April 11, 2011

• Early Christian Church Conspiracy?

  Intro:

  This is part of my review series on the skeptical anthology, "The Empty Tomb: Jesus Beyond the Grave" (ET).  Basically I've lifted this little bit from my material on chapter 4 of that book, which is the essay, "Apocryphal Apparitions: 1 Corinthians 15:3-11 as a Post-Pauline Interpolation" written by Robert Price (which can actually be found many places online). 

  The reason I'm bumping this up is because J. P. Holding and Richard Carrier recently debated in person on the related topic of the textual reliability of the New Testament and I hope to build on what's gone before between skeptics and Christians.

  Chris Price from Christian CADRE, J. P. Holding from Tektonics (in an essay that was online, but is now in the book, "Trusting the New Testament"), Steve Hays from Triablogue (in the ebook, "This Joyful Eastertide"), Stephen Davis (which is in a philosophy paper you'd have to pay for), and Norman Geisler are addressing Price's arguments.  I've tried to play all their points against each other to see what the arguments amount to from an outsider perspective.

  ---

  Chris Price says:

  Dr. Price’s theory, for which he gives few facts, is that the manuscripts “mysteriously vanished” due to orthodox suppression.

  However, Holding says:

  ...to be fair, Price can pull up a bit of support for his posi­tion...

  Robert Price had quoted William O. Walker Jr. to explain himself (page 71):
  

  ...the surviving text of the Pauline letters is the text promoted by the historical winners in the theological and ecclesiastical struggles of the second and third centuries….In short, it appears likely that the emerging Catholic leadership in the churches ‘standardized’ the text of the Pauline corpus in the light of ‘orthodox’ views and practices, suppressing and even destroying all deviant texts and manuscripts.  Thus it is that we have no manuscripts dating from earlier than the third century; thus it is that all of the extant manuscripts are remarkably similar in most of their significant features; and thus it is that the manuscript evidence can tell us nothing about the state of the Pauline literature prior to the third century.

  Although Hays complains:

  Why is that taken to be evidence that the NT text was “standardized,” rather than evidence of scribal fidelity to the autographa?

  I imagine someone like Hays would be disgruntled if we entertain both options since at this point the evidence would be compatible with either, right? Do we have to be dogmatic either way? 

  Holding seems to think we do:

  The assumptions Walker makes are more or less that there must have been interpolations in the Pauline texts, simply because well, there must have been! It is simply assumed based on later evidence that there must have been interpolations earlier; or, it is assumed that the early church must have altered the texts, simply because it is determined that there were possible motives for them to make alterations.

  I don't see anyone claiming that there MUST have been interpolations. The skeptical case (as far as I can piece it together from Price, Bart Ehrman, and Carrier) seems to be: 

  1.  We know such things did happen later (when it is easy to prove with manuscript evidence). 

  2.  Inference to naturalism implying more modest starting conditions to any given religious movement. 

  3.  Obvious political and/or religious motives given the ubiquity of such human politics. 

  4.  Opportunity and our ignorance one way or the other in key early stages. 

  5.  How much is on the line to believe otherwise (a worldview is making a pitch to the rest of the world). 

  So, it is reasonable to assume that there *probably* were (as in at least more likely than not) and that there's no compelling reason to suppose we can rest assured there weren't.  This argument has the most force given 2 combined with 5 and it only has meaning when Christians in a positive sense wish to assert their arbitrary confidence that their religion *didn't* get tweaked in important ways when no one was looking. 

  So apart from a much larger worldview and personal context, the skeptical argument doesn't seem to have much compelling force on the spot.  If this were just some random academic question between two professors of historical magic in a world filled with legitimate magical claims and we wanted to happen to know about particular instances in history where particular individuals inflated their cases, there really wouldn't be a lot to work with.  We'd just shrug our shoulders and walk away it seems. 

