Two items from Erasmus on Stunica

I've been reading through vol. 74 of the Collected Works of Erasmus series—Erasmus' controversies with Stunica—Diego López de Zúñiga, if you prefer (not to be confused with the other Diego López de Zúñiga. Zúñiga was the main editor behind the Complutensian Polyglot and was therefore one of the more qualified of Erasmus' many critics. Still, Erasmus took issue with Zúñiga, including the way he went about his criticisms. I always enjoy reading the writings of my second-favorite Dutch textual critic who worked in Cambridge, and I found these words from his Apologia Against Zúñiga to be interesting:

Collected Works of Erasmus vol. 74, p. 245

"This man put the extracts on display once and for all in the most invidious way he could, omitting the material that softened their sharpness, and adding violent and even meaningless titles to exacerbate their effect."

Evidently, Zúñiga was circulating quotes from Erasmus' writings taken out of context—he had conveniently left out the parts where Erasmus qualified what he said to make it less severe. You can definitely get more mileage out of a quote that way, but it's simply not honest to leave out the parts that contradict the narrative you are trying to spin. As I read on, I chuckled at what Erasmus said a few pages later about Zúñiga (in the context of his responses to Erasmus' broad criticisms of abusive clergy who were not acting like Christians): "And he is an unhappy advocate if he cannot protect the honour of others except by speaking ill of me, which a pimp could do just as well."

___

To shift gears, we also see this interesting comment a few pages later: "Or is it a falsehood that I say that some passages have been added? That is incontrovertibly the case at the conclusion of the Lord’s Prayer, to say nothing of other places" (p. 258).

Zúñiga evidently (by what I infer from Erasmus' response) didn't like that Erasmus admitted that it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that there are places in the New Testament textual tradition where something has been added. Erasmus appeals to the doxology of the Lord's Prayer (Matt. 6:13). I find this interesting for two reasons:

1. Despite that he says that it is "incontrovertibly the case" that the doxology is not original, Erasmus did include it in his Greek text. However, he clearly doesn't think it's original, he says as much, and elsewhere, his Paraphrase leaves out the doxology.

2. Erasmus' appeal to the Lord's Prayer is especially clever. Zúñiga was over the Complutensian Polyglot, which leaves out the doxology to the Lord's Prayer and has a rare marginal note about how it is added in the Greek copies. While it seems that Zúñiga was not the author (or at least not the principal author) of this marginal note, it's still the case that he was in charge of an edition that left out the doxology and casts doubts on its authenticity. Jerry Bentley writes, concerning the marginal note in the Complutensian Polyglot: 

"In only one note does a peculiar observation suggest its author. This is the note to Mt. 6:13 (quoted above), which discusses the authenticity of a clause found in many Greek texts, but not in the Vulgate: "for thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory forever. Amen." The note casts doubt on the authenticity of this clause : the author suggests that the clause crept into Greek New Testament manuscripts by way of the Greek mass, where it forms part of the liturgy. The note obviously bears the mark of the Cretan Demetrius Ducas, no doubt the only member of the Complutensian team familiar enough with the Greek liturgy to have made such precise points about it. This is not necessarily to say that Ducas prepared all the annotations, for the note to Mt. 6:13 is by no means representative of all the rest. We may be fairly sure we see Ducas' influence in this note, though we must not jump to the conclusion that he was sole author of the annotations." ("New Light on the Editing of the Complutensian New Testament," Bibliothèque d'Humanisme et Renaissance 42.1 (1980): 154–155).

The textually-missing/marginally-present doxology and beginning of the note in the Complutensian Polyglot (page 2069 here).

About that Dan Wallace quote

The quote

A line from Dan Wallace's foreword to Myths and Mistakes has been making the rounds on the internet, usually in the context of people who want to discredit textual criticism. If you've not seen it, here is what usually gets shared (Update: Thanks to Jeff Riddle, who caught my typos, which I think came from accidentally hitting cmd+x instead of cmd+c when copying the phrase to search on other sites; it has been corrected, as have the mis-phrasing in the first sentence, which I am not sure how I got wrong.):

“We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain.” —Daniel B. Wallace, "Foreword" to Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, edited by Elijah Hixson and Peter J. Gurry (Downers Grove: IVP Academic, 2019)

One website has it this way:

The quote according to one website (below a picture of Bozo the Clown).
UPDATE: A coworker of mine found this site down, so here is the site as of July 5th 2021.

