Vorkosigan

Who knows? But the ending in John that seems a part of Mark could not have been the ending; part of it is missing. Perhaps there was something to Gnostic leaning, so it was removed. <shrug> Who knows?

Vorkosigan

Vinnie

Do either Matthew and Luke support this alternative scenario? They are our first potential witnesses to the ending of Mark's gospel. I read that they diverge widely (supposedly after 16:8) here but I haven't had a chance to go look yet and investigate the merits of this claim. Of course there would still be several possible scenarios here.

Vinnie

Vorkosigan

Good question. Did you read the site I gave you? it explains how Luke stands in relation to John and Mark here.

Vorkosigan

CX

I certainly didn't mean anything negative by my comment. As far as this being a serious discussion board, it is, but that doesn't mean that opinions cannot be stated. Naturally I'm basing my opinion on my own experience which has been that rank and file Xians don't really care about text critical issues. FranklyI'm not sure why they would. My father was recently ordained and I watched his years in seminary. The focus there is on faith and ministry. Not much attention is given to egghead academic issues. You seem rather put out by my comments which I'm a bit confused about.

HelenM

First, I accept that you didn't mean anything negative.

In response to what you just wrote, I'm not sure why [conservative] Christians wouldn't care whether some part of the Bible is likely to have been in the original manuscripts, given that the doctrine of inerrancy generally says that the original manuscripts were inspired by God and inerrant, not the copies we have today.

It seems to me that the obvious first question to ask is "Ok, if the originals were inspired and not the copies, how close to the originals is my copy of the Bible?"

If you think Christians wouldn't even ask that question or care about the answer it seems to me that you must have encountered remarkably uninquisitive Christians. In my experience Christians do ask that question and many more, about how they can be 'sure' they can 'trust' what's in the Bible.

I was put out because of what it implies about Christians if they don't ask the most obvious, basic questions about the Bible.

I don't see this as an 'egghead academic issue'.

Conservative Christians are wary of textual criticism which presupposes the Bible [in the original manuscripts] is not the inspired inerrant Word of God. A lot of it does presuppose that.

But, there are types of textual criticism which do not presuppose it is not the Word of God and one is the study of how close the copies of the Bible we have today are to the original manuscripts (which we don't have so all we can do is trace back and derive what we think they originally said).

I have no problem believing that some seminary courses are focused more on faith and ministry than textual criticism.

However, that's very different from saying Christians don't even care whether the Bible they are reading has been altered significantly since it was first written. A change to the ending of a gospel is very significant, I would say.

Given that the ending of Mark doesn't seem to be original, conservative Christians vary in how much weight they put on what it says. There isn't much in there that isn't in the rest of the Bible, so it doesn't affect doctrine very much whether it's considered 'inspired and inerrant' or not.

I expect you know that the passage now in John's gospel where woman is caught in adultery and Jesus writes in the sand also is not in the earliest manuscripts. Modern translations have a note to that effect and most conservative Christians seem to treat it as a text that can be relied upon nevertheless.

I hope this response explains my reaction a bit better. I don't read this forum much and I often see posts on other forums here that infer Christians are 'dumb', etc. That was what your remark signified to me but maybe you didn't intend to imply that.

Helen

Yuri Kuchinsky

Helen, and others,

I don't see why this question should be framed in this way, i.e. to say that _conservative_ Christians wouldn't care whether some part of the Bible is likely to have been in the original manuscripts or not. I'd go much further than that, and will say that, in our day and age, almost _nobody_ -- either conservative or liberal -- cares about Textual Criticism at all!

This is simply a fact of life. TC is in big decline, and you can see it, for example, by simply checking out the table of contents of any big NT academic journal. No articles about TC!

So this is how the professional NT scholars operate. And if you begin to talk about the amateurs, the simple believers, they just don't know any better. You can't blame them. Blame the professionals.

And as to that "lost ending of Mk", myself, I've given up looking for it quite a while back. I don't think that it really matters, because I don't think that Mk was the first gospel to be written. The various endings of Mk have all been played with for ages, probably, before the canonical text had been finalised.

Cheers,

Yuri.

Vorkosigan

Yuri, can you give a concrete example of how we would know this from looking at the TOC from a big NT academic journal?

Benjamin Franklin

I have encountered a few Christians who quote me the apologetic line that all errors are a results of copyist errors and there are no major doctrinal disputes, without really critically examining whether this statment is true or not. I believe many Christians do question the Bible a lot initially but then then simply shove their doubts aside after a while without really resolving it satisfactorily.

CX might be overstating his case when he said most but I believe there are a sizeable number of Christians who are like that.


BF

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, Vork,

Normally, it's pretty easy to tell from the title if the article deals with TC. NT Textual Criticism is a study of ancient MSS and versions of the NT. So if an article deals with this area, the title will indicate it.

Of course there's now the TC Journal, which is an electronic journal. This seems to be the main professional publication dealing with the biblical TC at this time.

http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/TC.html

Obviously there's so little interest in this subject area that a paper-and-ink publication would be too rich for them.

All the best,

Yuri.

Clara Listensprechen

Oh, a good 'un...

I've got facts to back up the assessment of fundamentalist mentality, and it has to do with the widespread but erroneous notion that today's city of Jerusalem is the same ancient city tread by Jesus and everyholybody else. Everybody who makes a trip to Jerusalem to walk the Via Dolorosa thinks that this is the way Jesus actually walked, and the ministry of tourism prefers that believers believe that...but...not only is it not true, but fundamentalists (and the tourism business) won't allow archaology to take place there or much of anywhere else in that city because they fundamentally and firmly believe they're visiting the real deal.

They aren't.

The holy Jerusalem was leveled by the Romans in 70 A.D. and built a town atop the ashes to their own design including temples to their own gods. Leveled that one in a war 132-135 A.D., and again built something completely different. The original "holy city" lies some 20 to 30 feet below the one of today, but I know for a fact that you can't convince any devout Abrahamist--Christian, Jew, or Muslim--that the city they worship as if it were an idol is naught more than a monument to Roman pagans.
Which version? If they take it seriously, they'd care about which version, while realizing first and foremost that ANY "Standard" version is a consensus of several versions, and can't be any kind of "word of God" because of the several versions a Standard version is derived from and for which there is no single original document.
Which version is the Word of God, ey? NO WAY it's ALL of 'em...even Standard versions don't resource from ALL of them.
There are no such "original manuscripts", as there are several originals of several origins, Eastern as well as Western. Try again.