Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Duvduv · 08-05-2012, 07:09 AM

Very good points, PhilosopherJay.
Indeed, Pinkvoy's argument would be stronger if he could show that the scribe made other errors in various words that he corrected. But only in one single word, and this one? What say you, Pinkvoy?

pinkvoy · 08-05-2012, 09:01 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi Pinkvoy,

What you are saying that is that the Christian scribe who copied this passage got the spelling of the word "Christian" wrong. You are saying that In the only known instance of the spelling of the word "Christian" in the only known manuscipt of the only known text that you wish to use to prove the existence of Christians in 64 CE, the Christian scribe spelled the word "Christian" wrong.

"Christian" and "Christ" would be the precise words that a Christian scribe would be most familiar with. The fact that in the whole book of tens of thousands of words, it is the only mention of Christians would certainly make the Scribe sit up and take notice and be most careful copying this word.

We can say because of its rarity in the manuscript this was the word that the scribe was most likely to get right and was least likely to make an error on, and yet he got it wrong while getting the other words in the passage, at least, all right. We have one unbelievable fantastic coincidence here.

Second, we know from Tertullian and other writers that apparently, some Roman writers did speak of someone named Chrestus who had followers.

Thus you would have it that not only did the scribe make a spelling mistake, he made it so that it matched an actual name that we know about from Suetonius. This would not be the case if he got any of the other letters wrong. He could have miswritten any of the eleven letters in the word Christianos wrong. and come up with a word meaning nothing. He could have seen the iota as an Alpha or Beta or Gamma or any one of the 20 other letters of the Greek alphabet. Thus the chances of this error as opposed to any other single spelling error was 23 X 11 or 1 in 246.

Thus we have two fantastic and unbelievable accidents

1. The scribe somehow managed to get the one word he was most familiar with and most should have gotten right to be wrong.

2. He somehow managed to make the mistake and just the mistake in such a way that it matched a known name from Suetonius.

By Occam's razor or any other logic, we have to conclude that the scribe got the original word right and the "correction" was the change away from the original.

One could say that this being simply a scribal error is almost as likely as Jesus curing a blind man with his spit around the same time as the Emperor Tiberius did the trick.

If there were other manuscripts that did not have the change we could dismiss it, but because there is not, there is simply no way that this can be seriously taken as proof of the existence of one single Christian existing in 64 C.E.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinkvoy

This author
http://www.textexcavation.com/docume...hrestianos.pdf

points out that it could be a scribal error, notes there is a dot above the "e" which suggests attempt by the writer/scribe to correct his spelling mistake and points out that in that manuscript, does not have the name Chrestus but Christus with no attempt to correct that spelling (i.e to Chrestus)

Occam's razor.

the manuscript in question does not contain both Chrestianis and Chrestus but a corrected Chre/istianos and Christus with an "i"

simplest explanation is that he mis-spelled chrestianos and attempted to correct the misspelling, and then correctly spelled Christus.

he did not attempt to change christus to chrestus

spin · 08-05-2012, 09:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnoldo

Philo also alludes to some disturbances in Rome leading Cladius to take action against certain jews in Rome.

Quote:

. . But he never removed them from Rome, nor did he ever deprive them of their rights as Roman citizens, because he had a regard for Judaea, nor did he ever meditate any new steps of innovation or rigour with respect to their synagogues, nor did he forbid their assembling for the interpretation of the Law, nor did he make any opposition to their offerings of first fruits.

Did you make this up, arnoldo?