  Holding calls Walker's line of reasoning a "fallacy of association" (as in, just because kid x hangs out with pot heads doesn't necessarily mean he smokes pot, too) as though certainties are being presented.  It is logically possible that there were no interpolations (just like it is possible you hang out with potheads and don't join in) and I don't think Price, Walker, Carrier, or Ehrman would disagree with that (though your mom probably won't buy the "fallacy of association" defense).  Why does Holding feel the need to overstate the claim?  Is it because there's no defense against these mundane uncertainties?  

  Davis says that Robert Price wants to make up for the lack of manuscript evidence:

  Indeed, he would no longer have to argue, along with William G. Walker, that powerful and sinister forces in the Great Church around the year 300 made sure to suppress earlier texts of 1 Corinthians that did not include 15:3-11.

  Robert Price, in response to Davis, says:

  I don’t think anybody doubts that early Christian authorities did what they could to suppress and destroy the writings of their theological opponents, and it appears that such efforts applied to their biblical manuscripts as well. It is certainly not unreasonable when Muslims believe that, when the Caliph Uthman had the text of the Koran standardized, he destroyed all previous copies and their dangerous variants. That is no wacky conspiracy theory, and neither is the hypothesis of extensive early interpolations in the New Testament. I urge the interested to read Winsome Munro’s Authority in Paul and Peter and Walker’s Interpolations in the Pauline Letters. By all means, don’t take my word for it. And for God’s sake, don’t take Davis’s either.

   

  Can't even lay out some of the evidence yourself?  *sigh*  I can only hope that Munro and Walker actually lay out a compelling case for this conspiracy rather than just make more assertions.

  Hays seems to have his doubts:

  Did the early church really have the organizational efficiency as well as enforcement mechanism to recall and destroy all “deviant” MSS and then reissue a standardized text?

  Geisler has his doubts, too, and calls it implausible speculation:

  ...[Price's] argument from the adage that “history is written by the winners” (71) is implausible and contrary to fact. For this is not always true. Indeed, on the accepted dates of 1 Corinthians (A.D. 55-56) by even most critical scholars, Christianity was not a political winner. In fact, it was not a winner until centuries later.

  Um...I think by "political winner" Price is talking about Christian sect on Christian sect action...not Christian sect on Pagan action.

  Holding asserts:

  ...this alleged conspiracy on the early church is not even practi­cally possible; the ability to reach all over the world and snuff out deviant manuscripts simply did not exist. The existence of vast amounts of heretical and non-canonical material is proof alone of that reality.

  And Hays complains:

  At the very least, an elementary distinction needs to be drawn between the active destruction of extant writings and the failure to preserve them.

  As though Carrier were psychic, in a footnote, in another chapter of ET (that book both Hays and Holding are responding to), Carrier partially agrees with Holding and makes that necessary "elementary distinction:"

  ...no “conspiracy” needs to be invented here: the evidence of textual suppression and alteration throughout the Christian tradition is overwhelming and undeniable (indeed, horrifying and lamentable), yet did not require any organized conspiracy—unwanted texts were simply not preserved, and sects that wanted them were actively hunted down and destroyed. This is a known fact of history.

  Hays admits he has no imagination:

  ...if the surviving MSS were systematically corrupted, what would be the remaining evidence that they ever were systematically corrupted in the first place?

   

  In the same footnote, Carrier references as though perhaps this lays out that evidence:

  Cf. James Robinson, “Jesus from Easter to Valentinus (or to the Apostles’ Creed),” Journal of Biblical Literature 101 (1982): pp. 5-37.

  So unfortunately this "dialog" ends with a whole bunch of back and forth assertions and an even bigger reading list as though between 7 or so authors commenting we couldn't do better than that?  *sigh*

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  Outro:

  I've been working on my review of The Empty Tomb off and on since 2007ish and have always been disappointed with the lack of detailed argument from either side.  Getting intimate and non-defensive interaction that clarifies the state of the evidence would be nice.  Let's hope we get somewhere with more info on the Carrier vs. Holding debate.

  Ben

  • 8:35 am
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