In a recent book about the textus receptus, This quote shows up more than once, quoted by contributors Dane Johannsson (p. 112), Pooyan Mehrshahi (p. 174), and Christopher Sheffield (p. 212). In each of the three instances, the contributor gives the Wallace quote [update: "substantially exactly", by which I mean without the context; Johannsson and Mehrshahi add the word "thereof", which is not in the original quote] exactly as I quoted above (Update: the words are as I typed, not in all-caps as the screenshot has them).

This quote—again, exactly as I quoted above—is the very first one given in this list of "quotes that everybody should copy and paste" to try to discredit textual criticism. In fact, when I search that site for the phrase "Even if we did, we would not know it," I get 72 hits.

The quote even gets its very own page all to itself, here (with an interesting URL, I might add). I'm sure there are other examples as well. [Update: the URL has been corrected to give the quote in context.]

If this is all you've heard, it wouldn't be surprising—perhaps you would even be justified—if your reaction was something like this:

A normal Christian, new to textual criticism, hears the scary Dan Wallace quote out of context and reacts understandably.

The context

That sounds scary, but it's rare (if it ever happens) that it gets quoted in context. Here it is; I highlighted in yellow the sentences that you typically don't see when people share the quote—what Wallace says immediately before and after the words that usually get repeated:

Notice Wallace's point: "we also do not need to be overly skeptical." Wallace explicitly rejects "radical skepticism". What exactly, then, is Wallace describing? We can shed some light on that by looking at things he has said elsewhere. When we do, we see that in the spectrum between radical skepticism and absolute certainty, what Wallace is describing is much closer to the certainty end than to the skepticism end (which is near where E.F. Hills lands in the spectrum—like Wallace, Hills also rejects absolute certainty in every place).

E.F. Hills rejects absolute certainty of the text of the New Testament
(Believing Bible Study, 2nd ed. [1977], p. 217)
Hills continues with a statement that I can agree with: "In other words, God does not reveal every truth with equal clearness. Hence in New Testament textual criticism, as in every other department of knowledge, there are some details in regard to which we must be content to remain uncertain. But this circumstance does not in the least affect the fundamental certainty which we obtain from our confidence in God’s special, providential preservation of the holy Scriptures. Through this believing approach to the New Testament text we gain maximum certainty, all the certainty that any mere man can obtain, all the certainty that we need."

To take Wallace in his own words, here he is saying "The New Testament Text in all essentials and in the vast majority of particulars is absolutely certain."

Dan Wallace, saying something that doesn't look like radical skepticism to me.

What about the "many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain"? That might sound like it is a free-for-all in those places, where anything goes and anything is possible. Is that accurate though? [To be clear, I don't know if anybody made that inference from the quote, but in case they did:]

Here is a recent interview Wallace gave in which he says something that I have tried to point out to people when they ask me about it, and I think Wallace frames it helpfully. Here, he is talking about those places of uncertainty. Wallace says (screenshot and link below):

There's a few passages I could talk about, but understand that scholars have known what is in the original Greek New Testament for well over 150 years, because we have it above the line or below the line. It's not ... like um if you have a multiple choice it's either Text A, Text B, or Text C—it's never Text D—"none of the above." Never.

Wallace appearing on Preston Sprinkle's Theology in the Raw podcast.

I do think it would be helpful if we were more clear about these places of uncertainty—it's never "we have no idea what the original text is." Instead, it's "we are confident that in this place, it's one of these two [or rarely, three] options, but we're not completely sure which one. It can often be as simple as "Did Luke use one word for 'and' or a different word for 'and' here?"

Technical paragraph with examples of such 'uncertainty':

[9 of the 155 split line readings in ECM Acts is the 'uncertainty' between whether δέ or τέ is correct—at Acts 3:10, 12:17, 13:11, 13:52, 14:11, 15:6, 21:18, 22:23, and 24:27, and many others make about the same amount of difference as δέ/τέ. Similarly, 11 of the split line readings in the ECM Mark are transpositions involving all the same words: Mark 2:10, 3:27, 4:41, 5:19, 6:2, 6:38, 13:29, 13:30, 14:5, 15:29, and 15:34. That is to say, if we follow ECM Mark, there are 11 places where we can be sure which words belong in the text though we can't be sure if they should be in one order or a different order. Admittedly, not all of them are this inconsequential, but it would be inaccurate to say that none of them are.]

The problem

Now admittedly, one need not agree with Wallace to represent his own views fairly. One may genuinely think that modern textual criticism leads to radical skepticism in which we can't have any confidence in the NT text (though how many of its actual practitioners think so is perhaps a different discussion). One may not be able to distinguish between 0.1% uncertainty involving a choice between two knowns and 100% uncertainty in which anything is possible. And one might even think that having to choose between two readings where editions of the Textus Receptus differ is somehow categorically different from having to choose between two readings at an ECM split line.

