Pericope Adulterae - Lectionary theories - Burgon, Robinson, Snapp

[Steven Avery]

These theories are mostly from Maurice Robinson and James Snapp. Maybe John Burgon as well has lectionary theories.

Facebook - NT Textual Criticism - 2015
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTTextualCriticism/permalink/875781295842205/
This file contains a defense of John 7:53-8:11, responding to an essay by Manuel Pereira in which he rejected the passage. In the course of answering Pereira's objections to the genuineness of the passage, I review external evidence, internal evidence, and some other subjects. (22 pages, Word doc)

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This came up in Evangelical Textual Criticism
https://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2021/01/an-master-thesis-on-endings-of-mark-by.html

JGabriel22
Mr. Snapp has used an equally strange defense of the originality of the PA in John. For him, the PA was lost early in the transmission of the 4th gospel only to be 'rediscovered' a few hundred years later and reintroduced into the gospel throughout the Mediterranean until it became part of the textus receptus.

 

[Steven Avery]

James has two papers:

Another Textual Analysis of the Passage about the Adulteress
– A Response to Manuel Pereira –
James Snapp, Jr. – May 2015
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTTextualCriticism/permalink/875781295842205/

CHECK THE COMMENTS - post #5 here

John 7:53-8:11 was in an exemplar used by a copyist in Egypt in the mid-100’s – having descended to it from the autograph. By the mid-100’s, the churches in Egypt already possessed a rudimentary lection-cycle for their major annual festivals, such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, the Annunciation, and Palm Sunday. Regarding the Gospels-selections assigned to be annually read on Sundays, the textual critic C. R. Gregory stated, “It seems to me likely that at an extremely early date the lessons were chosen for the Sundays.” John Chrysostom, in the late 300’s, refers to the assignment of specific passages for specific Sundays to be something established by previous generations. His contemporaries Epiphanius and Augustine likewise indicate their familiarity with reading-cycles used in their churches.


There is no need to imagine that these lection-cycles were the same everywhere, or that they were not subject to gradual expansion and adjustment; the first point here is simply that the celebration of a basic series of annual feast-days, including Pentecost, was an extremely ancient practice. The second point is that in the ordinary Byzantine lectionary – attested in hundreds of Greek copies – the reading assigned to Pentecost consisted of John 7:37-52 plus John 8:12 - this final verse being included in order to end the reading-selection on a positive note.


With the factor of a basic annual lection-cycle in play, imagine an Egyptian copyist in the 100’s: his exemplar is a lector’s copy, and it contains notes and marks added by the lector to assist him in the course of reading the Gospels in the church-services. The copyist comes to John chapter seven, and sees, after the statement at the end of 7:52, instructions in the margin, which say: Skip ahead. And so he skips ahead until he finds instructions in the margin which say, Restart here. Therefore this dutiful copyist follows these instructions, and accordingly he does not copy John 7:53-8:11, just as – he supposes – he was instructed. And the manuscript (or manuscripts, if the same copyist thus made several copies) which contained this mistake proceeded to affect both the main Alexandrian transmission-stream and its neighbors. p. 3

(3) Lectionaries. Pereira’s statement that John 7:53-8:11 is absent in ancient lectionaries is only partly true. The passage is not included in the Synaxarion – the movable part of the lectionary, in which the dates are annually reset so that the reading-list begins at Easter, regardless of what day of the year it is. But most of the passage is included in the Menologion – the fixed part of the lectionary in which readings are assigned to specific dates of the year, in honor of saints, martyrs, etc.

In the Menologion, either John 8:2-11 or John 8:3-11 (local usage varied) is arranged as the lection for Saint Pelagia of Antioch, or (combining the commemoration of two penitent women, Pelagia of Antioch and Mary of Egypt) the Penitents, which is October 8. This accounts for some features in the margins of some manuscripts, which shall be described later. p. 4-5

A good section, not on lectionaries:

Why should a reading that is manifestly ancient, and which is supported by 85% of the extant Greek manuscripts, and against which there is no decisive internal evidence, be rejected? Of course in response, those who reject John 7:53-8:11 appeal to the sheet-anchor of pro-Alexandrian textual criticism: Step one: assert that manuscripts must be weighed, rather than counted. Step two: give the manuscripts with the Alexandrian reading more weight than all the others. Voila.

