"Sola Scriptura" Before There Was a New Testament "Scriptura"

[RedFan]

Have you even so much as heard a rumor of such evidence ever existing?

 

[guanophore]

The editor who has two or more variants of the same passage in front of him should always seek to recover the original manuscript, i.e., edit “out” any changes form the original, for otherwise he wouldn’t be properly editing. He would be editorializing. Thank God that we (you and I) have zero evidence of that ever happening.

It seems that you have very little study of the history and translations of the texts. You know, don’t you, that the manuscripts were copied painstakingly by candlelight in monasteries? Do you not think the Abbot and bishop exercised oversight for their accuracy? Early scholars did not have all the same resources as we do today,but scholars such as Jerome always submitted their work to the successor of the Apostle and accepted correction from them.

The reason the CC fought so hard to prevent unauthorized translations from being made is to prevent what eventually happened with Luther, where changes were made to the text that altered the meaning of the passage.

 

[RedFan]

We have none of the original manuscripts. We have only copies of copies – and they do not agree. Which means that if (as may make sense, but as we have no evidence of) “the Abbot and bishop exercised oversight for their accuracy,” they were not 100% successful (else the copies would all agree).

So far as I know, no ecclesiastical imprimaturs came about in the first four centuries of Christendom. If you have evidence to the contrary, please share it.

 

[guanophore]

We have none of the original manuscripts. We have only copies of copies – and they do not agree. Which means that if (as may make sense, but as we have no evidence of) “the Abbot and bishop exercised oversight for their accuracy,” they were not 100% successful (else the copies would all agree).

I was speaking locally, that there was fidelity in the location where copies were being made. The monks did not just make their own adjustments, because if they did, these were corrected when reviewed. As copies that were made locally were able to travel and be compared, the translations were compared to the Sacred Tradition for accuracy.

An imprimatur is a Latin word, and Latin developed primarily after the fourth century as the ecclesiastical language in the West. The canon was closed in 382 AD. This is an authorative pronouncement on the collection of books that had already been reviewed and accepted by local councils.

 

[RedFan]

An imprimatur is a Latin word, and Latin developed primarily after the fourth century as the ecclesiastical language in the West. The canon was closed in 382 AD. This is an authorative pronouncement on the collection of books that had already been reviewed and accepted by local councils.

If “imprimatur” bothers you because it’s post-4th Century Latin, then use έγκριση – but the point is that no mention of Church approval of a copy as being faithful to the original manuscript is recorded anywhere in the first four centuries of Christendom. This has nothing to do with the canon being closed, and everything to do with how we can know whether the copies we have of the books within that canon are or are not faithful to the original.

I have little doubt that, by and large, they are. (Bruce Metzger, perhaps the leading Textual Critic of the past century, estimated at least 92% faithfulness.) But that isn’t what I have been posting about. I have been posting about the unsupported and unsupportable speculation that successors to the apostles actually weighed in – presumably as eyewitnesses to the events described – to ensure that copies of the originals were accurate. There is ZERO evidence, and no reason to believe, that they did.

 

[adf417]

Evidence of what rumor specifically?

 

[guanophore]

I have little doubt that, by and large, they are. (Bruce Metzger, perhaps the leading Textual Critic of the past century, estimated at least 92% faithfulness.) But that isn’t what I have been posting about. I have been posting about the unsupported and unsupportable speculation that successors to the apostles actually weighed in – presumably as eyewitnesses to the events described – to ensure that copies of the originals were accurate. There is ZERO evidence, and no reason to believe, that they did.

So how do you imagine that this 92% faithfulness was achieved? Do you think all the scribes just acted independently?

The 1983 Code of Canon Law entrusted the Apostolic See and the episcopal conferences to the authority to approve translations of the Sacred Scriptures in the Latin Catholic Church (c. 825, §1). Prior to 1983, Scriptural translations could be approved by the Apostolic See or by a local ordinary within a diocese. No translations were permitted that were not approved through the Bishopric.

 

[RedFan]

Rumor of an apostolic successor weighing in on copies of manuscripts to ensure accuracy in the first four centuries of Christendom…

 

[RedFan]

So how do you imagine that this 92% faithfulness was achieved? Do you think all the scribes just acted independently?

I’m sure they did in the early years.

