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Old 02-25-2005, 08:30 AM   #41
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Originally Posted by Clivedurdle
but what of Ecce Homo in the mean time!?
That was John...and he said in Greek. "Ecce Homo" is from the Vulgate.
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Old 02-25-2005, 08:44 AM   #42
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Default Critical Text Versus The Majority Text

Hi Haran:

Haran >> I've been evaluating the textual evidence for the longer ending of the book of Mark. It seems very likely to me that the book of Mark originally stopped at 16:8 (though a seemingly odd place to end). Textual criticism can show that the longer ending of Mark was in existence pretty early on, but I'm wondering if "higher criticism", something I am not as well read in, can tell us anything more. In other words, does it appear that the longer ending of Mark has influenced the endings of Matthew, Luke, or John in any way, or that they have influenced it?

Your question is based upon the wrong supposition that the Gospel of Mark stopped at 16:8. The solution to this situation becomes easy to recognize once we look at the broader picture. The shorter version of Mark 16 is present only in the Critical Text. The Textus Receptus and the Majority Text contain all twenty verses that you see in your Bible today. You might find it interesting that the Received Text and Majority of the manuscripts disagree in Mark 16:8, as the TR adds the word “quickly.� Also, the Critical Text borrows Mark 16:9-20 from the Majority Text, and then adds “and in their hands� in Mark 16:18. Some of the differences between these original manuscripts can be found here: ( http://www.studybibleforum.com/spages/Alexandrian.htm ). Basically, the Critical Text (you are leaning heavily upon) is derived from the Alexandrian (Egyptian) manuscripts. The Received and Majority Texts are based more upon the Bysantine (Antioch) body of manuscripts.

My personal view is that the final page of the Gospel of Mark was deliberately mismanaged by the Egyptian scribes who were unhappy with the contents. If you will think about this carefully then the truth will be known, as the majority of the manuscripts having Mark 16 with 20 verses came from a variety of sources. It is mathematically impossible for all of them to agree if scribes were randomly adding their own ending to the Gospel of Mark. This is the part of Mark they did not want to see:

“Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping. When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.� Mark 16:9-11.

What label do Christians today place upon those who refuse to believe that Jesus Christ died for our sins to be raised on the third day? (1Cor. 15:3+4, Rom. 10:9)? You and I refer to that group as ‘unbelievers.’ And yet, Christ sent the Twelve out to preach to the unsaved in Matthew 10:5-7. How do you explain the fact that the Son of God sent unbelievers out to preach the gospel to the unsaved? The difference is that Christ was preaching the ‘gospel of the kingdom’ (Matt. 4:23, 9:35, etc.) to Israel only (Matt. 15:24) while on the earth. The ‘gospel’ we preach today is “Christ and Him crucified� (1Cor. 2:2) from the Pauline Epistles, and the good news he refers to as “my gospel� (Rom. 2:16, 16:25, etc.). Your Bible contains the 20 verses of Mark 16, because all of them appear in the Majority of the manuscripts. Therefore, we should conclude that there was no corruption of God’s Word in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, except where the manuscripts disagree.

In Christ,

Terral
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Old 02-25-2005, 10:02 AM   #43
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[Edited to Add:] Please pardon my lack of hospitality; greetings and welcome.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Terral

Your question is based upon the wrong supposition that the Gospel of Mark stopped at 16:8.
I think "conclusion" is perhaps a fairer characterization.

Quote:
Basically, the Critical Text (you are leaning heavily upon) is derived from the Alexandrian (Egyptian) manuscripts. The Received and Majority Texts are based more upon the Bysantine (Antioch) body of manuscripts.
Are you proposing that the endings of Mark as reported in Bobiensis and Syriac Sinaitic are derived from the Alexandrian tradition?

Quote:
My personal view is that the final page of the Gospel of Mark was deliberately mismanaged by the Egyptian scribes who were unhappy with the contents.
Interesting - the people least happy with Mark's ending were those whom he served as their first bishop, according to tradition.

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If you will think about this carefully then the truth will be known
Thank you for the suggestion, but some of us have already thought about this carefully.

Quote:
... the majority of the manuscripts having Mark 16 with 20 verses came from a variety of sources. It is mathematically impossible for all of them to agree if scribes were randomly adding their own ending to the Gospel of Mark.
Nobody is suggesting that a multitude of scribes randomly added their own ending and that they (dare I say, miraculously?) all agreed.

