Is There an Original Text Even of One of MY Books??

[00:00:01] Is there an original text, even of one of my books, written by Bart Ehrman, read by Mike Johnson? [00:00:10] Here's a way to think about what it can even mean to talk about an original text from a post many years ago, published when I was just finishing up one of my books. [00:00:24] In my debates with other scholars about whether we can know for certain, or, as they sometimes put it with 99% certainty, what the original words of the New Testament were, I always argue that we cannot know, and they argue we can. [00:00:43] Let me explain one reason that I find their position highly problematic by dealing with a broader issue. [00:00:51] What exactly is the original text of a document? If we cant agree on that very basic and fundamental question, then we cant very well agree on the possibility of getting back to the original. [00:01:05] Ive dealt with this problem on the blog before, but let me approach it from a different angle this time. [00:01:12] I have just finished my recent book on how memory studies can help us think about the oral traditions of Jesus that were in circulation in the years and decades before the gospels were produced. [00:01:26] The book will be called Jesus before the gospels and should be published sometime in the spring. [00:01:33] So in 20 years, looking back on things, what will people imagine is the original text of that book, or say, of a chapter of the book, E. G. Chapter one? [00:01:47] Here is the reality. I had an extensive outline of what I wanted to say in chapter one, which I had worked on for weeks. I then wrote the chapter over the course of two days after finishing it. On the second day, I went back and revised it, rearranging some material, correcting spelling and grammatical mistakes, rewording sentences, restructuring paragraphs, and so on. About two weeks later, I went back to it and revised it again. [00:02:20] After I finished the whole manuscript, I went back and revised the whole book, including chapter one again. [00:02:29] Is one of those drafts or revisions the original? [00:02:34] I then sent the book off to friends, colleagues, and other readers, including some on the blog, and they made suggestions. [00:02:43] I took their suggestions to heart and made edits. [00:02:47] I then read the whole thing through one last time, tweaking it here and there. I then sent it to my editor. He had lots of comments and wanted me to change things, add things, remove things, alter things. [00:03:03] I did so on his advice, and then I went through it one last time to make final adjustments in style to make it absolutely as good as I could. [00:03:16] Is one of these revisions the original? [00:03:20] I have now sent it in its final form to the publisher. The first thing they will do is send it to a copy editor who will want me to change things stylistically, she may not like the way I begin sentences with but or, and she may not like my extensive use of dashes instead of commas. She may think some of my sentences are too long and complex. [00:03:46] She will adjust my citations in the footnotes to the style preferred by the publisher, and she will do hundreds of other things to the manuscript. [00:03:56] She will send it back to me, and one by one, I will need to either accept, reject, or alter her suggestions. [00:04:05] The copy edited manuscript will then go to the compositor, who will set it up in type, and that's the form that it will finally be published in. [00:04:15] So back to my basic what is the original text of my chapter one? [00:04:23] Is it the form of the text that was published? [00:04:27] Well, that's not really the original, since there were many earlier forms of that chapter. [00:04:33] How can a form of the text be older than the original? [00:04:38] So is it the form of the text that I sent to the compositor? The form I sent in to be copy edited? The form I originally sent to my editor, one of the revisions I made before sending it to him, the first rough draft I produced over the course of two days, the outline that I had made, that was the basis for the draft. [00:05:01] Probably not the final option, but which of the others? [00:05:05] And who is to decide which one is the original form? [00:05:12] And what about the Gospel of Mark? Or Paul's letter to the Romans? [00:05:17] In some ways, the process was undoubtedly simpler for each of these books. The authors did not have compositors, copy editors and editors to deal with. [00:05:29] They simply wrote their book and put it in circulation. [00:05:34] But almost certainly they edited the books before doing so. [00:05:39] So what is the original? [00:05:42] If you say that it was the final edited form, that's fine. But then again, you're saying that the original was not the first form of the text. [00:05:53] So in what sense is it actually the original? [00:05:57] If you say it was an earlier form of the text, then you have the problem that you have no access to an earlier form of the text, since it was never circulated or copied, so that none of our surviving manuscripts derives from that form, say, the first draft or the first edited version of the draft. [00:06:21] And in some ways, the issue is even more complicated for either mark or Romans than for my recent book. [00:06:28] Take Romans. Paul, we know, dictated his letter to the Romans. Since the scribe names himself in chapter 16, verse 22, he is a fellow, otherwise unknown named Tertius. [00:06:44] Presumably, Paul looked over what Tertius had written to make sure it was what he wanted to say, and made corrections. That's typically what ancient letter writers did, then Tertius would have produced a fresh copy for circulation. [00:07:01] But all this complicates things. [00:07:04] Which is the original? The fresh copy finally sent out. [00:07:09] It's not the earliest form of the text is it? The copy as Paul had corrected it, the copy that Tertius first wrote? We dont have any access to either of these copies. [00:07:23] But heres a further what if Paul said something in his dictation and Tertius wrote it down incorrectly? What if Paul said one word and Tertius thought he said another word? [00:07:38] Then the presumably original written text has a mistake in the original. [00:07:45] So were Pauls spoken words the original or something else? [00:07:51] I dont think theres an easy answer to these questions, but they shouldnt be ignored as they always are in my experience by people who want to assure us that we know the original text in 99% of all cases. [00:08:08] Really? [00:08:10] Which original? [00:08:12] If it were just up to me I would say that the original is the first form of the text that was placed in circulation. [00:08:20] But since that in fact is not the oldest form of the text maybe we shouldnt call it the original.