Robert, to the degree I now understand the point you’re making in post 117, I agree with you. To put the point in my words, modern scholars don’t attempt to identify the NT authors, but they do attempt to “de-identify” (to use your word) certain authors they believe that the ancients erroneously identified.
Stephen, in post 120 you said:
“But don’t you see how this statement literally ‘Begs the Question’?”
No, I don’t. Would you please explain?
“The process that you imagine taking place here is precisely what is in question. I refer you back to my quote
of Eusebius on Papias.”
I’m only imagining details of the process. The process itself is referred to by Eusebius, Athanasius, and Augustine – and I have given citations of each above. I don’t see how your quote of Eusebius on Papias applies. Eusebius’s source for the authorship of Mark was the apostolic churches handing down that gospel. Papias may have been adding details (e.g. Mark was transcribing Peter’s recollections), but he was not Eusebius’s source for the identity of Mark as the author. I just don’t see how your quote bears on the “handing down” process.
I’m going to make some observations and ask some questions, breaking them up into small units. I hope that doing so will make it easier for you to respond. I’m going to start by repeating the first two observations, which have been previously made.
Observation 1: Ehrman Blog posters seem to agree that modern scholars do not attempt to determine authorship of NT texts. (I first stated this at the end of post 115 above, with a little elaboration.) This acknowledgment doesn’t settle the question that launched the thread, but it definitely gives ancient scholars a leg up. For the ancients indeed sought to determine authorship. Logically speaking, therefore, they only have to have demonstrated the least bit of proficiency at that task to be declared superior to modern scholars at that task.
Observation 2: Ehrman Blog posters seem to lack appreciation for, and sometimes even awareness of, the “handing down” process practiced by ancient churches, especially during the 1st through 4th centuries. (I first made this observation, with some elaboration, in post 116 above.)
Observation 2: Ehrman Blog posters seem to lack appreciation for, and sometimes even awareness of, the “handing down” process practiced by ancient churches, especially during the 1st through 4th centuries.
This ‘begs the question’ because it assumes that this “handing down” process has been established. But this is a claim that still needs to be confirmed. My quoting Eusebius on Papias was an attempt to highlight a clear discontinuity in this “handing down”.
Observation 1: Ehrman Blog posters seem to agree that modern scholars do not attempt to determine authorship of NT texts. This acknowledgment doesn’t settle the question that launched the thread, but it definitely gives ancient scholars a leg up. For the ancients indeed sought to determine authorship. Logically speaking, therefore, they only have to have demonstrated the least bit of proficiency at that task to be declared superior to modern scholars at that task.
No, the ancients assumed authorship based on an uncritical tradition founded on pre-existent religious beliefs. Modern critical scholarship, even when practiced by believers, begins from the perspective of a methodological agnosticism about the texts, a perspective totally alien to the ancients. For example, take the Pastoral Epistles. I know of no evidence questioning their authenticity before the 19th century. Yet today you will be hard pressed to find a single non-fundamentalist scholar who accepts their authenticity. (The fundamentalist apologists assume Pauline authorship and then spend all their time trying to rationalize the obvious textual difficulties.) When you understand why this is, then you will understand the difference between ancient believers and modern critical scholarship. Read Ehrman’s book!
Robert, regarding your post 125:
We don’t need to know the details of the “handing down” process; we only need to imagine them long enough to realize that the process is recognizable as one we ourselves have participated in when it comes to family heirlooms…and it is therefore viable. When Aunt Millie’s recipe is handed down, there is no need to study its vocabulary and syntax.
Yes, there were scholars involved in this process, but they were not central to it. What was central was the reading of these texts in congregations every week from the time they were first delivered in the 1st century until the 4th century when they were canonized. Once canonized, authorship moved to the background in importance insofar as church was concerned – but not insofar as history was concerned, which explains the interest that drives me in life and in this thread.
Stephen, in post 126 you said:
“This ‘begs the question’ because it assumes that this ‘handing down’ process has been established. But this is a claim that still needs to be confirmed.”
Eusebius wrote of the “handing down” process. Athanasius and Augustine confirmed it. It needs no further confirmation.
“My quoting Eusebius on Papias was an attempt to highlight a clear discontinuity in this ‘handing down’.”
What is the discontinuity in the “handing down” process that your quote highlights? I fail to see it. The issue there seems to be about interpretation of texts and of oral sources – none of which bears on the handing down of texts.
“No, the ancients assumed authorship based on an uncritical tradition founded on pre-existent religious beliefs.”
What are you basing this statement on, because I see no basis for it. On the contrary, the “handing down” process is simply a matter of passing on texts between people with a common interest.
