Yuri Kuchinsky

Hello, JES,

In your quote above, it seems like instead of "works" (underlined) it should be "words". Is this right?

Of course I think that Westcott and Hort are crooked. It's completely ridiculous to say that only 1 in 1000 words in the gospels can be seriously disputed on textual grounds (if this is what they were trying to say).

IMO it's more like 1 in 20 (at least).

Check out this,

Westcott & Hort fraud
http://www.trends.net/~yuku/bbl/whfraud.htm

Best,

Yuri.

Yuri Kuchinsky

The age of the manuscripts is generally quite irrelevant. While the Byzantine text (as represented by KJV) is not perfect, IMHO it's better than the mess that our modern textual scholars have produced (as represented by the "modern" Bibles).

Regards,

Yuri.

Steven Carr

For example, Luke 24:12 reads 'But Peter, rising up, ran to the tomb; and stooping down he saw the linen cloths alone, and he returned home marvelling at what had happened'.

It is missing from some Old Latin manuscripts, which agrees with Codex Bezae that the verse should be missing.

Was Luke 24:12 added by a scribe in the second century so that it could be shown that somebody found the witnesses to the resurrection to be credible?

If it was not added, then some scribes must have chosen to delete it. Why on earth would they do that?

The verse is very similar to Peter's rushing to the tomb in John 20:3-10. The word for the linen cloths in Luke 24:12 (othonia) is not the word that Luke has just used in Luke 23:53 (sindoni), but it is the word used in John 20:5.

This one verse (Luke 24:12) has 3 words or phrases used nowhere else in Luke or Acts. It also uses an 'historic present', which Luke shuns elsewhere, - for example of the 93 historic presents in the Markan verses that Luke used, no less than 92 were changed by Luke.

By this, I mean that Luke uses 'he sees', when everything else in Chapter 24 is in the past tense. Notice that the NIV translates that as 'he saw'. Even they recognise that writers do not suddenly change tense in a narrative for no good reason.

Luke 24:12 uses words for 'stooping down', 'the linen clothes', 'went away home' , which are never used elsewhere in Luke or Acts.

Exactly those words in Luke 24:12 which are not otherwise in Luke-Acts, are in John 20, with John 20:5 being very close indeed!

Conclusion. The verse has been added by a later scribe.

All that can be offered against it, is a view that a God who allows evils like tsunamis, hurricanes, earthquakes, AIDS, malaria, smallpox and rabies nevertheless would nevertheless not allow scribes to alter the Bible (although we can see manuscripts where scribes have changed what is written)

Luke 24:40 , Luke 24:3, and Luke 24:6 are other places where many, if not most Old Latin mansucripts (as mentioned by Praxeus) agree with Codex Bezae, and disagree with modern Bibles.

Julian

Well, certainly a lot of opinions in this thread. Textual criticism is a very divisive issue as it deals directly with the textual basis of the religion. Several of the opinions posted here are, of course, quite silly and should be corrected as the tendencious nonsense that they are.

Firstly, praxeus thinks that textual criticism is useless and, in fact, pointless. He has stated his disdain for the discipline several times here on BC&H. Why is that? Because he already has his beloved Byzantine text which he believes is inerrant and completely correct. Therefore, any other text must, by necessity, be wrong. This is a belief issue and has nothing even remotely scientific about it. Notice how he discards the ancient documents but then turns right around and appeals to the antiquity of the Byzantine text. In all fairness, the Byzantine text does have very old roots but to claim that it is the 100% correct text is ludicrous and should be disregarded as a crackpot theory.

Then, enter Yuri, who hardly has anything positive to say about most topics discussed here. If memory serves, he supports Lukan primacy, another fringe theory. He then proceeds to attack Westcott and Hort without the decency of allowing for a variety of mitigating factors. Yes, W&H were wrong in many ways but it must be remembered that their version came out in 1881 and displayed brilliant scholarship that is referred to by many scholars, even today. They also didn't have access to many of the finds that have come about in later years. Considering the time and environment that they worked in, their achievement was quite remarkable. Yuri then proceeds to categorize the UBS4/NA27 as a mess. Nice. Care to be more specific? Care to back that up with some factual observations? You know, from some real scholars?