N/A

Duvduv · 08-05-2012, 09:58 AM

Pinkvoy, I don't think you are replying to the points made by Philosopher Jay. It appears that you are simply restating your original contention.

outhouse · 08-05-2012, 10:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Duvduv

Pinkvoy, I don't think you are replying to the points made by Philosopher Jay. It appears that you are simply restating your original contention.

true

and he had to open up a second embarrassing thread on the same subject.

he has to ignore everything ever written about the possible man jesus in order to use his imagination to tie in his poor guess

PhilosopherJay · 08-05-2012, 10:11 AM

Hi pinkvoy,

I am not sure that you understand Occam's razor. It is not that the simplest explanation is always right. It is that given two explanations that explains all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be right. Between an explanation that explains all the facts and a simpler one that doesn't, the explanation that explains all the facts is the better one. Your explanation does not explain 1) just how the writer could have gotten the word "Christian" wrong of all words he was copying and 2) it does not explain how it just happens to be such an error that, with a 1 in 246 chance, it ends up of being an error that names the man Suetonius suggests was a leader of Jewish Rebels in Rome a decade after Jesus allegedly died according to the four gospels. Even if we only consider this second fact, your explanation of scribal error has a .4% (1 in 246) chance of being right and mine (non scribal error, but correct copy of original) has a 99.6% chance of being right. Adding the first problem, the unlikely chance of a Christian Scribe misspelling the word "Christian," the 99.6% chance goes much higher.

Try this thought experiment. I am an American. I am copying a very long book from say 1610 and it has only one mention of an American in it. This may be the only book where the word "America" is used at such an early date. What are the chances of me misspelling it "Amerecan" versus the chances of the word being spelled that way in the original text?

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinkvoy

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopheJay

Hi Pinkvoy,

What you are saying that is that the Christian scribe who copied this passage got the spelling of the word "Christian" wrong. You are saying that In the only known instance of the spelling of the word "Christian" in the only known manuscipt of the only known text that you wish to use to prove the existence of Christians in 64 CE, the Christian scribe spelled the word "Christian" wrong.

"Christian" and "Christ" would be the precise words that a Christian scribe would be most familiar with. The fact that in the whole book of tens of thousands of words, it is the only mention of Christians would certainly make the Scribe sit up and take notice and be most careful copying this word.

We can say because of its rarity in the manuscript this was the word that the scribe was most likely to get right and was least likely to make an error on, and yet he got it wrong while getting the other words in the passage, at least, all right. We have one unbelievable fantastic coincidence here.

Second, we know from Tertullian and other writers that apparently, some Roman writers did speak of someone named Chrestus who had followers.

Thus you would have it that not only did the scribe make a spelling mistake, he made it so that it matched an actual name that we know about from Suetonius. This would not be the case if he got any of the other letters wrong. He could have miswritten any of the eleven letters in the word Christianos wrong. and come up with a word meaning nothing. He could have seen the iota as an Alpha or Beta or Gamma or any one of the 20 other letters of the Greek alphabet. Thus the chances of this error as opposed to any other single spelling error was 23 X 11 or 1 in 246.

Thus we have two fantastic and unbelievable accidents

1. The scribe somehow managed to get the one word he was most familiar with and most should have gotten right to be wrong.

2. He somehow managed to make the mistake and just the mistake in such a way that it matched a known name from Suetonius.

By Occam's razor or any other logic, we have to conclude that the scribe got the original word right and the "correction" was the change away from the original.

One could say that this being simply a scribal error is almost as likely as Jesus curing a blind man with his spit around the same time as the Emperor Tiberius did the trick.

If there were other manuscripts that did not have the change we could dismiss it, but because there is not, there is simply no way that this can be seriously taken as proof of the existence of one single Christian existing in 64 C.E.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

the manuscript in question does not contain both Chrestianis and Chrestus but a corrected Chre/istianos and Christus with an "i"

simplest explanation is that he mis-spelled chrestianos and attempted to correct the misspelling, and then correctly spelled Christus.

he did not attempt to change christus to chrestus

pinkvoy · 08-05-2012, 10:15 AM

As Bart ehrman pointed out, even Christian copyist copying the Gospels by hand make scribal errors, either out of fatigue or boredom.

