Is a Paradigm Shift Now Called for?

Some comments in response to my previous posting on the textual transmission of early Christian writings (here) reflect the difficulty that some have in facing the need in a given field of study to undergo what Thomas Kuhn famously called a “paradigm shift,” i.e., a change in a fundamental approach or conception about a given subject.

In this case, the shift in question is from an older confident assumption that the early period of the copying of texts in Christian circles was “wild” and chaotic, followed then by a change to a stable and more fixed copying, typically linked to a “recension.”  As I noted in an earlier posting (here), by the end of the 19th century scholars often posited such a major recension of NT writings sometime in/after the 4th century CE.  This seemed intuitively cogent because in the 4th century we have monarchical bishops able to exercise to control over teaching and practices, the emergence of Christian scriptoria, and, by the end of the century, the emergence of a fixed/closed NT canon.

But the discovery of early NT papyri, initially the Chester Beatty papyri, but then still more remarkably P75 and also P66, put that theory in doubt (among those who followed the data).  For especially in P75 (codex containing large portions of Luke and John, dated ca. 175-250 CE) we have a text that is almost exactly that of Codex Vaticanus (the 4^th century codex that had earlier been posited as the result of that supposed 4^th century recension).[1]  So, clearly, the Vaticanus-type text of the NT writings wasn’t the result of a 4th century recension!

The early (2^nd/3^rd century CE) papyri do show the predictable types of variants that characterize the manual transmission of texts, and exhibit a certain variety in copyist skills and the influence also of readers.[2]  But we also have examples of fairly exact copying (again, e.g., P75), and scrupulous concern to correct copying errors (e.g., P66).

So, then the “recension paradigm” was adjusted to posit that it happened earlier, sometime in the second century CE.  This produced a picture in which supposedly from ca. 70-150 CE or so, copying was “wild” and chaotic, and the comparative stability in all our 2^nd/3^rd century NT papyri was the product of this re-dated recension.  (Note the apparent reluctance to abandon the old paradigm, and the effort to salvage it, as Kuhn observed in the sciences too.)

The “evidence” of the supposedly early “wild” copying of NT writings (prior to the late 2nd century) was the way that early Christian writers such as Justin Martyr sometimes use NT writings, appearing to cite them in wording that varies (sometimes markedly) from even our earliest copies.  But, for one thing, this kind of argument fails to take account of the very different practices followed in citing and using texts in the Roman era, compared with the practices followed in copying texts.  For ancient writers often (typically?) cited texts rather freely, often re-wording them for effect, which seems to have been regarded as both acceptable and even clever of them.[3]  Moreover, well after the supposed stabilization of NT writings and the formation of a NT canon, early Christian writers continued to use these texts with striking flexibility and freedom, which makes it a demanding task to use citations in these writers in NT textual criticism.[4]  So, the “free” citation of texts wasn’t confined to the early second century, and so isn’t evidence that the texts cited were handled loosely in copying them.

But if we focus on the only direct evidence of how texts were copied  ̶  ancient copies of them, surely  — we get the sense that copyists . . . copied.  Sometimes carefully, sometimes less so.  Sometimes skilfully, sometimes less so.  It wasn’t their job, however, to make major changes to texts.[5]

In my essay cited already on the NT in the second century I pointed to the social force upon those writings that were frequently read in churches.  This made these texts “corporate property” of circles of believers, and thus made major changes in them less likely.  In a forthcoming book that I’ve blogged on previously (here), Brian Wright shows how widespread the “communal” reading of texts was in the wider environment of the first and second centuries, and gives evidence that this practice also featured in early Christian circles.[6]  The effect of Wright’s study is to show that the social force of repeated corporate reading that curbed major changes in texts was likely active already in the first century and early second century (the time in which NT writings were supposedly handled in a “wild” manner).

In short, it is time for us to consider whether the notion (seemingly cherished by some) that there was an initial period of “wild” handling of writings that later became part of the NT, followed by a supposed fixing of texts sometime in the latter part of the 2^nd century, now should be laid aside in favour of a “paradigm” that more adequately reflects the evidence.  Scholars yield long-held notions reluctantly, often striving to salvage them.  That’s not wrong, for new ideas should be critically examined.  But there come times when even cherished notions should be set aside, when, instead of repeating dubious mantras we should boldly consider a new “paradigm.”  That time has probably come with reference to the early transmission of Christian texts.

[1] Gordon D. Fee, “P75, P66, and Origen:  The Myth of Early Textual Recension in Alexandria,” in New Dimensions in New Testament Study, ed. Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1974), 19-45; Reprinted in Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, E. J. Epp, G. D. Fee (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1993), 247-73.

[2] James R. Royse, Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri, NTTS 36 (Leiden: Brill, 2007), is now the major study of the matter.

[3] See, e.g., Christopher D. Stanley, Paul and the Language of Scripture: Citation Technique in the Pauline Epistles and Contemporary Literature, SNTSMS 74 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), on citation practices in the wider Roman world.

[4] Gordon D. Fee, “The Use of Greek Patristic Citations in New Testament Textual Criticism:  The State of the Question,” in Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee, Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism, SD 45 (Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1993), 344-59.

[5] See, e.g., Barbara Aland, “Die Rezeption des neutestamentlichen Textes in den ersten Jahrhunderten,” in The New Testament in Early Christianty, ed. Jean-Marie Sevrin (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1989), 1-38, who also notes the differences between citation/use of texts and copying them.  Also Larry W. Hurtado, “The New Testament in the Second Century:  Text, Collections and Canon,” in Transmission and Reception:  New Testament Text-Critical and Exegetical Studies, ed. J. W. Childers and D. C. Parker (Piscataway, N.J.: Gorgias Press, 2006), 3-27; Michael W. Holmes, “Text and Transmission in the Second Century,” in The Reliability of the New Testament:  Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace in Dialogue, ed. Robert B. Stewart (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2011), 47-65; Kyoung Shik Min, Die früheste Überlieferung des Matthäusevangeliums (bis zum 3./4. Jh):  Edition und Untersuchung, ANTF, no. 34 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005); and more broadly, Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger, eds., The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); and Lonnie Bell’s forthcoming study of early papyri of John (Leiden:  Brill).

[6] Brian J. Wright, Communal Reading in the Time of Jesus:  A Window into Early Christian Reading Practices (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2017).