There are certainly problems with the modern bible. Since papyrus is mostly preserved in Egypt what we have is essentially a very early Egyptian archetype. The newer version is also marred by tendencious religiosity which influences their decision in a manner more consistent with tradition than honesty. However, it is still the best bible out there unless one cares to read Swanson's version make up one's own mind.

Frankly, I am annoyed by the goofy emotional assertions that always pop up when we deal with these issues. Between prax's apologetics and Yuri's unfounded hostility, I hope than anyone reading this thread recognize their arguments for what they are.

Julian

JES

Which is actually why I come to this board, because I know there are plenty of knowledgeable people that will challenge 'goofy' assertions. My sense on textual criticism is that, just like a lot of other things in Christianity (i.e. eschatology, prophecy, historical Jesus), there are a ton of wide-ranging opinions all claiming to be based on sound scholarly analysis without much consensus.
I just need to do my due diligence and try to make as informed a decision as is possible but always be open to new information. It's frustrating but what other options are there? The challenge will always be trying to separate 'truth' from 'belief'.

Julian

To be sure. The only thing that is factual in the biblical studies fields, is that hard evidence and agreement doesn't exist. What we end up with are simply probabilities. An argument should not be taken farther than the evidence can bear, once we cross that threshold it becomes mere speculation, which is useful but should not be mistaken for fact.

The trick is to never let dogma, religious or otherwise, override your willingness to change your mind. And never, ever use the word 'truth.' Well, try not to, anyways. Only philosophers deal with 'truth.' Scientists deal with facts.

Julian

JES

Point taken...Facts not truths

Thanks

Steven Avery

Luke 24:12 (KJB)
Then arose Peter, and ran unto the sepulchre; and stooping down, he beheld the linen clothes laid by themselves, and departed, wondering in himself at that which was come to pass

That is the well-supported, clear and accurate
and consistent historic Bible text.
Now we head into textcrit-mishegas-land.

Yet compared to a few geographically/language isolated manuscripts (that line itself mixed) the verse is included in hundreds of Greek Byzantine manuscripts, and in fact it has tons of support, all languages, geographies, and from early to late. The omission is most sketchy.

In fact, ironically even the early Greek manuscripts, Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Alexandrius all agree with the great mass of Greek Byzantine (and Latin Vulgate and Aramaic Peshitta) texts here.

Even the 3rd century papyrus, P75 supports the reading !

http://www.ecclesia.org/truth/manuscript_evidence.html
"Burgon (14) p 89, states that 19 uncials, including Aleph, A and B plus every known cursive, support this passage. He also cites the Latin, Syriac and Egyptian versions in favour of the verse, together with Eusebius and Gregory of Nyssa of the 4th century and Cyril of Alexandria of the 5th."

The manuscript evidence is overwhelming, combined with early church writer references predating by centuries any extant manuscripts omitting the verse.

It is amazing, and rather telling, that someone like Steven would write an article on the verse Luke 14:12 and totally omit any mention all the early Greek manuscripts, the papyrus, or the early church writer references, even if he omits the 99% of manuscripts that have the verse as in our historic Bible.

So the omission in a small handful of geographically-and-language-isolated manuscripts around the 6th century and later is supposed to represent the text before a 2nd century addition ? This makes no sense.

When Steven writes..
http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm
"For technical reasons, whenever Bezae and the Old Latin manuscripts agree, that reading must date back to at least the second century, if not earlier. "

Clearly, Steven gives no source for this theory whatsoever. Worse, the Old Latin manuscripts are SPLIT, making the weak and strange theory completely inoperative even in the best of circumstances. Developing a dogmatic theory about a localized group of a dozen or so manuscripts from about the 6th to the 12th century makes no sense whatsoever, whatever your textual perspective.

