---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 19:30:48 -0500 (EST)
From: Yuri Kuchinsky <yuku@...>
Reply-To: TC-List <tc-list@...>
To: TC-List <tc-list@...>
Subject: [tc-list] Re: context of HMt

[edited]

[Reply to Sat, 8 Jan 2000 message by U.B.Schmid]

When judging the provenance of an ancient text, its content is extremely
important. The biggest mistake of Petersen, Horbury, and now Niclos, is
that they totally ignore the theology of HMt. This is what I mean by
straining out gnats while swallowing the camel. The gnats are little
assorted textual variants that provide no clear "smoking guns" either way.
The camel is the theology of the text that is extremely unusual and
clearly aberrant in the context of the middle ages.

How and in what circumstances a clearly "heretical" text like HMt could
have been created in medieval Europe? This is the question that Niclos
even **fails to ask**, far from answering it. Why do all these critics
fail to engage with this extremely important matter? I see this as an
indication of their incompetence as historical scholars. Because clearly
the question about the theological tendencies of HMt needs to be asked
before any other question -- before one goes into all the minutia of text
criticism.

So the answer to your question, Ulrich, is that it is the historian of
religion who needs to be asked first to evaluate an unusual text such as
HMt. So it is primarily the problem for the historian of Christianity to
clarify the Sitz of this text. When this is done, then the textual
scholars can do their work much more productively. In other words,
historical criticism should come before text criticism.

Let me repeat once again that it is incumbent on those who wish to claim
that HMt is a medieval translation to outline how it could have had its
Sitz im Leben in medieval Europe. As far as I know, nobody has been able
to do this as yet. Until this is done with some degree of realism, IMHO
any claim that HMt is a medieval translation is founded in quicksand.

Indeed, for anyone to maintain that HMt is a medieval translation,
obviously they would have to maintain that a gospel that is **very much
like** a primitive Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, that we know from many
ancient witnesses existed in antiquity -- a gospel possessing, among other
things, the low Christology of the earliest Jesus movement -- got
completely lost without trace in antiquity, but then was **miraculously
recreated** in the middle ages by some unknown genius, and without any
clear motivation for being summoned thus out of the thin air. Obviously
Occam's Razor will have a lot of fun with this one. Entities should not be
multiplied.

And now, let's look at some other things Niclos says in his article.

First of all, it is quite clear that Niclos contradicts Petersen.
According to Niclos, the Vorlage of HMt was not Latin,

"La conclusion que nous pouvons tirer de cette analyse de
termes en roman est que la source de la traduction ne fut
pas la Vulgate, main une langue romane." 384-5

Petersen thinks HMt had a Latin Vorlage. Niclos thinks HMt had a Catalan
Vorlage. Both of them cannot be right. So anyone wishing to claim that
everything is clear about Shem-Tob's HMt, and that no questions about it
remain, should think again. There're too many questions that still remain.

Yes, Niclos identifies some interesting apparently Catalan words included
in HMt. But from there to make a logical jump that the Vorlage was Catalan
would not be good science.

Since, as mentioned above, Niclos totally ignores the theology of HMt, any
attempt on his part to reconstruct the circumstances of its "translation
from Catalan" can only be pure speculation. It is absurd to suppose that a
recent convert to Christianity will come up with a clearly heretical
gospel. This should be self-evident to any historian of religion. As a
rule, converts are more Catholic than Catholics themselves. So any
suggestion that a convert can create a clearly heretical gospel amounts to
the logical fallacy of special pleading.

So according to Niclos, as we find out, HMt comes from the circles
associated with Pau Cristia, a famous Catholic convert from Judaism active
ca 1250-1313. According to Niclos, "this is where we should look for the
author of HMt". (403)

He also thinks that HMt is a translation by one man, a convert, possibly a
Dominican, and done by the command of his religious superiors. He thinks
HMt may be

..l'oevre pesonelle d'un converti, mais re'alise'e probablement
`a la demande des supe'rieurs de son Ordre .. si toutefois nous
avons bien affaire `a un dominicain comme nous le pensons.. (405)

I'm sorry, but this stretches credibility to the very limit, for all the
reasons already outlined.

Once again, I ask those who wish to claim that HMt is a medieval
translation to outline **in a realistic way** how it could have had its
Sitz im Leben in medieval Europe. Until this is done, you're still
nowhere, folks.

Regards,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky || Toronto

http://www.trends.net/~yuku/bbl/bbl.htm

The goal proposed by Cynic philosophy is apathy, which is
equivalent to becoming God -=O=- Julian