Conclusion—Harmonization and Gospel Harmony

chapter 7 Conclusion—Harmonization and Gospel Harmony Harmonization is a result, not an intent. The evidence collected in this study shows that in the second to fourth centuries there was no general editorial agenda among scribes to harmonize one Gospel to another. No single manu- script, not even one with a comparatively high number of harmonizing readings, betrays a systematic pattern of alteration that would suggest that the scribe was endeavoring to conform the text of one Gospel to the text of another. Occasionally scribes intentionally created particular variants with the express purpose of aligning the accounts, but no scribe that we know of was intent on making a thoroughgoing assimilated revision or a significantly harmonized copy of any of the Gospels. If their intent was to bring the Gospels into accord by reducing the discrepancies between their accounts, the scribes failed re- soundingly. The many harmonizing variants in the manuscripts are in most cases not the product of scribal intent; they are a testament to the pervasive quality of gospel material upon the memories of the scribes. They are a consequence of the scribes’ familiarity with multiple forms of a single story and their memory of different versions of the same saying. In the first and second century, scribes received gospel material in the form of oral tradition and written texts. In oral tradition, sayings of Jesus and stories about Jesus were passed on from person to person and re-told over and over again. Each re-telling of a saying was an opportunity for changes to enter into the material. Different points of emphasis and detail emerged as stories were repeated. In the third century and beyond, textual transmission of gospel material increased. Scribes received sayings and stories in the form of written texts, which they heard, read, and copied. Some texts were exclusively collections of Jesus’s sayings, others contained narratives about Jesus’s life. As with oral tradition, each re-writing of the text was an opportunity for change, sometimes for deliberate (e.g. stylistic improvement) and sometimes for unintentional (e.g. homoioteleuton) reasons. A scribe’s first encounter with one form of gospel material, whether trans- mitted orally or textually, became familiarity with that form upon subsequent encounters. That familiarity transformed into an expectation with each new hearing, reading, or copying. That expectation of what the form of a particular story or saying would or should be, what Philip Comfort calls a “horizon of expectation” in this context, provides the best framework within which to © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:10.1163/9789004391819_008 430 chapter 7 understand the phenomenon of harmonization. Over the course of hearing, reading, and copying gospel material, a single Gospel or version of a saying or story solidified into the scribe’s “cognitive exemplar,” that is to say,his horizon of expectation. As a scribe copied a Gospel, his cognitive exemplar was sometimes in agreement with and sometimes in disagreement with his physical exemplar. The material in his cognitive exemplar occasionally became the impetus for substitutions, additions, omissions, and transpositions in the copy he was making. In textual criticism, these alterations are called harmonizations. I have called the operation by which these changes occurred “reflexive” or “automatic” harmonization. As the scribe copied one Gospel, the text itself recalled parallel material latent in the scribe’s horizon of expectation and in his general familiarity with alternative versions of sayings and stories. The cor- rector of Sinaiticus betrays no systematic pattern of assimilation; nevertheless, when he read “Blessed are the poor” in his exemplar of Luke 6:20, he reflexively added the words “in spirit” to his new copy of Luke as he recalled the longer version of the same beatitude from Matthew 5:3. The physical exemplar itself activated material in his cognitive exemplar.The scribe did not intend to assimilate the passage, at least in a thoroughgoing way, as can be seen from the fact that he has not introduced harmonizing readings in the remainder of Luke’s beatitudes; instead, he succumbed to the influence of parallel material resid- ing in his memory on particular occasions. The recognition that harmonization is primarily a result rather than an intent necessitates a change in the technical language associated with harmonization, at least as it is used of the fourth century and earlier. Textual critics and commentators regularly make some form of the following statements: “The scribe sought to harmonize divergent parallel passages,” “In order to bring the text into harmony, scribes have substituted …,” or “The scribe omitted the word to assimilate the passage …” These and other phrases imply that harmonization was a deliberate activity intended to eliminate the differences between parallel passages. In most cases, harmonizing variants are not intended to reduce discrepancies between the Gospels, even if they do so incidentally; they exist because of the differences between the Gospels and reflect the influence of parallel material. Therefore, one must take care when speaking about harmonizing variants. On the whole, scribes did not create harmonizations, if by harmonizations one means a reading intended to reduce discrepancies between the Gospels. It is more precise to say that a scribe created a harmonizing omission or harmonizing alteration under the influence of parallel material. The variant functions to align the passages quite apart from the scribe’s intent in the creation of the alteration. Furthermore, scribes did not harmonize, if by harmonize one.

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