Quote:
This is the part of Mark they did not want to see:

“Now after He had risen early on the first day of the week, He first appeared to Mary Magdalene, from whom He had cast out seven demons. She went and reported to those who had been with Him, while they were mourning and weeping. When they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they refused to believe it.� Mark 16:9-11.
Who is "they," and why would they not want to see this passage?

(Witnessing snipped)

Quote:
Your Bible contains the 20 verses of Mark 16, because all of them appear in the Majority of the manuscripts. Therefore, we should conclude that there was no corruption of God’s Word in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, except where the manuscripts disagree.
Is it all as simple as counting manscripts to determine relative attestation? Does an error become true after it has been repeated some requisite number of times?

By your reasoning, you must surely consider the Comma Johanneum to be a spurious addition with absolutely no authority to stand among the Scriptures.
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Old 02-25-2005, 10:26 AM   #44
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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic
Matthew, John and Luke show know such signs, although I agree that Mark's Greek seems a little simple and uneven at times.
Agree. I think the style of John is a bit unusual, though; some sort of "artificial simplicity".
Quote:
What do you think their first languages were if not Greek?
In the case of Mark, as I said, the "it came to pass" and "immediately" idioms are supposed to be Semitisms. More, I cannot tell.
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I can't see anything in Luke-Acts, Matthew or John to suggest anything but a Greek background. Their exclusive use of the Septuagint indicates that they did not know Hebrew and their use of Greek sayings traditions suggests that they did not know Aramaic.
This is a good point, and I'll have to think about it.
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Old 02-25-2005, 10:51 AM   #45
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Originally Posted by Peter Kirby
It is often stated that Mark has poor Greek, and I do not doubt it. However, I would like to have more knowledge. How long a list of Mark's solecisms can be put together? Has someone done this in a book, or can you point out the verses?
I don't know of anybody that has done this, although it seems an interesting idea. It may take some time to do, though.

A couple of examples from the top of my head, since this seems to have attracted some interest:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark 8:28
οἱ δὲ εἶπαν αá½?Ï„á¿· λέγοντες ὅτι Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, καὶ ἄλλοι, Ἠλίαν, ἄλλοι δὲ ὅτι εἷς τῶν Ï€Ï?οφητῶν.
Oops... The accusative of John and Elijah turns to nominative in "one of the prophets".

Matthew gets it right:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Matthew 16:14
οἱ δὲ εἶπαν, Οἱ μὲν Ἰωάννην τὸν βαπτιστήν, ἄλλοι δὲ Ἠλίαν, ἕτεÏ?οι δὲ ἸεÏ?εμίαν á¼¢ ἕνα τῶν Ï€Ï?οφητῶν.
Next two verses, in Mark:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Mark 8:28
καὶ αá½?τὸς á¼?πηÏ?ώτα αá½?τούς, Ὑμεῖς δὲ τίνα με λέγετε εἶναι; ἀποκÏ?ιθεὶς á½? ΪέτÏ?ος λέγει αá½?Ï„á¿·, Σὺ εἶ á½? ΧÏ?ιστός. καὶ á¼?πετίμησεν αá½?τοῖς ἵνα μηδενὶ λέγωσιν πεÏ?ὶ αá½?τοῦ.
Two verses and three tenses (imperfect, present, aorist). "Jesus was asking: '...', Peter says: '...'. Jesus admonished ...". This is not as bad, but still a sign of lack of fluency with the language.
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Old 02-25-2005, 10:55 AM   #46
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Originally Posted by Peter Kirby
Is there a plausibility that the author of Mark knew Aramaic? Or, that the author of Mark knew Latin?
I've read it argued here (Spin?) that Mark has a number of words from Latin, like "Praetorium". Can't find it using the search feature.
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Old 02-25-2005, 11:02 AM   #47
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Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic
I wonder if Mathetes has seen arguments from traditionalists that Mark's "bad Greek" is evidence that he was a Palestinian Jew struggling in a second language.
Yes. I've also come across arguments for any other possible origin for him: Syria, Egypt, Rome, almost anywhere.

