Toto

There's a recent thread that all the usual suspects participated in:

Trinity error and Jn 10:30

and an older one: The Trinity and early church fathers

There's a thread here on Isaac Newton, Bible Critic

jgibson000

You did both. But more importantly, if you actually read what he wrote to me (and I had indeed forgotten that he had :blush, he not only gave evidence that Origen supports in more than one place the reading found in Sinaticus et al. But quite contrary to what you seem to think, he said nothing that

(1) can be construed as a critique of the accuracy of Tischendorf's apparatus. Indeed, what Tischendorf says about Origen and 1 Tim 3:16 is not the subject Hooker is dealing with or that I asked him about. It's what is found in Biblia Patristica vis a vis Origen and 1 Itm 3:16; or that

(2) can be taken as showing that Tischendorf was wrong here, since Hooker did not address in any fashion whatsoever what is found in the citations from Origen that Tischendorf adduces vis a vis 1 Tim 3:16, i.e., Kommentare zu Matthäus = MAT.COM A 70 (164,6) and Iobum homiliae = IO.COM 2,210 (93,14) In fact, he said he still had to look up these two texts up!

It is wholly disengenious for you to suggest otherwise.

For the record, here's the exchange (which is archived here under the heading "texts from Latin Origen")

Steven Avery

I would be interested if Newton actually offers anything of real substance on either the 1 Timothy 3:16 or Johannine Comma issues. Something that hasn't been discussed later in a more accurate presentation.

We had the comment on one of the threads just mentioned ..

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showpost.php...42&postcount=9
"According to Newton, this verse first appeared for in the third edition of Erasmus's (1466-1536) New Testament."

If this was really his view then Newton was very ill-informed.

The unitarians and other non-Trinitarians are actually split a bit on the Johannine Comma. Newton would be the side that looked upon it as a Trinitarian addition while others have considered it more as Sabellian or oneness ammunition that was largely dropped out of the Greek line by Trinitarians.

On 1 Timothy 3:16 it is a stretch to consider the majority Byzantine reading as having any bearing on Trinity doctrine considerations - but clearly it is pertinent to the Deity of Messiah discussions.

In fact one verse discussion began when Jeffrey linked those two .. his idea of Paul not having a high Messiahology (that coming much later) ... with his claim that "God was manifest in the flesh .. " was a late addition.

If "God was manifest in the flesh ... " is actually Pauline it is difficult for the ebionite or unitarian or Arian. Another method to try to make the verse non-Pauline is to posit a later author for Timothy.

Shalom,
Steven

jgibson000

Yes. It's Biblia Patristica. And is "not show up" what he said?

Tiscehndorf gave no refernce to Origen's Homily on Luke. And the citation of Origen's commentary on Matthew is to MAT.COM A 70 (164,6) [GCS 38] not MAT.COM 10,16 (21,8) [GCS 40?]

So go ahead and do so.

But the issue isn't what your conclusions about 1 Tim 3:16 are. It's your claim that there are no attestations to the Siniaticus reading of 1 Tim 3:16 in the writings of church fathers who wrote prior to the date of Sinaticus.


Where do you get this figure? And why should we trust it? Is your source for this figure reliable? Has or she actually examined the Greek and Latin texts of the works of the early church writers in which (as he/she claims) these "references" appear, or are his or her claims based solely or primarily on English translations of those texts? What is his or her criterion for detecting "references"

Are you sufficiently competent in Greek and Latin to be able to assess the validity of the claims this source makes about who makes said references and whether they are what he/she says they are?

JG

jgibson000

I did? Please show me where.

And is your criterion for determing whether someone in the early church held a "high Christology" whether they held the belief that Jesus was God, especially in the Nicean/Chalcedon sense of this belieif?

JG

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Agreed that Mischa only discusses Biblia Patristica, leaving the search for the Tischendorf Matthew reference incomplete. And that he only says they don't speak to the Theos question, leaving BP unscathed.

Corrections accepted, thanks.

So did you ever find the reference you were looking for ?
MAT.COM A 70 (164,6).
You placed in bold this reference that you looked for but have never found.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000 (2) can be taken as showing that Tischendorf was wrong here, since Hooker did not address in any fashion whatsoever what is found in the citations from Origen that Tischendorf adduces vis a vis 1 Tim 3:16, i.., Kommentare zu Matthäus = MAT.COM A 70 (164,6)

Aren't you taking the location from Biblia Patristica and applying it to Tischendorf here? What you have for Tischendorf is ..
"die Kommentare zu Matthäus. iob: „in Iobum homiliae"
Are are assuming that since the first BP reference does not apply the second one must be his reference?

Since Tischendorf and UBS/NA has so many demonstrated problems in the 1 Timothy 3:16 section I would not take this Matthew reference without real text support.

