The 'internal evidence' sadly, is going to speak for itself, when placed in the light. We will content ourselves here with making a few simple observations:
Early in the history of the collating and printing of the NT text, (circa 1500-1800) it was noticed that these verses (7:53-8:11) in John were missing, or diacritically marked with suspicion in many manuscripts. This is in fact what raised a question and spurred an inquiry into their authenticity. Had this not been the case, critics would have had no reason to distrust the verses or the integrity of John in any way. This cannot be emphasized enough. No one was looking, nor had they any reason to look for evidence of 'editing' or even the use of previous 'sources' in John.
John is so unique in fact, that even though it covers the same period and 'apparently' the same person Jesus, very little can be shown to be directly related or borrowed from any other gospel (which is NOT the case with the other three gospels!) and the Pericope de Adultera is no exception. It cannot have been borrowed from another gospel and inserted into John in any process like that which obviously affected the Synoptics.
Nor does the addition of the passage change the nature of John or its general slant. The incident provides no new information about Jesus or doctrine, or special esoteric or gnostic knowledge. It is just more of the same material already found in John. This takes away any motive or purpose to its addition other than the simple desire to preserve a record of an incident in Jesus' life. This is inconsistent both with known editorial practices and even John's own intent and purpose. The case for addtion is implausible in the light of the textual history of the rest of the NT.
With or without the passage, John remains unique and unrelated to the Synoptics.
Critics turned to look for evidence against the authenticity of John 8:1-11 itself because of the strange behaviour of various scribes and copyists two to six centuries after its known existance as a part of John. And this itself is a logical non-sequiter: The observable behaviour is too distant in time from the early textual history and murky origins to have any direct bearing on the question. This is why the only real evidence of interest is the internal evidence.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 20th December 2005 at 08:27 AM.
(2) The State of the Art the Time of the Investigation.
Again some remarks: By the 1840's those concerned with the reproduction of the NT text were well aware of various textual problems created by the variations in the manuscripts. Critics were intelligent enough to ask the right questions in the light of the evidence.
But the important question is, had they amassed enough technical knowledge and formulated and tested enough technique to perform a proper medical diagnosis, and carry out any safe and successful operations?
The Short Answer: No.
The immensity and complexity of the task had not yet even been fully grasped.
In 1840, what was required was
a) The close analysis and careful collation of thousands of extant manuscripts, scattered across Europe and the Mediterranean, in the hands of churches, governments, and private collectors. This alone would require the selection, training, and cooperation of hundreds of field workers, coordinated via church institutions and working across borders and barriers of language and suspicion. This project alone, as is self-evident, would take hundreds of years, and span generations of workers.
b) An investigation and analysis of the process of copying and transmission, involving dating, sourcing, phylogenic classification and grouping, geneological dependancy, cross-pollenation and rescension. Again, a massive project, involving many workers, and long periods of study.
c) A thorough search for more (new) evidence, from archeaological investigations, historical research, and analysis of the both the historical and political processes affecting the text.
d) The development and refinement of a set of rational and scientific methods and tools for the reconstruction of the text. These would require rigorous testing and verification of their practical value and their scope of validity.
e) A clear and comprehensive vision of the essentials of the historical process, and the forces affecting the transmission, so that any textual amendments would not be 'ad hoc' or eclectic, but based upon a true and deep knowledge of what must have actually happened.
Of course none of this ever happened. Because the period between 1840 and probably as far as 1980 can only be described as the 'Wild West' of textual criticism of the bible, in which 'every man did what was right in his own eyes', and rugged individualism and a naive overblown assessment of one's own skills and ability to solve the immense complexities of the task were the norm.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Someone might protest that these are easy criticisms, that hindsight is 20/20. And indeed there is weight to this point, as well as fact that as a cautionary tale, it applies equally well to us. Twenty or a hundred years from now, we also may appear as the naive bumpkins, hopelessly muddling through matters too difficult for us to grasp, like children playing on a reef, unaware of the great depth of the ocean plummeting downward a few feet away.
