Canon and copies

If one agrees, at least in principle, with David Trobisch’s and Porter’s views of the Pauline letter collection (they agree in some ways and disagree in other ways), Paul himself was involved in the collecting and gathering of his letters as a letter collection and that he may possibly have written multiple copies of his letters. Porter posits that Paul may have made a copy for the individual or group he addresses his letters to, and then made a copy (or copies?) for himself. I think there is a high likelihood—as well as opportunity, especially given the amount of time he spent in prison—that Paul (and/or his amanuensis) did just that. I think that when Paul tells Timothy to send the parchments (2 Tim 4:13), he’s referring to his own letter collection (up to that point, of course). 

https://domainthirtythree.com/2019/04/22/on-method-and-purpose-in-new-testament-textual-criticism/

Do all our MSS go back to a single error-ridden copy?

This is germane to Bart Ehrman's wildly unrealistic hypothetical (which he never documents, that I'm aware of) that all our extant Greek MSS might go back to a single error-ridden copy. 

Trobisch attempts to circumvent the major crux of the issue by positing that seeking the original text is not about the individual books or their MSS so much as about the canonical text. As he states, "The history of the NT is the history of an edition, a book that has been published and edited by a specific group of editors, at a specific place, and at a specific time." He places this edition in the late 2C. As a result, one is seeking not the original text, but rather the original canonical edition, from which the later MSS can be traced as derivative. As interesting as canonical development may be, this too is not a solution to the question of the original text, as it begs the question of the prehistory of any book before it was 'canonized' and instead concentrates on the ordering and features of MSS that indicate their later editing, Stanley Porter, How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation (Baker 2013), 28. 

How “The Roman Catholic Church” “Compiled the Bible”?

I’m following up on some comments on the Jerry Walls Facebook thread, where he ridiculed the notion that the Roman Catholic Church claim to have “compiled the Bible” as “Simplistic, self-serving hubris”:

This paragraph of mine in the comments:

Irenaeus may have had good theology, but that's because he also was among the first to have an almost totally compiled New Testament. It wasn't "the Catholic Church" that put it together. Paul's works were most likely collected in his own lifetime. The Gospels and other letters were also collected in a group -- but there was no doubt they were regarded as Scripture from the moment the ink was dry.

Got some comments of its own. One commenter wrote:

your last paragraph is utterly unsupported dogmatic affirmation--essentially a form of sanctified wishful thinking. … You're right that the NT was _mostly_ canonized in the second century, as far as we can tell. But clearly it _was_ the early "Catholic Church" (i.e., the group of Christians from whom all modern Christians are in one way or another descended) that put it together. Your claim that Paul's letters and the Gospels were compiled and accepted as Scripture almost as soon as they were written makes no sense if Irenaeus was the first person to be working with an "almost completed canon." That's 100 years later. I have trouble seeing how you aren't contradicting yourself here.

It is the very nature of this "early 'Catholic Church'" that is in question. Yes, they saw themselves as one church. But don't give people the notion that this group of Christians had uniform worship or organizational structures. In fact, that is the very thing that is in question.

1 Clement, written from Rome eastward (towards Corinth) reflects a different church government structure than does Ignatius (writing from the east westward). Easter was celebrated differently in the east (Quartodecimans) and in the west. They were by no means an organized body with an organized governmental or liturgical structures.

So who were "they", and by what mechanism did "they" "put it together"? Likely they had good communication among themselves, and a common purpose. But that can be said of the Southern Baptist Convention, and that in no way suggests organizational unity.

So who were "this group", and by what mechanism did "they" "put it together"? We have some evidence.

Paul wrote in the 50's and 60's. While they didn't have Kinko's there at the time, it's almost a sure bet that his letters were circulating as a unit as soon as Christians were able to regroup from persecutions. The Chester Beatty papyrus, dated 200, contains the complete set of Paul's letters.

The Gospels were written at different times and places. The Gospel of John is typically dated at around 90 AD. There is no question that these two sets of documents were compiled early and often. Stanley Porter says "there is surprisingly strong manuscript evidence worth considering that indicates that sometime in the second century the fixed corpus of four Gospels and Acts was firmly established" (How We Got the New Testament 87).

Tatian's Diatesseron, circa 150-180, is likely as early as they were all collected in one place. It is very likely that Irenaeus at least had all of these documents.

Porter also relates "Majescule Manuscript 0232", dated to the third century, which has compiled a Johanine corpus. No doubt these documents had been thought of as a unit and had been collected earlier (in order to create this compilation).

1 Peter, 2 Peter, and Jude were also compiled separately in an early codex.

Some date the Muratorian canon as early as 170; that contains virtually the whole NT canon.

