Dr. Knust begins her presentation.

Jennifer began her presentation by thanking the sponsors and the southern hospitality she has experienced while here!

While Dr. Wasserman looked at the textual evidence of the PA, Dr. Knust’s treatment looks at the patristic evidence. The arguments made by these scholars will appear in a future publication on the PA.

Jennifer’s assessment of the Patristic evidence finds that it is unlikely that the PA was suppressed for moral reasons. Just yesterday, Dr. Punch argued for precisely this theory: that the text was suppressed on pious grounds. I can’t wait for the panel discussion!

Dr. Knust provides us with a thorough look at the church father’s heavy censure of scribal omissions. The fathers would not have looked kindly on intentional omissions. In light of this evidence, Dr. Knust finds it highly unlikely that a passage as long as the PA would have been intentionally omitted, especially as widely and thoroughly as would have been necessary considering the late evidence for the PA.

Now, Jennifer has moved away from a general discussion of the father’s disdain for adding to or taking away from the manuscripts to a discussion of Origen. Knust’s use of Origen supports the theory that problematic texts would not have been to expunge them. Instead, the scribal practice would have been to use a mark to signify the spurious nature of the passage. As a matter of fact, the later Byzantine manuscripts bear this very mark.