Toto

Another essay of Schmidt has been translated: The Place of the Gospels in the General History of Literature

Amaleq13

That looks very interesting especially with regard to the issue of an oral tradition and the question of genre. Thanks.

Julian

I see that Praxeus is using that ever-so-solid, age-old argument: The bible is true because the bible says it is true. The ultimate expression of circular logic. It is a not a frequent sight around here anymore. It makes one quite nostalgic. *sniff*

Julian

Huon

No, that does not help. What proves that "This is the Scriptures, the living Word of God." ?? What proves that "the great majority of manuscripts" contain exactly the "Word of God" ? It is perhaps the small minority of manuscripts which contain the "Word of God". And perhaps, the "Word of God" is in the Quran, or elsewhere, Dan Brown, why not ?

Johnny Skeptic

Regarding "God said he would preserve his words," how will Praxeus explain Revelation 22:18-19? The verses read "For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book." If tampering were not possible, no warnings would have been necessary.

I would like to ask Praxeus what identifies Paul's letters to various churches as being Scripture, and did the churches that he wrote to consider the letters to be Scripture.

judge

I don't know why anyone should cocnclude it, but I see no reason why the peshitta does not represent the originals

Johnny Skeptic

Judge, let's take a look at your web site reference. It says the following:

Well, let's take a look at your web site reference. It says the following:

"Readings from the Book of Matti in the Khaboris Manuscript.

"The Aramaic in which the Bible called 'Assakhta Peshitta' is written, known as the Peshitta Text, is in the dialect of northwest Mesopotamia as it evolved and was highly perfected in Orhai, once a city-kingdom, later called Edessa by the Greeks, and now called Urfa in Turkey. Harran, the city of Abraham's brother Nahor, lies 38 kilometers southeast of Orhai. The large colony of Orhai Jews, and the Jewish colonies in Assyria in the kingdom of Adiabene whose royal house had converted to Judaism, possessed most of the Bible in this dialect, the Peshitta Tenakh. This version was taken over by all the Churches in the East, which used, and still use Aramaic, as far as India, and formerly in Turkestan and China. The Peshitta Tenakh was completed during Apostolic times with the writings of the New Testament."

I don't care what language the Peshitta Text was written in. Why should anyone assume that its content are accurate? The Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says the following:

"(Syriac: “simple,� or “common�), Syriac version of the Bible, the accepted Bible of Syrian Christian churches from the end of the 3rd century AD. The name Peshitta was first employed by Moses bar Kepha in the 9th century to suggest (as does the name of the Latin Vulgate) that the text was in common use. The name also may have been employed in contradistinction to the more complex Syro-Hexaplar version."

What texts did the Syrian Christian churches use before the end of the 3rd century? Upon what sources did the writers of the Peshitta Texts base their writings?

Johnny Skeptic

Ju0dge, regarding your reference to the Peshitta, the Britannica 2002 Deluxe Edition says the following:

"(Syriac: 'simple,' or 'common'), Syriac version of the Bible, the accepted Bible of Syrian Christian churches from the end of the 3rd century AD. The name Peshitta was first employed by Moses bar Kepha in the 9th century to suggest (as does the name of the Latin Vulgate) that the text was in common use. The name also may have been employed in contradistinction to the more complex Syro-Hexaplar version.

"Of the vernacular versions of the Bible, the Old Testament Peshitta is second only to the Greek Septuagint in antiquity, dating from probably the 1st and 2nd centuries AD. The earliest parts in Old Syriac are thought to have been translated from Hebrew or Aramaic texts by Jewish Christians at Edessa, although the Old Testament Peshitta was later revised according to Greek textual principles. The earliest extant versions of the New Testament Peshitta date to the 5th century AD and exclude The Second Letter of Peter, The Second Letter of John, the Third Letter of John, The Letter of Jude, and The Revelation to John, which were not canonical in the Syrian church."

I am not at all impressed with the Peshitta. There is no evidence that any of its writers claimed to be eyewitnesses, or even than their writings were based upon 2nd hand or 3rd hand evidence.

judge

Note that the link I posted refers to the PNT.


But what do you know about it?


Well on the odd occasion they do in fact claim to be eyewitnesses (1 John is an example).
But this, of course is not evidence.
It could be evidence they were deliberate decievers or that someone changed the text at such an early stage that all copies we have now include the alterations. But this does not seem plausible IMHO.

Equinox

Johnny Skeptic Wrote:


I don't think they should conclude that with any kind of certainty.

One good source of an overview of this is the course on tape from the teaching company. It is available here: http://www.teach12.com/ttc/assets/co...ptions/656.asp

Also, for a very detailed discussion of many of the clear cases where the early Christians deliberately changed “scripture� to make it say what they wanted it to, here is a good book. I recently finished reading it, and even without knowing greek it was quite readable.
The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament


I mention this on one of my webpages:
Of course, back then there were no printing presses, so everything had to be copied by hand, which invariably allowed both intentional and unintentional changes to enter the copies. This went on for decades, even centuries. A result of all this circulating and copying by hand has been the changing of the documents that ended up in the New Testament. This is why there are more differences between our early copies than there are words in the entire New Testament! While most of these are unimportant, such as spelling errors and missing words or lines, others are theologically significant. In fact, none of the over 5,000 early copies of the New Testament documents completely agree with each other (except, of course, for the most miniscule scraps). Intentional changes to make the documents say what the copyist wanted them to say appear to have happened often, like the addition at the end of Mark’s Gospel, the insertion of the doctrine of the trinity in 1Jn 5:8, and many others.

(http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/...SE/tjchap6.htm)

It sounds like the person you are discussing this with can make a good case that we can reconstruct what the Bible said during the 4th or 5th century. However, this doesn’t touch the changes that may have occurred in the decades and centuries before our earliest manuscripts – even if those manuscripts agreed, which they don’t.

Take a look at how shoddy our record of manuscripts is from prior to the 3rd century:

http://www.laparola.net/greco/manoscritti.php



It’s easy to claim that a large number of manuscripts is good testimony, but it isn’t. The large number of manuscripts can easily be just a lot of later copies, since few early manuscripts exist.

Anyway, I hope some of that helps.

Have a fun day-

-Equinox