That being said, is it really accurate to represent Wallace's words to mean something he explicitly rejects? What is hard for me to understand is how so many people can fail to mention what Wallace explicitly said, both immediately before and immediately after the section that gets quoted. The problem does seem to be quite pervasive.

When I go back to the website that had 72 hits for the phrase "Even if we did, we would not know it," I get zero hits when I search the words immediately prior ("must be avoided when we examine the New Testament Text"). The same is true of the words immediately following ("But we also do not need to be overly skeptical")—zero hits. Clearly, quoting Wallace in context doesn't seem to matter there.

Not one of the three quotations in the TR book gives the Wallace quote in the context of his rejection of radical skepticism. One even does the opposite: Christopher Sheffield (pp. 211–212) writes:

Daniel Wallace is one of the most prominent proponents of the modern Critical Text. In a foreword to the book Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism, he declares:

We do not have now – in our critical Greek texts or any translations – exactly what the authors of the New Testament wrote. Even if we did, we would not know it. There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain" (xii) [sic]

There you have it. We do not have the whole Word of God and even if we did, we wouldn’t know it. Listen carefully to what he is saying, “There are many, many places in which the text of the New Testament is uncertain.” (emphasis mine). Could there be anything more harmful to the child of God than to have some scholar take a proverbial Sharpie and write a giant question mark over every page of his Bible? That is what the modern Critical Text method does, and it can bear no good fruit in the child of God or in the church of Christ. Such a mindset does not provide patience, comfort, and hope (cf. Romans 15:4), but rather exasperation, anxiety, and despair. It will not produce stable believers with a growing confidence in their Bibles and willingness to labor and suffer for its proclamation, but only the opposite.

[I added the bold for my own emphasis. The italics are Sheffield's.]

Here, Sheffield's remarks seem to be in stark contradiction to what Wallace affirms both in his foreword to Myths and Mistakes and also in his interview that I posted. Admittedly, the interview was more recent than the publication of this book, but in a way that underscores my point—this confidence in the text was Wallace's position back when Sheffield was saying it wasn't. It seems to me that in most cases, the Wallace quote is given to 'prove' that Wallace (and by extension, modern textual criticism) is hopelessly uncertain with an implication that any verse is up for grabs—even though this type of uncertainty is explicitly what Wallace rejects.

In conclusion

1. Dan Wallace gets quoted out of context.

2. Quoting out of context is bad, so we should be extra careful to avoid it.

Final note:

No, Wallace did not ask me to write this. Yes, I do work for him, and I would have liked to get a response from him directly, but he wouldn't, as he typically doesn't respond to things like this. He did read a draft of this post though and agreed with how I represented him.

Sacred Words Videos Online

The videos from our recent Sacred Words conference are now online at the TCI YouTube channel. We filmed all the speakers in the main auditorium. This included Peter Gentry on the text of the OT, ETC’s own Anthony Ferguson on DSS, Stephen Dempster on OT canon, and Dan Wallace on NT text. (We didn’t have the equipment to film the other breakout speakers.) It was really a great conference and we were pleased with how it turned out, especially for our first such event. Thanks to all our speakers!

Gentry

Ferguson

Dempster

Wallace

Support CSNTM

Dan Wallace shares a very nice video explaining CSNTM’s mission. As someone who has both worked with CSNTM and benefits significantly from their work, I would encourage you to support them.



More from Dan:

As we point out in the video, our work is urgent and significant. Manuscripts are deteriorating, some at an alarming rate. What is not mentioned is that CSNTM is funded solely by donations. Although hundreds of thousands of manuscript images can be viewed for free, they are costly to produce and archive. To digitize a single manuscript costs the Center $7500. Our job is a long way from being completed. And all these projects require funding. I’m asking you to consider making a donation to the Center.

We need more people to become part of the “Circle of Friends”—those who partner with us by donating monthly to our mission. Even more pressing is the need to fund projects that are waiting in the wings. Would you consider helping the Center in its mission to preserve unique, handwritten copies of the Christian Scriptures?

As I mention in the video, a thousand years ago a monk named Andrew wrote a personal note at the end of the manuscript he was copying: “The hand that wrote this is rotting in the grave, but the words that are written will last until the fullness of times.” His words have become our mission statement. Won’t you join us?

