APPENDIX
A
Scribal
Gap-Filling
It is my opinion that scribal gap-filling accounts for many of the
textual variants (especially textual expansions) in the New
Testament—particularly in the narrative books (the Four Gospels and Acts).
Usually, textual critics examine textual variants as accidental deviations from
the original text. However, some variants may be accounted for more accurately
as individual “reader-receptions” of the text. By this, I mean variants created
by individual scribes as they interpreted the text in the process of reading
it. In the centuries prior to the production of copies via dictation (wherein
many scribes in a scriptorium transcribed a text as it was dictated to them by
one reader), all manuscript copies were made singly—each scribe working alone
to produce a copy from an exemplar. The good scribe was expected not to have
really processed the text internally but to have mechanically copied it word by
word, even letter by letter. But no matter how meticulous or professional, a
scribe would become subjectively involved with the text and—whether consciously
or unconsciously—at times produce a transcription that differed from his
exemplar, thereby leaving a written legacy of his individual reading of the
text.
Even a scribe as meticulous as the one who produced 𝔓75 could not refrain, on occasion, from filling in a perceived gap. This
occurs in the parable in Luke 16:19–31 where the reader is told of an unnamed
rich man and a beggar who has a name, Lazarus. Perceiving a gap in the story,
the scribe gives the rich man a name: “Neues,” perhaps meaning “Nineveh” (see
note on Luke 16:19). Other scribes gave names to the two revolutionaries
crucified with Jesus: Zoatham and Camma (in some manuscripts), or Joathas and
Maggatras (in other manuscripts; see note on Matt 27:38). Many other scribes
filled in bigger gaps, especially in narratives. In the story of the salvation
of the Ethiopian eunuch recorded in Acts 8:26–40, some scribes added an entire
verse so as to fill in a perceived gap of what one must confess before being
baptized. Thus, we are given these extra words in Acts 8:37, “And Philip said,
‘If you believe with all your heart, you may [be baptized].’ And he [the
eunuch] replied, ‘I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.’ ” (See
note on Acts 8:37 for further discussion.)
The observations of certain literary theorists who focus on reader
reception help us understand the dynamic interaction between the scribe
(functioning as a true reader) and the text he or she was copying. Textual
critics must take into account the historical situation of the scribes who
produced the manuscripts we rely on for textual criticism. Textual critics must
also realize that scribes were interactive readers. Indeed, as many literary
critics in recent years have shifted their focus from the text itself to the
readers of the text in an attempt to comprehend plurality of interpretation, so
textual critics could analyze variant readings in the textual tradition as
possibly being the products of different, personalized “readings” of the text
created by the scribes who produced them.
The work of Wolfgang Iser is useful for understanding how scribes read
and processed a text as they transcribed it. Iser is concerned not just with
the question of what a literary text makes its readers do but with how readers
participate in creating meaning. In other words, the meaning of a text is not
inherent in the text but must be actualized by the reader. A reader must act as
cocreator of the text by supplying that portion of it which is not written but
only implied. Each reader uses his or her imagination to fill in the unwritten
portions of the text, its “gaps” or areas of “indeterminacy.” In other words,
the meaning of a text is gradually actualized as the reader adopts the
perspectives thrust on him or her by the text, experiences it sequentially, has
expectations frustrated or modified, relates one part of the text to the other,
and imagines and fills in all that the text leaves blank. The reader’s
reflection on the thwarting of his or her expectations, the negations of
familiar values, the causes of their failure, and whatever potential solutions
the text offers, require the reader to take an active part in formulating the
meaning of the narrative.
While readers do this gap-filling in their imaginations only, scribes
sometimes took the liberty to fill the unwritten gaps with written words. In
other words, some scribes went beyond just imagining how the gaps should be
filled and actually filled them. The historical evidence shows that each scribe
who copied a text created a new written text. Although there are many factors
that could have contributed to the making of this new text, one major factor is
that the text constantly demands the reader to fill in the gaps.
A literary work is not autonomous but is an intensional object that
depends on the cognition of the reader. As an intensional object, a literary
work cannot fill in all the details; the reader is required to do this. During
the reading process, the reader must concretize the gaps by using his or her
imagination to give substance to textual omission and/or indefiniteness. Since
this substantiation is a subjective and creative act, the concretization will
assume many variations for different readers. For example, the Gospel of Luke
says that the crowds who had watched Jesus’ crucifixion “returned home, beating
their breasts” (Luke 23:48). Although it would seem that most readers are given
enough text to visualize this scene, the imaginations of various scribes were
sparked to consider how extensive their grief was or to re-create what they
might have been saying to one another as they walked home. A few scribes,
imagining a more intense reaction, added, “they returned home, beating their
breasts and foreheads.” Other scribes
provided some dialogue: “they returned home beating their breasts, and saying, ‘Woe to us for the sins we have
committed this day, for the destruction of Jerusalem is imminent!’ ”
Iser calls the textual gaps “blanks”; each blank is a nothing that
propels communication because the blank requires an act of ideation in order to
be filled. “Blanks suspend connectibility of textual patterns, the resultant
break in good continuation intensifies the acts of ideation on the reader’s
part, and in this respect the blank functions as an elementary function of
communication” (Iser 1978, 189). According to Iser, the central factor in
literary communication concerns the reader’s filling in of these textual
blanks. His theory of textual gaps is useful for understanding scribal
reader-reception. Of course, his perception of gaps or blanks is far bigger and
more demanding on the reader’s imaginative powers than was usually the case for
New Testament scribes. Nonetheless, scribes were confronted with gaps or blanks
that begged for imaginative filling. Many scribes, when confronted with such
textual gaps, took the liberty to fill in those gaps by adding extra words or
changing the wording to provide what they thought would be a more communicative
text. Indeed, the entire history of New Testament textual transmission shows
the text getting longer and longer due to textual interpolations—i.e., the
filling in of perceived gaps. We especially see the work of gap-filling in the
substantial number of expansions in the D-text of the Gospels and Acts. Whoever
edited this text had a propensity for filling in textual gaps, as he perceived
them. Such gap-filling is especially pronounced in the book of Acts, where the
D-reviser made countless interpolations (see introduction to Acts). (Philip
W. Comfort, New Testament Text and Translation Commentary: Commentary on the
Variant Readings of the Ancient New Testament Manuscripts and How They Relate
to the Major English Translations [Carol Stream, Ill.: Tyndale House
Publishers, Inc., 2008], 873-74)
