Evangelical Textual Criticism - When a Marginal Note Becomes Text

Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2022/10/when-marginal-note-becomes-text.html

The heavenly witnesses as originally a margin note?

A very difficult theory, without any real evidence, a symptom of text-crit confirmation bias.

The Theory:
A random Latin scribe (call him Clunk the Interpolater)

a) places in a note a beautiful syntactic parallelism
b) he improves the three witnesses by adding that they are earthly witnesses.
The New Verse
c) is totally Johannine including the Word as in John 1:1 1:14 and Rev 19:13
d) fixes a Greek gender solecism when translated over from the Latin! Amazing:)
e) supplies the “witness of God” referred to in verse nine
f) breaks up a wooden redundancy from verse six to the three witnesses

Then, this beautifully crafted, majestic new verse is pulled in neatly to the text, improving John. And is noted by Jerome in his Vulgate Prologue and is used by 400 orthodox, as clearer than the light, contra the ‘Arians’ (homoians) in the Council of Carthage in AD 484.

And all this margin-to-text creation happens before Cyprian utilizes the verse twice, applying “the three are one” to the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Myths of Modern “Scientific” Textusl Criticism
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
https://linktr.ee/stevenavery
Hi Ryan, while I do have a high view of the Holy Spirit inspired scripture text (an ‘Evangelical’ position) that was not my point.
Also the lectio difficilior approach can br nonsensical as pointed out by Martin Litchfield West:

“When we choose the 'more difficult' reading, however, we must be sure that it is in itself a plausible reading. The principle should not be used in support of dubious syntax, or phrasing that it would not have been natural for the author to use. There is an important difference between a more difficult reading and a more unlikely reading.”

And the short text is dubious syntax And unnatural phrasing.

My main point:
The theory of a bumbling multi-step margin-to-text creation is extremely unlikely weak, and was invented in order to give an ‘accidental’ veneer to the supposed interpolation. If a person really was against heavenly witness authenticity, a far more textually sensible theory would have the text carefully juggled and improved, by a singular sharp scribe, c. AD 100-150. In time to maybe get into Cyprian’s Bible and a number of Confessions. Got the text-crit, this would be analogous to their theory on other major variants, including the Mark ending and Acts 8:37.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Hi Ryan, while I do have a high view of the Holy Spirit inspired scripture text (an ‘Evangelical’ position) that was not my point.

Also the lectio difficilior approach can be totally wrong as astutely pointed out by Martin Litchfield West in Textual Criticism and Editorial Technique (1973) p. 51.

“When we choose the 'more difficult' reading, however, we must be sure that it is in itself a plausible reading. The principle should not be used in support of dubious syntax, or phrasing that it would not have been natural for the author to use. There is an important difference between a more difficult reading and a more unlikely reading.”

And the short text is dubious syntax And unnatural phrasing.

My main point:
The theory of a bumbling multi-step margin-to-text creation is extremely unlikely weak, and was invented in order to give an ‘accidental’ veneer to the supposed interpolation. If a person really was against heavenly witness authenticity, a far more textually sensible theory would have the text carefully juggled and improved, by a singular sharp scribe, c. AD 100-150. In time to maybe get into Cyprian’s Bible and a number of Confessions. Got the text-crit, this would be analogous to their theory on other major variants, including the Mark ending and Acts 8:37.

Steven Avery
www.linktr.ee.com/
 
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Wacky internal evidence argument from Alfred Plummer
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism....showComment=1666354009859#c725236302831965078

Hi Anon,
That note goes back to Alfred Plummer (1840-1912) in his Epistles of John in the 1880s.

Epistles of John (1884)
Alfred Plummer
https://books.google.com/books?id=BMNbAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA208

Putting aside the weak analogy with secular writings, and his raising the always controversial question of ontological interpretation, the Internal Evidence case is largely based on countering the weak pro-authenticity argument that the reason the verse vanished from the Greek was Arian expunction. However, far stronger arguments involving an earlier drop cover topics like homoeoteleuton, the Sabellian controversies and the disciplina arcani.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Grantley Robert McDonald in Raising the Ghost of Arius (2016) quotes a number of heavenly witnesses contras who make the claim of a margin note becoming text, in a double-scribe creation. In addition to his own theorizing, twice, the following writers float the idea:

Heinrich Bullinger
Johannes Crell

Richard Simon
http://books.google.com/books?id=nYzPAAAAMAAJ&pg=RA1-PA2
p. 2 and p. 4

Isaac Newton
William Whiston

Bullinger and Crell indicate the idea comes from Erasmus’s Annotationes, but so far I do not see it from Erasmus.

