darstec

Is any copy of the Diatessaron carbon dated earlier than any manuscript that does not contain Mark 16:9-20? I'm not sure if that is a trick question or not. I don't think there are many early manuscripts/fragments that actually have been carbon dated. Most dates, I think, rely on paleography and handwriting styles can be faked, rather easily in fact.

judge

Like most here I have over time come to see that most of what i was taught about the bible is not correct. I was after a time persuaded by the arguments for peshitta primacy.

I Like to post here because the standard of poster sis quite high and a lot of religious bias is not present here.
I could be wrong but at present I think they seem to be right.

Naturally when the passage in John was raised I noted that the peshitta provides an explanation and we went from there.

As for the diatessaron, as it's name implies it was made from four gospels. Therefore it was probably made from the peshitta if the peshitta is earliest.
this is backed up by the Arabaic copy.
That there are some "extra bits" could just be the result of the original editing

Julian

I think I listed enough reasons in my OP.
No one seems to seriously consider the option. It seems to me that they have good reason.
While it is true that Syria was a very early outpost in christianity, possibly the earliest, you have yet to prove that the CoE have any better claim than the RCC to any kind of tradition. I see no evidence other than geographical coincidence.
Denied by the experts. You will have to prove it, with some passages that we have both in the Peshitta and the Diatessaron.
Sure, their liturgy might be old, but how old? And what is the evidence?
Take your time, there is no rush.
Rabula seems to no longer figure seriously in anyone's theory as a pivotal point, just as a rock in the stream, showing up in the flow of textual tradition.
My source for Aphrahat is not Metzger but W. Petersen and T. Baarda.

Julian

judge

Metzger and others commonly cloud this issue by referring to an non existent entity called the "Syrian Church".

There was no such entity. there were various communities which spoke Syriac but they were not united, but divided.

The main two were that community which became the SOC and the other which became the COE.

My claim here is that the earliest attestations from the COE are exclusively the peshitta, word for word.

I will provide evidcne for this, you are free to do the same, if you think the so called experts have any.
You might be surprised when we look at the details

.Agreed

.It will be interesting to look at the details.

andrewcriddle

All actual manuscripts based on the Diatessaron are late (all after 500 CE mostly long after 500 CE.) There are early church fathers who quote from the Diatessaron but the actual manuscripts of their works are late

Evidence for the actual text of the Diatessaron is hence always cumulative rather than based on a specific reliable manuscript.

In the case of Mark 16:9-20 there is widespread support for inclusion in Diatessaronic texts both Eastern and Western and IIUC no evidence of omission.

Andrew Criddle

judge

This proves nothing. Alexandrain mss might be thge oldest because the climatic conditions favor the preservation of old texts.
This is circular reasoning. You are assuming to be true that which you wish to demonstrate.
In fact it is even worse because as I mentioned before the earliest wiynesses we have of any Syriac version is from Aphrahat and the COE liturgy.

This is not an argument but rather an assertion, with no supporting evidence.

Why would we expect to have any?
In fact we have no fragments or partial versions of the peshitta. Damaged and old mss were copied and destroyed. The greek churches did not do this and so we have many old fragments.
Prior to the discovery of the DSS the oldest Hebrew bible was in greek as well.

No I have meade it clear we are ddealing with the eastern peshitta.
You are referring to the variants with respect to the peshitto.
Again you are relying on western scholars who cloud and distort the delineation.


Yes becaus the OS is a revision of the peshitta. this argument works both ways.

Yes, this evidence is against your idea. I am not sure why you bring it up?

OK I am almost certain this is false :devil1: . Can you please provide and example?
And please don't truncate the reading leaving out the parts that are close to the OS and including the small portion that is close to the OS.

Thanks again Julian, I realise you are just relying on what you have read, but actual hard evidence is going to be very very difficult to provide.

judge

Sorry I got my wires crossed here but the server went down for over an hour so i could not edit. I am not "almost certain" about this but I am sceptical and intertested in.

1. Actual evidence in the form I ask for above.

2. What conclusions you draw from this.

3. Where do you place the liber graduum.

Roger Pearse

Note that the Syriac text of the Diatessaron is itself lost, and the text is known to us from modified Latin and Arabic translations.

However during the 1950's, many pages of a Syriac manuscript of Ephraim Syrus's Commentary on the diatessaron (previously only known from an Armenian translation) came to light through the illegal antiquities market; a further leaf followed; and in the 1980's the Chester Beatty library acquired a further 41 leaves of the manuscript, leaving only some 30 leaves unaccounted for. The ms. is now Chester Beatty Syriac Ms. 709.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

judge

However as I mention here a copy of the diatessaron was made by a COE monk from Syriac into Arabic, making it fairly easy to know the text.

The diatessaron was never rooted out from the persian churches even though it was not used there liturgically.

Unfortunately as I mention in the thread I linked to Metzger and other western scholars cloud the issue and imply the diatessaron was rooted out from all "syrian" churches.

It is fairly clear that it was not rooted out Persia which was not under the jursdiction of rabbula.

Huon

On another site, I read this :
http://www.aramaicpeshitta.com/Arama...ck/murdock.htm
This is Dr. James Murdock's translation of the Western Peshitto (which is virtually the same as the Eastern Peshitta, besides the addition of 2Peter, 2John, 3John, Jude and Revelation) from 1852.

Note: Unlike Younan and Lamsa, Murdock was not an Aramaic-speaking Assyrian, nor a Peshitta primacist.

My question : Is really the Western Peshitto (with an O) virtually the same as the Eastern Peshitta (with an A), besides etc... ? Perhaps some small differences between "western" Aramaic and "eastern" Aramaic, if this makes sense ?