“Modern critical scholarship, even when practiced by believers, begins from the perspective of a methodological agnosticism about the texts, a perspective totally alien to the ancients. For example, take the Pastoral Epistles. I know of no evidence questioning their authenticity before the 19th century. Yet today you will be hard pressed to find a single non-fundamentalist scholar who accepts their authenticity. (The fundamentalist apologists assume Pauline authorship and then spend all their time trying to rationalize the obvious textual difficulties.) When you understand why this is, then you will understand the difference between ancient believers and modern critical scholarship.”
I understand everything you say in this paragraph. What you fail to understand is that nothing you say in this paragraph has any bearing on a “handing down” process.
Aunt Millie recites her recipe to Uncle Herman who writes it down and hands it over to their nieces and nephews, who make their own copies, and hand them down to their children, who hand them down to their children, and so on…until one day when Simon & Schuster publishes it, eliminating the need for handwritten copies or their personal attestation. That is, until one day, when people ignore how the S&S cookbook ever came to be in the first place and start doing vocabulary and syntax studies on it to see if Aunt Millie was really the one who wrote the recipe.
“Read Ehrman’s book!”
I did. That’s why I came here to discuss the subject.
Observation 3: Regarding NT texts, we can consider the 1st-4th centuries as the age of authorship, and the 4th-21st centuries as the age of canonicity. As Porphyry rightly said, in effect, in one of his posts above, once canonicity prevails as an issue, authorship recedes to the background. The 4th century was a hinge period, when authorship passed the baton to canonicity.
Observation 4: No text is anonymous at inception. For at the very least, its creator knows his own identity. If a text ever becomes anonymous, therefore, it occurs sometime after its creation because either the author or someone else or some other factor hid the author’s identity. To study a text you deem anonymous, therefore, you ought to have a theory about how it became so.
Aunt Millie recites her recipe to Uncle Herman who writes it down and hands it over to their nieces and nephews, who make their own copies, and hand them down to their children, who hand them down to their children, and so on…until one day when Simon & Schuster publishes it, eliminating the need for handwritten copies or their personal attestation. That is, until one day, when people ignore how the S&S cookbook ever came to be in the first place and start doing vocabulary and syntax studies on it to see if Aunt Millie was really the one who wrote the recipe.
Is that really how you imagine it? What was much more likely is that neither Aunt Millie nor Uncle Herman nor their children could read or write. The recipe was passed down orally until a literate friend of a granddaughter tried it and wrote it down. The friend modified the recipe to her own taste as all the cooks before had done (more sugar, less sugar, no sugar). Then over the years this friend made copies for other friends none of whom knew the origin. After many years some local recipe collector encountered it and added it to their collection. The collection was copied and passed down and over the years the names of certain legendary cooks were associated with the recipes. Subsequent generations simply accepted the associations.
Stephen, regarding what you wrote in post 131:
You’re applying the analogy to a speculation – not history. It is precisely because literacy rates were the inverse of today’s that the texts were handed down in the context of congregations (i.e., synagogues and churches), not of isolated individuals. The primary purpose of such gatherings was to overcome the literacy issue by having the literate few read aloud to the illiterate many – the same way monolingual diplomats and others can work at the United Nations today through the presence of translators.
The recipe analogy applied to actual history is: Aunt Millie ~ Jesus, Uncle Herman ~ the apostles, the various relatives ~ the various congregations. The handing down process referred to by Eusebius, Athanasius, and Augustine was a handing down of apostolic texts – from beginning to end.
Observation 5: The full title of this blog is “The Bart Ehrman Blog: The HISTORY and LITERATURE of Early Christianity” (emphasis added). The full title of the forum category within which this thread is posted is “The HISTORICAL Jesus: What can we say about what the HISTORICAL Jesus really said, did, and experienced?” (emphasis added). Consistent with all this, the focus of this thread – authorship of the NT TEXTS – is approached as an issue of HISTORY, not theology (emphasis added).
Mike, let’s talk about tradition–this process of handing on that you suspect the rest of us don’t appreciate.
Let’s take this Aunt Millie’s recipe example. Let’s imagine my family has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that they say came from our great great great aunt Millie who served them to George Washington when he stayed at the tavern she ran.
The problem with a tradition is that–assuming it is only a tradition without external verification–you can’t verify most of that chain of handing on. You only have access to what the generation before you gave you.
How do we know that the recipe is what the family lore claims it is?
