Lachmann (3) - The "Illiad Theory" and Acts

F.N. Peloubet, in The Teacher's commentary on the Acts (1903, Oxford) deals with Lachmann's multiple author theory in passing, in the context of the composition of Acts.
Peloubet (Introduction, xxxv fwd) states:

"VI. THE SOURCES OF ACTS.   As Luke expressly says in the preface to his Gospel that he derived his information from the records of eye-witnesses, with which he was perfectly familiar, the same is doubtless true of his treatise on the Acts of the Apostles. ...
...there is no reason for thinking, a priori, that the speeches cannot be historical. . . . The speeches of the leading apostles would impress themselves on the growing community, and would be remembered as the words of the Lord were remembered.
...
There are some interesting comparisons of the discussion of the composite nature of the Acts with other literature in  A. H. Strong's The Great Poets and their Theology. 

"The German Lachmann resolved the Iliad into sixteen distinct and clearly defined layers.  Paley has compared the Iliad and the Odyssey to pictures of stained glass made up by an artistic combination of handsome bits of older windows which fortune and time had shivered." 

The combatants [textual critics] are more and more arraying themselves on the side of the traditional view that both poems are by the same author, and that this author is Homer. But Homer himself may have taken many years for the elaboration of his poems, revising and improving them as he repeated them again and again, so that during those years versions of various degrees of perfection may have been set in circulation.  

Goethe in one of his letters to Schiller cites different versions of his own poems, in connection with the theory we have been considering. He had at various times amended and enlarged them; but he did not on that account prove that there was a second Goethe, or many Goethes. "

What all this tells us is that subsequent critics and investigators  cioming after Lachmann have found that all such naive theories of 'many detectable layers' and 'multiple authors' are at best precarious conjectures and near-worthless.   Even, and perhaps especially, reconstructed 'genealogies', based on the alleged identification of various 'interpolations' and layers are simply academic fantasies, their proliferation and variations providing the best evidence of their spuriousness.

Nazaroo

What Causes LARGE Omissions?

Back in the 19th century, maverick textual critics were not afraid to confront the two biggest textual variants in the NT, namely Mark's Ending (Mk 16:9-20) and the Pericope de Adultera (Jn 7:53-8:11).   It was considered essential in those days to investigate them and have a position on such important matters.   Nowadays, flying a holding-pattern is the norm and critics rarely come in to land on either side of any issue.  Its hard to get anything except the standard Metzger quote when inquiring about either passage.

But every critic knows in his heart that the standard explanations and canons of TC simply cannot accommodate such gigantic variants.  "Prefer the shorter reading." appears absurd next to something as monumental as Mark's Ending, for no mere copyist could have invented it.  Describing John 7:53-8:11 as a "marginal gloss" is just ludicrous, when manuscripts don't even have margins that big.

Its no surprise then, that early critics gave their shot at a more plausible mechanism and account of the matter.   Mark's Ending seems to be just about the size to fit on a lost last page.  The so-called Western order Had Matthew, John, Luke and Mark last, making the ending the final page not only of a copy of Mark, but also of many a copy of the Four Gospels bound together.

As early as the 1880s, Rendel Harris posited the idea that the PA had slipped out of a quire in some early copy of John.  He supposed that it was spread  in four pieces, filling a small folded papyrus quire-sheet.    But this need not be the only arrangement in an early papyrus that could have resulted in the lost text.  It could also (perhaps with more likelihood) have covered both sides of a single folio, having been flexed or torn out of an early Gospel.

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Intriguingly, G. D. Bauscher in 2009 proposed a kind of homoeoarcton error, where two columns written in Syriac had begun with similar looking string of letters:

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  Any one of these common scenarios could have caused the initial omission, and subsequently also have caused suspicion to fall upon either passage, as confused copyists noted the absence of the verses.

It is easy to imagine how any initial error could have generated much deliberate interference later, and caused quite a complex history among at least a handful of early manuscripts, just as we seem to see now in the transmission record.

peace
Nazaroo

Critical Abbreviations in the Apparatus of NA27 etc.

Here are some handy 'cheat cards' you can cut out and use as bookmarks, for your used copies of Nestle/Aland, courtesy of Mr. Decker:

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Marginal Notes in Medieval manuscripts:

Miniscule (cursive) manuscript GA-1582 is actually a copy of the Family 1 text-type, but appears to some critics as an older or more primitive copy than manuscript GA-1 itself.

Additionally, 1582 has similar and unusual notes in the margins, of unknown origin, as follows:

The Ending of Mark:

At Mk 16:8 (σλγ) is a final decoration, and then (identical with Codex 1): [the following note:]

εν τισι μεν των αντιγραφων. εως
ωδε πληρουται ο ευαγγελιστης.
εως ου και ευσεβιος ο παμφιλου
εκανονισεν. εν πολλοις δε. και
ταυτα φερεται

Then follows 16:9-20. [24] In the margin at 16:19, the following is written in a tapering triangular shape:

ειρηναιος ο των
αποστολων πλη
σιον. εν τωι προς
τας αιρεσεις τρι
τωι λογωι. τουτο
ανηνεγκεν
το ρητον.
ως μαρκω
ειρημε
ν
ο
ν
This marginal note is not found in Codex GA-1.


- from The Textual Tradition of the Gospels: Family 1 in Matthew by Amy S. Anderson (Brill, 2004), p. 68-69