Amaleq13

So, you falsely cited Metzger as the source of your claim when, in reality, the source was your own calculation based on numbers Metzger actually uses?

In what sense could your citation be considered anything but misleading?

Roger Pearse

Surely the classics are worthless as the output of ancient society if we have no idea whether they *are* the output of ancient society? They are worthless as a historical record, if they have been "significantly changed" down the centuries. But we don't either of us believe this, I sense. I infer from your comments that we both believe that they have suffered relatively minor damage, if they have reached us at all. I am unclear why we suppose different for the far better preserved NT.

At this point I think we start to write theology. This question is a different one, containing all sorts of unstated presuppositions about what the "word of God" must be, how it must be transmitted, and, if we were to address these claims, our qualifications to speak for this God have to be presented and demonstrated. The relevance of this to the general question -- are books transmitted to us by copying or not -- seems questionable. I must admit that I am uninterested in such theology. As far as this issue -- of transmission -- is concerned, the NT is just another book.

The argument above comes rather close to suggesting that ancient texts 'must' be transmitted in a different form if people 2,000 years later happen to consider them important. I'm not sure that needs much discussion! -- All books, as books, are transmitted in the same manner, regardless of content; by hand-copying. Did they reach us?

If we say no, we go straight into obscurantism, in my humble opinion.

Well, there are not 'thousands of differences', other than in the sense that there are thousands of manuscripts which inevitably means lots of typos, none significant. Do we consider a text extant in one manuscript better preserved? We don't, of course. Whatever the number, the situation is far better for the NT than for any other ancient literary text.

Compared with the text of Gelasius of Cyzicus (of which I posted details earlier) where the first witness is 9 centuries?

This will not do. If we have what Gelasius wrote -- and only a fool would suppose otherwise -- then we certainly have what the NT authors wrote. If we do not have the NT, we most certainly do not have any other Greek texts from antiquity. We're not discussing theology; we're discussing whether or not we have what the authors wrote.

Claims about intentional changes of the text seem a bit strange to me, I'm afraid.

It was extremely hard for anyone to change a text intentionally in such a manner as to affect all subsequent copies, as Cicero found, because of the fact that every copy is created individually. For instance we know from his letters that he tried to get some corrections into the manuscripts of one of his works, as disseminated by Atticus, but our copies do not have those corrections.

Certainly people would introduce forgeries into the text of the Greek fathers. But they would then end up looking for genuine copies, and usually finding them. It was *very* hard to get rid of all the genuine copies, you see.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Sheshbazzar

Speculating and suppositions are cheap, and seldom conform to what was is the reality of the subject. vis, "The Kennedy assassination", "The Lunar Landing", "UFO Reports" and "The Bible", and A whole lot of speculating always going on going on.
Being as this is the "Bible Criticism & History Forum" of IIDB, I'll confine my speculations here to only the latter subject.

It is my speculation, (and a quite serious one, I may add) that the OP claim of 99.5% textual purity is way, way off. A total crock.

When consideration is given to all of those sections of The NT that display obvious signs of centuries of latter Christian theological "doctoring" and tampering with its individual words, along with "interpolations" and "long endings", even to the extent of the fabricating and incorporating of entire pseudo-Pauline Epistles right up through the reign of Constantine and beyond, to even attempt making such claim becomes almost ridiculous.
But then, the making of ridiculous and unsupportable claims is certainly nothing new within the realm of religion.
The more that I investigate the origins of The NT the more convinced I become, that perhaps as little as 20% of the contents of the Canonical Text even existed before 200 A.D. with the rest being "fashioned" and refashioned in the ongoing sectarian Theological Wars right up until the time that Imperial Rome officially "closed" the Canon.
While a claim of a high accuracy of transmission since that time, is valid, by that time, with the barn door having stood wide open for over three centuries, the horse had long, long since escaped.
Anyone who actually studies Bibles, (and here I mean the studying of "Bibles" themselves, not "theology" or "religion") can easily detect that subtle alterations of the Biblical texts are still going on, as various sects vie with each other over various translation and doctrinal "issues", and produce "Version" after "Version" after "Version" after...each one allegedly more modern, more correct, more readable, more accurate.

Old and theologically embarrassing sections often getting "rephrased" to conform to this or that denominations new and improved understanding.
Because after all, "The Bible" is the foremost propaganda tool of the Christian church, and as such it is the Christian church that fashioned The Bible, and bears rule over The Bible, not The Bible that rules over the church. The animate organization that fashioned the tool, employs the tool to further its ends, the inanimate tool is not responsible for how it is being used.

spin

In all the books that I've looked at regarding William Shakespeare, I've never seen any other means of spelling the name. In fact from texts published a couple of centuries ago it hasn't changed. I'd say that 100% of the reproductions of his name over the last few centuries shows a remarkable purity in representation. The strange thing however is that Shakespeare himself wrote his name in several different manners and that the representation that we use today is merely one form standardized. The fact that the last few centuries have maintained an orthodox form of the spelling in no way reflects the heterodoxy of the original material.