Sure, Bezae especially is notorious for dropping verses that are dropped almost nowhere else on manuscript earth. It is an extremely oddball and corrupt text.

Ironically Steven writes in the most circular fashion on his webpage..
http://www.bowness.demon.co.uk/reli2.htm
"There are far more than insertions than deletions, especially in the Codex Bezae, which is notorious for adding stuff, not subtracting stuff."

The reason that additions are 'notorious' is that they are such an obvious example of corruptions, supported by nothing else, and standing out like a sore thumb. Comparitively deletions are of little import, and in Steven's case he will argue that the deletion was the original anyway, to square his circle.

And dropping text from manuscripts is in fact one of the easiest things possible, either accidentally or deliberately, for reasons ranging from scribal weariness to doctrinal questions.
And what you often find in the textcrit doctrinal conjectures is that they can cut both ways and represent more the intent of the modern textcrit analyst rather than any type of sensible analysis. We had a detailed study of that on the textcrit forum recently in another similar fav of Ehrman's, Mark 1:41. When you have an ax to grind, every hammer is a sharpenning blade (or something like that).

Sure, one usage is more the sense of the fabric or cloth, the other is the usage as the burial clothes themselves. Similarly Luke used byssus earlier for linen, while Matthew and Rev used livnon, and bussinos was used in Rev. A rich vocabulary will be used in Greek as in English, often representing the more exact nuance of each phrase.

Bypassed to below, where the 3 'words or phrases' are discussed.

Except for the twenty or so times that Luke does use such a historic present ... hmmmm

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b...er/035966.html
Randall Buth
"It would appear that Luke himself has no objections to the
historical present, in fact, he uses the historic present himself. "

First, you are assuming certain contested synoptic theories, which I will bypass.

And since Mark was likely written in Latin or Graeco-Latin (Hoskier) and then translated to Greek, you would clearly expect some major and fundamental grammatical differences between Mark and Luke. And we simply have no firm idea if Luke had access to a completed Mark, or in what language.

And you omitted this reference, eliminating even your careful attempt at a sculpted uniqueness.

Luke 8:49
While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.

Mark 5:35
While he yet spake, there came from the ruler of the synagogue's house certain which said, Thy daughter is dead: why troublest thou the Master any further?

Since Luke uses a historic present about 20 times, (oh, did Steven forget to mention that?) any carte blanche claim is void of signficance. Even if one did make a claim, it would have to be based on a really close analysis of the grammar in the individual cases, where would you expect the historic present usage ?

Note that the historic present has a particular purpose..
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b...er/023239.html
"highlight those episodes which build suspense towards a climax in the plot structure and directly relate to the author's purpose" (1984:20). A second function is "a kataphoric reference to a following important event" (ibid., 22)... The effect of using the present tense in a past-tense narrative is to create suspense as Boos has noted. (Levinsohn 1977:27 also talks of the use of the historic present in an inciting event.)

And one can see Luke 12 fitting these parameters extremely well, with the suspense building unto the post-resurrection appearance of Jesus later in the chapter.

In fact, this type of striking and suspensful usage was exactly what Mark Goodacre points out.

http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/b...er/035967.html
"There's also 24.12, when Peter goes to Jesus' tomb, KAI PARAKUYAS
BLEPEI TA OQONIA MONA. I've always thought that Luke's more sparing
use of the historic present makes it all the more striking and
dramatic here, "And you know what? He is looking at the burial
cloths alone". It's one of the interesting links between Luke and
John too, of course -- John 20.5, KAI PARAKUYAS BLEPEI KEIMENA TA
OQONIA"

First, the King James Bible has "he beheld" Tyndale, Wycliffe, Geneva had "saw" and most other translations also have "he saw" (ESV, Holman). There is nothing special about the NIV here. Generally the historic present will translate into the English past tense, there is nothing surprising or unusual in that regard, of course translator styles will vary, and there can be a choice of English translation in a particular construct.

