E. Jay Epp, in Harvard Theological Review (92:245-281), wrote:
The text-critical discipline per se carries with it no normative implications and imposes no theological overlay onto such a text or variant…In the same breath, however, I wish also to emphasize that every textual critic has full freedom to perform his or her text-critical work within any chosen theological framework, but that choice constitutes a fully separate, voluntary, additional step and one not intrinsic to or demanded by the discipline.
This was the feeling that dominated the discipline of textual criticism. P. Kyle McCarter wrote, “The textual critic… is a scholar who respects neither familiarity nor tradition insofar as texts and readings are concerned” (Textual Criticism, 1986, p11). Even when textual criticism began as a discipline, scholars, who were accused of threatening orthodoxy, sought after the “original text” (that is the autographs) through various principles. However, more recently, on the other hand, PJ Williams began the Evangelical Textual Criticism blog with these words,
One thing that needs to be said is that evangelical textual criticism is not synonymous with textual criticism carried out by individuals who are evangelical. Evangelical textual criticism is textual criticism which is governed by the principles of evangelicalism.
While Williams does not say this, this is probably a response to the rise of Bart Ehrman (Orthodox Corruption of Scripture) and others. So, can one now practice textual criticism without theological bias? Or rather, can one engage in NT textual criticism theory without being rendered as theologically biased. For example, Eldon Epp (along with others like Parker and Ehrman) is currently challenging the notion that we cannot and should not define textual criticism’s goal as seeking after the original. In the article previously mentioned, Epp states,
…some (perhaps many) textual critics may be seeking an authoritative “original” New Testament text and may choose to identify it with an authoritative “canon,” but such a goal is neither intrinsic to textual criticism as a historical-critical discipline, nor is it within the domain of textual criticism to place a theological overlay on either its purposes or its results.
So already, is Epp labeling anyone who desires to seek after an authoritative “original” as theologically biased or is he labeling those who equate the authoritative “original” with the canonical as theologically biased or can the two be separated? Can one desire to seek after the original (in its intial meaning) autographa without being labeled as theologically biased? Or is that endeavor being laid to rest by scholarship for other textual critical endeavors?
Epp’s main point here is that “no easy equivalence exists between ‘original’ texts and ‘canonical’ texts, because each term is multivalent. Thus, there is no more a single ‘canonical’ text than there is a single ‘original;’ our multiplicities of texts may all have been canonical (that is, authoritative) at some time and place.” Most, who try to keep church and state separate (no, I mean textual criticism and theology separate), would agree that “textual criticism as a discipline is not automatically and necessarily concerned with authority.” But to assume that seeking after the original autographa or earliest attainable text is being concerned with authority is narrow-minded.
According to Epp, because of the ambiguity, complex, and unmanageable of the term “original,” textual criticism needs to shift its focus from “reaching a single original text of the New Testament — or even a text as close as possible to that origin” to “reach back into the discipline of codicology and forward into the field of hermeneutics.” So, just because the field became more complex, we should just “give up” seeking after the original autographa (or earliest attainable text)?
Of course, those with evangelical theological tendencies still want to seek after the original, or earliest attainable text, because of canonical or authoritative reasons. However, is it possible for an evangelical to lay aside their theological convictions and ideologies and seek after the original text or earliest attainable text? Or is this an impossibility? And if it is an impossibility, then all those who came before us, are they theologically biased because they sought after the original autographs (or earliest attainable texts)?
These are just some of my thoughts as I am working through this. What do you think? Is it possible to pursue textual criticism without theological bias?
