Julian

That certainly depends on the user. In the 2nd century when they were splitting hairs trying to establish a more exact theology, a time that saw the rise of strong 'heresies,' it was quite severe. Nowadays it would probably only matter to the extremists. As you note below, for a textual critic the differences are vast.
While I am not overly familiar with Acts in the Western tradition (too little time, too much to read), a hot topic in text critical circles are the Western Non-interpolations, passages that highlight important theological differences as to the nature of Jesus, at least to a 2nd century reader engaged in a christological battle.
The issue here is that the 'wild' readings occur almost entirely in the Western tradition and not in the Alexandrian, according to the traditional view although the issue is probably more complicated than that. We don't see the subtle stages of variation that we are accustomed to. This would indicate that a divergence happened before we have significant manuscript attestation. Scholars seem split into two camps, those who consider the Western Non-interpolations the more original reading (I belong in this camp) and those who consider them scribal alterations away from the originals. The Western readings of the type encompassed by the Western Non-interpolations were unlikely to make it into the Byzantine tradition because that tradition shows a great tendency to streamline and enchance the text whereas the Western Non-interpolations display the exact opposite tendencies, namely a simplification of the text. Since text almost invariably tends to get longer, not shorter, it can be assumed that the Western Non-interpolations represents the earliest stage of those passages, especially in light of the fact that overall the Western family generally adds material to the text. This latter was one of the strongest arguments of Westcott and Hort when they first proposed their idea. It is also hard to explain why a scribe would have removed the sections that are missing. Impossible to explain, to my mind.

I believe that the Western text, in some places, does constitute unusually good knowledge of a few early passages and show the text before it grew as a result of theological/christological in-fighting. Others will disagree with this and merely put it down to tendentious scribal emendations.

Julian

lpetrich

Including preserving the original manuscripts instead of copies of copies of copies?

"How terrible it would be if the originals were available!" -- that is an extremely dumb argument.

Complete with miscopies and mistranslations and outright rewrites.

Making that alleged entity a lazy bum.

What hooey. How would that be any different from relics and holy places, like the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem or the Wailing Wall there?

The original text was "a single rigid text".

And translators can't exactly read the original authors' minds.

I'm reminded of Islam's policy regarding translations: the only legitimate version of the Koran is the original Classical Arabic version, and translations have the status of commentaries.

But if translations are legitimate, then why doesn't the Bible come with a translation guide so as to ensure that translators will translate it correctly?

But the same Jesus Christ had said that getting angry is a sin comparable to murder. He didn't quite practice what he had preached, I guess.

darstec

OK, I see your point. That might not have been my interpretation, but I guess it is a valid one nonetheless. But then, how can one tell whether that particular letter/letters were more legible at the time and the re-inker didn't feel the need to go over it?

S.C.Carlson

Almost every single letter of Vaticanus was re-inked, so the 10th cen corrector's failure to re-ink is interpreted as a deletion (additions were indicated in the margin).

Note that the images at the site are modified to sharpen the color contrasts to make the letters more legible. The original ink has faded considerably, and even the reinforced ink has gotten much lighter from their initial color of a blackish brown for such an ink. One scholar, who has looked at it, describes the present colors of the inks as "almond" for the original ink, and "chocolate" for the re-inking. I would concur with these descriptions based on my looking at the facsimile.

Stephen Carlson

judge

Hi Julian, hope all is well.
Would you be able to indicate one or two of the strongest instances of this if you have time?

thanks

Doug Shaver

That is debated, as a matter of fact.

The debates are not as emotional or as widely publicized as debates over the reliability of the Bible texts -- presumably because nobody is claiming that Plato words were God's words -- but they do happen.

Waning Moon Conrad

Here here!:wave:

Roger Pearse

It sounds as if we can agree that the differences as far as a 21st century reader is concerned are trivial, tho.

The proposition that the changes in the western text reflect some specific theological argument is a separate one, of course. I'm sceptical, tho, in view of our utter lack of information about how the text type arose.

I don't think that this is right. Literary papyri of all kinds generally demonstrate wild texts.

(I don't necessarily agree or disagree with the remainder of the post, but it's not really directed to the point that I was making).

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Clivedurdle

Is it?

What if the scribe has Arian beliefs, or wanted to argue against docetic beliefs? What if, you want to establish the geneology back to David?


We haven't mentioned the latest computer, archaeological and forensic techniques, that are now able to recover useful information from very damaged and altered documents.

Are all the bits and pieces that have been found on line yet? What percentage is?

If I were God wanting to communicate I would do stuff like AC Clarke suggests - a megalith on the moon, or actually a few stars in artificial positions or something particularly not right!

Alf

Perhaps this God watching over the text and making sure it is preserved isn't there?

Alf