Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

-- Hort's supposed reasonable eclecticism and claimed limited use of the two alexandrian manuscripts by spin (and many others). By the time all of Hort had been analyzed (zzzzz) spin would have effectively created the necessary distance from his original claim (which is why I did not bite on diversion attempts a-b-c above) or the folks having the discussion would be on 'vacation'.

(Thereby alleviating spin of any concern about his original blunder from memory... again the irony is that spin's memory is not too bad here, Hort simply hid the nut and bolts aspects of their methodology, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus über alles.)

================================

Incidentally, I'm quite sure there are some posters on this forum who :

a) generally accept the Westcott-Hort approach and text (or its tweaked offspring, the CT)
b) are variant-aware (unlike spin)

Any of those posters are welcome to indicate any verses where they understand that Westcott and Hort actually departed from a Sinaiticus - Vaticanus agreement reading. And if they have an estimate or guesstimate of how many Aleph-B agreed variants there are from the Majority Greek text, they can share away. Better than let the thread end here, perhaps we can work with some numbers and even discuss a few verse examples.

Oh, there will be a few CT cases that will fit the criteria, so we could also look at those, however those would be cases where the CT (as per NA-27) changed the W-H reading.

Again, the critical cases are those where Sinaiticus and Vaticanus agree and a great mass of other evidences, especially including a good majority of Greek manuscripts, disagree. This can be a straight case of two alternative words or phrases, or it could be an omission/addition variant.

Now in some of those Aleph-B agreements there could be substantial other evidences, such as a majority within the Latin lines and the early church writers. If the support is substantial, they would be taken out of the pool, however from my experience this will be a small percent, a finger-count. Then from the remaining pool you are looking for all the cases where the Westcott-Hort Greek text == RV (Revised Version) actually follows the great majority of evidences over Aleph and B.

In round numbers, what will you find ?

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

This comment reflects the fact that you don't know what's involved in either what he has said or the argument itself. Claims mean nothing. He has been badmouthing things for years, yet very rarely does he understand or provide evidence for his positions.

When he provides something it is usually predigested Gill or Burgon or other gems of anti-scholarly bathos, ie others' opinions.

"[R]ight" means having evidence for claims and even someone as biased as you cannot see evidence in his claims.

His "question"? You have misunderstood the events here. Steven Avery has made claims that he has not backed up. As is his usual procedure instead of doing what he should as reasoning person would, he has done his one trick burden shifting. You are just trying to be an accomplice.

Let me let you finish your empty rhetoric. :wave:


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

If there are others here who are not mesmerized by the chutzpah that appreciating two top Bible scholars in our history (Dean John Burgon and John Gill) is labeled "anti-scholarly bathos" -- simply because they so frequently refute modern mishegas in detail by precision referencing and salient and accurate analysis -- remember we have an actual request to see if anybody who :

a) generally accepts the Westcott-Hort approach and text (or its tweaked offspring, the CT)
b) are Bible variant-aware (unlike spin)

Would like to try to look at the spin assertion, his memory from a decade and more ago that he has abandoned on one level, yet steadfastly and adamantly maintained on another (refusing to either support or retract with even minimal actual verse research).

Thanks. The thread still has solid potential, although spin would now like to derail the Westcott-Hort methodology discussion, for obvious reasons.

======================================

Incidentally, in true scholarship circles, the work of Dean John Burgon is still highly respected today (some of the early church writer material has never been published due to the color-coding nature of the work creating publishing difficulty and is in the British Library) and nobody has come to the fore with the Dean's knowledge and understanding of the early church writer references in the last century. Generally the one criticism is that his writing style was 'bombastic' -- meaning that the readers who were duped by Westcott and Hort were concerned for their sensitive ears when the Dean wrote about the 'revision'. And when the Dean gave hundreds of specific references and variants powerfully and clearly and forcefully (something 'spin' will not do for even ONE verse of his own selection to support his own statement !) including both manuscript evidences and the early church writers. The criticism boils down to the simple fact that Burgon knew his textual material, arguably better than any other man in the world at his time (definitely in terms of early church writers), and Dean Burgon knew the falsity of the Westcott and Hort theories. And the Dean also knew by examination and told the reading world of the corruptions of Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Bezae. (Descriptions that have NEVER been countered.) Thus Dean John Burgon spoke powerfully and truthfully on these issues, while those with very limited background try to attack him today.

The truly funny thing is that the attack that came here against Dean John Burgon (out of leftfied) was from a poster whose Bible text claim to fame is:

A) He was surprised to know that Irenaeus and Cyprian had Acts 8:37 references
B) He has "MEMORIES" of reading Hort a decade or more ago

A similar comparison of the attacker (Avery edit) and the historical giant could be done with John Gill, however since he lived way before Westcott-Hort (this thread) and focused more on historical and Hebraic and exegetical and Bible matters rather than textual, is really simply a spin diversion.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

spin

Cutting through the rhetoric... oops, nothing there.


spin

spin

This is not a reasonable response. It tries to boggle with useless information: it doesn't matter how many thousand manuscripts attest to a wording when the earliest manuscripts don't. You need a reason for preferring later manuscripts for the specific example. Why should you? Just which manuscripts exactly would you use as sufficient witnesses to your version of choice? And why these and not the commonly referred to manuscripts?

aChristian, carelessness works both ways. You need something better than a guess. The mou could be reduplicated. Or a scribe might have expected a mou given the frequency in parts of the text of pathr mou and inserted one without thought. You have no scholar reason to choose one over another on stylistic grounds or on age of the tradition.