‘The God Who Speaks’ documentary

I’ve just been alerted to the release of a new Bible documentary for Christians called The God Who Speaks. The contributors are (with one exception?) American-based Evangelical scholars, apologists, or pastors. You can buy the DVD at the website or stream it for free if you have Amazon Prime.

I haven’t watched it myself, but, from the trailer, it looks like it gives attention to the text’s transmission. (Note that Dan Wallace, Mike Kruger, and Karen Jobes are contributors.) If any readers have seen it, let us know in the comments. And happy new year!

Here’s the description from the producers:

The God Who Speaks is a 90-minute documentary that traces the evidence of the Bible’s authority through interviews with some of the world’s most respected biblical scholars. This film answers common objections about the Bible’s reliability and equips believers to confidently base their lives on the power of God’s Word.

30+ Sessions of Dan Wallace on Textual Criticism—Free

A student of mine emailed to let me know that Credo House currently has a sale going on for Dan Wallace’s lecture series on textual criticism. I believe you still have to pay if you want the video (with slides?), but all 30+ audio sessions are free! I don’t know what they normally go for, but the video is listed at $200. This is a steal. I think this is an updated and maybe expanded version of the course I took (and paid for!) from Dan at Dallas Seminary. If you’re a student, pastor, or layperson wanting to learn TC from Wallace himself, go get it.

Update on P137 (P.Oxy. 83.5345)

[Note of explanation: I wrote most of this post over the weekend before Dan Wallace released a second statement. Thankfully, I delayed posting it long enough to work his statement into my post. If you haven’t read Wallace’s second statement, stop what you’re doing and go do that now.]

I haven’t been able to post updates to the saga of the Early Mark Fragment as often as I wanted. Peter Gurry and I have been busy making last-minute edits to a project we’ve been working on for over two years, but we have finally submitted it to IVP, so I have a bit more time now.

A quick summary, if you’re just now tuning in

In the most recent volume of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. 83), the Egypt Exploration Society (EES) published a fragment of Mark 1 (P.Oxy. 83.5345; P137), edited by Dirk Obbink and Daniela Colomo and dated to the late second/early third centuries. Scott Carroll and Dan Wallace both verified that P137 is the fragment that they had spoken of as “first-century Mark”; the earlier dating was simply incorrect.

The EES made a statement that the fragment had never been for sale and even made the edition available online. Most of the back and forth from that point centered on Scott Carroll’s insistence that Dirk Obbink had offered the fragment for sale and the EES’s insistence that the fragment was never up for sale. These are the unresolved questions that give this fragment its continuing intrigue: Did Dirk Obbink try to sell it (possibly without its owners’ knowledge or approval), and if not, why in the world would anyone lie about that?

All of these discussions were happening while Brent Nongbri was writing a series of excellent blog posts on the Oxyrhynchus Papyri, which you should definitely read.

James McGrath has a great roundup of posts about the fragment, here.

Developments since my last update on the other post

Larry Hurtado spoke out in defence of Dirk Obbink, writing “I personally have great confidence in Dirk Obbink as a scholar and a person of honor and integrity” and adding “But I trust Obbink, and that means that the claim that he offered the item for sale like some huckster I regard as false and mischievous.”

Bart Ehrman echoed Hurtado’s defence of Obbink, “I believe Obbink is completely honest and innocent in the whole affair” (see the comment section, here).

Dan Wallace responds on (formerly) ‘First-century Mark’

Over on his blog, Dan Wallace has just written a post about his involvement with the fragment formerly known as “First-century Mark.” We now know, thanks in part to this post by Dan, that P. Oxy. 5345 is the fragment formerly known as “first-century Mark” and that it is not, therefore, first-century. Instead, the editors, Dirk Obbink and Daniela Colomo, date it to the 2nd/3rd century (see Elijah’s post). This is important because we have known for quite some time that the first-century date was based on the expertise of Dirk Obbink. Apparently he changed his mind before Dan even made the initial announcement, but Dan didn’t know. So, why was it ever dated first century? I don’t know.

In any case, here is the first part of Dan’s post.

There has been a flurry of announcements and comments on the internet about the “First-Century Mark Fragment” (FCM) ever since Elijah Hixson posted a blog on Evangelical Textual Criticism this morning. As many know, I signed a non-disclosure agreement about this manuscript in 2012 sometime after I made an announcement about it in my third debate with Bart Ehrman at North Carolina, Chapel Hill (February 1, 2012). I was told in the non-disclosure agreement not to speak about when it would be published or whether it even exists. The termination of this agreement would come when it was published. Consequently, I am now free to speak about it.

