Solitary Man

No! The play isn't merely a play, it's a world for Classicists to peer through. This means that our understanding of the Greek world differs greatly from what we thought we knew, and moreover it calls into question the reliability of Classical transmission, since we know from other sources that Euripides wrote such and such play.

A fundamentalist, maybe. But who cares about them? Why get worked up over crazies? Tell a paranoid schizophrenic that they aren't coming to get him, and you also better run for cover. Moreover, how is it significant? Do you not think that there are also Greek pagan revivalists whose worship can also come from a Greek play? Give them a while, and they too can become as fundamentalist as Christians (I've actually seen a couple, and dare I say don't even try to correct their gods-awful grammar).

Many fundamentalists I know accept that the Bible was composed by humans.

It's not even relevant, though.

No! Roger, and might I add I as well, holds the position that those who deem a text worthless because there were changes adhere to a worthless position themselves - obscurantism. We all know there are some changes.

If you think this is true, than you've never done any text critical work on the Classics.


Do you have any case studies on the "huge motivation" compared to other ancient documents?

Or those could have been the best 18 out of 95. You don't know that. You're guessing here, and making guesses with very little evidence, I might add.

These four happen to be older (except one or possibly another) than all the other gospels we have. And besides, you did an inaccurate parallel. On the first one, you said survive, and on the second one, you said survive in our Bibles. Surely you cannot compare.

Somehow I don't think you've dived deep into church theological much.

Solitary Man

Sorry Joe, but what you've reproduced fits what Andrew wrote perfectly.

Bart Erhman: "Assuming that Mark's Jesus cried out "why have you forsaken me," why would some scribes have changed it to "why have you reviled me"? Surely it's not unrelated to fact that Gnostics were using the verse to support their separationist christology."

From the above, point by point:

1. Mark's Jesus said "Why have you forsaken me?"
2. Some scribes changed it to "Why have you reviled me?"
3. Those scribes changed it because some Gnostics were using 1. to support their own "separationist Christology".

That's exactly what Andrew said.

thedistillers

Why are we having this discussion, since no one actually seems to hold that position?

This is certainly not Ehrman (who was called 'a little man') position that ancient texts are worthless if there were changes.

If we all know that are some changes, why then calling obscurantists those who claim we can't know for sure what the original says? It is a corollary!

If you know for sure what the original of any given ancient text says, please inform us of the methodology you use to arrive at such a strong conclusion. I am eagerly waiting.

Solitary Man

"If we all know that are some changes, why then calling obscurantists those who claim we can't know for sure what the original says? It is a corollary!"

Not knowing 100% is far different than saying the text is unknowable. We have a matter of practicality. The message survives, and we're 99% sure of that. There's always a 1% chance, but even in the hard sciences that 1% won't go away.

Solitary Man

I went back to reread the thread, and caught with my eye what Roger may have taken offense to (and just a couple of posts later my suspicions were confirmed).

Ninjay: "Actually, he's of the opinion that because we don't have the original texts, we can't know with certainty what they said."

There needs to be a qualifier here. While we cannot know with absolute certainty, we can know with reasonable certainty, given our evidence. Others have since pointed out that Dr. Erhman does not think that the texts are "unknowable", i.e. all of it is called into question. Some here, like aa5487 (or whatever the numbers are) have proposed such an absurd position before, and he's not alone here.

However, neither I nor Roger make the claim that we know with 100% certainty what the originals said. So, please cut out the strawmen. They're getting annoying.

Roger Pearse

Just thinking laterally here, do we have a list of books where we *do* know with 100% certainty what the originals (what they?) said? After all, all you people who think you have read the Lord of the Rings can chop that up now; the first edition by itself is different to subsequent ones (eyewitness experience).

We know that the process of publishing printed books tends to introduce changes all by itself. Typos anyone? Furthermore, what gets printed and what the author originally wrote are not always the same.

Now if this is the case today, how much more in the past.

So I wonder whether a demand is being made of ancient texts that few texts in the history of the world would pass?

Not committed to this one -- just floating it and seeing if anyone can see the point I'm thinking of.

aa5874

Your statement about my position is completely FALSE. You CANNOT point out to me any absurd position with respect to this thread.

Equality7-2521

This from wikipedia:

The pericope is not found in its canonical place in any of the earliest surviving Greek Gospel manuscripts; neither in the two 3rd century papyrus witnesses to John - P66 and P75; nor in the 4th century Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The first surviving Greek manuscript witness to the pericope is the Latin/Greek diglot Codex Bezae of the fifth century. Papias (circa 125 CE) refers to a story of Jesus and a woman "accused of many sins" as being found in the Gospel of the Hebrews, which may well refer to this passage; while there is a certain reference to the pericope adulterae in the 3rd Century Syriac Didascalia Apostolorum; though without any indication as to which Gospel, if any, then contained the story.

Until recently, it was not thought that any Greek Church Father had taken note of the passage before the 12th Century; but in 1941 a large collection of the writings of Didymus the Blind (c313- 398) was discovered in Egypt, including a reference to the pericope adulterae as being found in "several gospels"; and it is now considered established that this passage was present in its canonical place in a minority of Greek manuscripts known in Alexandria from the 4th Century onwards. In support of this it is noted that the 4th century Codex Vaticanus, which was written in Egypt, marks the end of John chapter 7 with an "umlaut", indicating that an alternative reading was known at this point.

Jerome reports that the pericope adulterae was to be found in its canonical place in "many Greek and Latin manuscripts" in Rome and the Latin West in the late 4th Century. This is confirmed by the consensus of Latin Fathers of the 4th and 5th Centuries CE; including Ambrose, and Augustine. The latter claimed that the passage may have been improperly excluded from some manuscripts in order to avoid the impression that Christ had sanctioned adultery:

Certain persons of little faith, or rather enemies of the true faith, fearing, I suppose, lest their wives should be given impunity in sinning, removed from their manuscripts the Lord's act of forgiveness toward the adulteress, as if he who had said, Sin no more, had granted permission to sin.[3]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pericope_Adulter%C3%A6


It would be nice if anyone in the know to comment on the accuaracy of this.

Solitary Man

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Solitary Man

Spot on, Roger. The expectations here are unrealistic, but that just comes with the ignorance of the field abroad. You can easily tell who has done their homework, and who is just spiteful.