Abstract
Because few manuscripts of the NT writings are preserved from the first three centuries of the Christian era, scholars have debated the extent that modern critical editions of the NT reflect the text in circulation during these early centuries. In order to answer this question, this article will set out the evidence for ancient publication through community transmission. It will consider examples from Cicero, Martial, Quintilian, Pliny the Younger and Galen. These authors reveal that they preferred social networks rather than commercial dealers to circulate their writings. These same communities that copied and distributed an author’s works inadvertently created an environment in which significant alterations and plagiarizing of these same writings became known. Matthew D.C. Larsen, who has recently approached the same problem addressed in this article by examining ancient publication conventions, is engaged with throughout. The conclusions drawn here press hard against Larsen’s assertions.
Highlights
IntroductionThough there are many manuscripts that preserve portions of the NT writings, very few of these manuscripts date to within the first millennium of the Christian
Though there are many manuscripts that preserve portions of the NT writings, very few of these manuscripts date to within the first millennium of the ChristianMitchell era, and only a handful within the second and third centuries.[1]
Helmut Koester articulated this criticism well when he wrote that, New Testament textual critics have been deluded by the hypothesis that the archetypes of the textual tradition which were fixed ca. 200 ce – and how many archetypes for each gospel? – are identical with the autographs
Summary
Though there are many manuscripts that preserve portions of the NT writings, very few of these manuscripts date to within the first millennium of the Christian. Holmes has suggested that the ‘trends, patterns, and tendencies from a later period for which we have evidence’ be projected ‘back into the earliest period for which we lack evidence’ in order to understand the earliest shape of the text (Holmes 2011: 78) This is not unlike Petersen’s approach, the conclusions of which were already mentioned above.[4] This method has led Holmes to conclude that ‘all the variation during the time period in view affects a verse or less of the text’ indicating that the text of the NT writings is ‘characterized by macro-level stability and micro-level fluidity’ (Holmes 2011: 78). In tension with Larsen’s work, this article proposes that, because the NT writings were transmitted and circulated through Greco-Roman conventions of community distribution, this naturally produced a condition in which the plagiarizing and ‘macro-level’ alteration of these writings would have been exposed within these same community circles
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