ynquirer

Forgive me, Roger, but external evidence rather supports “He was the Christ” than “He was believed to be the Christ.” Original Greek contains the former alone, while you have to suppose that all the extant Greek copies come from the same, deteriorated text precisely in that it lacked – because of accident or whatever – “was believed.” A very restrictive supposition, truth to be told.

The argument that “he was the Christ” is the most difficult reading, whereby the strongest, is the same kind of argument that has the earlier copy be more credible than the later as well as the original-language text be more so than translations. They are not expected to be exact in a hundred percent of the cases, but they are assumed to be accurate on a statistical basis. (However, statistics are ‘objective’, aren’t they?)

What I do not understand is your contention that lectio difficilior potior would treat every corruption as original. That proposition does not make justice to the principle. Ehrman makes extensive use of it in his Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, and it is unchallenged so far.

Roger Pearse

Well no, it does not. What you mean by the words "external evidence" (does jargon help here?) is "all the Greek manuscripts say this." Yes, I know.

I'm not sure that I understand what you're getting at here -- sorry.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

ynquirer

All right; have it the way you prefer. Evidence rather supports “he was the Christ” rather than “he was believed to be the Christ.” And yes, evidence here stands for “all the Greek manuscripts say this.” It happens that Greek is usually assumed to be the language in which Josephus originally wrote Antiquities of the Jews.

And where I’m getting at is this. When trying to explain why all the Greek manuscripts say that, you say:

The power of the standard text to overwrite any other versions? Do you mean that every scribe copying in Greek language the original text – “he was believed to be the Christ,” according to you – did know of the corrupted and substituted the latter for the former – following the instructions of whom? It looks like a pretty little conspiracy theory, doesn’t it?