Here Steven is simply fabricating a supposed problem in the grammar, without an iota of Greek scholarship support. Maybe he is interpreting Ehrman, in which case it would be good to see Bart's quote. In Greek as well as in English there are lots of good reasons for changing tenses in a narrative, and this verse is a perfect example, as discussed by Mark Goodacre on b-greek.

Ahh.. our three references... Linen clothes we already discussed.

Now... where else would you expect Luke to use the word for 'stooping down' other than looking into the tomb ? Some words are used once for the most natural reasons. Or what other word would Luke use other than 'parakupto' ? If the answer is none, and none, then we see the transparent inspipidity of this type of vocabularly count argumentation.

Then on 'went away home', first of all that is not even the text in the great majority of manuscripts, as in the Byzantine Text, or the Textus Receptus. Even in the minority reading, it is a compound word from two roots that simply combine two words used by Luke again and again. There is nothing unusual to base an argument upon here.

And Mark also uses the root word as well.

Mark 1:7
And preached, saying, There cometh one mightier than I after me, the latchet of whose shoes I am not worthy to stoop down and unloose.

All we are dealing with is proper vocabulary.

This 'logic' we will chalk up to a moment of fleeting insanity from Steven.

As shown above, we have hundreds of manuscripts from a wide language and geographical base combined with clarity of language, no internal arguments of substance, and lots of collaborating early church writers. That is quite a bit to be "offered against it" <edit>
Edward Hill discussed this long ago. I am only extracting one element but suggest reading the section below online.

"The Western Omissions"
http://www.thescripturealone.com/Hills-5.html
"... the fact that all eight of these readings have recently been found to occur in Papyrus 75 is unfavorable to their hypothesis that these readings are additions to the text ... critics are now changing their minds about them. Kurt Aland (1966), for example, has restored these Western omissions to the text of the Nestle New Testament. (30) Hence the R.S.V., the N.E.B., and the other modern versions which omit them are already out of date. And this rapid shifting of opinion shows us how untrustworthy naturalistic textual criticism is.

Some of these verses are also discussed at..
http://www.scionofzion.com/science.htm
They Dare Call This Science! - Will Kinney

Shalom,
Steven Avery
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messianic_Apologetic

Yuri Kuchinsky

What is this supposed to mean? Since when I'm the subject of discussion here?

We don't need such ad hominem comments.

Sorry about that...

I guess I should be feeling guilty now!

Oh, so I guess I'm indecent, too!

Is someone paying you to defend mainstream theories here BTW?

I would like to advise Julian to keep his ad hominem comments to himself. Otherwise I'll lodge an official complaint.

Nothing "brilliant" about W&H.

Which "finds that have come about in later years" are you talking about? How should have these "finds" affected W&H theories?

I believe I've been here a lot longer than you. Perhaps you've missed quite a lot of what I posted before. But as to being "more specific", I've lots of specific stuff on my webpage. Such as,

NT Scandals and Controversies
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/cvers.htm

As far as NT goes, KJV is far preferable. See my webpage.

Yuri.

Vinnie

We don't have "God's word". We have copies of copies with mixed readings. Just finished this today:

http://www.after-hourz.net/writings/bibleissues2.html

Here is a segment pertinent to x thousand manuscripts support me...

There are over 5,000 Greek manuscripts of the New Testament which stand against rigid models of Biblical inspiration. Apologists often boast of the large number of New Testament texts and the comparative time for which the New Testament is attested when viewed in light of other classical works. For example, Plato wrote in 400 B.C.E and the first surviving text of his work from antiquity dates to around 900 C.E. That is about 1300 years later and we only possess about 7 copies of Plato's work. Of Tacitus's Annals which were written ca. 100 CE we possess twenty copies, the first of which appears a thousand years after after it was written. The New Testament can also boast of thousands of other manuscripts in different languages. This is the evidence that prompted John Warwick Montgomery to lucidly state the result of being skeptical towards the resultant text of the New Testament:

"To be skeptical of the resultant text of the New Testament books is to allow all of classical antiquity to slip into obscurity, for no documents of the ancient world are as well attested bibliographically as the New Testament." Thus if we are to be skeptical of the New Testament text then we must be skeptical of Plato, Tacitus's Annals, Caesar's Gallic Wars, Livy's History of Rome, Pliny's Natural History, et cetera.