Occam's razor - the manuscript attempts to correct the e by making it into an i, and it spells Christus with no attempt to correct the spelling to Chrestus.

same scribe writing it.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi pinkvoy,

I am not sure that you understand Occam's razor. It is not that the simplest explanation is always right. It is that given two explanations that explains all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be right. Between an explanation that explains all the facts and a simpler one that doesn't, the explanation that explains all the facts is the better one. Your explanation does not explain 1) just how the writer could have gotten the word "Christian" wrong of all words he was copying and 2) it does not explain how it just happens to be an error that with a 1 in 246 of being the name of man Suetonius suggests was a leader of Jewish in Rome a decade after the alleged Jesus allegedly died. Even if we only consider this second fact, your explanation of scribal error has a .4% (1 in 246) chance of being right and mine has a 99.6% chance of being right. Adding the first problem, the unlikely hood of a Christian Scribe misspelling the word "Christian," the 99.6% chance goes much higher.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

Quote:

Originally Posted by pinkvoy

the manuscript in question does not contain both Chrestianis and Chrestus but a corrected Chre/istianos and Christus with an "i"

simplest explanation is that he mis-spelled chrestianos and attempted to correct the misspelling, and then correctly spelled Christus.

he did not attempt to change christus to chrestus

spin · 08-05-2012, 11:24 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi pinkvoy,

I am not sure that you understand Occam's razor. It is not that the simplest explanation is always right. It is that given two explanations that explains all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be right. Between an explanation that explains all the facts and a simpler one that doesn't, the explanation that explains all the facts is the better one. Your explanation does not explain 1) just how the writer could have gotten the word "Christian" wrong of all words he was copying and 2) it does not explain how it just happens to be such an error that, with a 1 in 246 chance, it ends up of being an error that names the man Suetonius suggests was a leader of Jewish Rebels in Rome a decade after Jesus allegedly died according to the four gospels. Even if we only consider this second fact, your explanation of scribal error has a .4% (1 in 246) chance of being right and mine (non scribal error, but correct copy of original) has a 99.6% chance of being right. Adding the first problem, the unlikely chance of a Christian Scribe misspelling the word "Christian," the 99.6% chance goes much higher.

Try this thought experiment. I am an American. I am copying a very long book from say 1610 and it has only one mention of an American in it. This may be the only book where the word "America" is used at such an early date. What are the chances of me misspelling it "Amerecan" versus the chances of the word being spelled that way in the original text?

Inventive, Jay, but nothing more. The word "christian" appears three times in the new testament, Acts 11:26, 26:28, & 1 Peter 4:16. In Sinaiticus each time it is spelt with an eta not a iota, ie "chestian" not "christian". This means that your logic is no response to the manifestation. Christians can spell the term contrary to your expectation. And your analogy with "American" is trivial and false. A better way of looking at it regards the word "nuclear"... had to get that wrong you might think, but American presidents seem to revel in pronouncing it "nucular". Couldn't happen frequently, right?

At this stage I have offered a conjecture in the past as it is the simplest explanation: the scribe who produced the relevant Medicean manuscript may have been a Frenchman. The current French term for "christian" is "crêtien", derived from earlier French "crestian" which was used at the time, so an absentminded "e" could easily slip into the text through interference from the mother tongue. How did "Peter" creep into Gal 1:18 when the original appeared to have "Cephas"? Isn't this an absentminded substitution of the translation? As Pinkvoy indicated, scribes make mistakes.

N/A

arnoldo · 08-05-2012, 12:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by arnoldo

Philo also alludes to some disturbances in Rome leading Cladius to take action against certain jews in Rome.

Did you make this up, arnoldo?

The quote as I stated was from Philo but I should’ve specified it was from his work entitled Legatio ad Gaium. Jerome Murphy-O'Connor, in his book entitled Paul a Critical Life, argues that Philo was criticizing Claudius’s actions indirectly by bringing up Augustus’s record towards the Jews in Rome. Google books has a preview available on page 13.

