Sorry, after you spend some time on YouTube the clickbaity titles come naturally.

I had a bit of a conversation with Prof Ehrman in the comments of one of his recent posts about variants and interpolations. I reproduce it for you now-

Stephen April 18, 2025 at 1:57 pm – Reply
I’m interested in what conclusions we can draw from the state of the text as it survives.

1. Whoever collected the texts that make up what came to be called 2 Cor probably only had fragments available to them and pieced them together as best they could. Right? The fragmentation occured prior to the collection? Was deliberate mutilation at all likely?

2. There are probably interpolations present in the NT of which we are unaware because we have no surviving manuscripts that lack the passages (and they don’t draw attention to themselves in an overt way).

BDEhrman April 21, 2025 at 8:55 pm – Reply
1. It’s usually thought he had full texts that he cut up. 2. I’m not sure what would make that “probable,” but it’s certainly possible.

Stephen April 23, 2025 at 12:47 pm – Reply
The idea that some editor possessed a copy of the Corinthian correspondence and then proceeded to mutilate it and reassemble it out of order surprises me. On the other hand the idea of a later editor possessing surviving fragmentary copies and who assembled them as best he could for copying seems much more reasonable a view. Given Paul’s status why do you think someone would cut up complete letters and reassemble them?

Thanks

BDEhrman April 28, 2025 at 9:15 pm – Reply
I suppose they thought they were keeping the most important parts. Just as today, millions of people claim the entire Bible is the word of God, but they are really only interested in a few parts of it.

Does anyone else have as much trouble internalizing this process as much as me? Some follower of Paul had access to the entire Corinthian correspondence and cut it up for the “best parts” and put it together out of order? I imagined some collector, later than Paul, finding fragments of the Corinthian correspondence putting it together as best he could for subsequent copying. After a certain amount of copying it began to be regarded as a single letter. Doesn’t this latter scenario make more sense of the data? They didn’t cut up 1st Corinthians for the “best parts”.

Comments? What am I missing?