And I don't want to ignore the obvious talent and intuition that early pioneers had. After all, many were seasoned researchers, and human beings after all, dealing with apparently all too human texts and media of transmission. And these are things every experienced person can and ought to know something about.
Chess Analogy
But I would liken this to the parallel situation of chess. In the early heyday of chess, men played romantically, taking great risks, guessing intuitively the value of this or that line of pursuit. And in those very days, there is no doubt that one could walk into an Englishman's club and play a darn good game of chess that would challenge even the better player of today's on-the-fly problem-solving abilities.
But nowadays no professional chess player can avoid memorizing and analyzing massive numbers of openings and variations, nor can he afford not to keep up to date with the latest developments in this or that line of play. There is a certain point in every chess player's career when he knows that to go any further, even a little, he must now sit back and do years of intense research to cope with subtle transitions from opening to middle-game. And no player today can avoid or ignore a deep mastery of the toughest endings.
The game has changed. Even at the medium skill level, memorization of openings and traps have more value in practical play than knowledge of general opening principles. Over many years, a great reversal in the nature and method of the game has occured.
Modern Textual Criticism
So likewise with textual criticism. No one can get by in this field without a Nestle/Aland Critical text, or even a Merck's. No one can afford not to know about Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, or Westcott and Hort, Scrivener and Burgon, Metzger and FF Bruce.
But even more important, today's tools involve advanced mathematical models involving probability theory, deep structure analysis of grammatical morphemes and semiotics, and above all the statistical compilation, sifting and information analysis that modern computer technology provides. Textual criticism is no more safe from the scandal, collapse, and phoenix-like reconstruction that every other field of research in the world has undergone or is undergoing.
The days of flying along by the seat of your pants and riding on the coattails of your own reputation are over. Now airplanes are flown with radar and remote controls, planned routes and radio towers.
What is more important now are tools like
Colwell's Studies in the Methodology in Textual Criticism of the NT,
A Descriptive Analysis of EINAI by Lane McCaughy,
Syntax Criticism of the Synoptic Gospels by R. A. Martin.
or even, Quantum Computation and Quantum Information by Nielsen and Chuang.
These are the tools and techniques which will eventually speak to such questions as the probability of authorship of passages, or the transmission and extent of a text type.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 20th December 2005 at 10:24 AM.
Now, when we turn to Samuel Davidson's work on the internal evidence regarding the Pericope De Adultera (John 8:1-11) we only need to make the following key observations:
(1) Davidson seems to have just selected an idiosyncratic late Medieval copy of the passage, without doing any investigation of the question of the earliest or most accurate text.
(2) He has not considered most of the major variants in the text, as either possible assimilations to the style of John, or evolutions in the form of the text he is using to make his stylistic analysis.
(3) He has not considered the natural and obvious contamination of the parallel Lectionary tradition and its effect on the grammar and vocabulary of the text.
(4) He has not distinguished the narrative from the dialogue in cataloguing and assessing his stylisms. This is especially important, since John itself displays evidence of the author's influence over the form of dialogues actually recorded elsewhere in John, and these must be thoroughly examined.
(5) He has not investigated the possibility of variants which actually support the conjectural stylisms he suggests that John might have alternately used.
(6) With a number of examples he gives no alternative at all, or any conjecture as to what John would have wrote instead or might have.
(7) Some of his evidence and argumentation could be arbitrarily reversed and provide evidence for the authenticity of the passage, instead of against it.
Obviously, a critically important flaw in Davidson's approach to internal evidence is the actual reversal of the order in which various portions of the task need to be accomplished, and make the entire edifice worthless scientifically.
In a nutshell,
(a) Davidson should have waited until Von Soden exhaustively collated the manuscripts and established the main versions and variants for the passage before trying to analyze either the 'style' of John or the 'style' of the passage.
(b) Davidson should have waited until someone did a proper and scientific statistical analysis of John's style in the rest of the gospel, properly adjusted for 'semiticisms', 'translational Greek', possible use of previous written sources, and form-critical results.
This having been said, we can now proceed to Davidson's evidence.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 20th December 2005 at 11:02 AM.