Another interesting possibility regarding Philo was that his philosophy was used against the Apostle Paul forcing Paul to argue against philonic precepts. Murphy-O'Connor writes;

Quote:

. . .language used by the group at Corinth reflects Philo's distinction between the heavenly man and the earthly man. All the key elements just mentioned appear in two passages of a single work by the Alexandrian philosopher, De Sobrietate, 9-I I and 55-7. Hence, we are entitled to assume that other elements integral to Philo's understanding of the heavenly and earthly man also formed part of the religious outlook of the spirit-people, and that Paul has these latter in mind when he argues against such points.

Duvduv · 08-05-2012, 01:38 PM

I think we have to be very careful in this discussion of the French. To my knowledge there has never been a word "Christien" in French. The accent mark used over the e in "Chretien" in French is called circonflexe (circumflex) and is used over an e, a and o to substitute for as, es, os, as is words such as
forêt (forest), Côte (coast) and bâtard (bastard). It is also used over a u but not for the same reason.
In the case of the letter i we find it used in some words and verbs, but not in a word preceded by several consonants as CHR in christian. Otherwise French would have developed the word "CHRITIEN" or "CHRITIAN" with the accent over the I, or even CRITIEN or CRITIEN.

Quote:

Originally Posted by spin

Quote:

Originally Posted by PhilosopherJay

Hi pinkvoy,

I am not sure that you understand Occam's razor. It is not that the simplest explanation is always right. It is that given two explanations that explains all the facts, the simpler one is more likely to be right. Between an explanation that explains all the facts and a simpler one that doesn't, the explanation that explains all the facts is the better one. Your explanation does not explain 1) just how the writer could have gotten the word "Christian" wrong of all words he was copying and 2) it does not explain how it just happens to be such an error that, with a 1 in 246 chance, it ends up of being an error that names the man Suetonius suggests was a leader of Jewish Rebels in Rome a decade after Jesus allegedly died according to the four gospels. Even if we only consider this second fact, your explanation of scribal error has a .4% (1 in 246) chance of being right and mine (non scribal error, but correct copy of original) has a 99.6% chance of being right. Adding the first problem, the unlikely chance of a Christian Scribe misspelling the word "Christian," the 99.6% chance goes much higher.

Try this thought experiment. I am an American. I am copying a very long book from say 1610 and it has only one mention of an American in it. This may be the only book where the word "America" is used at such an early date. What are the chances of me misspelling it "Amerecan" versus the chances of the word being spelled that way in the original text?

Inventive, Jay, but nothing more. The word "christian" appears three times in the new testament, Acts 11:26, 26:28, & 1 Peter 4:16. In Sinaiticus each time it is spelt with an eta not a iota, ie "chestian" not "christian". This means that your logic is no response to the manifestation. Christians can spell the term contrary to your expectation. And your analogy with "American" is trivial and false. A better way of looking at it regards the word "nuclear"... had to get that wrong you might think, but American presidents seem to revel in pronouncing it "nucular". Couldn't happen frequently, right?

At this stage I have offered a conjecture in the past as it is the simplest explanation: the scribe who produced the relevant Medicean manuscript may have been a Frenchman. The current French term for "christian" is "crêtien", derived from earlier French "crestian" which was used at the time, so an absentminded "e" could easily slip into the text through interference from the mother tongue. How did "Peter" creep into Gal 1:18 when the original appeared to have "Cephas"? Isn't this an absentminded substitution of the translation? As Pinkvoy indicated, scribes make mistakes.

N/A

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08-05-2012, 07:09 AM	#61
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	Very good points, PhilosopherJay. Indeed, Pinkvoy's argument would be stronger if he could show that the scribe made other errors in various words that he corrected. But only in one single word, and this one? What say you, Pinkvoy?

08-05-2012, 09:58 AM	#64
Duvduv Veteran Member Join Date: Nov 2011 Location: USA Posts: 4,095	Pinkvoy, I don't think you are replying to the points made by Philosopher Jay. It appears that you are simply restating your original contention.

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