Confirmation
The first thing to mention is that yes, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 5345, published in The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, vol. 83 (2018), is the same manuscript that I spoke about in the debate and blogged about afterward. In that volume the editors date it to the second or third century. And this now is what has created quite a stir.

Apology
In my debate with Bart, I mentioned that I had it on good authority that this was definitely a first-century fragment of Mark. A representative for who I understood was the owner of FCM urged me to make the announcement at the debate, which they realized would make this go viral. However, the information I received and was assured to have been vetted was incorrect. It was my fault for being naïve enough to trust that the data I got was unquestionable, as it was presented to me. So, I must first apologize to Bart Ehrman, and to everyone else, for giving misleading information about this discovery. While I am sorry for publicly announcing inaccurate facts, at no time in the public statements (either in the debate or on my blogsite) did I knowingly do this. But I should have been more careful about trusting any sources without my personal verification, a lesson I have since learned.

 Do read the rest of his post for his personal history with the fragment. 

Matthew 24:36 and Rapture Predictions

In case you missed, it there was another end-times prediction for yesterday.

A ‘biblical numerologist’ who goes by ‘David Meade’—no relation to John—predicted that a rogue planet would appear, the rapture would happen, and the world as we know it would generally come to an end.

And yet, here we are.

Today, then, seems to be a great opportunity to look at the variant in Matthew 24:36:

Περὶ δὲ τῆς ἡμέρας ἐκείνης καὶ ὥρας οὐδεὶς οἶδεν, οὐδὲ οἱ ἄγγελοι τῶν οὐρανῶν οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός, εἰ μὴ ὁ πατὴρ μόνος.

But concerning that day and hour, no one knows. Neither the angels of the heavens, nor the Son, except the Father alone.

The variant in question is the presence or absence of οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός.

According to the NA28:

Absent in: 01^2a K L W Γ Δ f1 22 565 579 700 892 1241 1424 g^1 l vg sy co; Hier^mss and the Majority text
Present in: 01* 01^2b B D Θ f13 l2211 it vg^mss Ir^lat Hier^mss

Bart Ehrman calls this variant “one of the clearest examples of an orthodox change effected to prevent its heretical ‘misuse’” (Orthodox Corruption, p. 91). Ehrman accepts οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός as the earlier reading that scribes then omitted. Dan Wallace, on the other hand, argues that the phrase οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός is indeed original—to Mark’s Gospel. Its absence in Matthew is because Matthew removed it, only for it to be added back in by later scribes.

Ehrman summarises the theological argument for ‘Orthodox Corruption’: “it suggests that the Son of God is not all-knowing and could be used therefore by adoptionists to argue that Jesus was not himself divine” (p. 92). Wallace has a series of responses to the theological argument in his article. I would like to point out that Ehrman does acknowledge that the same phrase is nearly always present at Mark 13:32 (though just a handful of manuscripts do omit it there).

If one reads Matthew and Mark together canonically, neither the presence nor the absence of οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός changes any core doctrines of Christianity. Whether Matthew included the phrase or not, it is clear that Mark did.

Finally, regardless of how one interprets Matthew 24:36 and Mark 13:32, and regardless of which reading one accepts as original at Matthew 24:36, one thing is clear: Only the Father knows the day and the hour. Not the angels in the heavens, nor the televangelist end-times ‘prophets’.

If you really want to read a book on biblical numerology, I recommend this one.


For the editions of the works I cited here, see:

Ehrman, Bart D. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.

Wallace, Daniel B. “The Son’s Ignorance in Matthew 24:36: An Exercise in Textual and Redaction Criticism.” In Studies on the Text of the New Testament and Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Michael W. Holmes On the Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by Daniel M. Gurtner, Juan Hernández Jr., and Paul Foster, 178–205. NTTSD 50. Leiden; Boston, 2015.


EDIT (24 April): I corrected a typo that a reader caught, in which I mistakenly referred to Matthew 24:26 (not 24:36) in the final instance.

Dan Wallace Responds on the ‘Embarrassment of Riches’

Last week, I wrote about the charge made against some reasoned eclectics that they are guilty of praising the large number of NT manuscripts in their apologetic but then not actually using them in their text-critical work. For the details, see here.

I had hoped the post would spark some discussion and it certainly did! It’s now at almost 100 comments. Clearly, it touched a nerve. One of the people I mentioned in my original post was Dan Wallace and I am happy that he responded on the original post. I thought his response deserved its own separate post and so I present it here, only lightly edited by Dan.