I think it's great that you feel the freedom to post what appears to be an entire book on this site. But I do hope you plan on responding to the critique of others. This is not a site that is designed for someone to upload a book and run Consider it a book review site.
To which we added, that the suspicion is strong that there is really a lot of posturing and shuffling going on here. The critics are afraid to openly attack the verses as a fraudulent insertion of spurious material, because they would turn away a large part of their Christian market base. (Call me jaded.)
However, since the critics have separated the problem of the authenticity of John 8:1-11 into two questions:
(1) Is the passage properly a part of John and authored by him?
(2) Is the passage an authentic event in the life of Jesus?
(i.e., a faithful tradition handed down by 'posterity' about him?)
...and have chosen to sidestep the 2nd question in a politically expedient manner, not so much from fear of being hit by a lightning bolt, but in fear of the reaction of the churchgoers who buy modern bible translations, we also can deal simply (and at least for now only) with the first question.
You provide once again absolutely no evidence for your belief that we are afraid of the Christian buying market. In the first place, critics have been happy to dispense with I John 5.7b-8 -- an extremely important passage to a lot of people -- and never look back. As you have noted, there are verses 'missing' all over the New Testament, thanks to their efforts. These things are hardly the works of fearful men and women.
In addition, I happen to think exactly what Hodges wrote -- that the text in question is probably an historical event. That is, it probably happened. And this is more than you can say for much of the rest of John's gospel! Yet, the question is not whether it's true -- the question is whether it belongs in John. There is a lot of evidence that extra-canonical works of the New Testament contain actual sayings and events of the life of Jesus -- yet there are few people arguing to insert those parts into Mark! Jude quotes extra-canonical Jewish writings, but that doesn't mean they should be included in our canon.
If you want to argue that its inclusion by posterity is reason enough for it to be in our Bibles -- fine. Just realise what you are arguing. And please do not make comments imputing motives on our work and analyses which have nothing to back them up. We are, as you, attempting to do the Lord's work. Your pointless ad hominem attacks are becoming tiring.
I think it's great that you feel the freedom to post what appears to be an entire book on this site. But I do hope you plan on responding to the critique of others. This is not a site that is designed for someone to upload a book and run Consider it a book review site.
Please. I have certainly composed the last three messages on the fly. Placing this discussion on the public domain is hardly a way to protect one's book copyrights.
I have just finished posting in the last few days/week to a thread which has 110 pages (1200 posts!) That was on one narrow subject, and so I don't see why we can't spend a reasonable amount of time and provide a good meaty amount of evidence for others to enjoy.
I would love to respond to critiques, which is why I am posting my arguments on the net. I don't 'post books and run'. I know some do, but you will have noticed by now that I actually enjoy responding to criticisms and attacks, no matter how hairy or unreasonable it gets.
You provide once again absolutely no evidence for your belief that we are afraid of the Christian buying market. In the first place, critics have been happy to dispense with I John 5.7b-8 -- an extremely important passage ...
'Once again'. All I can say is that there is opinion and fact. I think I am entitled to post both. There has been no shortage of facts in my posts. I don't offer 'evidence' for opinion. Your point here is well taken. I think there has been an obvious adjustment in attitude since they stopped burning heretics at the stake in Europe. However, if you were to practice 'textual criticism' in Arabia, I think you'd alter your boast of 'boldness'.
In addition, I happen to think exactly what Hodges wrote -- that the text in question is probably an historical event. That is, it probably happened. And this is more than you can say for much of the rest of John's gospel! Yet, the question is not whether it's true -- the question is whether it belongs in John. There is a lot of evidence that extra-canonical works of the New Testament contain actual sayings and events of the life of Jesus -- yet there are few people arguing to insert those parts into Mark! Jude quotes extra-canonical Jewish writings, but that doesn't mean they should be included in our canon.
And here we disagree too. Not only was the protestant rejection of the Apocrypha a stupid and backward step, but sure: Please place a copy of Enoch between my testaments. That would be useful for instruction and research. And extend Scofield's notes to include Enoch while you're at it. Lets make the bible comprehensible.
