The following interview from the 1970s is courtesy of Maurice Robinson shared here with his permission.
During the time I was studying NT
textual criticism under Kenneth W. Clark, and just before beginning my doctoral
studies in Fort Worth, I asked Clark if he would answer a number of questions
in an interview format. He agreed, under condition that such would
not be for general publication until
long after he had died. As a result, my manually typed transcript of the taped
interview (3 May 1977) lay buried among my papers for the past 43 years, and
was frankly forgotten until it was rediscovered in a long-unpacked box this
Fall. Sufficient time now having passed (Clark died in 1979, at age 81), it
seems wise to electronically retype the transcript for full release.
The approximately two-hour
interview occurred at Clark’s home in Durham, North Carolina, on 3 May 1977,
when he was 79 years old. He had been quite ill that previous winter, but was
in reasonably good health at the point of the interview, although at times
talking about other subjects and often repeating previous statements. However,
the following transcribed excerpts are interesting and perhaps pertinent to
NTTC theory and method even today:
MAR:
It seems that in your earlier
articles you basically accepted the Westcott-Hort theory, but that this view
had modified as time went by; first, to the status of “questioning” its
validity, and most recently of “doubting” its general correctness.
CLARK: My views really have never changed. I
never had been quite convinced of the acceptability of the Westcott-Hort
theory; there are too many unproven historical claims, and it relies too much
upon subjective factors in its basic reliance upon internal evidence. As you
know, I have always been strongly opposed to eclecticism; yet the idea that we
are capable of picking and choosing the readings which best suit the context,
and are therefore textual critics
(whether or not we need utilize the documents
which contain that very text) — this is our current “critical” stance, and we
are much the worse for it. Again, Westcott-Hort were far more than the
eclectics of today: they were document
partisans — the nemesis of all poor text-critical theory. Far too attached
to Vaticanus as an “infallible” standard.
As
to why an increasing criticism of the Westcott-Hort theory seems to develop in
my writings, I believe I was just further developing that which I have always
held. It is true that much of my critique had been delayed, but that was for an
entirely different reason: every new discovery of papyri had to be analyzed,
because many of my criticisms would be affected thereby; in fact, many of the
building-blocks of the Westcott-Hort theory were severely weakened, without a
word from me; the papyri had toppled their theoretical building-blocks.
However, had the papyri been known to Westcott and Hort, their text would still
have been essentially the same. In fact, had they been in possession of Papyrus
66, the Bodmer MS, and knew nothing whatsoever about Papyrus 75, the close
relative of Vaticanus, they would have rejected the evidence of P66 out of hand
— and why? Because the text of P66 did not sufficiently parallel B. On the
other hand, had they been in possession of P75, without P66, they would have
praised it out of hand. And why? Because its text was so like B. You recall
that Colwell wrote about Hort having put “blinders on our eyes”? Well, Hort had
them on as well!
MAR: You have stated that we are now
working with and are in fact bound to a new “Textus
Receptus”, in the form of an Alexandrian text rather than the old TR of the
Byzantine type. It has been quite disturbing to Eldon J. Epp and Gordon Fee
that you have so characterized our current critical texts as though they were
somehow thereby “inferior”. Is that what you intend by your statements, or have
Epp and Fee misinterpreted your point?
CLARK: I should not say we should call the
current critical texts “inferior” by any means. However, I have made it quite
clear that all current critical texts have not moved far from the Westcott-Hort
text, despite all the new discoveries such as the Koridethi Gospels (Θ), the papyri, and the
increased studies into the lectionaries, versions, and fathers — none of which
had been accomplished in the days of Westcott-Hort. Yet it should be clear to
any unprejudiced mind that the Alexandrian texttype — though excellent in many
respects — is not and cannot be regarded as the original text of the autograph
MSS. Yet what do we see? In every critical edition since Westcott-Hort we have
a reproduction, more or less, of their Alexandrian-based text — an exception
being the work of A. C. Clark in Acts, who deliberately followed the Western
text (if such can in fact be called a “text”), thinking it to be original.
MAR: In regard to Souter, a while
back you mentioned to me something to the effect that you felt Souter’s text to
in fact be the closest we currently have available to the autograph text: does
this not conflict somewhat with your statement regarding the new “Textus Receptus” of the Alexandrian
type, since Souter’s text was basically a reprint of Palmer’s reconstruction of
the Greek text presumed to underlie the Revised Version of 1881, and closely
followed Westcott-Hort?