---

This has been an interesting discussion (which I just learned about from a friend) on the quantitative argument that I have used in public debates and lectures. I’ve read through the comments as of yesterday (and noticed, but did not read, a mass of comments posted just in the last 24 hours) and noted the objections to this argument. I think the thread can be grouped as follows:

1. Peter Gurry calls me an apologist. 
2. Gurry mentions that both Ehrman and Robinson have argued against the quantitative argument for various reasons.
3. The quantitative argument in isolation is weak and misleading. It’s not 5000+ MSS in any given place, and only 424 (Greek) MSS are from the eighth century or earlier. 
4. I am apparently speaking hypocritically when I invoke the numbers because most of these are Byzantine MSS and I presumably think the Byzantine text isn’t worth much. A good analogy would be that I consider the Byzantine witnesses to be counterfeit in thousands of places.

I’m sure I’ve overlooked some of the arguments. But these are the major ones from what I can tell. My response:

On the ‘idle boast’ of having so many New Testament manuscripts

My post on the topic of the comparative argument for trusting our modern texts of the New Testament produced some good discussion. But one issue that got passed over in the ensuing comments deserves more attention and that is what I want to give it here.

A slide from Wallace’s presentation at Biola

The issue is whether apologists like James White or Dan Wallace, for example, are being inconsistent for practicing reasoned eclecticism and for appealing to the vast number of Greek NT manuscripts. Wallace, for example, likes to refer to our “embarrassment of riches” for recovering the original text of the New Testament. But his practice of reasoned eclecticism seems to suggest that he is “embarrassed” in quite a different way by these riches because he doesn’t actually use them (see, e.g., the NET Bible). Apologetically he wants to have his embarrassingly-rich cake, but text-critically he has already eaten it. That is the charge anyway and it is one I have heard Bart Ehrman use in debate against Wallace.

But Ehrman is not the only one to use it. He finds himself a strange bedfellow with Maurice Robinson on this who puts the problem this way:

The resources of the pre-fourth century era unfortunately remain meager, restricted to a limited body of witnesses. Even if the text-critical evidence is extended through the eighth century, there would be only 424 documents, mostly fragmentary. In contrast to this meager total,the oft-repeated apologetic appeal to the value and restorative significance of the 5000+ remaining Greek NT MSS becomes an idle boast in the writings of modern eclectics when those numerous MSS are not utilized to restore the original text.*

Robinson again:

Granting that a working presumption of most eclectic scholars (including Ehrman) is that the vast bulk of NT MSS basically should be excluded as irrelevant for the primary establishment of the text, Ehrman’s statement [against the comparative argument] makes perfect sense. Rather than claiming some sort of text-critical superiority to the classics based on the sheer quantity of extant MSS, modern eclectics perhaps should acknowledge that their actual preferred witnesses for establishing the best approximation to the “original” NT text number only in the few dozens, as opposed to the several thousands otherwise set aside from serious consideration.

I’d like to open this up to discussion again. Can reasoned eclectics make any apologetic appeal to the abundance of our NT witnesses without being inconsistent? If so, how?

———
* “Appendix: The Case for Byzantine Priority” in The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform 2005, p. 568.

Update: see Dan’s response here.

Mark 16 on a Roll

Many New Testament scholars consider Mark 16.8 to be the original ending of the Gospel. Others regard the original ending as now lost. For those who think it’s lost, the most frequent explanation is that it was lost at some point given that the beginning and ends of books are particularly liable to damage and loss. Those who think that Mark 16.8 is the original ending sometimes argue against this by pointing out that, because Mark was most likely written on a roll, a loss at the end is actually very unlikely.

Dan Wallace makes this argument in Perspectives on the Ending of Mark (2008). After saying that it is very unlikely that Mark wrote his gospel as a codex, he says

However, if Mark’s Gospel is earlier than this [end of the first century]—as virtually all scholars acknowledge, regardless of their view of the synoptic problem—then he would have written his Gospel on a roll, and the first generation of copies would also have been on rolls. And if the Gospel was written on a roll, then the most protected section would be the end, because when someone rolled the book back up, the end would be on the inside. To be sure, some lazy readers might not rewind the book when finished—of course, they would get fined a denarius at their local Blockbuster for such an infraction! But the reality is that this sort of thing was the rare exception, not the rule. Consequently, if Mark was originally written on a roll, it is hard to imagine how the ending could have gotten lost before any copies were made. (pp. 35–36)

Appeal has also been made to the placement of the title in a scroll in this debate. F. G. Kenyon actually changed his mind on whether the end was liable to loss. He felt that the position of the title at the end of the roll would mean that “the reader of a roll would not want to wait till he had read to the end in order to know the name of the author and the title of the work; and an intending reader would not want to unroll the entire roll in order to ascertain these facts.” Because of that, Kenyon takes the opposite view of Wallace on whether a scroll might account for the loss of Mark’s original ending.