If you want to argue that its inclusion by posterity is reason enough for it to be in our Bibles -- fine. Just realise what you are arguing. And please do not make comments imputing motives on our work and analyses which have nothing to back them up. We are, as you, attempting to do the Lord's work. Your pointless ad hominem attacks are becoming tiring.
Your personal offence at a historical analysis is laughable.
You act as though Samuel Davidson was your personal friend. If you were recently grieving over his death you would have my sympathy. But here your pathetic posturing adds nothing to the scientific discussion. Samuel Davidson's (and anyone else's) work deserves criticism and review.
You want to be included in the 'number of textual critics': fine.
As if that was something to admit, or be proud of...what a bunch of clowns.
I don't doubt your credentials, because your oversensitive emotional responses indicate you are indeed 'university trained'.
I will continue to impute motives to any and all people who in the past or currently submit 'scientific' or 'scholarly' work and expect aclaim or creditation. No pain no gain. Don't expect any respect at all, unless your work earns it, and you can prove your ethical standards even exist.
As for using the royal 'we' and then imputing to textual critics generally a 'God fearing Christian' world view or religious position, don't make me laugh. Do you really seriously think the majority of textual critics would sign the Apostle's Creed? Don't be ludicrous. The majority of textual critics are self-confessed heretics and agnostics, far more concerned with tenure at their universities then loyalty to Jesus. Oh give me a break.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
'Once again'. All I can say is that there is opinion and fact. I think I am entitled to post both. There has been no shortage of facts in my posts. I don't offer 'evidence' for opinion.
Perhaps, then, let us reduce the amount of opinion in your posts. And do not call it
Your personal offence at a historical analysis is laughable.
if you are also going to call it opinion. In order for it to be about analysis, you'd have to provide a reason. But as it is, you're simply spouting off your opinion of what those who have a more critical position than you think.
And yes, a rather high number of textual critics on both sides of the debate could ascribe the apostle's creed. I don't know why you seem to think otherwise. Obviously there exists a number of biblical scholars who have abandoned the faith. But now if we leave Europe, we find a different story. The United States, which has produced some excellent scholarship, has also a practical commitment to Christianity that has not entirely fallen away. And here I am not thinking only of DTS and Maurice Robinson.
It certainly is personally offensive to have someone sitting there saying that you are attempting to undermine Truth and God, and attempting to deceive the populace, because you happen to believe in Alexandrian priority. It's about more than Samuel Davidson when you write,
The critics are afraid to openly attack the verses as a fraudulent insertion of spurious material, because they would turn away a large part of their Christian market base.
.
The men and women under who I have studied, and the people with who I work now, can all subscribe happily to the Creed, and we all happen to be arguing their beliefs (and we certainly disagree): yet we all consider John 7.53-8.11 to belong outside of the book of John. BTW, none of this happens to be about posturing. You seem to think that I believe I am competition with you.
It is not evil for someone to disagree with you. If you're going to suggest that we who hold the position that the pericope does not belong are cowardly and swayed by the whim of the masses, then you darned-well better provide some reasoning. Put up or shutup.
Lets skip over this. I'll decrease the amount of opinion content, if you concentrate on discussing the evidence and arguments I have presented and will continue to present.
If you want to roll around in the dog doo doo on the front lawn over the spiritual state of modern 'scholarship', we can do that later, after lemonade and cookies.
