Greer-Heard: Bill Warren Session

[UPDATE: see below. It appears I misunderstood Wallace's argument, and I've updated to reflect what his argument about Mark 1.41 and Luke and Matthew's copies actually is. The fact is, I might still be missing it, 'cause he's been making the argument in some form for about a year now, and I still have trouble understanding it.]

Warren starts by noting the vast amount of evidence, and the mountain that hasn't even been tackled yet. Many of the lectionaries and minuscules haven't been studied. so we can't pretend the work has been finished. In all likelihood, we should be trying to do MORE than one thing with the evidence.

BUT another thing we should do is ask, "who created the variant readings?"

At this point, I basically zoned out. Warren introduced a lot about variants that had been covered already. Right now, he's going over theologically motivated variants, and the three possibilities for how they came about. I like what he's talking about (that we need to pay greater attention to the scribes/church fathers/theologians who were creating the variants), I'm just tired, and it's not really anything that hasn't been mentioned already. Also, I know there's going to be another Q&A coming up, in place of the 'closing statements,' so I'm gonna save my battery power for that.

One interesting thing in the Q&A (which so far is a lot more of Wallace questioning than Warren answering): Wallace has once again brought up attempting to utilize Matthew and Luke to get to an earlier form of Mark. For example, in Mark 1.41, while our earliest and best manuscripts (in addition to the majority of the manuscripts) have that Jesus was 'compassionate' here, rather than 'angry' which is almost certainly the original reading, Matthew and Luke DO have 'angry.' [UPDATE: I've spoken with a friend of mine who was also at the conference, and it appears that I've gotten this completely wrong. Obviously, Matthew and Luke don't have that Jesus was angry. I think that Wallace's argument is as follows: that Jesus was 'angry' rather than 'compassionate' appears to be the original reading of Mark 1.41. Matthew and Luke have neither that he was angry nor compassionate. Therefore, what seems probably, is that the copies of Mark that Matthew and Luke possessed had the original reading of 'angry' in them. Matthew and Luke both elected not to include that, as obviously it's a bit troubling. The counter-hypothesis (that Mark originally had 'compassionate') doesn't account for the evidence as well ('cause why would they be concerned to delete that Jesus was 'compassionate').] In that place, it appears that the copy of Mark that Matthew used and the copy of Mark that Luke used were pretty good copies. What needs to be done, or what could be done, is to use Matthew and Luke to get to an earlier text of Mark. Wallace and Warren also got into a discussion about whether or not Matthew and Luke were doing the kinds of things that early scribes would have been doing (with the result that copying would be really wild) or something different (in which case it wouldn't really comment on the wildness or quiescence of the text).

Ehrman spoke more on theological corruptions, and concluded with a question brought to his mind by a student of his: this student asked him if it was possible that some of the early scribes were women. This question brought to mind another in his mind about whether or not some of the early scribes could have been non-Christians. Warren basically answered that he thought maybe, but there was no evidence.