Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition: Evidence of the Influence of Apologetic Interests on the Text of the Canonical Gospels

Abstract

Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition: Evidence of the Influence of Apologetic Interests on the Text of the Canonical Gospels, by Wayne C. Kannaday. SBL TextCritical Studies 5. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature; Leiden: Brill, 2004. Pp. xiii + 274. $130,00/$39.95. ISBN 9004130853/1589831012. That the early Christians were engaged textual wars with pagan critics is by now well known. What has scarcely been explored, until now, is the degree to which early Christian scribes participated these wars the process of reproducing-copyingearly Christian texts. This study succeeds filling this gap. Kannaday's study, a revision of his doctoral dissertation under the of Bart D. Ehrman, is a compelling one: he argues, quite conclusively to my mind, scribes engaged the work of transmitting the canonical Gospels did indeed, some cases, modify their exemplars under the influence of apologetic (p. 57). To build his case for apologetics (p. 139), Kannaday focuses his attention on the textual traditions of the NT Gospels and proceeds successive chapters to show how the precise arguments made by pagan critics and Christian apologists can be found variant readings throughout the Gospels. The opening chapter introduces the various subfields that will be united the volume: the field of NT textual criticism and the field of early Christian apologetics. Specialists either of these fields will find little here, but including this material (which may well be a remnant of its once-dissertation status) allows the volume to reach a much broader audience. Kannaday offers brief introductions to the works of pagan critics (e.g., Pliny, Tacitus, Seutonius, Lucian, Apuleius, Marcus Cornelius Pronto, Celsus, Porphyry) and early Christian apologists (e.g., Quadratus, Aristides, Justin Martyr, Tatian, Athenagoras, Theophilus, Melito, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, and Minucius Felix). Particularly helpful this first chapter is Kannaday's overview of the directions taken the field of NT textual criticism: while the seeds of this new direction were sown a century ago by the works of J. Rendel Harris and others, Kannaday is right to highlight how the work of his mentor, Bart Ehrman, (and others) has sought to redirect the focus away from establishing the original text of the NT and toward exploring how the transmission of the NT intersected with the historical dynamics of the second, third, and fourth centuries. Chapter 2 (Antiquity, Harmony, and Factual Consistency) brings the reader to the evidence itself. In a pattern that will repeat itself for the next three chapters, Kannaday begins by highlighting a particular theme the controversies between Christians and their pagan opponents and then demonstrates how the theme is apparent the textual traditions themselves. Here the subject is the pagan attacks on the apparent novelty (i.e., newness) of Christianity and their criticisms of the inconsistencies Christian Scriptures. Kannaday shows how Christian apologists and scribes worked to prove the antiquity of the Christian faith and modified the Scriptures so as to make them more consistent. Many of the variants Kannaday treats here and elsewhere, of course, have been studied by other NT textual critics, but Kannaday offers plausible, and often highly compelling, explanations for the cause of the variants. For example, his lengthy treatment of a variant at Mark 1:2 (Does the text read in Isaiah the prophet or in the prophets?), Kannaday suggests that, although scribes may simply have wished to omit errors-and hence preferred the more general reading in the prophets since what follows is not simply a prophetic passage from Isaiah-there may well have been an additional motivation at work: it is reasonable to posit apologetic interests as the momentum behind this scribal alteration. Certainly the effect of the change served apologetic interests, as the correction buttressed a vulnerable spot the text that had already been exploited by an antagonist [i. …