James Snapp posted a thoughtful comment recently to my "Bible as Christian Scripture," chapter 2, section 3, "The Text of the New Testament." I thought I would retrofit this response to the same day as the original post.
First, with regard to the originality of the ending of Mark:
I would never say that those very few scholars who argue for the originality of Mark 16:9-20 are not very intelligent or do not know their details. They have to be ingenius and know their stuff thoroughly to be able to make a plausible argument!
In my mind, the external evidence on this score is really corroborative rather than the decisive point. The decisive point is that Mark 16:9-20 simply do not fit the context of Mark 16:1-8. Mark 16:9 begins the resurrection story all over again as if Mark 16:1-8 didn't even exist, and 16:9-20 is a summary collection of resurrection bits rather than the continuance of an even narrative style.
My hunch is that evidentiary arguments for the originality of the longer ending of Mark are really game-playing with evidence, going through the motions of scholarship to give credence to conclusions one had before starting. Why not simply say the ending of Mark is original by faith? That's a coherent position.
Second, differences between the textus receptus and the Majority text:
Thanks for pointing out some places where I need to word things more carefully. I think you would agree that there are few major variants between the two, regardless of how many piddly ones there may be.
By the time I was done with this series, I recognized that the matter of text is very sloppy, even given the working hypothesis I am playing out here. We have the Vulgate and the Byzantine tradition as the two majority representatives of Christian worship throughout the centuries. If they agree on a reading, that reading has a good claim to be the Christian one. But the very nature of my working hypothesis makes the specific text of the Bible largely irrelevant to reading the Bible as Christian Scripture.
In the end, I am going to argue for a multi-layered approach, one that focuses on the consensus of the church but dialogs with the process of revelation along the way. I would thus argue the same for the text--no inordinate emphasis on the original text but a consideration of all the biblical texts that Christians have used and heard God's voice from over the centuries.
Shorter Reading
James: "It is not totally false but in order to be true it must be so thoroughly qualified that the actual rules are embedded in the qualifications."
I don't personally put too much weight on this one, but it has, as you say, seemed true more times than it is not.
Acts 8:37
You obviously know way more about the Majority Text than I do. I had never noticed that the Byzantine tradition does not have the verse. Thanks!
How Inspiration Works
James: Let’s see here: first, the Holy Spirit inspired the authors of the NT books. Then copyists, in the process of transmitting the inspired text, created some alterations – adding some new uninspired material and omitting some old inspired material. Now, the church, being guided by the Holy Spirit, is free to reject the inspired text and prefer variants which originated with uninspired copyists, because the message of the non-original text is “cleaner and more orthodox” than the autographs???
Ken: There are a number of long standing assumptions you make here, ones that must be carefully processed and that this hermeneutical thinking I am doing in this BCS series is wrestling with. I will only mention here that, without denying original inspiration, the Bible is only useful to the people of God today if it is understood in an inspired way by a Christian reader. The way thinking typically goes on this today is, by implication, Who cares if anyone after the original audiences understood the perfect, absolute revelation of the original text? It was originally inspired! I know this is not what is said. But it is the implication, I believe, of the usual model.
The rejoinder is then usually--But it wasn't inspired back then just for back then. It was inspired absolutely back then for all time! This is a pre-modern response, one that has no real understanding of the original meaning or of human language and culture. Words don't have continuous meanings, and absolute propositional speech is unable to address the particular needs of any time or place because of how general it has to be to be timeless. If the Bible were written in purely God's absolute terms, no human would ever understand it in any time or place.
Practically speaking, the most important moment of inspiration, if the Bible is actually going to be God's Word to anyone alive, is the moment when a person reads it, not when it was written. This is the fundamental--and fatal--blind spot of the hermeneutical orientation of the traditional model for inspiration.
What I'm Saying
James: I like to put this idea in an analogy, comparing the NT text to a ship, and its message to the cargo: when a ship arrives at its destination after a long voyage, barnacles are attached to the hull, and fresh coats of paint have been applied to some parts of the ship, and some of the polish has worn away. All these things may predictably occur, but the cargo has been preserved.
Ken: What I am arguing in this series is that we are mistaken if we think the entire ship was constructed when it left the original dock. Parts of the Christian ship that we consider essential were completed during the voyage. The hardest task, and one that the Reformation performed, is to distinguish the barnacles of the voyage from legitimate construction along the voyage.
Re-orienting our thought
James: If some new manuscript-discovery implies that the original text meant something significantly different than what the Standard Text means, the implication of the discovery might be rejected purely on doctrinal grounds.
Ken: I am completely separating text from meaning. We are again mistaken if we think that words have some fixed meaning that holds fast over time. The same words of the Bible have given rise to many different meanings in the eyes of many different interpreters. The specific text is ultimately a minor issue, and our decisions about when additions were made or not made are really secondary to finding a fixed message for Scripture as a whole.