CSNTM Finds More Manuscripts in Athens

Manuscripts: great places
to look for new manuscripts.

Dan Wallace teases us on his blog with a note that he has recently found more uncatalogued NT manuscripts in Athens.

I recently returned from two weeks in Athens, working at the National Library of Greece. My student and former intern, Max Berti, joined me. We discovered a surprising number of New Testament manuscripts. But I’ll have to tell you all about that later. Follow the link to the CSNTM website below, where you’ll see info on several discoveries from 2015.

There’s more detail at the CSNTM blog. Rob Marcello tells me that 10 of the new manuscripts have already been published at csntm.org and that more will be coming next month.

Before my first trip with CSNTM I remember thinking it was crazy that there could be NT manuscripts just sitting on library shelves that are virtually unknown to NT scholars. Having now seen the size of some of these library collections and understanding that NT scholars are generally busy folks, I now understand better how this can happen.

So good for Dan and his team for continuing to visit libraries and work through their catalogs. Any students out there reading should take note: if you want to find little-known manuscripts, start poking around in big libraries. (It’s best to get permission first, though.)

CSNTM Expedition in the Greek Press

As noted earlier on the blog, CSNTM is currently on a major expedition in Greece digitizing the entire Greek NT collection of the National Library—over 300 manuscripts. It’s a huge undertaking and the results should be well worth it. If you read modern Greek (or know how to use Google translate), there are two articles in the Greek press on the expedition. There are some nice pictures included. Godspeed to the team, especially in what look like very tight working conditions!

Update:

In further confirmation of Head’s Rule, Dan reports on his blog of discovering an uncatalogued manuscript of the apostolos in the binding of a 12th century lectionary.

Has anyone seen “First Century Mark”?

I have had correspondence with Craig Evans and have his permission to confirm that he has not seen the alleged first-century manuscript of Mark and does not know the identity of the scholar or scholars to whom it has (presumably) been assigned for publication.

I also believe that Dan Wallace had not seen the alleged manuscript at the time he debated Ehrman. I do not know whether he has seen it since then.

There may have been more eyewitnesses to the Secret Gospel of Mark than to ‘FCM’.

Based on current evidence I would conclude that, although ‘FCM’ may exist, we currently have no reason to believe that it exists or will be published in the coming years. Of course, a historical kernel might exist to the stories of ‘FCM’, but I personally have very limited enthusiasm for source criticism.

Breaking News: CSNTM to Digitize MSS at the National Library of Greece!

Today the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) publically announced the breaking news that they are to digitize all the NT MSS of the National Library of Greece in Athens. Manuscript lovers world wide can be happy that more MSS are becoming available in digital format for study. The fact that this major project has been agreed upon by one of the largest repositories of Greek MSS in the world, the National Library of Greece, is a great acknowledgement of the CSNTM as a professional organization for manuscript photography and digitization. In addition, this undertaking may open up many more doors in the future. We owe our gratitude to Dan Wallace and his staff and we look forward to seeing the results. I am proud of being a member of the board of the CSNTM.

Extra: Watch Dan Wallace breaking the news.

Here is a part of the press release from CSNTM.

Press Release
12 January 2014
On January 7, the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts’ Executive Director, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, and Research Manager, Robert D. Marcello, traveled to Athens to meet with the Director of the National Library, Filippos Tsimboglou. After meeting with the Director last September to begin discussions of a collaboration, they worked out final negotiations and signed a contract for CSNTM to digitize all the New Testament manuscripts of the National Library. This is a historic collaboration between one of the five largest repositories of Greek New Testament manuscripts and the world’s leading institute in digitizing Greek New Testament manuscripts. Approximately 300 manuscripts with 150,000+ pages of text will be digitized over the next two years. CSNTM is excited to be working with Dr. Tsimboglou and his staff on this strategic undertaking.

Read the whole press release here.

Up-date report (Feb 20) here. 