Fortunately we have some of his original signatures to tell us of the situation. Now, if the 99.5% claim as discussed here were true, we still have the analogy of the signatures, for not only do we have the earliest gospel, but we have two others which use it as their source, ie they, Mt and Lk, are not pure, but accreted forms of Mk. We have a glimpse of the things that were happening before fossilization happened. Remember, we are only examining those texts that were allowed to survive. Another glimpse of what may have lain before can be seen in the Marcionite material preserved in the church fathers. It is only through convenience that we accept those fathers views that Marcion, and not they, had touched up the texts.


spin

Equinox

RP wrote:
No, the classics aren’t worthless then. Let’s say, hypothetically, that 80% of a classic is accurate, and 20% is intentionally changed. That’s not “worthless”, but rather still quite useful. If we found out that 20% of the illiad weren’t written by homer, would that change it’s value much? No. In fact, do we know if homer actually wrote any of the Illiad? We don’t know for sure, and the Illiad is still valuable. I don’t understand why it must be all or nothing. Rather, all have probably changed some, with some changing more than others. In opposition to this is the NT, which some claim to be inerrant – an obviously ridiculous claim. Even claiming that the NT is "far better preserved" has no basis. You can claim that the NT of the 4th century is "far better preserved", and I'd agree. Did you see my big print summary statement? What part of that do you disagree with? Here it is again:

We have a pretty good idea of what most of the NT text that existed in the proto-orthodox church in the 4th century said.

Note the caveats:
pretty good idea of We have a lot of textual variants, most of which can be sorted out.

most of the NT text Some verses are more sure than others, but none are certain.

in the proto-orthodox church Nealy all our copies are from people with one set of doctrines, who would have all made the same or similar changes – thus much of the agreement between variants is likely due to similar direction of the changes.

in the 4th century We have very little evidence from before the 3rd century


And as such, is subject to the same analysis of any other ancient book, which shows intentional changes, insertions, deletions, and included forgeries. I say we mustn’t molly-coddle any favored set of books, but rather treat everything by the same yardstick, which shows that that NT is as much the product of humans as any other ancient work.


No, we don't. We go into reality. Again, it’s not Yes vs no. Of course none are unaltered, of course some bits remain in even the most altered ones. This kind of black and white thinking is inconsistent with any examination of the real world, and the real world is the core of historical reconstruction.


OK – so if I’m a better basketball player than my 2 year old son, does that mean I should try out for the lakers? Of course not. Saying that the NT is better preserved than other ancient texts is meaningless. Besides, you don’t know it is. Several texts of the NT could be highly altered before our earliest copies, and you wouldn’t know. One of our non-NT texts could happen to be a close copy of an original, and you wouldn’t know. Even the extant evidence shows plenty of changes.

Again, you are missing the whole point of my post. For all of them, we have a pretty good idea of the text at some point. For a religious text, that’s terribly inadequate. For a human work, that’s fine. See the difference? Also, as before, all fall in the middle somewhere, your imposed dichotomy of “we either have them or we don’t” is simply artificial, and not the way the real world works. Plus, in the real world, there is a lot less motivation to change (or to “correct” an “error” in) an unauthorative Gelasius as compared to the “important” writings of Paul.

Why? We have many examples that are quite clear. What about the place in Hebrews where the changes are done on the same document? Or times when Luke appears to have been changed to make jesus look more human? Why does it seem strange to you that Christians would “correct” what they saw as “errors”? What about marcion? There is a clear example of a Christian changing Luke.

Again, that’s ignoring the real world. At first, there are only a few copies. If one of three copies gets radically changed, one is lost, and then we later have descendants of only those two, there is no way to know which is closer. The proto-orthodox will of course choose the one closer to their doctrine, and that same situation had the opportunity to happen over and over in the NT. To say that at each time, we just happened to get the close one defies simple logic and probability.

Why? How would anyone know which was genuine? If an initial letter spawned several significantly changed revisions, than the odds are that the “genuine” one would be eliminated in some communities because it’s “obviously” a forgery because it doesn’t match the “revision”, which is thought to be “genuine”. Remember that back then they didn’t have printing presses. Do you think Titus is genuine? If not, then why was it chosen as genuine?