That being said, Origen can be counted as the one supported early reference against ...
"God was manifest in the flesh ... ".
To really conclude though it would be far better to see all his citations in context.

Now, Jeffrey, please tell us

Every additional church writer evidence the first four centuries that YOU claim is solid and strong evidence for a pronoun reading against Theos.

Not every writer that Tischendorf mentions in one manner or another.
That you claim is clearly a strong evidence.

You might also reply about Jerome.
As I indicated "I dunno" is better than your method ... (snip).

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

There were a lot of posts on bibexegesis and fundebate. I didn't search them all, I remember you placed a high Messiahology concept as Nicean and not before. I mention that here and notice that in response you only start discussing whether there are ECW citations of 1 Timothy 3:16 with Theos before Nicea.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Fundebate/message/16258
One of the ironies of the whole discussion was that it began with Jeffrey claiming that "God in the flesh" was not Pauline, in fact he claimed it was Nicean (on bibexegesis). Out of that came the 1 Timothy study... The irony is that Jeffrey never acknowledges that these quotes from Hippolytus and others strongly mitigate against his "Nicean" claim, even if they were not taken from 1 Timothy 3:16. Oops.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bibexegesis/message/5682
But nowhere does Paul equate Jesus with God or use the incarnational language of GJohn.

At that time you were pretty clueless about the evidences.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/bibexegesis/message/5855
And in the only time that any Church father quotes this section of 1 Tim
3:16 -- Didymus Caecus in his Commentarii in Psalmos 73.8 -- he tells
us that it is Jesus not God who is being raised up.

You were omitting (among many others)

Apostolic Constitutions 4th century (represents earlier tradition)
Gregory Thaumaturgus; 4th Century:
Chrysostom (380 AD),
Diodorus of Taurus (370 AD), quotes Paul's actual words asserts them in Paul's epistle to Timothy.
Gregory of Nazianzus (355 AD),
Gregory of Nyssa (370 AD). (over 20 references)

Jeffrey, would you agree today that you were wrong to claim that Didymus was the only church writer to quote 1 Timothy 3:16 ?

One point .. Unlike many Christian apologist modern textcrits you did show an awareness of the importance of the verse variant. They often put out the idea that it makes no real difference between the Theos or pronoun readings.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000 And is your criterion for determing whether someone in the early church held a "high Christology" whether they held the belief that Jesus was God, especially in the Nicean/Chalcedon sense of this belieif?

That Messiah is God manifest in the flesh, yes ... definitely not in the Nicean/Chalcedon sense.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Steven Avery

Puttings aside that you are misquoting what I actually said in every aspect ..

I have written clearly here that the Origen citation is legitimate and agreed that my statement from a year plus ago needed correction to ..

"lots of nice evidence for "God was manifest" before and contemporaneous to the first manuscript evidence against. "God was manifest.." is far better attested in the ECW than the various alternatives."

So I asked you for any other solid evidences for your position from the church writers in the first four centuries other than Origen. Still waiting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000 Where do you get this figure? .

By counting the references.
In many cases I have the quotes, in others I have a reference.

This is reasonably up-to-date.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Messia...c/message/9925
1 Timothy 3:16 - God was manifest in the flesh

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000 And why should we trust it? Is your source for this figure reliable?.

You were welcome to critique the references on Fundebate, and now here or other. You tend to come up with strange arguments such as trying to discount the reference based on the doctrinal interpretation of the author ('he was referring to God the Son').

I don't remember offhand that any have been taken out of the plus category that I had set up from the web discussion (I had taken one out from my research) but I am always willing to improve by an informed critique. If one or two of the twenty or so should be removed I will gladly do so, and inform others.

Quote:

Originally Posted by jgibson000 Are you sufficiently competent in Greek and Latin to be able to assess the validity of the claims

Many of the references go back to Dean John Burgon (and an earlier work). Most of the references past the 3rd century look to be so clear that it is unlikely that Greek or Latin nuance will change their position as a reference. Most of the ones through the 3rd century have been discussed in detail and any objections noted and considered. e.g. I made sure that Ignatius is only placed in the category of 'allusion'.

If someone with Greek and Latin expertise and research time publishes a work with all the references (similar to the book that Michael Maynard did on the Johannine Comma) I will probably buy it. Meanwhile my list is likely the most comprehensive and accurate on the Net.

Jeffrey, I do not want to slight the against side. So I am trying to find if there is anybody other than Origen that I will put in the first four centuries as a strong and clear early writer against. You have any nominations ?

And how about the Jerome reference you gave ?
Where is that ?
Is the Vulgate doing double-duty ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Chris Weimer

Mischa Hooker did consult Origen "Interpretatio Latina" and found exactly the passage cited by Tischendorf; he did not indicate that he found problems with Jeffrey’s references, only that some texts were not accessible to him. He says that Praxeus misunderstand him, that he was not challenging Jeffrey's citations in any way.

