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Mr Scrivener's Response

(1) Blurring Categories and Guilt by Association:

Intelligently speaking, these 23 examples listed are not "harmonizations" at all. While Frazier himself attempts to blur three different categories of Variation Unit, namely "conflations", "harmonizations", and "expansions of piety" the examples listed are all of the 3rd kind, namely expanded titles honoring Jesus.

They are not "harmonizations", either of parallel texts, or harmonizing to nearby context. If they are in fact expansions (a point I'll get to later), then they are done on the spot, without consulting any other texts, either within the document or of a parallel passage. There is no need or call for that in expanding to a well-known title.

Nor are they "conflations" as is apparent by the phenomena. Hort and subsequent critics understand conflation as the deliberate combining of alternate variant readings into a new longer reading, typically a 'Western' and Alexandrian, in an effort to preserve both. None of these readings are 'Western'/Alexandrian or other combinations.

They are just title expansions, plain and simple efforts to honor Jesus by placing his "full title" in the text at every opportunity, if that is indeed what happened. Frazier knows this, since he calls them obvious "expansions of piety".

This attempt at 'guilt by association' doesn't hold water, for the three types of expansion are quite different in purpose, have different textual features, and occur independently. Real "harmonizations" and "conflations" involve bold editing and require text-comparing, while ordinary scribes could make pious name expansions without text comparison, by assuming a simple homoeoteleuton error.

Even if the listed cases were legitimate, the demonstration would only extend to this type of reading. The Byzantine text will not have been found "guilty" of either harmonization or conflation, but only of this very specific type of expansion.

(2) Title Expansion Practices may not be the cause of Variants

Note that since all NT texts have plenty of longer and shorter titles everywhere, it is quite possible that some, perhaps many, of the longer readings are original, or stem from a common archetype, and that the titles have been shortened either by Alexandrian editorial activity for conciseness, or else accidental omissions in the act of contraction of names.

That is, all text-types present a "mixed text" (if we can call it that) with plenty of short and long versions of Jesus' name. If there was a consistent or longstanding tendency to expand the titles of Jesus, even just in Paul's letters, why such a poor show and inconsistent result?

(2) Title Expansion Practices are not found in the Gospels

All of Frazier's examples are in the letters, except 3 (Acts/Rev). Why? It is not really surprising to see most opportunities for 'pietistic expansion' occur in Paul's letters (& the Catholic Epistles). But it is very significant that none occur in the Gospels at all, for this shows two things:

(a) They are not inspired by parallel texts (i.e., "harmonizations").

So we can't use this peculiar group of readings to "prove" the existance of "harmonizations" at all. The authors of these expansions did not use text-comparison.

(b) Scribes did not expand at every opportunity (only in epistles).

If they did expand, they did so very carefully, to avoid putting anachronistic titles in narratives. But if this was a process extending beyond individual editors and generations of copyists, it would have been a tightly disciplined, informed policy, uniformly enforced. None of this would have been possible in the first 2-3 centuries.

(4) Title Expansion Practices can't be made Exclusively Byzantine

Frazier himself admits that the rather glaring "expansion", "Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" is the same in both text-types (he fails to give a count!), and also that there are 79 other verses where both texts have all three words together, "Lord Jesus Christ", without serious variation. This makes the claim that all these readings actually were expansions even more precarious.

That is, all text-types present a "mixed text" (if we can call it that) with plenty of short and long versions of Jesus' name. If there was an attempt to expand the titles of Jesus, even in Paul's letters, why such a poor and inconsistent show?

And if all text-types have many examples of both short and long, and if this process accounts for the vast majority of cases in the Byzantine text, then surely the practice began very early, and the same process must also account for readings shared by several text-types. If such longer phrases are "non-Pauline", then perhaps we should assume they ALL are non-Pauline. What does that say about the Alexandrian text? Its almost as crappy as the others, chock-full of boners.

Frasier might be right to insist that assuming a priori that the Byzantine text is original is a methodological mistake. But just because he can argue that expansion is plausible does not establish near-certainty for his opinion.

We might agree that his account is "the most reasonable explanation" or just "plausible" for many Variation Units. But the claim remains weak, because of the inherent features of the rest of the text in all text-types.

We could score the explanation, without further detailed investigation of each case, a 50-60% probability of being correct. But that is barely a passing grade, and nothing to boast about.

Frazier may feel he has correctly explained all these cases, but the claim is far, far from proven.

Most importantly, it does nothing to strengthen the case for Byzantine "harmonization" or "conflation", which was Frazier's original point and purpose.

mr.scrivener

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Steven Avery's Response

Steven: An excellent point. If this was a scribal habit there should be a reasonable amount of it in the Gospels. Maybe a little less, because Jesus was not risen until the end, but there should be a good number of additions of Lord or Christ.

Steven: Excellent point #2.

Steven: Since that is the nature of the D. A. Carson general attempt, it is not surprising to see it from his readers. Arguing from the possible to the definite.

Shalom,
Steven Avery
Queens, NY

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Daniel Buck's Response

"I think it can be demonstrated that a primary cause of contracted divine names/titles is that they were already contracted to begin with, viz, as nomina sacra. In the nature of things, these would all be 2-letter units ending in the same letter--a case of h.t. just waiting to happen. I'm quite convinced that this was the case with the NS cascade in Mark 1:1.

And I'm not at all impressed by any alleged scenario in which scribes would expand every NS they came across, as if they didn't already have enough to do.

On the other hand, my studies of the Johannine epistles leads me in the other direction with _KU_ in 2 John 3. It's present in most manuscripts, lectionaries, and versions from Sinaiticus all the way up into the late minuscule period. On the other hand, It's absent in dozens of manuscripts across five Greek textual families, a lectionary, and 3 different versions. Note, it's the only instance of 'Lord' in the entire TR corpus of the Johannines. While h.t. is still a possibility here* (it's a broken NS cascade), internal evidence strongly points in the direction of augmentation, possibly by a person (or more likely many persons) thought to be correcting an inadvertent omission earlier on.

Daniel

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*h.t. actually did occur in 218 & 1241, eliminating the entire cascade from KAI to the latter _PS_ . --ECM

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Nazaroo's Response

Dear List: One thing that immediately strikes me, and I believe Steven Avery has noticed, is that while people like D.A. Carson and even Hort had some methodological integrity, and knew boundaries of honesty in debating, many modern Hortians, such as Mr. Frazier seem oblivious to the concept of seeking truth and establishing truth by following rules of honesty and scientific procedure. Mr. Frazier for instance, quotes D. A. Carson in support of the Hortian view of the Byzantine text, but forgets one of the main purposes behind Carson's writing in the first place, - his "Thesis #13", which I quote below as a reminder: