A little fun for your Friday. See if you can guess the source of the following quote. (Remember, it’s no fun if you ask Google.)
“If the primary purpose of this discipline is to get back to the original text, we may as well admit either defeat or victory, depending on how one chooses to look at it, because we’re not going to get much closer to the original text than we already are. Barring some fantastic manuscript discoveries (like the autographs) or some earth-shattering alterations in text-critical method, the basic physiognomy of our texts is never going to change.”Update: That may have been too easy. But Bart Ehrman it is, in his review of the first fascicle of the ECM (delivered at SBL, I think).
I'm thinking you gave the answer away with the first word of your last sentence.
ReplyDelete(I'm guessing it was Bart Simpson :)
Bart Ehrman
ReplyDeleteEhrman
ReplyDeleteHow do we know this, given what may have transpired between the time Ehrman originally wrote something and the point of final typesetting? The original statement may now be totally lost, heavily adjusted, or totally corrupted, leaving only the existing printed version as the Ausgangstext.
ReplyDeleteIt does seem too long and intricate to have been original.
DeleteDr. Robinson,
DeleteAs always, you continue to make me smile and wonder if maybe I need to rethink my position on the Majority Text view!
Tim
It certainly bears the imprint of an earlier "E" source. But it appears that it was modified to reflect the internecine conflicts of the author(s) community.
ReplyDelete