Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Here is more spin wisdom. Two posts worth ! Anything to avoid his own clear assertions.

Clearly spin cannot have a real discussion on textual matters.

spin
1) Very first assertion is a disaster,
2) Read Hort over a decade ago
3) And apparently nothing else
4) Works from his "memory" of what he read 10 and more years back
5) Does not know NT variants
6) Does not know early church writer evidences
7) When they are in front of him, he handwaves
8) His basic approach is an immediate contradiction (see below)
9) Refuses to retract a "memory" nor does he try to research the memory

And spin says he wants to have a deep conceptual discussion ?

First things first, spin.

Try to make your contradictory quotes, the first of which is factually totally deficient re: Hort (you absolutely refuse to even give one verse in support) into some sort of sensible position.

spin .. were you even remotely familiar with the textual views of Dean John Burgon, Wilbur Pickering, and Professor Maurice Robinson or Edward Hills ? If you reject all their work, tell us on what basis, before anybody wastes time trying to explain the basics to you. Have you actually read any material from any of them ?

In short: Why not study a bit first, before you demand this and that.
If you have rejected their views after careful study, then why demand they be repeated ?

What is your view of the Lucian recension ?
Do you accept the recension as historical and have a proposed date ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

I'll wait for you to start justifying your views based on evidence. We've already wasted a lot of space here with your avoidance of your duties and my calling you on it.


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Bye spin.

Come back when you answer the post above. Point to point.

(Note: I am laughing about the spin tactic. You just prove everything in the world to my satisfaction, convince me that everything I read 10-15 years ago and vaguely remember, is wrong, and then maybe I will consider taking responsibility for my own assertions today !)

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

Waiting for content.............

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

spin, since you lost every battle above, and know diddles about the topic, why not simply take the General Westmoreland approach ..

declare victory ... and move on out !

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

But not for yet more contentless rhetoric....

avi

First of all, thank you Toto, for splitting this thread, I think it is quite fascinating.

Secondly, to Spin and Steven, please focus your energies on the topic, remembering Toto's admonition.

To Spin: I have remained mired in chapter 3 of William D. Mounce's excellent textbook of Biblical Greek for more than 8 months, so please understand that I am not pretending to challenge your statement:umm.

I apologize for having not previously understood Muncie's explanation of the difference between omega and omicron. I was transliterating both as "o". I will try to remember that omega is transliterated as "w", and pronounced as in "wholly", and not as in "knot", the pronunciation for omicron.

Why is "tau" transliterated as if written "theta"? The Greek letter, in all versions is tau, not theta. Is "tau" pronounced "th" when followed by "eta"? Is this just a custom, or is there some basis for this peculiar method of representing in roman letters the Greek symbol "tau"?

Here's my two sources:

oti o pathr mou meizwn mou estin

Why does the Latin Vulgate version follow Sinaiticus/Vaticanus, and not the "Byzantine majority"?

avi

Thank you, bacht. I appreciate your perspective. I acknowledge, however, that I do not share your opinion, vis a vis "minor details.", e.g. whether or not the additional "mou" in John 14:28 represents a mere scribal error, either by insertion or deletion, rather than a far more serious manifestation of a tumultous, bloody confrontation, in which lives were lost, children orphaned, and wives turned into widows.

Let's put it this way. Suppose you want to make a copy of the New Testament, in the year 450 CE. How would you go about it? 150 years earlier, you could not have done it, for the book did not exist until after Nicea. Such a book was extraordinarily precious. It would cost a fortune to reproduce it. But wait, how did one procure the raw materials, kept under lock and key by the authorities? In other words, making a copy was not just difficult, it was politically suicidal to produce a copy counter to the "official" version. There would be little hope of survival, if the Emperor's soldiers came to hunt you down, for committing heresy, by changing the official text.

