Apikorus

Thomas, again noone is denying that the NT has the most extensive textual support of any ancient document. The issue is when that support begins to accrete, and the answer is the Byzantine period, beginning with Constantine in the early fourth century CE. NT manuscript support during the first and second centuries is almost nonexistent: 5 verses from p52, 12 from p90, 8 from p98, and 5 from p104. There are about 50 extant third century papyri, almost all of which are extremely fragmentary. (A few are more extensive, but still none is remotely complete.)

The composition and transmission history of the NT during the first three centuries is hence somewhat obscure.

The approach that "thebeast" has taken is alas characteristic of fundamentalists, namely to deny the facts. Gratuitously tossing in some material from an antisemitic hate site on the Talmud gathers doesn't help his case much.

Mr. beast, regarding the Talmud, toward which I have a clinical interest (I'm an atheist by the way), your list is riddled with errors. First of all, that you proffered such a small list to indict a document of over 2700 densely filled pages suggests that the spicy bits are rather exceptional. To be sure, there are some nasty statements strewn throughout the Talmudic corpus, but they are few and far between. Compared to the writings of the Patristics or Martin Luther on the Jews, the Talmud is a model of generosity and tolerance!

The Talmud is an enormous colloquy, conducted across centuries of time. Not every opinion presented therein was accepted by the majority. (This was one problem with your little list - its author failed to realize that many of the statements identified were in fact rejected by the rabbis themselves!)

The author of your list (I presume you are utterly illiterate in Hebrew and Aramaic and the best you can do is to plagiarize from hate sites) also left out statements such as
I wonder why?

Regarding your list, the very first quote ("All gentile children are animals") is quite curious because there is no such statement anywhere in the Talmud. (If you think there is, please quote me the original Aramaic!) The passage in question (B. Yev. 98a) addresses whether marriages forbidden to Israelites (say, between a man and his aunt) should also be forbidden to converts. E.g. if you want to marry your sister, and you convert to Judaism, should you be permitted to do so? A verse from Ezekiel (23:20) is then quoted ("...their flesh is like the flesh of donkeys..."). This is probably what led the author of the list to claim that the Talmud is saying that all gentile children are animals. But this accusation is spurious. The verse is adduced in support of the position that converts should not be restricted by Israelite law (i.e. the Torah (Leviticus 18 to be specific)). The idea is not so much to denigrate gentiles (though the implied comparison is hardly flattering) as it is to stress that conversion has rendered the convert's flesh as new, and as unrelated to that of his biological kin as humans are to donkeys. At any rate, the argument is rejected.

Incidentally, Ezekiel himself is comparing gentiles to donkeys in Ezek 23:20. If you are a fan of the bible, I'd think you should cut the Talmud some slack, but that's perhaps a matter of taste. Another minor point: the Hebrew Bible describes on of the sons of Jacob (Issachar) as a donkey as well (Gen 49:14). Three verses later, Issachar's brother, Dan, is likened to a snake.

You yourself sound more than just a bit imbalanced, Mr. beast. Are you an unhappy person?

thebeast

[Edited by Jeremy Pallant to remove unnecessary insult]

Feel free to contact me if you have a problem with this.

Thomas Cassidy

No doubt, the farther back you go, the more rare such manuscripts become. I was not arguing that point, but showing that both the 5,600 and 25,000 numbers could be considered correct depending on which body of manuscripts were included in the count.

As to the first 3 centuries AD, the early vernaculars were said to have originalted around the mid 2nd century (150 AD) but, unfortunately, no manuscripts presently extant can be dated that early. The patristic quotes do support the common readings much earlier than the manuscript evidence, even though the actual manuscripts of the patristics have long since passed from the scene, we can still date the quotes to within the lifetime of the writer.

It must be remembered that before 325 AD it was very risky for a Christian to travel, but after Constantine, it was again relatively safe, and the number of manuscripts began to burgeon in proportion to the amount of travel being done by Christians. This may also explain the deviation of the Alexandrian textform from the Byzantine, and after the time of Constantine, the rapid ascendency and ultimate dominance of the Byzantine textform.

