vary from one another, sometimes in highly significant ways. The task of the textual critic is to try to recover the oldest form of these texts.
This is obviously a crucial task, since we canât interpret the words of the New Testament if we donât know what the words were. Moreover, as I hope should be clear by now, knowing the words is important not just for those who consider the words divinely inspired. It is important for anyone who thinks of the New Testament as a significant book. And surely everyone interested in the history, society, and culture of Western civilization thinks so, because the New Testament, if nothing else, is an enormous cultural artifact, a book that is revered by millions and that lies at the foundation of the largest religion of the world today.
3
T EXTS OF THE N EW T ESTAMENT
Editions, Manuscripts, and Differences
T he copying practices we have considered thus far have been principally those of the first three centuries of Christianity, when most of the copyists of the Christian texts were not professionals trained for the job but simply literate Christians of this or that congregation, able to read and write and so called upon to reproduce the texts of the community in their spare time. 1 Because they were not highly trained to perform this kind of work, they were more prone to make mistakes than professional scribes would have been. This explains why our earliest copies of the early Christian writings tend to vary more frequently from one another and from later copies than do the later copies (say, of the high Middle Ages) from one another. Eventually a kind of professional scribal class came to be a part of the Christian intellectual landscape, and with the advent of professional scribes came more controlled copying practices, in which mistakes were made much less frequently.
Before that happened, during the early centuries of the church, Christian texts were copied in whatever location they were written or taken to. Since texts were copied locally, it is no surprise that different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition. That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part âin-houseâ documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in a place like Alexandria, Egypt. Moreover, in the early centuries of the church, some locales had better scribes than others. Modern scholars have come to recognize that the scribes in Alexandriaâwhich was a major intellectual center in the ancient worldâwere particularly scrupulous, even in these early centuries, and that there, in Alexandria, a very pure form of the text of the early Christian writings was preserved, decade after decade, by dedicated and relatively skilled Christian scribes.
P ROFESSIONAL C HRISTIAN S CRIBES
When did the church begin to use professional scribes to copy its texts? There are good reasons for thinking that this happened sometime near the beginning of the fourth century. Until then, Christianity was a small, minority religion in the Roman Empire, often opposed, sometimes persecuted. But a cataclysmic change occurred when the emperor of Rome, Constantine, converted to the faith about 312 C . E . Suddenly Christianity shifted from being a religion of social outcasts, persecuted by local mobs and imperial authorities alike, to being a major player in the religious scene of the empire. Not only were persecutions halted, but favors began to pour out upon the church from the greatest power in the Western world. Massive conversions resulted, as it became a popular thing to be a follower of Christ in an age in which the emperor himself publicly proclaimed his allegiance to Christianity.
More and more highly educated and trained persons converted tothe faith. They, naturally, were the
This is obviously a crucial task, since we canât interpret the words of the New Testament if we donât know what the words were. Moreover, as I hope should be clear by now, knowing the words is important not just for those who consider the words divinely inspired. It is important for anyone who thinks of the New Testament as a significant book. And surely everyone interested in the history, society, and culture of Western civilization thinks so, because the New Testament, if nothing else, is an enormous cultural artifact, a book that is revered by millions and that lies at the foundation of the largest religion of the world today.
3
T EXTS OF THE N EW T ESTAMENT
Editions, Manuscripts, and Differences
T he copying practices we have considered thus far have been principally those of the first three centuries of Christianity, when most of the copyists of the Christian texts were not professionals trained for the job but simply literate Christians of this or that congregation, able to read and write and so called upon to reproduce the texts of the community in their spare time. 1 Because they were not highly trained to perform this kind of work, they were more prone to make mistakes than professional scribes would have been. This explains why our earliest copies of the early Christian writings tend to vary more frequently from one another and from later copies than do the later copies (say, of the high Middle Ages) from one another. Eventually a kind of professional scribal class came to be a part of the Christian intellectual landscape, and with the advent of professional scribes came more controlled copying practices, in which mistakes were made much less frequently.
Before that happened, during the early centuries of the church, Christian texts were copied in whatever location they were written or taken to. Since texts were copied locally, it is no surprise that different localities developed different kinds of textual tradition. That is to say, the manuscripts in Rome had many of the same errors, because they were for the most part âin-houseâ documents, copied from one another; they were not influenced much by manuscripts being copied in Palestine; and those in Palestine took on their own characteristics, which were not the same as those found in a place like Alexandria, Egypt. Moreover, in the early centuries of the church, some locales had better scribes than others. Modern scholars have come to recognize that the scribes in Alexandriaâwhich was a major intellectual center in the ancient worldâwere particularly scrupulous, even in these early centuries, and that there, in Alexandria, a very pure form of the text of the early Christian writings was preserved, decade after decade, by dedicated and relatively skilled Christian scribes.
P ROFESSIONAL C HRISTIAN S CRIBES
When did the church begin to use professional scribes to copy its texts? There are good reasons for thinking that this happened sometime near the beginning of the fourth century. Until then, Christianity was a small, minority religion in the Roman Empire, often opposed, sometimes persecuted. But a cataclysmic change occurred when the emperor of Rome, Constantine, converted to the faith about 312 C . E . Suddenly Christianity shifted from being a religion of social outcasts, persecuted by local mobs and imperial authorities alike, to being a major player in the religious scene of the empire. Not only were persecutions halted, but favors began to pour out upon the church from the greatest power in the Western world. Massive conversions resulted, as it became a popular thing to be a follower of Christ in an age in which the emperor himself publicly proclaimed his allegiance to Christianity.
More and more highly educated and trained persons converted tothe faith. They, naturally, were the
Similar Books
