darstec

Famous or not, I notice Metzger or the writer of this webpage, uses the word probably a lot in discussing the footnote. Did the correcting scribe (and the one to whom the footnote belongs) erase the whole line and rewrite it? Otherwise I don't see how he could fit in the two extra letters especially the wider 'N" and the accompanying spaces in a short space between the "e" and "r".

Besides I think the alteration is more substantive than a slight mispelling. pheron means more like supporting, upholding or bearing up whereas phaneron means making visible, revealing, opening to sight.

So we are back to whether the correcting scribe is commenting on slight mispelling, or in a theological change. I think it is the latter, as I cannot see him getting that upset at this change and not all the others in the manuscript.

S&H

Hi,

I found this info on the Greek manuscript evidence.

Greek Manuscript Evidence
The original language of most of the Old Testament was Hebrew, the language used by the Israelite nation. By the time of Jesus' birth, though, the Hebrew Scriptures had already been translated into Greek (the Septuagint, or LXX), and this translation was accepted by many Jews and by the Christians living at Jesus' time as authoritative Scripture.

The original language of the New Testament was Greek - a particular form called "koine", or "common Greek". By the time Alexander died in 323 B.C., most people in the world were bilingual, and Greek was the second language that everyone used. This "common man's" language was rich in meaning, subtlety, and descriptive power, so it naturally became the preferred language for trade and cultural exchange.

How many copies of the New Testament are available?

1. There are over 5,300 known ancient Greek manuscript copies (MSS) and fragments of the New Testament in Greek that have survived until today.

2. Counting an additional 10,000 Latin Vulgate and over 9,300 other early manuscript versions, this totals over 24,000 surviving manuscripts of the New Testament.

3. Compare this with other ancient historical writings:


Homer's Iliad – 643
Sophocles – 193
Caesar’s Gallic Wars – 10 Greek manuscripts
Annals of Tacitus – less than 20
Plato – 7


http://home.houston.rr.com/apologia/sec5p4.htm

arricchio

I don't understand what you mean by "tainted". You seem to imply that a pure or untainted version of the Bible once existed. But, if there is no God, then no reference to him, or story about him, in the Bible was ever true. You cannot taint something that was false from the outset. You may as well ask when the story of Hercules was "tainted".

As far as I'm concerned there is no difference between the story of Jesus walking on water and the story of Saint Martin and the Pine Tree. They are both fabulous tales about spiritual heroes told and retold by people with a need to believe that their particular spiritual hero is the best. For some reason, an act of gravity defiance always seemed a particularly good way of making that point.

S.C.Carlson

The original ink in Codex Vaticanus had considerably faded by the turn of the first millennium, so a later scribe painstakingly went through and carefully inked over every letter. While doing so, the scribe would make "deletions" by not inking over the letters he wanted to delete. The author of the note was the one who restored the original reading by re-inking the letters ΑΝ in ΦΑΝΕΡΩΝ.

Stephen

darstec

He would have had to re-ink the entire line. While I can't put the original under a microsope with color filters, the inking over does not show a shorter set of words that have been extended in that photograph as far as I can see. And I still think he referred to a theological point.

Have you been able to examine the document up close? Can you make out pheron behind the re-inking? The "AN" in this particular line breaks up the flow of writing uncharacteristicly. As the "A" has a peculiar slant to it, and the "N" is abnormally wide (for this scribe). This particular passage seems to have drawn far greater emotion than it seems called for. Surely this isn't the only place in the manuscript that the original author changed. Are the other changes met with the same acridity?

darstec

Mabye I'm reading this wrong. Are you saying there was an original scribe whom we shall call Scribe A who made the manuscript some time prior the first millenium that wrote phaneron. Then sometime after the turn of the century another scribe whom we shall call Scribe B changed it to pheron? Then this last scribe still later changed it back to phaneron?

If so shouldn't a microscope show at least three levels of writing? It would be interesting to see all three levels. Has this been done and is it illustrated in the family tree of manuscripts?

S.C.Carlson

Actually, he re-inked almost the entirety of the whole manuscript.

By the end of the first millennium all the ink faded, so the original word looked like this: ΦΑΝΕΡΩΝ.

After the first re-inking the word would have looked like this: ΦΑΝΕΡΩΝ.

Yes, this shows that the letters AN had a different re-inker, sort of like this: ΦΑΝΕΡΩΝ.

Stephen

darstec

That appears to be a whole lot of conjecture there. You mean to say the second scribe left whole and obvious gaps in the line? [What might he have done when adding extra letters? Looks like extra umlauts?] From what I can see with only the enlarged photograph, the third scribe didn't exactly "ink over" scribe B's writing (or at least didn't color in between the lines so to speak) because plainly we can see a hint of the earlier faded letters somewhat offset from the two hands. We can also see some very faded lines that are much longer than the ink overs, as well as some shorter lines than the ink over. {But then who can tell whether they belong to scribe A, B, C (or are there more as in the case of Sinaiticus?)} Or at least I imagine that is what I see.

Isn't that the manuscript that one can now buy a exact facsimile of for around $5,000, blemishs, dirt stains and all? {Or am I thinking of Sinaiticus?) You wouldn't happen to have a copy of it, would you?

S.C.Carlson

I'm just giving you the current and uncontroversial thinking about the MS, but it looks I've been assuming that you were more familiar with the basic facts about Vaticanus than you are. Since seeing is believing, this page is probably more helpful than anything I can write: http://www-user.uni-bremen.de/~wie/V...s/general.html

Iasion

Greetings,

The NUMBER of manuscripts has NOTHING to do with their TRUTH. Consider -

* the Iliad - over 600 manuscripts, more than the NT until after 1000AD - does this mean that the Iliad was more true than the NT until about 1000AD, but from the middle ages on, the NT became MORE TRUE than the Iliad?
* the works of 10thC. Yen-Shou of Hangchow - about 400,000 copies exist, about 4000 times as many copies as NT copies at that time - does this make the work over 4000 times MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Book of Mormon - there are millions of copies of this work, many dating maybe a FEW YEARS after the original - would this make the Book of Mormon much MORE TRUE than the NT?
* the Lord of the Rings - there are many millions of copies of this work, (including the original manuscript AFAIK), dating from very soon after its writing - does this makes the Lord of the Rings of vastly more true than the NT?

No.
It should be obvious that the NUMBER of copies attesting to a work gives no support to the truth of the contents - yet apologists repeatedly bring this point up as if it proves something.


Iasion