Jeremy Pallant

I grant the Bible the same respect I grant classics like the Iliad or the Oddessy. However I regard neither the Iliad nor the Bible as being accurate representations of histoical events. Neither one reflects reality.

Funny. A fundie Christian can come across like a fundie Muslim at the drop of a hat. Neither one is in posession of "evidence", but both can spew the same canards like a poor unfotutunate afflicted with gastroenteritis.

What is an 'easons?"

You're no different than a fundie muslim.

Bollocks. Total bullshit fuelled by insecurity.

CX

Of course and welcome. Thank you for confirming what I've said thus far. It's a pleasure to see a newcomer who is reasonably familiar with the subject.

I wonder if you could provide a reference for this. Are you including variants within text types? Also what have you to say about the "Western Text"? Lastly what do you consider astounding about the agreement of MSS for canonical NT texts? This seems what we should expect given the remarkable hegemony of the church after the 3rd century and the nature of the formation of the canon. I imagine this is somewhat of a subjective issue, but it doesn't seem all that surprising to me. All it really shows is that the texts that agree are in agreement which I find somewhat tautological.

Vinnie

Hey beast, I made this page for people like you:

http://www.geocities.com/ilgwamh/what.html

I apologize to the administration here for posting that link but it was warranted :banghead:

The beast has been served.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

Thomas, again noone is denying that the NT has the most extensive textual support of any ancient document.

Any ancient western document. Remember, we have "originals" of thousands of ancient Chinese documents, diaries pulled from tombs, official records, and so on. Additionally, the Buddhist scriptures and later, the Taoist canon, were set in stone. The Confucian Classics were set down in stone -- 200,000 characters, on 46 steles from 175-180 AD - the earliest, although the Buddhists set the record 7,000 stele over a 400 year period starting in the 7th century. This ensured transmission quality unrivaled elsewhere. Additionally, printing began early, and so did a strong tradition of epigraphic and textual analysis. The first "degrees" in the latter were granted in the 11th or 12th century, as I recall offhand.

"Since the end of the 19th century," wrote Needham some thirty years ago, "no fewer than 40,000 tablets of bamboo and wood have been unearthed from various locations in China." Any of these would be more "authentic" than the Bible, wouldn't they?

I completely spaced the cuneiform libraries uncovered in the Fertile Crescent. Any of the massive quantities of official records would blow away the Bible for authenticity. Perhaps that quote should be modified "for its size" or something. Even the meanest, briefest note from antiquity in the hand of its original author is "better-attested" than the Bible.

Of course, once you get to early printing, you get into the millions of copies of documents and images, with tens of thousands surviving. Printing began in the 7th century in Asia, so....

In any case, it strikes me that "better-attested" is one of those superlatives deliberately invented to make the Bible look good. Of course it is better-attested. Why would anyone bother to make thousands of copies of other works?

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

I've never seen any Caesar's Gallic War advocates telling me I must obey the contents of that work or suffer eternal conscious torment in hell.

Vinnie

Thomas Cassidy

Thank you.No. Just the variants between the two major textforms. Every manuscript and every text has variants when compared to other manuscripts or texts within its own textform. Scribal errors are impossible to avoid. Every scribe, sooner or later, committed errors due to haplography, dittography, metathesis, homoeoteleuton, kakiagraphy, or itacisms. When I began my theological education, several decades ago, the conventional wisdom was that the Greek manuscripts were divided into 4 basic texttypes, the Alexandrian, Byzantine, Caesarean, and Western. However, as we studied these texttypes we found that the Caesarean probably didn't exist as a distinct textform, but was simply a collection of partially corrected Byzantine manuscripts. Likewise the Western text (in Greek) was likely a collection of partially corrected Alexandrian manuscripts. This latter grouping has been complicated by the fact that the two most recent Latin Versions, that of Jerome, and the Clementine, were both based on the Western text, and thus those readings have been perpetuated in the vast majority of the Latin texts. I consider it astounding that such divergent sources, often at odds with one another, could perpetuate, with such agreement, the vast number of manuscripts, texts, and vernaculars we still see extant today.