aChristian

I think the point is that there is a quantity is of individual witnesses with no indication that any of them are copied from another.


The preconceived idea I am talking about is that mou should not be there because it was put in to support arguements for Jesus' divinity. Rather than choose the reading that matches this idea, I believe the accurate way to determine the text is to choose the one that 95% to 99% of the manuscripts attest to.

I didn't see those links, but would like to look them up. I am not interested in different modern texts like UBS or Nestle, but different manuscripts. I can go back and check the earlier posts.

As I said above, quantity transforms into quality the same way as in this example. If 5000 witnesses to an auto accident all write an acount and they all agree with each other and each is unaware of the other 4999 accounts, the quantity of accounts allows you to determine what really happened.

This is the problem Hort had which caused him to make up history. There is no historical record of anyone rounding up all the existing copies.

This is the preconceived notion. However, the evidence, the manuscripts themselves don't reflect this. Although I can only say for sure that >50% have mou, I suspect from what I have read that it is closer to >95% have mou. I would like to have the exact count.

The problem with the authorities changing the text is that they would have to go all over the empire and change all the copies and there is no record of this happening. They couldn't just get all except a few geographical small areas or these areas would produce copies that would not agree with the majority. As I understand it, there are no groups of copies like this. There is just one large group with 95% to 99% agreement on the reading.

aChristian

Thanks. I will check out the references you gave and not overreach with my numbers.

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

As well as other empires. e.g. The Syriac regions in the east. Or later, the Rome-Constantinople split. Or North African regions or the British Isles or many other areas that had their own spiritual milieu quite distinct from Rome.

Basically you have simply a total myth in terms of ancient days, as you point out. Before about 350 AD there was no centralized power of any import as a Christian center (the earlier suppression including some Bible confiscation was pagan Rome against the Christians) and the Bible by then had wide and strong distribution in multiple languages and regions. By the fifth century you had wide dissemination of Greek and Latin (multiple Old Latin translations and the Vulgate) and the Syriac Peshitta and Bohairic and Sahadic and Gothic and Armenian. (From memory, tweaking by addition or subtraction is fine.)

Much later there were persecutions that may have included Bible suppression. The inquisition re: groups like the Waldensians and Abigensians (this history is hotly debated). These 'heretical' groups (per the RCC) may have resisted the Vulgate with beloved and superior Old Latin Bibles in various dialects. Others say their Bibles were Vulgate-based anyway, with distinctions small.

Similarly William Tyndale was considered a heretic, not just a Bible publisher. (Erasmus too but mostly more some decades after his life, thus his books made the Index librorum prohibitorum). However the Bible text Tyndale published, the Received Text or Reformation Bible into English, became within a century the English Holy Bible (KJB), still maintaining the sound Tyndale textual choice (Textus Receptus) and with his beautiful language even more enhanced. Dropping the Vulgate for the count. Later a far worse counter-reformation text became the critics friend.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

avi

I of course, deny that John 14:28, and John 10:30 qualify as verses for which a "very simple scribal faux pas" suffices to explain the insertion of the word "mou". We are dealing with a religion, Christianity, that had no scruples about murdering absolutely innocent people, (as William Tyndale and Michael Servetus were,) in the most bloodthirsy and hideous fashion, simply because they, honest and honourable Christian believers, that they were, dared to differ, publically, with the authorities on doctrinal matters. Are we so naive as to believe that insertion of this word "mou" into the text of John went unnoticed, unchallenged, and that no one died as a result of opposing this activity? What, you suppose Dr. Servetus died of fright, not the flames, as commanded by Calvin, and approved by both Luther, the Spanish Inquisition, and the Vatican?

Commenting on aChristian's explanation for the "validity" of the KJV, that >90% of the existing Greek manuscripts employ "mou":
This comment misses the point, entirely. I do not rail against KJV because only 10% of the existing Greek versions lack "mou". I shout from the rooftops about the invalidity of KJV, because the most ancient sources, in both Greek and Latin, employ no "my"-->"my" represents a novel addition to the text, it does not represent "John's" thought, i.e. KJV is not faithful to the ink flowing from John's quill. Whether the percentage of false manuscripts is 97%, or 94% or 99.99% is utterly irrelevant. KJV does not become legitimate by virtue of the existence of a large quantity of phony Greek copies.

