Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

While clearly an overstatement, your statement was reasonable enough as an off-hand comment to be acceptable. And I made that clear above.

And since the analysis gives a clear proof (or overwhelming evidence) that the alexandrian texts are not sources of ancient/original variants, it is even more a pleasure to emphasize the Byzantine nature of Jerome's Greek gospel sources.

Most welcome. And thank you for helping discover and place in exposition one of the strongest proofs that the alexandrian manuscripts are junque, and that the whole Westcott-Hort system should be sold in the shambles for whatever trinkets you can get.

Your simplified version encouraged me to really check out the exact numbers and statistics.

One of the only reasons this is not emphasized more in Reformation Bible/TR and KJB discussion is that many folks who support those texts don't see the nuance in the Vulgate text, or in the superb Reformation Bible analysis, thus the text-line movements and arguments above are simply missed. Not just the net-style proponents, afaik scholarly writers like Edward Hills and D. A. Waite have not made this powerful manuscript argument about the textual nature of Jerome's early Greek fountainhead manuscripts.

Thanks again, spin, I appreciate very much that you have been a part of helping bring to more light one of the clearest and simplest and most powerful demolishing arguments against the alexandrian / W-H / Critical Text conceptual and textual errors.

Now, .. it is an interesting question if the argument expressed by Daniel Buck is given in similar form by Dean John Burgon or others. Research in progress - if anyone knows, or has a lead, feel free to share away !

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

I wish I could say "you're welcome", but as your particular niggle was umm, well, ahh, misguided, I don't want to take credit for another's delusions.

I aimed to please. I know you prefer simplified versions.

Yet, here am I watching you sink further into your gloom, forced to trawl infidel sites to try to defend your sad bible choices.


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Thank you spin for supplying the Tertullian Latin.

Well I tend to doubt that Alexander Souter, who used the Westcott-Hort Greek and was never known for KJB usage, was going by the King James Bible.

Tertullian Against Praxeas - Alexander Souter
http://books.google.com/books?id=mOJLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA90
http://www.tertullian.org/books/sout...nstpraxeas.txt

So your "obviously" makes no sense at all.

However, the real evidences I gave for the "my father" reading are:

1) 99% + Greek manuscripts
2) ease of dropping of text

In fact, I specifically pointed out various difficulties on a small variant like this in referencing early church writers for support. Oops. A smidgen of misrepresentation above.

=======================

As for Tertullian as a whole, what is spin's take on his Bible text compared to the "earliest and most reliable manuscripts" when they disagree?



(you can wait patiently for an answer on that one)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

avi

Thank you spin, well researched. Very adroit. Thank you Roger, for such a splendid accomplishment--your web site is remarkable!!!

Personally, I am convinced that KJV is useless as a testament to the original Greek documents....

I think Hort and Westcott deserve a round of applause:
><

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

For those of you who take the W-H crowd here seriously remember they say that every Vaticanus and Sinaiticus agreement should be the Bible text, as the two "earliest and most reliable" manuscripts. They also are saying that Tertullian should be the Bible text because of his antiquity, about 150-200 years before the manuscripts.

So let us start with :

John 5:4 (KJB)
For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool,
and troubled the water:
whosoever then first after the troubling of the water
stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had."

John 5:4 (W-H NA NIV NAS etc)
______________ (this space intentionally left blank)

Tertullian - De Baptismo

If it seemeth a strange thing, that an Angel should interpose in the waters, an example of what was to be hath gone before. An angel interposing troubled the pool at Bethsaida.

Hmmmm...

Let us see how quickly the W-H crowd correct their versions and add the section. Once they correct that verse, we can happily look at many more verses from Tertullian's Bible.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

You're welcome.

OK then, how would you explain why the translator chose to insert a "my" not found in Tertullian, apparently every time the KJV has one but the other traditions don't?

(Should we expect a loud silence?)

A large group of late manuscripts may all be based on a small offshoot tradition that was less representative of the "original" texts than earlier texts that are now far less well represented by late manuscripts. The survival of literature is often a matter of history and politics. There are few manuscripts before Constantine's time, but was that because few were copied or that political conditions didn't foster the preservation of texts?

Generally, the earlier the manuscript the less opportunity that it is based on an offshoot tradition.

This doesn't represent the range of possibilities, does it? Scribes have been known to insert things, either by misreading a text or by knowing other texts (such as other parts of John where pathr is qualified by mou). Dropping things might be easy when talking about carrying something, but it is no easier than inserting with scribal activity.

Yet you've run to Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and any other church father, whenever it suited you.

Do you know the fable? It's about not being able to fight one's nature.

Earliest texts are merely the best hope of getting to the fabled original text. But, as all things transmitted by hand eventually yield errors by the nature of the means of transmission, they are all bound to have errors. The older the text in a complex manuscript tradition, the less likely it is to have as many errors as newer ones.

Every manuscript because of the nature of its imprecise method of transmission has the possibility of being the head of a new tradition.