This is true in a sense but not necessarily. Some works are more prone to altering than others. For example, no one is going to deliberately alter something unless there is ample motivation. Someone altered the Jewish Historian Josephus's description of Jesus in the Testimonium Flavianum (Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3) because they wanted it to glorify their Lord and Savior. Classical scholars already know to be skeptical of the ancient texts they study. It may appear hackneyed to the reader but there is still much truth in the statement history is written by the winners. Texts were also transmitted by the winners. The Bible was canonized by the winners as well. Numerous other texts claiming apostolic authorities as their authors were appealed to by many Christians yet rejected from the canon.

Montgomery's comment appears to assume that skepticism of a work that appears 1,000 years after it was written in the manuscript record is unheard of. Unless classical scholars have very good reason to believe such a text would be precisely transmitted without alteration then they surely should be skeptical of such a work. Each work has to be evaluated as best it can on a case by case basis. New Testament scholar Helmut Koester noted this fact in The Text of the Synoptic Gospels in the Second Century, "Textual critics of classical texts know that the first century of their transmission is the period on which the most serious corruption occurs. Textual critics of the NT writings have been surprisingly naive in this respect" (p. 37, 1989). Furthermore, nothing prevents classical scholars from granting a text's authenticity on a strictly provisional basis for study. This cannot be done in the case of the New Testament Inspiration simply for the fact that people should not be willing to base their lives on a lost text whose status is only provisionally granted for research purposes.

Plato enthusiasts are not telling us how to use our eyes by telling us what we can and cannot look at (e.g. pornography or sexual material). Classical scholars do not use Caesar's Gallic Wars to tell us how to use our ears. They do not tell us what types of music or language or preachers or doctrinal teachings we can or cannot listen to. Exegetes do not use the Annals of Tacitus to tell us how to use our mouths. They do not quote Tacitus in efforts to tell us what we can and cannot say. What we can and cannot teach. What we can and cannot eat. Livy's History of Rome is not quoted as evidence we are not supposed to engage in casual sex. No one appeals to Homer's Iliad in defense of abstinence. Thucydides History is not cited as as a proof-text that tells us with whom and in what conditions consensual adults can have sexual relation in. Herodotus's History is not used to suppress homosexual or women's rights (more accuratelyhuman rights). Pliny's work is not trumpeted as the reason a person should tithe to the church or consulted as an infallible guide dictating how people should dress, act and conduct their lives.

Montgomery and other apologists have introduced a red herring. A red herring is a formal logical fallacy in which a person introduces a topic that is irrelevant and diverts attention from the issue under discussion. Classical history is interesting in that it shed's light on our past but classical texts are by no means as influential today as is the New Testament. Manuscripts are not the classicist's only means of reconstructing history either. A more dependable method utilizes archaeology rather than arguments based solely upon texts written by authors with personal biases and prejudice'.

Furthermore, we have in our possession, numerous instances of autographical texts from antiquity. The Bible is not nearly the best or unique in its textual transmission. It simply has become the most popular book of all time and was widely used and extensively copied. Apologists usually ignore all of Eastern history. For example, The Database of Early Chinese Manuscripts catalogues volumes and volumes of ancient textual finds in China.

Rather than an obscure mess of 5,000 plus different Greek manuscripts with genealogical mixing and doctrinal alternations that must be sifted through by scholars in an effort to reconstruct the original New Testament, would not a single preserved copy of the originals have been more useful? Does the transmission of the New Testament look like a divinely guided process or does its complexity, diversity and messiness look like a strictly human process? The latter appears to cohere with the data better and this naturally leads us to question the competence of a divine being who writes us a guide to life only to have it lost in the sands of time.

V