No one is "attacking" aChristian or Steven Avery because the quantity of bibles misquoting John 14:28 and John 10:30 is only 88.8%, rather than 95.2%. What I am criticising is your combined failure to acknowledge, (even now, after spin's demonstration that Tertullian did NOT write "my", as Steven had asserted he probably would,) that our best evidence, at this point, indicates that the ink coming off John's quill contained no "mou" in those two contested passages, notwithstanding half a millenium of maintaining the contrary, in KJV. Whether KJV is based upon 2% or 99.9% of the extant Greek biblical sources, is irrelevant to the question of the accuracy of those sources.

The utility of this thread, in my eyes, is that a hypothesis has been tested, and confirmed, to the best of our abililities, given the limitation of a paucity of original sources with which to work. We still do not know, for certain, of course, whether the ink drying, as John set down his quill, included or excluded the word "mou" in those two passages. What we can no longer argue, from my perspective, is that KJV better represents John's original sentiments, than Sinaiticus/Vaticanus. To me, the evidence is overwhelming that "mou" was an addition to those two passages in KJV, not a subtraction from them in all of the oldest documents.

I am still waiting for someone with "faith" in the integrity of KJV, to provide the date for the oldest extant Greek manuscript which employs "mou" in John 14:28 and John 10:30.

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Avi, the reason Michael Servetus (or Priscillian) was not considered relevant to this thread is that the 'heretic' issues did not remotely concern the Bible text, which is what you had raised (a mass confiscation of unapproved Bibles by authorities) so it was a bit of a diversion. You might want to start another thread if that is your concern.

Avi .. you are simply repeating the misrepresentation above, in another form. There was nothing about probability, from memory I gave a 100% accurate report on an two English translations on the net and warned very clearly that such translations are dicey, especially on small variants like a pronoun/article situation, and mentioned about three reasons they should not be taken at face without checking.

Why not simply acknowledge that what I wrote about Tertullian and Cyprian and the citations was 100% accurate (more than that .. helpful) and not be a false accuser through shifting misrepresentations. (First "presumption" now switched to "asserted he probably would".)

===========================

And my request that you at least attempt to substantiate (or more simply, fully retract) the "blatant falsehoods" accusation stands as well. You have not remotely demonstrated anything even close to one falsehood, much less multiple, much less blatant. Why would you write in such a manner ? While I am not sure if that is considered to be a false accusation and insult of being a liar on FRDB, I surely take it that way.

============================

Note, I am not at this time going any more into the textual and early church writer and internal issues with you. It does not seem that you really have any consistent theories (or even background knowledge) on those issues, or that you are even doing any studies outside how they lie on your one verse.

So I am only concerned with the integrity issues in the quotes above.

Shalom,
Steven

spin

We've seen how Tertullian disagrees with Steven Avery's version of the bible over the issue of the missing mou. We stumbled on the issue by accident, when Steven Avery inadvertently brought our attention to Tertullian (and who knows what other gems are awaiting being rubbed into Steven Avery's face?). So let's go back and look at the situation with the mou generally. Below is a list of places where the mou has crept in.

(It should be noted that the issue is one which caused problems to early scribes because sometimes the text featured "the father" and at other times "my father", which involves adding the word mou after "(the) father". A lapse of concentration might mean the addition or the dropping of a mou. This means that some variation is to be expected not only in the earliest manuscripts but the late copies as well and the more time passes the more likelihood of error.)