There's no way of knowing whether Tertullian's biblical texts at different periods were the same. I would expect them to disagree. That's the nature of the artefact. Among the DSS are Hebrew texts that feature two different versions, as can be seen in a few of the peshers which cite a text and give a commentary based on another form.

Was that too long a wait?


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Why ? .. I have no idea, but I know Alexander Souter was a fan of the revision and the W-H text, so your claim had no basis. About the Greek NT Souter's book specifically says - "Little notice is given to the later "Byzantine" manuscripts in either edition."

Did you check if there is only one copy of the Latin text extant ? Maybe Alexander Souter had his own theories about translating Latin to English, you can do a research paper on the topic.

next - "spin tries stemmatics"

How large ? How small ?

Much simpler.

The earlier the manuscript the greater the likelihood that the manuscript:

a) was in a dry desert region
b) stopped being used, and was considered corrupt and unusable and was effectively discarded

This is clearly the case for extant manuscripts before the 5th century. Another evidence would be if there were not other manuscripts quite close in text. There is nothing at all close to any of the following - Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Curetonian Syriac , Sinaitic Syriac, Bezae (included because of the clear corruption). They are not even close to each other, eg. Hoskier counted 3000+ significant variants between Aleph-B in the gospels.

Another marker would be scribal corruption, that is .. obvious blunders within the text, not textual variants but a scribe woozy from the heat or something. Again, that abounds in these manuscripts.

All the ECW are incredibly important evidences, even more especially on inclusion / omission discussions than anything else, the ending of Mark, Acts 8:37, the heavenly witnesses, the Pericope, angry without a cause. Next on any significant variant like 1 Timothy 3:16 and John 1:18. Also on the issues like the swine marathon from Gerash and many dozen others. And on a small pronoun/article type of question, they are still helpful, obviously far less so, a point that I stressed above and you simply ignored while pretending I had expressed a different view.

spin .. your motives are transparent in using the snake fable, same as your motives in the vampire comment. (Avery snip simile) yet you could learn to post properly. Anyway, this is mod stuff, so let's drop it here.

An obvious exception is if the text is full of scribal (not textual) blunders, as are Sinaiticus, Vaticanus and Bezae. I posted the detail on Bezae, the alexandrian manuscripts are similar.

And every spin philosophication has the potential to go into an ethereal tangent of nothingness.

Yes, because you did not answer the question and pretended you did.

What do you do when Tertullian - 150-200 years earlier than Aleph-B, disagrees with them directly and forcefully and very significantly. How important is Tertullian at that point as a textual evidence ? One example above. Tertullian way before Aleph-B affirms John 5:4. So what is the earliest evidence ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

Your "I have no idea" was sufficiently representative.

That needn't change his use of the KJV.

I haven't found any notes on the subject over the net. I did find two other translations, which follow the Latin that I cited.

It doesn't matter.

Ditto.

Conjecture.

So later manuscripts are more likely to be less corrupt??

Perhaps the weight is on "considered"? How would the considerers know that the text is corrupt?

Evidence for their time, but how do you relate them earlier?

The example that I gave was of nine separate instances where Tertullian's text differed on the specific issue and it was certainly not Tertullian's choice. He shows with other examples -- John in all manuscripts features an alternation between pathr and pathr mou, ie the Ur-text for all used both forms at different times. It's just that the TR tends to using the latter more. Tertullian though all the citations from John follows the earliest manuscripts.

You can't explain it simply by trying to trivialize the issue.

You need to remove the mote from your eye...

...but can I expect any change from you? Nature. Bite.

Blunders themselves are more helpful than you give credit for.

At least my tangents are ethereal. Yours are just plain wilful.

Rubbish. You make bad assumptions both in framing your question and receiving the answer.

I, uh, did answer this. The earliest texts we have are not autographs, so we can't expect them to be pristine. Tertullian gives us a glimpse a very early tradition. Weigh em up, boyo. That's what text scholars have always done. That's why you find lots of examples of church fathers in NA27. They are provided for you to weigh them up. That's why Irenaeus gets mentioned for the LE. But don't try to introduce anachronism with your oodles of late copies of who-knows-what. You can't use blind faith.


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

So then Tertullian demonstrates to you that John 5:4 is original scripture ? Or at least very high probability.

Answer the question, specifically.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

Here's Metzger briefly weighing it up:

Jn 5:4 "is a gloss, whose secondary character is clear from (1) its absence from the earliest and best witnesses (î^{66, 75} a B C* D W^supp 33 it^{d, l, q} the true text of the Latin Vulgate syr^c cop^{sa, bomss, ach2} geo Nonnus), (2) the presence of asterisks or obeli to mark the words as spurious in more than twenty Greek witnesses (including S L P 047 1079 2174), (3) the presence of non-Johannine words or expressions (kata. kairo,n, evmbai,nw [of going into the water], evkde,comai, kate,comai, ki,nhsij, tarach,, dh,pote, and no,shma – the last four words only here in the New Testament), and (4) the rather wide diversity of variant forms in which the verse was transmitted."

Quite a gamut of weighing in such a brief space.

Where exactly did Tertullian cite Jn 5:4? -- so I can look at the Latin.


spin