We’d want evidence from the time. Perhaps we actually have great great great aunt Millie’s diaries–wherein she records the memorable event of the great general’s stay and perhaps even records what she served on that day, including chocolate chip cookies for desert. And maybe we have her actual cookbook that shows in her own hand a recipe for chocolate chip cookies. And perhaps we also have independent witness to Washington’s visit, perhaps his own diary, recording that he stopped there for dinner, even remaking on how good the cookies were.
Or maybe we only have the journal of one of the persons in Washington’s entourage, noting that they stopped at the tavern–which we know from other sources was the very tavern Aunt Millie ran–but with no mention of the cookies, let alone a recipe.
Or perhaps we only know that Washington stopped in the town, where great great great aunt Millie ran an inn, without knowing that he actually ate at that tavern–let alone that she used this recipe before us today to make cookies for him.
How could error have crept into this chain of custody?
Well, maybe someone–a generation or two later–remembered from his childhood that Aunt Millie made wonderful cookies and–though lacking the actual recipe–tried to recreate a recipe that was like what he remembered her serving, and, pleased with how perfectly (to his memory and taste) he had imitated what he remembered, labeled the recipe “Aunt Millie’s Chocolate Chip Cookies.” Thus a reconstruction or an homage (of what quality of a reconstruction we can’t possibly say) got mistakenly identified as the actual thing. Then, the inventor of the recipe remembered a story about Aunt Millie serving Washington when he stopped and speculated that she may have served these cookies to Washington. After a generation or two of handing the story on, the qualification “May have” was lost and the family lore was simply that she did in fact serve these cookies to Washington.
Maybe someone a few generations after Aunt Millie found an old recipe for chocolate chip cookies among some old family papers, and tried to figure out whose recipe it could be, and–based on his knowledge that Aunt Millie had run a tavern–concluded it was probably hers, saved it, and handed it on as such. Then this person, fascinated by this imagined connection to his past, researched Aunt Millie, and discovered that Washington had once traveled near the town where they thought she had her tavern. He then engaged in a flight of fancy and concluded that Millie had most likely served Washington these cookies.
Maybe someone in the 1940 was asked to contribute a recipe to a cookbook of parishioner’s family recipes being published by the local church, and decided to give his recipe a fictions backstory–because, why not? People are story tellers and that is a good story, and there is hardly any harm is telling a good story.
Maybe–years after the revolution–someone made chocolate chip cookies for a big family party and had fun with his young nieces and nephews by telling them the story about Great Aunt Millie. Though for him it was just a whimsical story to tell some kids to watch their eyes get wide, they remembered the jocose lie decades later but without realizing it was all just their uncle being playful.
Anyone with some imagination could construct further such scenarios. The problem for the people receiving the story is that–if it is just family tradition–then all they have access to is the present version of that tradition. People are unreliable in handing on traditions for many reasons. Sometimes they outright fabricate or deceive. Sometimes they make leaps of logic, or do shoddy research, and hand it on as fact. Sometimes they just misremember details, or drop important qualifications (like handing on as fact what was given to them as speculation.) Often they are unreliable just because they hand on a dubious story as fact without doing the work necessary to verify it, or asking the questions that might have exposed it as an error.
What I want to stress, really stress, is that these sorts of mistakes happen routinely. Bare lore, tradition, legend–without documentation–is not reliable.
So look at Christianity in the first two centuries. That is the crucible of orthodox Christianity, but it is historically obscure. We just don’t have the records to know where various claims and traditions came from, but we do know enough to know that there were a lot of people making stuff up and making competing claims.
The fact that people hundreds of years later say, this is what has been handed down to us, doesn’t prove that it is accurate.
Here is another thing that needs to be stressed: Traditions get less reliable over time. The more hands a tradition goes through, the further the tradition gets from the source, the more opportunity there has been for errors to creep in and spread. So what does that say about the fact that Christianity (very much including claims concerning the authorship of Scripture) was most diverse in the earliest period and only began to solidify as you move away form the source? That is the opposite of what happens with a reliable transmission of information.
The only way traditional transmission gets more reliable with time is if it stops being mere tradition and the tradition gets corrected through research into the evidence. That is precisely what we do not see in the writings of the authors at the time that consensus was being built. As you say, their argument was simply, this is what was handed on to us.
A process of development that I see running through the whole history of Christianity is, what I might call, claim creep. It is hard to describe in general terms, but the basic pattern is that a claim is made in an early period that–to the people making it–wasn’t particularly important. But after a few generations pass, the very fact that the person made that claim comes to be seen as significant and authoritative. Then that claim is used to draw conclusions that original person almost certainly never envisioned. This is driven in part by people asking more questions as time passes, and seeking greater certainty–to get it, they rely on what they have, and so put weight on things that they were never meant to bear. Look for example at the way Prov. 8 was cited by both sides during the Arian controversy to settle theological questions that the author certainly never foresaw. Or the way Mt 26:39 was used in the Monothelite debate. Or consider how a Patristic reference to Mary as being like the arc of the covenant was used centuries later to argue for her Immaculate conception.