Wallace reviews Elliott

From the SBL Review of Biblical Literature 26 March 2014

J. K. Elliott
New Testament Textual Criticism: The Application of Thoroughgoing Principles
http://www.bookreviews.org/bookdetail.asp?TitleId=8709
Reviewed by Daniel B. Wallace

 This is an interesting and helpful review of Elliott's collected essays. That is really a daunting book to review and Dan has done a good job of summarising. Dan says he has been persuaded to come over to the correct view of Hebrews 2.9 through reading this book. He also offers some general comments on thoroughgoing eclecticism and some critical reflections. Only on one point did I think he missed a trick. Dan mentions that he found a lot of typos in the book, stating: "I counted over 150". I would have thought that in the spirit of Keith Elliott we deserved the entire list!!!

JETS Reviews of Recent TC/Canon Volumes

JETS Vol 56, No. 1 (March 2013):

1. Review of M.J. Kruger's CANON REVISITED: ESTABLISHING THE ORIGINS AND AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS (Benjamin Laird); 
2. Review of L.M. McDonald's FORMATION OF THE BIBLE: THE STORY OF THE CHURCH'S CANON (Ryan J. Cook); 
3. Review of Nestle-Aland 28th by Dan Wallace.

Bonus: vigorous discussion between Dan Wallace and Stanley Porter on Granville Sharp.

JML

Interview with Dan Wallace

Dan Wallace is interviewed at The Gospel Coalition about NT textual criticism. A basic overview of NT TC, apologetically oriented, but lots of nice diagrams and pictures.

First century Mark fragment and extensive papyrus/i?

Dan Wallace has now further specified his claim that there is an unpublished manuscript of Mark which is likely to be first century. Many of us will have no small scepticism towards such claims, but as the claim is of inherent interest and as it is made by someone who has made significant contributions to the study of the text of the New Testament I thought it would be good to repeat the whole text here. Also of interest is the claim that 7 unpublished early papyri cover 43% of the NT, which would at a minimum require one of them to be extensive. If there is an extensive papyrus then that, for me, is of far greater interest (see Dan’s ‘thrill’ below) than a ‘fragment’ which on the basis a few letter shapes is assigned by one palaeographer to the first century. It is suggested that publication can be expected in 2013. It sounds like the dates have been proposed on the basis of palaeography, not of association within the context of cartonnage.

Dan writes here:

On 1 February 2012, I debated Bart Ehrman at UNC Chapel Hill on whether we have the wording of the original New Testament today. This was our third such debate, and it was before a crowd of more than 1000 people. I mentioned that seven New Testament papyri had recently been discovered—six of them probably from the second century and one of them probably from the first. These fragments will be published in about a year.

These fragments now increase our holdings as follows: we have as many as eighteen New Testament manuscripts from the second century and one from the first. Altogether, more than 43% of all New Testament verses are found in these manuscripts. But the most interesting thing is the first-century fragment.

It was dated by one of the world’s leading paleographers. He said he was ‘certain’ that it was from the first century. If this is true, it would be the oldest fragment of the New Testament known to exist. Up until now, no one has discovered any first-century manuscripts of the New Testament. The oldest manuscript of the New Testament has been P52, a small fragment from John’s Gospel, dated to the first half of the second century. It was discovered in 1934.

Not only this, but the first-century fragment is from Mark’s Gospel. Before the discovery of this fragment, the oldest manuscript that had Mark in it was P45, from the early third century (c. AD 200–250). This new fragment would predate that by 100 to 150 years.

How do these manuscripts change what we believe the original New Testament to say? We will have to wait until they are published next year, but for now we can most likely say this: As with all the previously published New Testament papyri (127 of them, published in the last 116 years), not a single new reading has commended itself as authentic. Instead, the papyri function to confirm what New Testament scholars have already thought was the original wording or, in some cases, to confirm an alternate reading—but one that is already found in the manuscripts. As an illustration: Suppose a papyrus had the word “the Lord” in one verse while all other manuscripts had the word “Jesus.” New Testament scholars would not adopt, and have not adopted, such a reading as authentic, precisely because we have such abundant evidence for the original wording in other manuscripts. But if an early papyrus had in another place “Simon” instead of “Peter,” and “Simon” was also found in other early and reliable manuscripts, it might persuade scholars that “Simon” is the authentic reading. In other words, the papyri have confirmed various readings as authentic in the past 116 years, but have not introduced new authentic readings. The original New Testament text is found somewhere in the manuscripts that have been known for quite some time.

These new papyri will no doubt continue that trend. But, if this Mark fragment is confirmed as from the first century, what a thrill it will be to have a manuscript that is dated within the lifetime of many of the eyewitnesses to Jesus’ resurrection!

Update:
Having been prompted to reread Dan’s statement it is clear that the 43% includes existing known manuscripts. Therefore the ‘Seven’ do not need to be extensive.