Let’s take three codices as examples, only because they are so famous. Ignoring damaged folios, the Matthew in Codex Sinaiticus agrees with the Matthew in Codex Alexandrinus in 97% of their words, and agrees with the Matthew of Codex Vaticanus in 96% of their words. Mark, almost as much overlap (the percentage depends heavily on whether we count the resurrection narrative at the end of Mark, verses 16:9-20, which is missing in Sinaiticus and Vaticanus). Luke, even more. But no gospel is 100% identical as between codices. Where they differ, they differ because their copyists (1) had a different manuscript to copy from; or (2) erred in copying faithfully, or (3) both. The chances that the three copyists (or sets of copyists) of these three codices knew each other, or even lived within 50 years and 500 miles of each other, are remote. In each case, the manuscripts they copied from were themselves copies, maybe second or even third generation copies. And if we had them in existence today, we would undoubtedly find discrepant language among them as well (although hopefully less the closer in time to the original they were created).

I don’t mean to pick on the codices. Each gospel has existent third century fragments, whose language usually but not always agrees with other fragments and with the versions found in the later codices. (Sometimes we even find a gospel quotation by an early Church Father that varies slightly from other sources.) Where they are discrepant, the same principles are in play.

Now, if I understand you, you posit in each case a review by an early bishop before the ink was allowed to dry. My question is, review for what? Consistency with the manuscript copied from? Consistency with what the review understood as the historically accurate account? Consistency with theological principles?

(If this last possibility is where you come down, it will be worth discussing separately in its own post. Sometimes a discrepancy does have theological significance. Let’s take an example: Mark 1:1. In Sinaiticus the opening sentence of Mark omits “the Son of God.” Was the phrase added to a copy somewhere along the line, or was it in Mark’s original and removed somewhere along the line?)

I am of the view that there was no such review. I am open to being convinced otherwise.

 

[adf417]

Rumor of an apostolic successor weighing in on copies of manuscripts to ensure accuracy in the first four centuries of Christendom…

Possibly, but im personally unaware…

which is why we give so much weight to [T]ridition and thank God for the visible church in which anyone can find this proper [T]ridition. Otherwise the Jws are equally correct in their variants.

 

[guanophore]

you posit in each case a review by an early bishop before the ink was allowed to dry.

No, I don’t believe I said that.

My question is, review for what? Consistency with what the review understood as the historically accurate account? Consistency with theological principles?

Yes. Only writings that were consistent with the Sacred Tradition, handed down through the paradosis, were permitted to be read in the Churches. A valid Eucharistic celebration was one that was celebrated in unity with the bishop.

From the beginning all written accounts could still be verified with those who were present:

"3. The blessed apostles, then, having founded and built up the Church, committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate. Of this Linus, Paul makes mention in the Epistles to Timothy. To him succeeded Anacletus; and after him, in the third place from the apostles, Clement was allotted the bishopric. This man, as he had seen the blessed apostles, and had been conversant with them, might be said to have the preaching of the apostles still echoing [in his ears], and their traditions before his eyes. Nor was he alone [in this], for there were many still remaining who had received instructions from the apostles. " Iren., Adv. Haer. 3.3.3

 

[RedFan]

Your quote from Irenaeus is not about NT writings (although it does go on to mention Clement’s letter to Corinth). So, what is it doing here? Are we changing subjects?

The issue we have been discussing is not apostolic authority or succession. The issue is apostolic successors correcting/checking the copyists of NT writings. Irenaeus has nothing to say about that.

 

[guanophore]

I wonder how you sola scriptura denizens out there view the interstitial period between Pentecost and the publication of the various books of the NT between roughly 40 and 100 C.E. Does it weaken your thesis at all?

For its first 20+ years Christianity spread through Paul’s missions and through the preaching of the original apostles and others – but with no NT writings to point to. Paul starts to write letters to particular churches in the 40’s C.E., but they don’t get instantly copied (think about how tedious the copying process was back then!) nor instantly shared throughout the Mediterranean world (think about how long it took to travel from, say, Antioch to Rome in those days!). We don’t have any evidence that his letters were circulated widely until decades after they were penned.

I must have misunderstood the topic. I was pointing out that the Word of God has been preserved infallibly in the Church by the HS before there was a NT. I think the rabbit trail about whether any successors to the apostles made corrections to texts is just to keep the focus off Sacred Tradition as valid.