How does this apply to the development of the NT canon? When the authors of the 4th and 5th centuries give a reason beyond bare unauthenticated tradition for accepting the books as authentic, the reason they give is the sheer number of prior orthodox authors who used it. Thus an early writer might make use of a book. Maybe he just thought it made a pithy point and didn’t know whether it was authentic or not. Maybe he believed it was authentic, but it didn’t seem to him a terribly important issue and he may have been mistaken. A few generations later, subsequent authors who belong to his school, and look up to him, feel at liberty also to quote from that work. After all, if it was good enough for him to use, it is okay for us too. After a few generations it ends up providing one or two critical proof texts to disprove certain heresies–and so gets used heavily to defend orthodoxy. After a few more generations, it has been used so widely, it can’t be questioned without drawing the whole Orthodox tradition into question, and authors will insist not only that it is authentic, but that it must be inerrant. And that is exactly what we see happening in the history.
Robert, in post 134 you wrote:
“Why do you keep avoiding answering pertinent questions?”
Some of the questions that seem pertinent to you seem peripheral to me.
“What, if anything, do you know (know, not imagine) about this process that others here are unaware of?”
I claim no unique knowledge. It’s just that some of the things you guys say sound like you haven’t sufficiently thought through the things you know.
“Why haven’t you answered any of the important questions about the first collections of Pauline epistles?”
Please refresh my memory as I do not know what questions you’re talking about.
“Why did Marcion’s collection have a letter to the Laodiceans?”
I don’t know. Why do you think this is pertinent? The question of this thread is about the NT texts.
“And what of Eusebius’ account of the correspondence between Abgar and Jesus? Is that to
be trusted?”
Same answer as immediately above.
Thaddeus, an apostle, one of the Seventy, sent by Thomas after the Ascension, but as already promised by Jesus in writing while he was still alive?”
Same answer as immediately above.
“Is this not the apostolic succession of which you and Eusebius speak?”
I am only interested in apostolic succession to the degree that it helps trace the chain of custody in the handing down process by which we received the 27 texts with authorial ascriptions that we call the New Testament.
Well, it seems the best documented history of the chocolate chip cookie comes from a recipe developed by Ruth Graves Wakefield at the Toll House Inn, which didn’t exist until 1930, but there are indeed claims that earlier recipes existed prior to that.
An example that urges us to consider Robyn Faith Walsh’s provocative critique of the view that assumes some sort of curated tradition behind the gospels.
A recipe is probably an inexact analogy. Consider a musical theme. A composition meant to be passed on with exactitude is the mark of a literate culture. In oral cultures what is passed is a theme which is expected to be shaped and performed to meet the needs of a specific audience. Literate culture is like Classical Music. Oral culture is like Jazz.
How many versions of Mark were there? All we have is what survived.
Porphyry, regarding what you wrote in post 135:
“Mike, let’s talk about tradition–this process of handing on that you suspect the rest of us don’t appreciate.”
I appreciate the time and thought you put into this. What you’ve written doesn’t change my mind, and I will have to show you where you’ve gone wrong, but I won’t be doing that with any glee because, again, the work you demonstrate here, as well as your gift for storytelling, are quite impressive.
“Let’s take this Aunt Millie’s recipe example. Let’s imagine my family has a recipe for chocolate chip cookies that they say came from our great great great aunt Millie who served them to George Washington when he stayed at the tavern she ran.”
You’ve introduced a distraction (George Washington and the fame that would accompany any association with him) into the analogy. Analogies should carry as few extraneous factors as possible in order to maintain efficiency in their illustrative power. But this is a minor mistake. Alas, you make major ones, too.
“The problem with a tradition is that–assuming it is only a tradition without external verification–you can’t verify most of that chain of handing on. You only have access to what the generation before you gave you.”
This is your first major mistake, and it is the same one Stephen made. That is, you are taking the analogy too literally and too narrowly. As I explained to him, “The recipe analogy applied to actual history is: Aunt Millie ~ Jesus, Uncle Herman ~ the apostles, the various relatives ~ the various congregations.” Your example of a family with a limited backward horizon doesn’t match the reality of a congregation – made up of many families, with many, many opportunities to bear witness to a process. Also recall from the original analogy the recipe – that is the thing, not whatever dish was produced from it. A script, a text – something physical that can be seen and touched by the many families of a congregation. These are public settings – not ideas and memories that flow in and out of minds. Sure, the texts stimulate ideas, but the texts are physical – whether originals or copies.