That is exactly what has been done in the case of John 7:53-8:11. Although 85% of the Greek manuscripts include John 7:53-8:11, it is argued that the 15% that do not contain the passage ought to be assigned six times the weight of the manuscripts that contain it, because that 15% includes the “best” or “finest” manuscripts.

How is “best” defined? As we already saw, Pereira supplied three characteristics: their age, their literary quality, and their breadth of origination.

The earliest manuscripts of the Byzantine transmission-line which show John 7:53-8:11 being skipped in the Pentecost-lection, and the earliest representatives of the Caesarean transmission-line which show John 7:53-8:11 (and, in the Palestinian Aramaic Lectionary, 8:3-11) being transplanted to the end of the Gospel of John, are not as old as the earliest Egyptian manuscripts, but they are about as old as one could reasonably expect them to be considering the differences between the Egyptian climate and the harsher climates elsewhere. The earlier manuscripts representing these transmission-lines have not survived, but their voices survive loud and clear in the multitude of copies which echo them. p. 21-22

Here, James helps refute his own Mark ending theories

John 7:53-8:11: A Floating, Edited, Accepted Insertion?

One more piece of internal evidence in favor of the genuineness of John 7:53-8:11 merits special mention: the contents of the opening verse. Metzger described the passage as “a piece of oral tradition,” and others have considered it a “floating” text, as if it gently fluttered like a butterfly into the text of the Gospel of John. But what kind of composition begins with the statement that everyone went to his own house?

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[Steven Avery]

John 7:53-8:11: A Tour of the External Evidence
Presented by James Snapp, Jr. – Good Friday, 2014

However, a far more likely explanation for the PA’s presence after Luke 21:38 in f13 is that the PA was placed there in the archetype of f13 for the convenience of someone who wanted a continuous-text copy of the Gospels adapted to lectionary usage. The lection for Pentecost consists of John 7:37-52 followed by John 8:12. In an attempt to tidy up the text for the Pentecost-lection, John 7:53-8:11 was removed from the text of John. John 7:53-8:11 was then placed alongside Luke 21:38 where, as the text that forms the lection for the Feast-Day of Saint Pelagia (October 8) it conveniently follows, approximately, the text that forms the lection for the Feast-day of the soldier-martyrs Saints Sergius and Bacchus (October 7), which is Luke 21:12-19

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F. C. Burkitt, along with several others who have looked into this question (Colwell, Van Lopik, and earlier, Burgon, who, despite making several mistakes in his assessments of the pertinent evidence in a special chapter about the PA in Causes of Corruption, may have been the first to deduce that the transfer of the PA in f13 was due in part to “a liturgical consideration”), viewed the displacement of the PA in f13 as the result of lectionary-influence. Burkitt regarded any other explanation as “inconceivable.”

 

[Steven Avery]

The Pericope Adulterae: A Tour of the External Evidence
https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2014/04/the-pericope-adulterae-tour-of-external.html

 

[Steven Avery]

Another Textual Analysis of the Passage about the Adulteress
– A Response to Manuel Pereira –
James Snapp, Jr. – May 2015
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTTextualCriticism/permalink/875781295842205/

COMMENTS - VERY HELPFUL

Damon Lee Gang
Is there more information on lectionary tendencies from 100 AD to 200 AD because as I'm reading I find myself wondering how strong your case is here?

James E Snapp Jr
Damon Lee Gang,
Besides the statements I mentioned from Chrysostom, Augustine, and the author of Apologia David, one could consider what Justin says about the customary reading of the memoirs of the apostles. And, one could simply consider, too, that Pentecost was /already/ on the calendar of Jewish Christians who celebrated it as part of their Jewish heritage. And we have a statement or two in Origen and in the (or, a) "Apocalypse of Paul" about lectors.And, some of the papyri are lectionaries, as described previously in this group. But we have hardly any *direct* evidence of lection-cycles in the mid-100's. (Similarly we have hardly any *extant* copies of most books of the NT from the same time-period.) To an extent, the elegance with which the theory fits the evidence lends its premises credibility.

Damon Lee Gang
Do we know anything about L1604?

