Well, it is certainly nothing personal.Kunigunde Kreuzerin wrote:I do not understand why both of you are not a bit more friendly to my suggestion.
When I read your first post about a limited meaning of δὶς I really thought about it, and am still thinking about it.
I agree that the changes may have been intentional. In fact, I am pretty sure they were.The discussion started with the observation that the early textual tradition of Mark 14:30.68.72 is really damaged. There could be two different reasons: intentional corrections of the text or inadvertent errors by some early scribes. When we notice how damaged this textual tradition was, then, I think, the possibility of intentional corrections can not be ruled out.
This is what is not clear to me. To my mind, if the original text had either one consistent cock crow or two consistent cock crows (setting aside for the moment your perceived inconsistency regarding the meaning of δὶς), but the persons handling the text were accustomed to a different number of cock crows to signal the dawn, then the change may well have been made simply to assimilate it to its new cultural context. I have suggested that perhaps the text started with one cock crow, congenial to a Jewish context and to Mark 13.35, but that somebody changed it to two cock crows in order to better line up with the cultural expectations of readers of the same mind as the writers of the Greco-Roman texts which Brown lists. That is my preferred direction of change at this very moment, but I admit that it could hypothetically have gone in the other direction, from a Greco-Roman understanding to a more Jewish one. In either case, the textual tradition as we have it would be the result of both readings being current. This scenario has the advantage of evidence for both a single and a double cock crow having cultural meaning, and it has the advantage (to my way of thinking, at least) of putting authors and editors in the position of producing the two consistent texts (with one or two cock crows throughout) and scribes in the position of producing the inconsistent texts.But it is clear that the original text must have contain a real problem which caused such intentional corrections.
A variant on this scenario that I am seriously considering is that perhaps whoever added the second cock crow (to what we find in Sinaiticus) originally did not add the actual event of the first cock crow in Mark 14.68; the original purpose was simply to track down every instance of "cock crows" and turn it into "cock crows twice", so as to better represent the Greco-Roman notion of when the dawn arrives. (This is what we find in Vaticanus.) Then somebody later furnished the first crowing so as to be consistent. (This is what we find in Alexandrinus.)
If somebody was inclined to think of this word in the same way you do, then yes, such an issue could have sparked a textual change, and that textual change could have, in combination with the original text, sparked the textual history we see today. I agree with this.During our discussion I noticed (contrary to my first assumptions) that the preferred reading variant contains such a problem, because - taken on the surface and with the “normal” meaning of "δὶς" as “twice” - the prophecy of Jesus (Mark 14:30) went wrong and I think it is no exaggeration to say that this would be a problem with the potential to cause an intentional correction of the text.
The sticking point for me is:
It is possibly because I myself do not actually see the same problem that you do (though I feel I completely understand and respect why you see such a problem) that I want evidence of these ancients who would have seen it as such.Naturally, it must be assumed, that some ancients understood it as a big problem and that this knowledge was later lost.
For me, even after thinking about it a long time, I do not see δὶς as an issue in passages like this. I think that something cannot happen twice before it happens once, but I also think that it cannot happen twice until it happens for the second time. I do not regard the chronological placement of the first time as in any way relevant to the timing of the second time. I can try to prevent something from happening twice even if it has already happened once.
Now, I am not an ancient, and your hypothetical group of them may well have existed. But the scenario I outlined above still appeals to me more, simply because I have the evidence actually before my eyes of how certain ancients treated the issue of the cock crowing, and I do not have to hypothesize them against my own sensibilities on the meaning of δὶς.
But I am completely open to change my mind! It would not take much. Your hypothesis is attractive for its explanatory value. But do you think it explains the variants in the "mixed up" (inconsistent) texts like Vaticanus and Bezae better than the struggle to reconcile two consistent texts with different numbers of cock crows? Is there a variant or a pattern of variants in those manuscripts that you feel leans most directly in the direction of your hypothesis? It is possible I simply have not yet clocked your argument from the textual data itself.
Ben.