You also miss the point that what is going on in this congregation (not individual family) is simultaneously going on in other congregations. For example, Philippi is a little over a hundred miles up the road from Thessalonica. How long do you think it took before each congregation had a copy of the other’s letter in addition to its own? Thus there were multiple points of handing down. And thus it is not “a tradition without external verification,” but rather multiple points of external verification.
The rest of your embellished analogy brings in more extraneous factors: diaries, records of what she served GW, her cookbook, GW’s own diary, and so – all superfluous and distracting. Thus you are building your case on fanciful speculation and not the history we all know, but do not equally appreciate. The history is that, according to our sources (Eusebius, Athanasius, Augustine, not to mention others) texts were handed down from the beginning. That’s the recipe that Uncle Herman wrote down for Aunt Millie. And it’s a simple process, reading aloud, along with Moses and the prophets from one generation to the next…in a public place with lots of people. And going on from one end of the Roman Empire to the other.
As you go on with your elaborate scenario, you have people telling this or that tale, adding this or that text, and more. It’s also very much beside the point – which is the recipe (~ one of the 27 NT texts) being handed down from one generation of church to the next, with a bishop in charge of each city, keeping records (such a list of widows, list of deacons, money collected, etc.).
“What I want to stress, really stress, is that these sorts of mistakes happen routinely. Bare lore, tradition, legend–without documentation–is not reliable.”
Whether they do or don’t, they have no bearing on the handing down process because the testimony we’ve been given by Eusebius et al is that apostolic texts were a one-generation phenomenon. They either made it from the 1st century to the 4th or they didn’t…and we have every reason to believe they did. Especially since the handing down process is so simple, especially when compared to the Rube Goldberg machinations you have so winsomely, but unnecessarily, described in the expansive yarn you’ve spun from my modest little ole analogy.
“So look at Christianity in the first two centuries. That is the crucible of orthodox Christianity, but it is historically obscure. We just don’t have the records to know where various claims and traditions came from, but we do know enough to know that there were a lot of people making stuff up and making competing claims.”
You and I agree that we’d love to know more about those years than we do, but let’s not let this make us forget what we do know. That is that 4th-century scholars tell us that 27 texts were handed down to them from the 1st century, that they traced them through the apostolic succession churches. We can say we don’t trust their judgment, but I can’t think of a single reason they wouldn’t be telling us the truth. I don’t see how they had either the willingness or ability to make false claims regarding those 27 texts. In fact, the only way they could have all arrived at the same answer…is if it was the correct answer.
“Here is another thing that needs to be stressed: Traditions get less reliable over time.”
That’s the benefit of canonization. It freezes the verdict in time. No need to trace a chain of custody after the 4th century because the list of texts and authors hardened like concrete. Even today, Christians differ from each other in opinions more than ever. But the New Testament has remained unchanged for two millennia. Even if some of them wanted to change it now, it would be known as the New New Testament because history could not forget the one that stood in place for 2,000. Like New Coke, it would become a marketing joke.
“A process of development that I see running through the whole history of Christianity is, what I might call, claim creep.”
That’s why I care so much about the 27 NT texts and their authors. First principles.
“How does this apply to the development of the NT canon? When the authors of the 4th and 5th centuries give a reason beyond bare unauthenticated tradition for accepting the books as authentic, the reason they give is the sheer number of prior orthodox authors who used it. Thus an early writer might make use of a book. Maybe he just thought it made a pithy point and didn’t know whether it was authentic or not. Maybe he believed it was authentic, but it didn’t seem to him a terribly important issue and he may have been mistaken. A few generations later, subsequent authors who belong to his school, and look up to him, feel at liberty also to quote from that work. After all, if it was good enough for him to use, it is okay for us too. After a few generations it ends up providing one or two critical proof texts to disprove certain heresies–and so gets used heavily to defend orthodoxy. After a few more generations, it has been used so widely, it can’t be questioned without drawing the whole Orthodox tradition into question, and authors will insist not only that it is authentic, but that it must be inerrant. And that is exactly what we see happening in the history.”
This is yet another example of how you guys keep veering to peripheral discussions. What you’re saying here has nothing to do with the handing down process of congregations to which Eusbius, Athanasius, Augustine, and others have testified. Yes, we listen to commentators like Papias, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and so on. But the handing down process working behind the scenes like a juggernaut over 300 years while commentators were talking to each other is what led to the collection we call the New Testament.
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