In order to demonstrate that I have some sort of a handle on what Bilby is talking about here is what the author writes about his classification of datasets.
When Bilby is restricting himself to Marcion he does not need these 5 classes of datasets. He only needs 3MrMacSon wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 11:23 pmBilby's not talking about what you imply you think he's talking aboutLeucius Charinus wrote: ↑Tue Jan 17, 2023 10:54 pm All good points but its a completely mixed bag of sources. These need to be identified and classified as they would be in any database. There are five kinds of sources ...
Bilby's PDF pages 65, 66
- "What then challenges him is the conviction that, if only he is skillful enough, he will succeed in solving a puzzle that no one before has solved or solved so well. Many of the greatest scientific minds have devoted all of their professional attention to demanding puzzles of this sort."
— Kuhn 38
History is written by the victors, except when it isn't, and multiple witnesses are more reliable than a single witness, except when they aren't.
Like many rules, these truisms have exceptions. Sometimes history is written by the losers, and most of the time history cannot and should not be boiled down to a simple game of winners and losers. Sometimes minority witnesses are the most reliable and least biased, and most of the time events cannot and should not be limited to testimonies, one of several types of data sources.
Text criticism inclines us to follow the above rules rigidly, rules incapable of uncovering strata that existed historically prior to the canonized textual formation. [46] Retrieving the earliest gospel strata requires making an art and a science out of finding and filing credible minority reports. To do so, we must make use of three main evidentiary sources, three types of datasets:
1. Patristic Polemical Testimonies. Our most important guidance to uncover the earliest gospel strata is embedded in patristic testimonies, not just to canonical scriptures, but most especially to the scriptures of their earliest opponents. Our quest for veracity has to wade through the vitriol. To borrow a saying from Robert Wilken, the early-orthodox were progressive, creating new syntheses, compromises, and solutions. Their opponents were sometimes the dogged traditionalists.
2. Extant Gospel Manuscripts. The manuscripts (including early translations and lectionaries) of Lk2 are crucial sources to find and file minority reports about Lk1. As Klinghardt has noted, over 75% of over 500 variants peculiar to Lk1 are attested as minority readings in the manuscripts of Lk2. [47] Caveat: collating gospel manuscripts without taking seriously the former and latter types of datasets is doomed to circular logic that does not open itself to the scientific reality of the historical data.
3. Neighboring Gospel Strata. We need to start thinking of each early gospel substratum as an evolutionary transition species. With a mere shoulder blade, a trained paleontologist can reconstruct an entire skeleton and make 3D visualizations of a newly discovered species. While textual DNA is inherently more susceptible to change and reorganization than biological DNA, the analogy is still useful. The more we can reconstruct the full breadth and detail of surrounding gospel strata, the easier it is to locate, sequence, and reconstruct each given stratum. To put it differently, we are very unlikely to find the earliest gospel compilations hiding in the ground of an archeological dig or in an unmarked manuscript on a library or monastery shelf, but data science makes it possible for us to clarify distinct substrata in comparison with their closest historical neighbors based not only on vocal patterns, but also patterns of sourcing, preservation, transformation, and transmission. The earliest gospel strata are preserved and audible (even as re-samplings) in later, better attested textual formations. Scholars only need to learn how to sample and restore these scientifically.
46 Matthias Klinghardt, "Marcion's Gospel and the New Testament: Catalyst or Consequence?" NTS 63 (2017) 318–23 at 322–23; doi.org/10.1017/S0028688516000461.
47 Ibid., 322.