In each of the following verses the KJV has the phantom mou:

Verse	Greek attestation	Renaissance translation
Jn 6:65	C 3 correct, Ps	+Wyc +Tyn
Jn 8:28	B	+Wyc -Dou +Tyn
Jn 10:17	** not in TR	-Wyc -Dou +Tyn
Jn 10:30	** not in TR	-Wyc -Dou +Tyn
Jn 12:26	** not in TR	+Wyc +Dou +Tyn
Jn 14:28	Aleph 2 correct, D 2 correct	-Wyc -Dou (ye father Tyn)
Jn 16:10	A	-Wyc -Dou +Tyn
Jn 18:11	** not in TR	+Wyc +Dou +Tyn
Jn 20:17a	P66, A, L, Th, Ps	+Wyc +Dou +Tyn
Jn 20:21	** not in TR	-Wyc -Dou +Tyn

Number + "correct" indicates the generation of correction to the given text,
eg "Aleph 2 correct" indicates the second corrector of Aleph [Sinaiticus].
Rennaissance versions: Wycliffe, Douay, Tyndale.

All of these examples are poorly tested, but what is worse on five occasions even the Textus Receptus doesn't feature the mou, ie the KJV is simply wrong and without any Greek support at all when it was translated. In most of these missing TR cases both the Wycliffe and the Douay translations usually support the TR against the KJV, but we find that the KJV follows the Tyndale translation almost every time, so the error of the added mou can be traced to the KJV editors and translators following the earlier English tradition represented by Tyndale.

Steven Avery seems to have a religious commitment to the KJV of the bible which isn't based on evidence but zeal.


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Without checking whether the "Greek support" assertion is true or not .. the claim of being "wrong" (whether against Tyndale, KJB or other translations) irequires an a priori acceptance of an ultra-literal translation methodology only, one which presumes that "literal" translation mapping of articles and pronouns and plurals and various grammatical elements is always the proper translation.

(Sidenote: Apparently spin would also disallow Latin considerations as well, while the translators looked at multiple texts. However for the purpose of these verses it looks best to simply stay with Greek and English.)

This is a false presumption that afaik is used in no scholarly translation anywhere in the world. And a very poor base from which to accuse.

(Incidentally, I was thinking of bringing this up re: Alexander Souter's translation, since I thought about that a bit last night, however at that point I was in already winding it down here and I saw no need, since the English Holy Bible was translating the Textus Receptus, not Tertullian.)

To give a simple example, virtually every Bible translates Isaiah 53:9 as "in his death" and that could be claimed to be "wrong" against the literal Hebrew.

If spin wants to claim that the only correct translation is that which maps articles, pronouns, plurals, conjunctions, etc directly one-to-one, (e.g without concern with flow and context and the sense of the section and language differences) let spin do so first and clearly, before declaring what is "right" and "wrong". Then we could research and see if that concept is agreed upon as the one proper translation methodology.

What is interesting is how prone to false accusation a person can become if thinking of Bible translation (or any translation, the English Holy Bible and a number of versions is the issue here) atomistically. spin apparently only looks like a geek technocrat, yet he forgets to actually read the full section, or even to speak the English words as a unit. A simple example would be to look at John 10:17 in the context of the verses surrounding . Yes, of course you can check the Greek. (Making it easy to see why a number of translations even in the 20th century agree with the King James Bible.)

Incidentally, I simply pulled that verse out to look at closely, often one verse examined closely teaches you of others, I wanted to take one "without any Greek support" and simply appreciate more excellently the word of God.

John 10:17 KJB
Therefore doth my Father love me,
because I lay down my life,
that I might take it again.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

As the worm wriggles on the pin searching for any means to escape, the issue still stands. Regarding the missing mou either the KJV in many instances doesn't represent any Greek at all or it represents late scribal errors that have crept into many later versions. In either case the KJV has erroneous material, not even following the TR.


spin

spin

Typical deflection.

Typical insult.

Bait waiting for shift...

Here we abandon any pretense of working from manuscripts and rely on the reader's opinions. We are interested in what the text originally said, not what you want it to say.

Vacuous comparison. Do these translations agree in all details with the KJV? This is a meaningless comment, but shows the any-escape-route-will-be-attempted mentality.


spin

spin

Appreciating the word of god involves knowing what the word is. You clearly don't know. You just believe in whatever the KJV says.


spin