Yuri Kuchinsky

Massive errors in Nestle/Aland citing Aramaic MSS!

Dear friends,

An Aramaic scholar Dr. P. J. Williams has recently revealed in Textualcriticism-L that the standard Nestle/Aland edition of the New Testament can be wrong as much as 28% in their citations of Aramaic manuscripts!

Wow! This is just so amazing...

I guess this reveals what sort of a bias our mainstream NT scholars are really suffering from.

Indeed, I've been saying for a long time that our whole mainstream NT scholarship is nothing else but a "Jesus the Greek" club!

They simply don't care that Aramaic was the language of Jesus and of his earliest disciples, and that this is really the best way to understand what early Christianity was all about.

Shameful!

Below, you can see the quotes from Dr. Williams' post.

Regards,

Yuri.

========== begin quote=============

From: "P.J. Williams" <p.j.williams@a...>
Date: Sat Mar 12, 2005 9:33 am
Subject: Re: [textualcriticism] "claims" of Milne and Skeat

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/textua...sm/message/589

I can observe that from my own experience NA27 is relatively accurate when citing Greek witnesses. The main problems that I see are in the citation of versions, especially Syriac and Coptic. A recent estimate I made of the accuracy of citation of the Peshitta in Romans led me to conclude that 28% of the references were erroneous.

I list a couple of hundred errors in Syriac citations of the Gospels at:

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/divinity/willi...Appendices.pdf

which gives the appendices of my book entitled _Early Syriac Translation Technique and the Textual Criticism of the Greek Gospels_ (Gorgias Press, 2004). ... My estimate is that Latin is the most accurately cited version, and that Coptic and Syriac versions (excluding the Harclean) are often cited in error.

=========end quote==============

Regards,

Yuri

Peter Kirby

What do you suggest one do to find out what the versions say?

I already have the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic NT, so there's a start I guess...

best,
Peter Kirby

Haran

Cool... Where'd you get a copy of the Sahidic and Bohairic Coptic NT? Do you have a link?

Peter Kirby

"Good Books" Scholarly Reprints

http://members.aol.com/goodbooks7/index.html

best,
Peter Kirby

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, Peter,

Well, obviously, one needs to go directly to the versions, if you want to find out what they say... And this'll cost lots of money to buy all these editions.

Sure, it's a start.

The problem is really at multiple levels.

-- In the "Greek Only" atmosphere, the versions are for the most part ignored.

-- General decline of textual criticism.

-- Even the Greek Bezae is mostly ignored. How come there's no modern edition of this valuable text? No English translation?

-- Still no modern English translation of the Old Latin texts.

-- More generally, the whole Western/Peripheral text is ignored. But that's where the earliest textual tradition is.

That's why I see our whole modern NT textual criticism as fundamentally fraudulent... And now, considering what P.J. Williams said, we have some additional evidence of that.

Regards,

Yuri

judge

One must of course be cautious of Syraic versions that were translated back from greek or even partly translated from greek versions for theological reasons.
As many believers inside the Roman Empire rejected the christlogy of the COE located outside they revised their versions on occaision moe in line with the greek versions which for a start had a diiferent Christology based on greek words and concepts rather than Aramaic words and concepts.

So it seem important at the very start to clearly delineate which syriac versions are which.