill; Leiden), available via Scribd, at least.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:02 am ... most (but not all) of what we find Justin attributing to the "memoirs of the apostles" can be found in our extant gospels, but not always in the same forms or combinations ...
I bet it's tedious, but good on you for doing it as Justin's texts would seem to be important in discerning the transmission of early Christian theology and it's 'gateways', especially now the roles of the plethora of texts (and the directions of their various passages and theologies) in the formation of the eventual NT is less certain.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 1:39 pm I am familiar. I have another text file chock full of cross references between Justin and the gospels from that book. Every so often I do some work to organize them all, but it is verrrrry slow and tedious going.
Thanks Ben for your brilliant post.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 7:02 amAdd into all of this the oral traditions from which Papias and Hegesippus are said to have drawn, and the fact that already, from the time of our earliest extant manuscript and textual evidence, there is a split between the so-called Western text and (at the very least) the Alexandrian text, and I think that the idea that there was a lot of textual variation early on deserves a very serious hearing. As you pointed out, gmx, the nomina sacra permeate our extant manuscripts; but, at the same time, variation also permeates our manuscripts:gmx wrote: ↑Wed Sep 05, 2018 4:16 amHowever, from the surviving ancient manuscript evidence of the NT, given the number of copies of each document likely to have been in circulation by 400 CE (arbitrarily chosen), and given the length of the major NT documents, does the manuscript record indicate a "free for all" attitude to adding / modifying the source material, or does the manuscript record indicate a high degree of reverence for the text itself and a reluctance to modify it en masse?
Unless I am mistaken he refers to his text as 'gospel' for the most part and once or rarely 'gospels.'refers to them as Gospels