by Gary W. Buchholz
In July 1985, Gary Buchholz — a graduate student in theology at the University of Chicago — posted an essay to net.religion.christian and net.religion that approached the doctrine of biblical inerrancy not through philosophical argument but through the Greek text itself. His starting point was a historical discrepancy in Mark 2:26: Jesus refers to "the days of Abiathar the highpriest" when David ate the showbread, but the Old Testament account (1 Samuel 21) clearly names Ahimelech — Abiathar's father — as the highpriest at the time. The scribes of antiquity noticed this too; the Greek manuscript tradition preserves four distinct variants of the problematic phrase, each representing a different attempt to resolve the difficulty. Buchholz reads these variants as evidence of deliberate scribal correction, and extends the argument to the broader pattern of redaction visible throughout the New Testament — concluding that the question of inerrancy cannot be raised because there is no stable, fixed, original text to be inerrant.
The essay is a rare instance of technical New Testament textual scholarship offered accessibly on a general Usenet group. Buchholz's learning shows in his familiarity with the critical apparatus (Sinaiticus, Vaticanus), his knowledge of scribal errors (haplography, dittography, homoeoteleuton), his fluency in the Two Source Hypothesis, and his awareness of Clement of Alexandria's reference to the Secret Gospel of Mark. What makes the essay memorable is its final philosophical move: that inerrancy is not a conclusion from biblical study but a prior ideological requirement of Fundamentalism — and that those who truly honor "radical biblical authority" will never arrive at Fundamentalist theology.
Checking the New Testament Greek with its full critical apparatus — that is, the citations of all significant variations of the text — I found some interesting variations in the manuscript traditions regarding Mark 2:26, which refers to "the days of Abiathar the highpriest" in connection with David's eating of the showbread. The Old Testament account in 1 Samuel clearly names Ahimelech, not Abiathar, as the highpriest at the time.
The apparatus cites four variations:
- epi Abiathar archiereos — "in the days of Abiathar highpriest"
- epi Abiathar tou archiereos — "in the days of Abiathar the highpriest"
- epi Abiathar tou iereos — "in the days of Abiathar the priest"
- The phrase is absent entirely
The apparatus assigns the "superior reading" as regards the variants to (1), and epi Abiathar archiereos therefore appears in the standard Greek, which is the source for Taylor's commentary and the reading found in the RSV. The significant authorities for (1) are Sinaiticus and Vaticanus — both fourth-century manuscripts; all variants come from texts no earlier than the fourth century.
One may want to agree with Taylor that the variants found in textual transmission are NOT the results of copyists' errors (haplography, dittography, homoeoteleuton, and others abound in the manuscript traditions) but rather are the self-conscious attempts by the copyists to correct what they found to be a historical error in "Scripture."
The Four Responses to an Inconvenient Verse
Allow me some creative interpretation of these variations.
With the addition of tou (by a scribe) and a little hand-waving, one might be convinced that the historical error is removed. (Reading 2.)
Better yet would be to add tou and alter archiereos to iereis — that is, "highpriest" to "priest" — thus allowing the proper reference to Ahimelech as highpriest in 1 Samuel and Abiathar as priest then and highpriest during the rule of David. (Reading 3.)
If there was a sense of historical difficulty felt in the fourth century regarding this "errant" reference, then the prize goes to the scribe who simply deleted the whole phrase altogether. Not only would this remove the historical difficulty but it would bring the text into harmony with Luke and Matthew, which set neither the names of Ahimelech nor Abiathar on the lips of Jesus.
The Pattern of Deliberate Redaction
That the scribes consciously altered texts to fit dogmatic motifs is beyond question. Obvious insertions are the "longer Mark" (Mark 16:9–20, describing the resurrection appearances and some final words of the "Lord"), the pericope of the laborer on the Sabbath (Luke 6:5f.), Jesus and the adulteress (John 7:52f.), and the mention of the Trinity in Latin manuscripts in the text of 1 John 5:7f.
That there are significant variations in all manuscript traditions of the fourth century and later might suggest that the same was done to the earliest manuscripts, and our "best reading" is really only reliable back to the latest edition of the texts by the last redactor.