James E Snapp Jr
Damon Lee Gang,
I recall reading a bit about it -- just incidental mentions here and there. A fragmentary Greek-Sahidic text from the 300's that does not fit any known lection-cycle.
(But, bear in mind that in the file, I do not insist that a detailed lection-cycle be in existence in order for the loss-mechanism to be present -- just a very rudimentary lection-cycle involving the major feast-days. Even in the USA, most churches, I suspect, have such a lection-cycle in a practical sense -- always reading from Mt. 28/Mk 9/ Lk 24/ Jn 20-21 at Eastertime, and always reading from Mt 1 & 2 and Luke 1-2 and John 1 at Christmastime.)
Ach; forgot one: one could make a case, I suspect, that the Diatessaron was designed to be read as a collection of lections. (Thus, the genealogies were omitted, not because of some docetistic agenda, but merely because they make rather boring lections.)

Damon Lee Gang
A harmony makes sense for personal reading ... I find myself reading to a certain place in each gospel (I was doing that today in fact) and trying to match my readings in the Gospels ... I think a harmony of the gospels is natural. Your point about genealogies, though, is a good one ... as well as us noting how it merges some things for continuous reading (avoiding repetition). Also, the lack of youtube (

) in those days would make me think that rather than lection that the Diatessaron would be good entertainment if read out loud (without 'boring' repetition)!? Maybe a kind of "The Message" of that day for the popular masses?

Jeremy Wright
Would you hold to its placement as is in johns gospel?

James E Snapp Jr
Jeremy Wright,
Yes ("as is" being between 7:52 and 8:12).
Casey PerkinsJames, this is one of the best defenses of the Pericope Adulterae that I've seen, and I hope it will be widely disseminated. Have you considered revising your ebook on Amazon to include the additional material?Buck DanielIt cannot be emphasized enough that a prerequisite to textual criticism of the New Testament is a thorough understanding of the textual criticism of the Old Testament. The very process of lection reading was inherited from the Jews (Luke 4:16), and all medieval Hebrew OT mss are marked with ancient guides for the lector (qere). That this process would carry over into the NT should have been the first assumption brought to bear on the evidence, rather than that hundreds of scribes would be likely to insert, alongside the text, their judgement against the canonicity of the very scriptures they were transmitting. There is really no excuse for Pereira's ignorance (James 3:1).James E Snapp Jr
David Palmer,
(Addressing a few questions/posts together here)
DP: "What is the "jump" indicator? Is it what looks kind of like a Pi over a V?"
Yes, basically an abbreviation for hUPERBALE.
DP: "The note in MSS 1 and 1582 . . . you have a typo there: you have "86th chapter" instead of "8th."
It's not a typo. That's what the note says. (Section-divisions are the reference-point, not the modern chapter-divisions.) (There's additional material about this in Gwynn's descriptions of some of the Syrian evidence but it takes a bit of technical detail to unravel it all.)DP: "On the relative absence of OUN and the increased presence of DE, I noticed that independently, from simply reading the Gospel of John in Greek. This really is significant, you minimize it too much."I pointed out that elsewhere in John (as others have noted previously), there are stretches without OUN and there are stretches with DE. So the anti-authenticity case at this point depends on a combination of two features, /neither/ of which are Johannine, to create one non-Johannine feature. I suspect that something similar could be done for several other 12-verse passages of John.
=AZU7sT17MXzcwfgcwdnsGgRgvOUirACvta2L1y5sSVf97oX4cpjoN3zDDiwvIu7BHinxPrOwcdVoj6flFVFdFOMk3Bya2GDpP0CPCLwP4AdzcPa7g0YSGRr-B5S9rH0g3ue6vsEqbs_QemtieVYQ6ii6&__tn__=R]-R']James E Snapp Jr
Casey Perkins,
Well, /now/ I have. But I would imagine that it would make better sense if people read Pereira's essay first.
Perhaps I should revise it so as to refer to Pereira's objections (most of which are echoes of earlier authors' objections anyway) in a more generic way, and then add it as a Part 2 of "The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) - A Tour of the External Evidence." But for now, it is what it is.

Casey Perkins
James E Snapp Jr
I just remember that the ebook focused on showing that the evidence was not lopsided in favor of exclusion; I don't recall it making a strong affirmative case for inclusion. That was the difference I had in mind, not any specifics in reference to Pereira.

James E Snapp Jr
Casey Perkins,
Yes; that's what it was supposed to do -- to allow readers a look at the evidence, instead of having to be fed exclusively Metzger's "overwhelming" commentary.

Now Steven Avery joins the lectionary discussion