Have a good day (I won’t be able to post until tomorrow)

Equinox

Sheshonq

Recognition that we lack the original mss does not "assign classics to the rubbish bin." It merely sets an upper boundary on the reliability of any comments or conclusions that we draw. For some reason, that makes you uncomfortable. But without those originals, we cannot make the kind of strong declarative statements that you have shown a preference for.

Lack of original mss. is a reality, like gravity. We need to recognize it, and let the chips fall where they may. And whatever happens to "classics" - well, that will just have to happen. All classics share this problem, not just the NT.

Unfortunately for you, Roger, the lack of access to manuscripts is a bounding factor that cannot be dismissed by your reductio ad absurdium.

No, we are not. There is a substantial difference in how a mss. from the 13th century would propagate vs. a 1st century mss:

• The acceptance of Christianity was not the same;
• The canon had not been fixed;
• The historical environments were different in too many ways to list;
• The social conditions were not the same between 1st century Mediterranean under Roman control vs. 13th century Europe;
• Technology used to transmit documents was different (Gutenberg? printable moving type in 1439? Think that might have helped? sheesh)

In just about every way imaginable, the scenarios you are trying to forcibly parallelize are not, in fact, parallel at all. You want these manuscripts to be identical to the autographs so badly, that you have blinded yourself to obvious points.

You obviously love tinkering with manuscripts, but I have to question your objectivity in evaluating them. If I wanted someone to spend hours ferreting out a hard-to-find manuscript, I'd certainly select you. But if I wanted someone to evaluate the worth of such a manuscript, you've pretty much disqualified yourself by your selective blindness.

Roger Pearse

Um. How useful to us is a history of which 20% -- an unknown 20% -- is fiction? If we write a history based on it, how good is our work? Do we rely on the ancient source? If so, 20% of our work is fiction. Or do we guess which bits are wrong (which we may, if we are foolish, call "the assured results of scientific investigation)? If so, an even larger percentage of our work may be bunk! Effectively we're at sea.

I'm not sure on what basis you introduce this 4th century? -- The NT of the 4th century is 100% accurately preserved, in that we have exemplars of that date. But we don't have mss of that date for any of the classics, as far as I know. Even at that level, the NT is "far better preserved".

No, ancient texts do not; and if they did, this would render them worthless as historical sources. The existence of damage in transmission does not justify these exaggerated claims.

Um, I write a book, someone copies it and that proves that I didn't write it? Surely not!

I'm sorry, but obscurantism -- pretending that texts which have reached us have not done so -- is not reality. Really it is not.

Unfortunately I don't see any practical difference between "this is very corrupt but of course valuable in some sense although we can't say what" and "this is worthless as a reliable source of information".

I suspect this argument (not original to you, I know) is merely a smoke-screen, devised specifically to evade the logical consequences of the obscurantism in question, you see.

Why not compare the textual traditions of a few of them? It will soon smack you in the face.

The same applies equally to every text, which renders the speculation worthless.

I did remark on the requirements for your theological statements to be valid. Please stop making them, hey? I have no interest in them, and they are irrelevant.

Unfortunately such assertions must give way to reality. Let's try using a city map, an unknown 20% of which is wrong! There is little practical difference between this and saying "this is useless".

Speculation of this kind does not tell us anything, tho.

[quote]
The next sentence would have answered this question, had you read it before 'replying'

I have no idea why you suppose that Christians considered it acceptable to change scripture. Calling Marcion a Christian who changed texts seems very strange; his willingness to change the texts earned his excommunication. He got the finger from no less than an apostle's disciple.

Quoting a specific example is ignoring the real world?

Come, you're not thinking at all about what I'm posting. Work it out. I have already made this clear.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

andrewcriddle

FWIW I tried to pin this estimate down and got a figure of 155. This is not reliable but is probably if anything an overestimate.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle

I find Dr Ehrman's response rather troubling.
IMO it blurs several different issues.

At one extreme; there are specific cases where we have real reasons (of varying strength) in NT criticism to suspect that the archtype (the manuscript from which all our textual evidence ultimately derives) differs from the autograph (what the author originally wrote), there are not IMO very many such places but they do exist.

At the other extreme it is formally possible that, although the archtype is close in time to the autograph (50 years or less) and there are no definite reasons at all to suspect any divergence between autograph and archtype, such deviation may still have occurred. IMO it is a distraction from the real issues to spend time or thought on such purely formal possibilities.

Andrew Criddle

-Jay-

And this, Sheshbazzar, would make a fine topic in its own right.

Orthodoxy drives canon.

regards,

NinJay