Evidence of this is that, given the Two Source Hypothesis, an analysis of the Synoptics shows that the text of the gospel of Mark used by Luke and Matthew as sources is not our canonical Mark. Further complicating this is the mention by Clement of Alexandria of the Secret Gospel of Mark, which may indeed be the source for Luke and Matthew, thus making our canonical Mark a later redaction of the Markan "original."
Further evidence for redaction prior to our earliest manuscripts can be found in the editing of Paul's letters. 2 Corinthians is almost beyond question an editing job of a number of letters (five) complete with interpolation and gloss. Various versions of Romans exist. Almost half of Paul's letters are pseudepigraphic.
The Question That Cannot Be Asked
Given this, how could one even ask the question of inerrancy?
What is it that is to be inerrant? The "original autographs" — they do not exist, so how could one deduce this "inerrancy" from non-existent texts?
If redactors altered the texts as in the case of Paul's letters, then is the result inerrant and the original Pauline texts non-inerrant? What is the purpose of the redaction if not to "correct" them?
How about the work of the scribes and copyists? Are the eleven verses of the resurrection of Jesus and the final words of Jesus something that really happened but that Mark forgot to include? Is "longer Mark" a corruption or correction? "Longer Mark" is canonical but not original. Does canonicity baptize scribal corruption?
Check any Greek New Testament with critical apparatus — the "accepted" text is a scholarly guess from a sifting of manuscripts and manuscript fragments. There are five thousand manuscripts of the New Testament; no two of them agree.
As regards the strong claim of inerrancy, I would wonder: what is it that they wish to prove inerrant? Original texts? Redaction? Copyists' additions? Anything canonical? Scholars' guesses as in the accepted Greek of the RSV? Where is the text? What text is inerrant?
Inerrancy as Ideology, Not Exegesis
Finally, I would say that even to mention "inerrancy" is thinking backwards. That is, "inerrancy" is a (Fundamentalist) theological requirement of the unstudied and uninvestigated Greek text and textual traditions. Rather, I would think one might begin with the text and then do the theology, rather than the other way round.
It is the Fundamentalist tradition — locatable in a specifiable time period in American history (the 1920s) — that is the real authority, and not the Bible. I submit that if one begins with the Bible and what scholars can reconstruct of its composition and transmission (the Bible as the real authority, as Fundamentalism ideally claims) and not with theological ideology, then I submit that the question of inerrancy cannot even be raised.
By asserting inerrancy, the Fundamentalist shows the true irony of exchanging biblical authority for human ideology. Begin with the Fundamentalist ideal of radical biblical authority and one will never arrive at Fundamentalist theology, nor at anything that could properly be called theology in its traditional sense.
Within the post-theological tradition, secularism is the result of taking the Bible seriously in its historical context — that is, the Fundamentalist ideal of biblical authority worked out to its radical conclusion. Put differently, the exquisite accomplishment of academic theology in the latter part of the twentieth century is the dissolution of its own discipline.
As regards the question of historical error: I reply yes, there is a historical error in Mark's gospel, despite the attempted correction by the scribes. I discussed this with a friend who teaches Greek, and according to him epi Abiathar (tou) archiereos is a standard dating formula, and the first-century sense of the text is: "in the days of Abiathar, when he was highpriest." The inclusion or exclusion of tou makes no difference to first-century ears. Therefore, as best as can be reconstructed, Mark's gospel has a historical error in regard to its intended reference to the story of David in 1 Samuel.
"Mark the first page of the book with a red marker. For, in the beginning, the wound is invisible."
— Reb Alce
Colophon
Gary W. Buchholz posted this essay to net.religion.christian and net.religion on July 30, 1985, from the University of Chicago Computation Center. It builds on a discussion initiated by a previous Buchholz post about the Abiathar/Ahimelech discrepancy in Mark 2:26, and draws on Vincent Taylor's The Gospel According to St. Mark and the Greek New Testament with full critical apparatus. The Barr's thesis mentioned in passing refers to James Barr's Fundamentalism (1977), which traced the ideology of inerrancy to a specific cultural moment in early twentieth-century American Protestantism rather than to scripture itself.
Preserved from the Usenet UTZOO archive (net.religion.christian / net.religion, batch b49, Jul–Aug 1985) for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026. Original Message-ID: [email protected].
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