Who does SBL Think It Is? Get Real and Get a Life SBL!

https://domainthirtythree.com/2016/10/26/who-does-sbl-think-it-is-get-real-and-get-a-life-sbl/

The Apostle Paul: His Life, Thought, and Letters

https://domainthirtythree.com/2016/09/08/book-announcement-porter-the-apostle-paul/

Porter on Misquoting Jesus

Commenting on Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus, Stanley Porter says (among other things):

Ehrman notes, as I already mentioned above, that John Mill [c. 1645-1707] examined around one hundred manuscripts and found thirty thousand variants. Now, Ehrman notes, with over 5,700 manuscripts, we have somewhere between two hundred thousand and four hundred thousand variants. Or, as Ehrman likes to say, we have more variants than words in the New Testament. This sounds rather shocking; in fact, it is sensationally so. Mill had on average three hundred variants per manuscript. Is that a lot? Given that some of these are minor variants, others changes in word order, and others obviously slips of the pen, I think not. However, with roughly 5,800 manuscripts and, for the sake of argument, four hundred thousand variants (the largest number selected), this means only seventy variants per manuscript. With 5,800 manuscripts and two hundred thousand variants, that reflects only thirty-five variants per manuscript. So in fact, the situation with variants is getting better with the discovery of new manuscripts, not worse. Eherman should be applauding rather than disclaiming. Another way to look at these statistics is to recognize that, on a conservative estimate, 80 percent of the text is established (some say 90 percent or more), regardless of the textual variants present in the manuscripts. If textual variants are distributed equally throughout manuscripts–they may or may not be, but there is no other way to examine this, and some of them, such as spelling, transpositions, and accidental scribal errors, almost certainly will be–this means that, if there are four hundred thousand total variants, there are only eighty thousand in the part of the New Testament that is not established, or an average of only fourteen variants per manuscript in the disputed portion; or if there are only two hundred thousand total variants, only seven variants per manuscript in the disputed portion. This is manuscript production–remember, the copying of ancient manuscripts was done by hand–that nearly rivals that sometimes found today in modern print! Ehrman's comments, then, are a clear instance of  unwarranted sensationalism. Of course, the way to treat variants is not simply to average them, but there is no need to sensationalize and exaggerate the situation so as to engage in fearmongering. After all, besides those mentioned above, many if not most of these variants will be unique variants, probably (on the basis of the distribution of dates of manuscripts, in which the vast majority are late) in later manuscripts, with little impact on the text; others will simply be the repeating of similar types of errors, again with little impact. This no doubt accounts for why in his treatment of the subject Ehrman returns to the same relatively limited number of examples of textual variants.  

In Misquoting Jesus Ehrman's sensationalism, besides a few incidental examples, begins with the story of the woman caught in adultery (Jn 7:53-8:11) and the ending of Mark's Gospel (Mk 16:9-20)…Ehrman is misleading on at least two fronts. First, he makes it seem as if many, if not most, of the textual variants are ten to fourteen verses in length, as these two passages are, when he knows better. In fact, most of the others that he discusses in the book are a word or a phrase in length. This latter length is far more representative. Second, Ehrman gives the possible impression that the scribes, in changing the text, deleted two valuable early passages, when quite the contrary is true. Later scribes, for whatever motives, added later material, but material that on the best textual grounds was never originally there in the first place. 

An examination of several of these other shorter examples, however, shows that Ehrman is on thin ice to claim that there is radical and gratuitous change of the text of the New Testament. I will not treat accidental errors, because to know that it is an accident assumes that we know what it is not to have the accident. In other words, where such occurs, the original is easily discernible. I will also not treat intentional changes where it is clear why the change was made–for historical, theological, or factual reasons–but where the original or unchanged text is easily restored, or where the Byzantine tradition is the only one that supports it. S. Porter, How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation (Baker, 2013), 65-69.  

“Did Jesus Really Exist?” and Social Memory

http://domainthirtythree.com/2016/03/28/did-jesus-really-exist-and-social-memory/

HT: Alan E. Kurschner

John, His Gospel, and Jesus

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/euangelion/2016/01/book-notice-stan-porter-on-john-his-gospel-and-jesus/

Stanley Porter: Did Paul Meet the “Earthly” Jesus?

https://earliestchristianity.wordpress.com/2015/12/14/stanley-porter-did-paul-meet-the-earthly-jesus/

“I have come to believe that, while the case is not an unproblematic certainty, there is … evidence from the Gospels, Acts, and especially Paul’s letters that indicate that Paul may well have met Jesus during their common time together in Palestine, so that, when Paul encountered the risen Jesus on the way to Damascus, he recognized the person and voice and knew who was calling him… I have also come to believe that the encounter or encounters with Jesus that Paul had before the Damascus road experience had a positive formative influence upon Paul and his thinking… I believe and will argue that the influence was significant enough so that when Paul embarked upon his own Christian missionary and teaching ventures, there was a much stronger line of continuity between the teaching of Jesus and that of Paul than many, especially highly critical, scholars wish to admit.”