Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and frequently cited works
- 1 The theory
- 2 The materials
- 3 The practice
- 4 ‘As our Saviour taught us …’: the Lord's Prayer
- 5 The sayings on marriage and divorce
- 6 The story of the woman taken in adultery
- 7 Secrets and hypotheses
- 8 The endings of Mark's Gospel
- 9 The last three chapters of Luke
- 10 The development and transmission of the Fourth Gospel
- 11 From codex to disk
- 12 The living text
- Index of citations
- Index of Greek New Testament manuscripts
- Index of names and subjects
12 - The living text
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of abbreviations and frequently cited works
- 1 The theory
- 2 The materials
- 3 The practice
- 4 ‘As our Saviour taught us …’: the Lord's Prayer
- 5 The sayings on marriage and divorce
- 6 The story of the woman taken in adultery
- 7 Secrets and hypotheses
- 8 The endings of Mark's Gospel
- 9 The last three chapters of Luke
- 10 The development and transmission of the Fourth Gospel
- 11 From codex to disk
- 12 The living text
- Index of citations
- Index of Greek New Testament manuscripts
- Index of names and subjects
Summary
To me the charters are Jesus Christ, the inviolable charter is his cross, and death, and resurrection, and the faith which is through him;–in these I desire to be justified by your prayers.
Ignatius, To the Philadelphians 8.3Man's need to write books is a great injury; it is a violation of the Spirit compelled by necessity, and is not the way of the New Testament.
Martin Luther, Sermon on the Gospel for the Feast of the EpiphanyIn the previous chapter, two facts were stressed: that the Gospel texts exist only as a manuscript tradition, and that from the beginning the text grew freely. It is from these facts that all questions of interpretation and all theological formulations must start. Concepts of biblical inspiration, or any other doctrinal formulations, which fail to take account of these two key facts are based on a priori theorising or prejudice, and not on the actual character of the writings. An attempt will be made in this final chapter to explore some of these matters. We begin where the previous chapter ended.
SCRIPTURE AND TRADITION
The interest and significance of the second century cannot be too highly stressed. One development within it attracts our attention here. Papias, early in the century, is actually cited by Eusebius as preferring oral to written traditions about Jesus: ‘I supposed that things out of books did not profit me so much as the utterances of a voice which liveth and abideth.’
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Living Text of the Gospels , pp. 203 - 213Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1997