Lodewijk Caspar Valckenaer is given as a reference for the idea by Christopher Wordsworth. Valckenaer wrote two volumes Dissertatio de glossis novi testamenti however it does not go up to the Johannine Epistles.
Volume One - https://books.google.com/books?id=qY2bJFfLObQC
Volume Two - https://books.google.com/books?id=TZ7m7VirigAC

Quoted for authenticity and against the idea of margin note creation:

Thomas Smith
Roger
Henry Thomas Armfield (my addition)

The quotes can be read here:

Pure Bible Forum
When a Marginal Note Becomes Text
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...a-marginal-note-becomes-text.2800/#post-11567

==========

RGA p. 49
Grantley Robert McDonald
The most convincing explanation for the occurrence of the comma in some early Latin bibles is that a gloss recording some version of the comma, formed from a combination of the allegorical interpretation of verse 8 and the two symbola, was written in the margin of a particular Latin bible, next to 1 Jn 5:8, possibly already formalised in some kind of credal statement. As Frances Young has pointed out, “creed-like statements and confessions must in practice have provided the hermeneutical key to the public reading of scripture.”67 The gloss was then evidently absorbed into the text when a later scribe copying this manuscript mistakenly believed that it was a correction in his parent manuscript rather than an extraneous addition.

67 Young, 1997, 18.

p. 141
Heinrich Bullinger
Furthermore, Bullinger followed Erasmus’ judgment in the Annotationes that this Trinitarian interpretation had begun as a marginal gloss which a half-learned (sciolus) reader or scribe had integrated into the text.168

168 Bullinger, 1549, 103: “Quidam multis hic agunt

p. 161
Johannes Crell
Johannes Crell (1590-1633)—head of the Socinian Academy at Raków, which would be shut down by the Polish crown four years after Crell’s death— used Erasmus’ Annotationes as evidence that the comma had crept into the text from the margin, and borrows Calvin’s argument that the original form of the comma in the Greek text refers to heavenly doctrine, redemption and truth rather than to the orthodox conception of the Trinity, a notion to which Crell as a Socinian was opposed.24 Given the reservations that Socinians harboured about the comma, it is curious to note that Crell’s edition of the bible (1630) contains the comma, albeit marked off in distinct letters.25

24 Crell, 1678, 111.
25 Düsterdieck, 1852-1856, 2:356.

p. 197
Thomas Smith and Richard Simon
Simon had pointed to the presence of the comma in the margins of some manuscripts as evidence of the fact that the comma had crept into the text from the margin. Smith by contrast believed that the presence of marginal additions showed that the scribes in such cases, suspecting that something was missing from the text but afraid to deviate from the original they were copying, had simply inserted the text into the margins

p. 198
Louis Roger
Roger also sought to refute Simon’s suggestions that the comma began life as a marginal gloss, and that the scribe consulted the Acta of the Lateran Council.116

116 Roger, 1713, 100-119.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_oBzWf22rOsC&pg=PA116

p. 206
Newton
From Cyprian, Newton worked backwards to Tertullian. The fact that Tertullian was the first to give a Trinitarian interpretation to the phrase tres unum sunt led Newton to suggest that this interpretation was “invented by the Montanists for giving countenance to their Trinity. For Tertullian was a Montanist when he wrote this; and it is most likely that so corrupt and forced an interpretation had its rise among a sect of men accustomed to make bold with the Scriptures.” On Tertullian’s authority, Newton suggests, this interpretation was subsequently adopted by Cyprian and other Latins.138 Newton then suggests that the Trinitarian allegoresis of the earthly witnesses led a scribe (or scribes) either to record this allegoresis in the margin, “whence it might afterwards creep into the text in transcribing,” or to insert it into the text “fraudulently.”139

138 Newton, 1785, 5:500.
139 Newton, 1785, 5:501.

p. 225
William Whiston
At the conclusion of the article in which Whiston treats the question whether “God the Father, the Word, or Son of God, and the Holy Spirit, are Beings, or Persons really and numerically distinct from each other,” he notes that readers may wonder why he omitted to include the comma in his enumeration of the Scriptural evidence for the doctrine of the Trinity. “But the plain reason is, that I believe ’tis certainly spurious, and inserted by some bold Transcribers from a marginal Gloss of the next Verse.” Whiston gives eight arguments against the authenticity of the comma; some are apparently original, while others show evidence that Whiston had engaged with the criticisms articulated by Newton in his Historical Account, suggesting that he had seen the drafts, or had engaged Newton in conversation on this matter.

p. 431-432
Grantley Robert McDonald
The textual diversity of the comma from the fourth to the fourteenth century is explained by the number of possible ways in which these three phrases can be combined. Once this credal phrase had been formulated, the comma began to enter the text of Latin bibles, probably after being copied into the margin and mistaken as an integral part of the text by a subsequent copyist.
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Henry Thomas Armfield
http://books.google.com/books?id=5eQCAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA204
https://archive.org/details/threewitnessesdi00armf/page/204/mode/1up
1666525660303.png


Check for others and include on post.

Horne makes a claim about mss. and handwritings, a different hand.
https://books.google.com/books?id=cy0XAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA369
1666524612523.png
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Looking for more background on the margin-to-text theory, Lodewijk Caspar Valckenaer is given as a reference for the idea by Christopher Wordsworth, in his commentary on the heavenly witnesses.

Valckenaer wrote two volumes Dissertatio de glossis novi testamenti however it does not go up to the Johannine Epistles for the specific case.
Volume One - https://books.google.com/books?id=qY2bJFfLObQC
Volume Two - https://books.google.com/books?id=TZ7m7VirigAC

Grantley Robert McDonald in Raising the Ghost of Arius, uses the theory twice in his own explanation of verse formulation, and quotes the theory from:

Heinrich Bullinger
Johannes Crell
Richard Simon
Isaac Newton
William Whiston

Curiously, Bullinger and Crell note the Erasmus Annotationes, but I have not seen Erasmus use the argument.

Thomas Smith and Louis Roger are noted as countering the argument from Simon.

==============

And I set up a research post, a work in process, with margin-to-text theory information here:

Pure Bible Forum
When A Marginal Note Becomes Text
https://www.purebibleforum.com/inde...a-marginal-note-becomes-text.2800/#post-11566

Henry Thomas Armfield raises the salient point about the ease of inadvertent dropping of text compared to any theories of "gliding" into the text. Many have written on this, and textual criticism seems to be generally very weak in dealing with inclusion/omission verses, not understanding that the dynamic is totally different than variants with simply alternate texts.

Steven Avery
https://linktr.ee/stevenavery
 
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Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Administrator
Erika Rummel
https://books.google.com/books?id=6nVE1e1O7-kC&pg=PA268

Tells us that Noel Beda (1470-1537) said that Erasmus and LeFavre were both:
humaniste theologizantes, (theologizing humanists),

Erasmus answered Beda (considered a scholastic theologian) in 1527 in:

Supputationes errorum in censuris Bedae
https://books.google.com/books?id=otA7AAAAcAAJ&pg=PA7-IA1

==========

Evangelical perspective - If we are concerned from an evangelical perspective, the letter from Erasmus to LeFevre, in response to LeFevre's published criticisms of Erasmus, has many fascinating elements. Here I am just working with the Erasmus material, using what is available in Google books! :

Luke as Paul's translator of Hebrews from Hebrew to Greek (this is from Clement of Alexandria through Eusebius)
Elohim as singular and plural
can Jesus Christ be called a man
Arians liked the term hypostasis
Paul's letters to Seneca (LeFevre approved)
Epistle to Laodecia - "feeble forgery" per Erasmus
Nazarene Gospel (Gospel according to the Hebrews)
remission rather than forgiveness
My Lord and my God - John 20:28
kenosis, emptying, robbery to be equal with God, lower than the angels, all things under his feet
Jesus as a created being
Cyprian and rebaptism
Mary wavers at the crucifixion
"the view that Christ alone is free from the sin of his birth"
 
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