Where did some laxity first appear in the old Roman Empire? I claim, it came in the "middle east", at the time of Mohammed. I think that the additions currently found in the "Byzantine Majority", trace their origins not to the Greek versions held in the archives of the Vatican, but in the Churches of Constantinople in the years 600-1000. By that time, the influence of Rome/Alexandria had lessened. Therefore, I envision the addition of "mou", not as a trivial, banal, or "minor" matter, but as a theological imperative for those forces, hostile to Rome, seeking independent interpretation of murky theological questions. I am quite certain that wealthy patrons who could afford to bribe the officials to procure the necessary materials, then rent the space, and hire the scribes, would also have hired a few proof readers!!!! So, I don't think the additional "mou" represented a casual scribal insertion error. Nor do I credit the scribe, fearing for his life, with a conscious decision to delete a word in the original before him.

Wow. lots of good points, thanks Roger.

1. I don't think we have any idea what language(s) Jesus spoke. Of course, if he were really "god", then, he would have been omniscient, and accordingly would have spoken every human language, with equal facility. (Though, of course, in that peculiar circumstance, one would certainly wonder why Jesus did not take the time and trouble to write even one word....) The New Testament is silent on this question. However, since those books are entirely written in Greek, it would seem reasonable to me, to assume that Jesus, (if he existed, a nontrivial assumption), spoke, read, and wrote Greek too. Josephus, another Jewish rabbi, as Jesus was reputed to have been, was both fluent and literate in Greek. Why wouldn't Jesus, supposedly of the Davidian line, i.e. kingly, therefore a prince, have enjoyed a superior education, including both Hebrew and Greek?

2. I am sorry to write that I completely disagree, most emphatically, with your conclusion. Perhaps you are correct, and I am wrong. Won't be the first time, nor the last, if so.
Absolutely not. No possible way. There isn't a scintilla of evidence that leads us to ANY kind of certainty at all. We are absolutely, UNsure of what went on, two millenia before the present day.

In genetics, Roger, loss or addition of a single base pair in the genome can result in catastrophic consequences for an organism. Here too, the "level of variation" is HUGE. It is enormous, representing a cataclysm of unbelievable suffering and sorrow. Millions of people, Roger, have died, many having been tortured, because of a difference of opinion on the meaning or interpretation of this or that bit of text in the New Testament. Textual veracity is not a trivial matter, with an inconsequential "level of variation", lacking consequential "significance in doctrine". The interjection of "mou", and comparable changes, undoubtedly led to bloodshed. We don't know about it, it is not documented anywhere, but that does not mean it did not happen.

What have you read about another one of my heroes, Roger, the Spaniard Michael Servetus:
Greek master, Theologian, Physician, and Anatomist par excellence, a guy who taught medicine at the University of Paris, who translated biblical passages from Greek to Latin, and a guy who opposed infant baptism, and the childish notion of trinitarianism.

The Catholics of course, hated him, and the Spanish Inquisition ordered his arrest and execution by burning at the stake, (Roger, did the Catholics gain some wealth upon performing these ceremonies of infant baptism???) however, Michael had gone to Vienna, and sought protection then by fleeing to Geneva, ruled in those days by Calvin. Oops. The Calvinists, the Lutherans, and the Catholics were all united on this one: Servetus was indeed burned at the stake, not by the Inquisition, but on orders from Calvin. Do you really believe Roger, that insertion of "mou" representing such {an insignificant} "level of variation" is inconsequential?

spin

The normal transliteration in ascii for theta is a Q/q. I use the capital, but I've frequently seen the other. The eta is transliterated in ascii with an h, so that pathr is pi alpha tau eta rho.

Good question when Jerome does tend to follow the "Byzantine" texttype.


spin

bacht

I can't read Greek so I'm stuck with English translations. I agree with your basic point that various hands have probably added or subtracted material in the canon for their own purposes.

My original comment was in regards to the debate about mss families used for the NT translations. If the variants are not about doctrine (God, Christ, salvation) then I don't think they're worth arguing about. The DSS have shown that the Hebrew text was fluid until the early 2nd C.

This depends on who you think Jesus was. I'm just assuming the obvious, that Jesus was a Galilean Jew of the 1st C. If we discard this then anything goes.

Taking her by the hand he said to her, "Tal'itha cu'mi"; which means, "Little girl, I say to you, arise."

Mk 5.41