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Greetings and a belated happy new year, Ken. Despite the tardiness of this reply let me jump right back into things and reply point-by-point.
KS: “In my mind, the external evidence [about Mk. 16:9-20] is really corroborative rather than the decisive point. The decisive point is that Mark 16:9-20 simply do not fit the context of Mark 16:1-8. . . .”
Which favors my view, which is that verses 9-20 were added during the production-stage of the Gospel of Mark, rather than sometime in the second century. (That is, either added hastily by Mark, in emergency circumstances, or – more likely – added by his colleagues at Rome after his forced departure, in whose hands he left his narrative to be finished and disseminated.) In 14:28 and 16:6-7 the stage is set for at least one appearance in Galilee; yet verses 9-20 contain appearances which we know – from Mt. and Lk. – to have occurred in or near Jerusalem. Only to a person unacquainted with the Gospels of Matthew, Luke, and John (and I Cor. 15) would the contents of verses 9-20 seem to be an adequate attachment/conclusion of the Gospel of Mark.
KS: “16:9-20 is a summary collection of resurrection bits rather than the continuance of an even narrative style.”
Nothing in verses 9-20 reveals literary dependence on Mt., Lk., or Jn.; meanwhile these 12 verses contain several unique points: for instance, it says that Mary Magdalene’s report that she had seen Jesus was not believed; it says that Jesus rebuked the Eleven on account of their hardness of heart; it says that Jesus told the disciples that if believers happened to drink deadly poison they would not be harmed. And rather than conform to Luke’s account, verses 12-14 appear to present the two travelers’ report to the disciples, and Jesus’ appearance to the eleven, as two distinct events. So while verses 9-20 are a summary of events, they are not a parchwork quilt with pieces cut from Mt., Lk., and Jn., as is sometimes claimed.
KS: “Why not simply say the ending of Mark is original by faith? That's a coherent position.”
Are you seriously asking why anyone would not make an argument with his foundation premise being something like, “It is true because I believe it to be true”?? That would be subjective, like your hunch about the motivations of defenders of the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20. Anyone can assert the opposite on the same grounds. If I, too, have a hunch – say, if I suspect that most people who deny the authenticity of Mark 16:9-20 do so because they are uncomfortable with some of its theological implications – that may be interesting, but it does not settle the question or address the evidence. It’s a coherent statement but not a coherent defense.
About the Prefer-the-Shorter-Reading text-critical canon: see David Miller’s nice essay on this in the Files at the textualcriticism Yahoo! Discussion-board; that should bring you up to date on the research which has shown that it is simply not a good rule.
Ken: “Practically speaking, the most important moment of inspiration, if the Bible is actually going to be God’s Word to anyone alive, is the moment when a person reads it, not when it was written. This is the fundamental--and fatal--blind spot of the hermeneutical orientation of the traditional model for inspiration.”
Practically speaking, if a tree falls in the middle of a forest and no one is around to hear it – practically speaking, it makes no difference if it makes a sound or not. But if we are to speak about the Biblical text in terms of its character, instead of in terms of its circumstances, then the most important point of inspiration is when the Holy Spirit inspired the authors to produce the text, and imbued their words with permanent divine authority. The Biblical text only inspires when it is read and used, but is itself inherently inspired whether it is read and used or not.
KS: “We are again mistaken if we think that words have some fixed meaning that holds fast over time. The same words of the Bible have given rise to many different meanings in the eyes of many different interpreters.”
Which is why it is important to consider the text “in situ.” Of course no one should imagine that words never change their meanings, but neither should we imagine that the person who wrote them (or the Person who wrote them) intended for his words to have multiple meanings. (We can figure that the Holy Spirit foresaw that Scripture would eventually have millions of applications, but interpreting the text’s meaning, and discerning its application, are two things.)
KS: “The specific text is ultimately a minor issue, and our decisions about when additions were made or not made are really secondary to finding a fixed message for Scripture as a whole.”
No; the specific text is not always a minor issue. Besides the obvious issue of whether the Holy Spirit inspired erroneous statements or not (which is a direct implication of the acceptance of some textual variants, such as the Alexandrian reading of Matthew 27:49), other issues are heavily impacted by text-critical matters. To grant that the general message of the New Testament as a whole is communicated by the Vulgate, and by the Byzantine Text, and by the Alexandrian Text, is like granting that the general message of a contract is communicated by three different drafts of the contract. All three editions of the contract may have the same general message, but if there are any disputes about points outside the general message, we must have either a definitive text or an authoritative agent to settle things, as a starting-point.
To the extent that individual congregations (or denominations) accept and emulate their leaders' use of particular versions of the NT (based on particular editions of the Greek text), such an authoritative authority exists, but since they can be wrong, and since some of them must be wrong (inasmuch as they disagree), we are obligated to work with a text that is not absolutely definitive, as I described previously.
Yours in Christ,
James Snapp, Jr.
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