My impression is that he was indeed struggling with the language, but that does not mean that he was a Palestinian Jew. There are many other possibilities. His ignorance of Palestine geography seems to go against this idea.
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Old 02-25-2005, 11:05 AM   #48
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Originally Posted by Mathetes
I've read it argued here (Spin?) that Mark has a number of words from Latin, like "Praetorium". Can't find it using the search feature.
Try this thread: spin vs. judge on NT written in Aramaic esp post 21:

Quote:
Originally Posted by spin
In point #2 above, I said that Mark was written in Greek for a Roman audience. It was normal that texts were written in Greek to be read by Roman audiences. Josephus a companion of the Flavian emperos of Rome wrote in Greek to a Roman audience, so the idea is not strange. However, writing in Aramaic to a Roman audience would make no sense at all, for, while upper class Romans often learnt Greek, they never learnt Aramaic.

There are a number of pointers that show that Mark was written for a Roman audience:
  1. an ordinary guard to a Jewish king was called a spekoulatwr in Greek, a term derived from Latin, but why called a Jewish king's soldier by a Latin term? to make it easy for the audience to understand. This Roman word is also transliterated into Aramaic, 'SPQLTR' -- [ ' = alef]. Why use a Latin word for a Jewish soldier in Aramaic? Because it was the term in the original Greek and the Aramaic translator didn't know a better way to translate it.
  2. money is either referred to in Roman currency or Greek currency, which is then sometimes related to Roman currency. The coins in Judea were shekels and prutahs and during Roman times the procurators produced these coins. So why do we find Mark 6:37 mentioning Roman denarii? Because his Roman audience understood them. We also find the denarius mentioned in the Aramaic. Why? Because it was in the Greek source. Mk 12:42 talks of Greek coins, lepta duo, two leptas, which Mark tells us are equivalent to a kordantes, or Roman quadrans.
  3. When Mark 15:16 tells us that they took Jesus to a palace, the writer explains that this palace was a praitwrion, the Latin term praetorium. Yet again we have an explanation for a Roman audience, for the text has already said that he was brought to a palace which should have been sufficient, but Mark is catering to his audience, and amusingly the term has been kept when translated into Aramaic.
  4. I have already mentioned the fact that Mark has borrowed the Latin term, flagello, which becomes fragellw in Greek ("l" -> "r"), then sometimes PRAGELA in Aramaic when fragellw is found in the Greek original ("f" -> "p"). The important evidence here is that the source language for the word once again is Latin.
  5. One of the most interesting manifestations of Latin intruding into the Greek of Mark is the verb "satisfacio" (= to satisfy), made up of two words, "satis" (= sufficient) and "facio" (=to make). This is translated into Greek literally from the Latin parts to get ikanon (= sufficient) poiew (= to make), the problem is that this compound doesn't normally exist in Greek: it only exists here. The Greek has clearly come from the Latin idea. (The Aramaic uses its own word meaning "to satisfy", CB'.)
There are various other Latin words to be found in Mark, all of which are best explained because Mark is catering to a Roman audience which could read Greek.

To imagine an Aramaic original to Mark would make what is transparent extremely contorted and rather difficult to explain. It is not sufficient to plead that these are just foreign words in circulation in Aramaic, for the coins weren't used in Palestine, and the logical idea of "satis facio" isn't found in Aramaic, so the Greek form cannot be explained from Aramaic (or even from simple Greek). Aramaic as a source for Greek Mark simply doesn't make sense, whereas a Greek writer steeped in Roman culture does.


spin
spin was arguing for the idea that Mark was written in Greek for a Roman audience (a common phenomenon), but his argument on satisfacio could be read to support the idea that Mark's first language was Latin.
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Old 02-25-2005, 11:36 AM   #49
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Diogenes the Cynic
What do you think their first languages were if not Greek? I can't see anything in Luke-Acts, Matthew or John to suggest anything but a Greek background. Their exclusive use of the Septuagint indicates that they did not know Hebrew and their use of Greek sayings traditions suggests that they did not know Aramaic.
Although the Septuagint is certainly the major source for the OT quotations in the Gospels, exclusive use of the Septuagint may be putting it too strong.

Andrew Criddle
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Old 02-25-2005, 12:20 PM   #50
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Originally Posted by andrewcriddle
Although the Septuagint is certainly the major source for the OT quotations in the Gospels, exclusive use of the Septuagint may be putting it too strong.

Andrew Criddle
Are you aware of any OT quotations in the Gospels that do not come from the LXX?
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