Michael Halcomb of Pisteuomen posted a few days ago on a topic near and dear to my heart: the original wording/textual criticism of the NT (yeah, I have a pretty cold heart). His post and subsequent comments concentrate a lot on “process“:
It seems more likely to me that documents like the Gospels were composed over time, not in one sitting. In short, the production of the Gospels happened in a process. The authors were at liberty to add, take away, etc. They could have written the original, taken something out, replaced or added something to it or scribbled a note in the margins. Who knows? Who cares?
While I would certainly agree that the Gospels were produced by a process (I'm not even sure how one would argue otherwise short of verbal dictation or God simply handing off a copy of each Gospel to its author), I'm not sure what bearing that has on the idea of the original text. At some point, regardless of the process that went into it, the Gospel was done. I can (and sometimes I even do) edit papers for my classes before I turn them in. I incorporate new research, rethink the presentation, add/delete whole sections depending on what I find, etc. But at some point I stop that process and turn in a final draft. At some point, the paper is finished. Why would we expect the gospels to be any different? At some point, they were completed, and moved from being an adjustable, editable text, to a text intended for the edification of the burgeoning Christian audience.
Michael then moves from speaking of the “process” to the question of the original autographs:
It is not always true, even from a text-critical standpoint, that earlier = better. In fact, it is very often the case (in very many things) that later = better. It is quite possible and plausible that the earliest manuscript was a rough draft. Maybe the author(s) went back later and read it and decided more needed to be said, or less. Maybe the first and earliest manuscript was written on a piece of papyrus that was too short or maybe they didn't have enough ink or even money to buy more materials. In other words, there are many reasons to shed the idea that earilest = best. If the texts were composed in a process, then, it is not the earliest that's most important at all but perhaps a late, finished manuscript--or even a copy created in the middle of the process that was best.
Here, I would disagree that it is plausible that the earliest manuscript (presumably, the first copy intended for general consumption) would be a rough draft.
Luke 1:1-4 is a good example: Luke went to great lengths in both of his volumes to note their careful research. What exactly makes it plausible that Luke would, putting careful time and research into the text, release a rough draft long before being finished? Once again, I think this fundamentally mistakes the process involved in the authoring and distribution of the gospels. There were undoubtedly more than a few hours time put into the writing of the gospels. If “the piece of papyrus was too short,“ why would we assume the author wouldn't simply wait until he had another piece of papyrus? If he ran out of ink, wouldn't he either get more or pick up the gospel another day? Fundamentally, these hypotheticals are unnecessary because they still ignore the larger truth: when it comes to writing, at some point you have a finished work. This isn't a play, with multiple productions yielding differing drafts (e.g. the Shakespearean model employed by Parker in his
Living Text of the Gospels). It's not a journal or diary. What we are looking at is a finished product, not the rough draft notes.
As far as the concept of 'getting back to the original' goes, I am torn. While I do believe there is an original text (as illustrated above), I don't know how much more useful it is than the text we have now. The way I see it, we can affirm one of three positions: either (1) the text we have now is insufficient, it is highly variable in theologically critical areas, and it is of utmost important to make huge advances in textual criticism before we can have confidence in its integrity, (2) the text we have now is completely sufficient, it is slightly variable in only theologically insignificant areas, and we are at or near a place where further text critical work will be unnecessary, or (3) the truth lies somewhere in-between. The extremes of (1) and (2), while they might sell books and fill a few coffers, both miss the mark (and neither is supported by the manuscript record). (3) is both the least sexy position and, in all likelihood, the most accurate reflection of the current state of research. Because of that, it is still important to strive to get back to the original.
[Update: in the time it's taken me to write this post,
C. Michael Patton of Parchment and Pen has posted (strangely, under Dan Wallace's blog moniker) on nearly this same topic. CORRECTION: while it was originally listed as by C. Michael Patton, it is indeed Dan Wallace who wrote the post.]
Posts