I'd like to quote a part of his email:

And finally, a great link he sent me: http://www.th.vu.nl/~krans/Wettstein...%20330_335.pdf

Enjoy!

Steven Avery

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chris Weimer Mischa Hooker...Origen’s Commentary on Romans that the verse did *not* start with “God” but with something resembling “quia”; and “quia” itself does not make sense in context, hence “qui” (much closer, palaeography-wise, to “quia” than “deus”) is 99% certain. Hence, Origen’s reading does confirm hOS rather than QEOS.

Thank you Chris.

So Origen's Commentary on Romans, translated to Latin through Rufinus, has a reading that does not match up to any Greek text. A difficult situation.

How do the translators of the Commentary on Romans handle this ?
Interesting to know what is done in the recent Thomas P. Scheck translation.

And would it be possible to get the full section (2-3 sentences) either in straight translation, or in Latin and then take it for translation? That would give a fuller context of the actual words for consideration before any proposed emendation.

Looking at it without glasses such a situation could have a few root causes. Perhaps Origen was adding the idea of 'because', perhaps Origen's Greek text was defective in a way with which we are unfamiliar. Perhaps the Latin translator accidentally added a letter or two, in which case you get into the realm of alternative mishap theories. Or perhaps Rufinus or a copyist made his own change. How one comes to a 99% out of any of this is a bit strange.

Does the same situation exist in Job ? Is the Origen Latin translation consistent in a unique reading ? What does he have in any other references that might relate, if any ? That would all be important in deciding whether 'quia' was a translator's accident from something or reflects Origen's Greek text or his own ideas.

If one really wanted to judge the evidentiary value it would be necessary to have every section where Origen has "manifest in the flesh" that appear to relate to 1 Timothy and look them over. Since there are at least four variants in the Greek and now yet another given in an early commentary a more critical look is necessary before jumping to any '99%' conclusions. What has been written about this in scholarship circles, anything other than the short Tischendorf remarks ?

It is interesting how the text is changed. On 1 Timothy 3:16 in translation almost all the translations (of the NA/UBS text, not the historic Received Text) change the text from what they claim is the underlying Greek. The NIV, NAS, NRSV, RSV, Holman, ESV, NET all use a reading "he" that they do not claim is the actual text (ie. it does not match the UBS/NA claim for the text). It is rather astounding.

Why ? The supposed original is too difficult and unacceptable. "who" or "which". The Greek grammatical and contextual difficulty of these readings brought over raw to English is too grating. So the translators simply change the text to a very lightly-attested reading in order to avoid making the absurdity of their actual Greek text too obvious to the readers. The great majority of whom simply do not know that the translators have deliberately changed the text in translation, rather radically. Then they can try to convince themselves that the difference doesn't really matter much (between "He" and "God").

How did the supposed original text get so difficult and absurd ("who" or "which"). That is built into modern textcrit with its presuppositions of a highly errant and difficult text (in this case usually 'smoothed' in translation.. similar is done with the ending of Mark where the textual idea that it is not really Bible is effectively hidden from most readers).

From the point of view of modern textcrit we must have difficulties and errors built into the text and we can find them in a few oddball and scribally-corrupt ancient manuscripts. So we will consider those couple of manuscripts the dream team. Then we can foist these manuscripts fabricated from the dream team on the public as "reliable" even though the scribal level of the underlying manuscripts is poor.

The presuppositions are that the original is corrupt and errant and the original is represented by the weird couple of disagreeing corrupt manuscripts. And that these were smoothed by later scribes who successfully changed the great majority of texts to a much smoother and harmonious and consistent and beautiful text. They also took out lots of logical and geographical errors that were in the original. A beautiful and accurate Bible could not be the original, under textcrit presuppositions.

That is why the early church writers are so helpful here. In a case like 1 Timothy 3:16 they give very strong testimony for the historical majority reading, even in the same time period as the few early manuscripts that are the main support for "who" or "which". Clearly even in that period "God was manifest in the flesh .. " was widely attested. So was this some great Antiochan-Lucian conspiracy (Jeffery has even tried to make it a Nicean alteration) that managed to change 95% of the Greek manuscripts to a sensible text ? Or was "God was manifest in the flesh.." the historic reading, well attested in antiquity and carried forward intact to the majority Byzantine text ?

The simple conclusion is the latter.
One must put on lots of baggage and glasses for the former.

A skeptic and opponents of the NT in general prefer the errant duckshoot text - so they will embrace the presuppositions that create an errant text. They want to argue for the errors as original. Obviously that helps their cause if the original text is forced to be errant, awkward, ungrammatical, inconsistent, weak in clarity and doctrine.

Shalom,
Steven Avery