Peace to this house in the name of our Father and our Lord Jesus the Christ,
Messiah, King of Kings, Only born Son of God, and our friend.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Davidson's Internal 'Evidence' against the Passage
Because Davidson actually presents his case in a rambling monologue a page and a half long, the reader may easily get the impression that it is a massive, homogenous stack of evidence in support of non-Johannine authorship. This is not at all the case however, so we will present instead in chart form, so the reviewer can immediately grasp the precariousness of the claims:
Phrase in Passage .............vs. ...........John's Alleged Diction _______________________________________________________________________________
eporeuqh eiV ton oikon (*) ...............aphlqen (m6) eiV ta idia eporeuqh eiV to oroV .........................aphlqen (m6)... / anecwrhsen +de .........................................................oun + orqrou ..................................................prwi / prwiaV genomenhV parageneto (*) ..................................anebh / ercesqai (var.) paV o laoV (*) ...................................paV o ocloV (var.) en mesw (*) .........................................eiV to meson (m6)
kateleifqh (*) ...................................afiesqai ( euromen m6) en mesw estwsa (*) ..........................mesh estwsa plhn ....................................................ei mh (L) katekrinen (*) ..................................ekrinen (m6) _________________________________________________________________________
(*) an unstable part of text involving variants (D) a part of the recorded dialogue (the Pharisees) (L) a Lukanism normally only appearing in dialogue (var.) probable readings exist supporting the conjecture
_______________________________________________________
Davidson offers a further list of words and phrases alleged to be unlike the expression of the gospel writer, this time without offering any alternative conjectures that would presumably be more in John's style:
_________________________________________ oi grammateiV kai oi farisaioi kaqisaV edidasken autoiV (*) kateilemmenhn (*) egrafen epemenon erwtwnteV (*) anararthtoV (D) suneidhsiV (*)
________________________________________
(*) textual variants (D) taken from dialogue
________________________________________
Davidson also tells us that oros ton elaiwn "seems derived from the synoptists", on no other basis than the phrase is also found there.
We are also informed that escatwn is an unsuitable antithesis for presbuterwn.
We'll comment on these in more detail shortly.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 21st December 2005 at 12:48 PM.
The first thing we want to do with Davidson's chart is get down to real cases. And that means pruning it of the bogus instances which have no meaningful content for the issue at hand. And yes, there are several of these:
(9) The Word-Order Variant: "Moses to us (commanded/wrote)" vs. "to us Moses (commanded/wrote)"
a) If there is one morphological feature of NT Greek that blows around like a leaf in the wind, and yet contains no syntactic or lexical meaning, its word-order. Greek is a language that is so highly inflected that for all intents and purposes, word order, especially in its minor variations, conveys no significance at all. Because of this, it is one of the most flexible and arbitrary features. Except in a few special cases, such as with the verb 'to be' in conjunction with the presence or absence of the definite article, (i.e., Colwell's Rule etc.) nothing can be squeezed out of it except perhaps a thinker's moment to moment attention, or his flow of thought. If one were to try to pick the absolute least useful indication of style or authorship in NT Greek, this would be it (strike 1).
b) Next, we ask, what is the most common scribal error found in every manuscript, page, verse of the NT? Word order. The fact that it is difficult and time consuming to erase ink, along with a) above, (the fact that word order doesn't matter anyway) results in scribes typically simply copying the accidentally skipped word right after the word interrupting the flow. As a result, in just about every manuscript, every few verses there is a simple word order reversal, totally meaningless to the text, and impossible to trace past the scribe of the exemplar. (strike 2).
c) Finally, indeed, when we check the extant manuscripts, we find the actual word order reversal referred to here is almost as common as the text-forms themselves. And a subpoint here is that the 'W.O.R.' in question is not a feature of the pericope so much as a reversable feature between competing versions of the text. Until the relative priority and dependance of the different forms of the pericope are known, nothing can be achieved with this. (strike 3).
d) Now we note that the variant in question is in fact an alternate reading between the two main competing versions of the pericope. (strike 4).
e) The W.O.R. not only unfortunately appears in DIALOGUE, meaning it cannot be clearly or unambiguously connected to John's narrative writing style at all, since he may simply be recording someone else's speaking style. To make matters worse, it appears in a pericope where there is little dialogue, but what there is, is critically important to the story, and so this dialogue is less likely to be 'altered' by John's style, if it is authentic. Lastly, it is in the speech of Christ's enemies, and even less likely to be assimilated by John himself, if recorded by him. (strike 5). How many do we need?
We are forced to put four or five x's through Example (9), and NO votes in its favour for any consideration at all.
__________________ "Neither do I judge thee. Sin no more." (Jn 8:11)
Last edited by Nazaroo; 21st December 2005 at 02:07 PM.
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