(And both of you please knock off the sloppy transliterations. There is no epsilon in pathr and note the omega in meizwn.)


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

This is an amazing sight to behold.

spin doesn't even realize that he has contradicted his very assertion that began this thread !

It looks like spin is now claiming that Hort was wrong (if actually Hort had the position described by spin) that Hort should have always favored the two "oldest manuscripts" .. amazing.

spin is also obviously clueless about stemmatics as well, apparently thinking that 1000 hand-copied manuscripts drop out of the sky. Or perhaps .. it all boils down to the infamous Hortian "Lucian recension". spin, did you forget to read Wilbur Pickering a decade ago ? aChristian gave you the recommendation

spin .. thou art a jewel. Actually I am thankful for your participation on this thread, as an example.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

===========================

PS.
For those who do like to think about these matters, here is the update of the earlier part which we will call

SPIN OOPS

Incidentally, in true scholarship circles, the work of Dean John Burgon is still highly respected today (some of the early church writer material has never been published due to the color-coding nature of the work creating publishing difficulty and is in the British Library) and nobody has come to the fore with the Dean's knowledge and understanding of the early church writer references in the last century. Generally the one criticism is that his writing style was 'bombastic' -- meaning that the readers who were duped by Westcott and Hort were concerned for their sensitive ears when the Dean wrote about the 'revision'. And the Dean gave hundreds of specific references and variants powerfully and clearly and forcefully (something 'spin' will not do for even ONE verse of his own selection to support his own statement !) including both manuscript evidences and text lines and the early church writers. The spin criticism boils down to the simple fact that Burgon knew his textual material, arguably better than any other man in the world at his time (definitely in terms of early church writers). And Dean Burgon knew the falsity of the Westcott and Hort theories, refuting decisively such nonsense as the infamous "Lucian Recension" which was at the conceptual heart of the Hort textual theory (spin might not have a memory of that one). And the Dean also knew by examination and told the reading world of the corruptions of Vaticanus, Sinaiticus and Bezae. (Descriptions that have never been countered.) Thus Dean John Burgon spoke powerfully and truthfully on these issues, while those with very limited background try to attack him today.

The truly funny thing is that the attack that came here against Dean John Burgon (out of leftfied) was from a poster whose Bible text claim to fame is:

A) He was surprised to know that Irenaeus and Cyprian had Acts 8:37 references
B) He has "MEMORIES" of reading Hort a decade or more ago

A similar comparison of the Dean Burgon attacker (Avery edit) and the historical textual giant could be done with John Gill. However since John Gill lived way before Westcott-Hort (the topic of this thread) and focused more on historical and Hebraic and exegetical and Bible matters rather than textual, it is really simply a spin diversion. However I highly recommend that John Gill be one of the very first references in many discussions. Often Gill will give the Hebraic background material that is not easily available anywhere else, in sources Christian, Jewish or secular. Lightfoot and Edersheim at times also giving very solid material, and Risto Santala in modern times being a notable additional resource for NT Hebraic background. Along with historians like the late David Flusser. From my studies, among these John Gill had the widest range of background, Tanach and NT and Talmud and Midrash and secular histories. Today's scholars tend to be atomistic and one-dimensional, with little depth of background and understanding. Whenever a modern-day exception arises, on even one article, it is a breath of fresh air.

bacht

A couple of points:

My understanding (and I'm not an academic) is that the variant Greek mss usually agree on basic points of Christian doctrine. I don't care much about verses being re-arranged or dropped or added if they only affect minor details.

Second, the average English speaker today cannot understand the KJV well enough to really grasp what the translators intended. This is a disservice to king James' team, and defeats the whole point of having a vernacular translation.

Protestants are typically more prone to bibliolatry, the adoration of the book itself rather than its message. The Catholic church understood the need for continuing interpretation after spoken Latin died out (the Jews faced a similar situation in the centuries before Christ, and ended up translating the Hebrew scriptures into Greek).

How difficult is it to translate the Golden Rule? The Jewish rabbis already acknowledged that this pretty much sums up the Torah, and Christians haven't added to it.

spin

Naturally spin hasn't. Steven Avery has simply misrepresented what was said to him in order for him to deliver his unsubstantiated claims about Hort. But...

About the only thing amazing here is that Steven Avery is still looking up hoping for a cupey doll from his father for his effort.

For some reason Steven Avery seems to think that the earliest manuscripts must be only two. Does anyone understand why?

"[D]rop out of the sky"! Wish I'd thought of that, but sadly I didn't think of it because it has nothing to do with anything but the fog in Steven Avery's head. Steven Avery's logic is as usual non-existent. He will never put forward a meaningful case why one should generally favor a bunch of late texts over early ones. Just look back and see his attempts to do so. That's right, nothing. He simply hasn't done it.

But I doubt that means that you are actually learning anything with those fingers in your ears.


spin

spin

Very patriotic!


spin

Steven Avery

Hi Folks,

Oops. spin forgot to relate to the fact that his claim about the early manuscripts (even as few as one or two) being more important than 1000 others on the verse being discussed contradicted his lauding of the supposed eclectic manuscripts view of Hort.

John 14:28 (KJB)
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you.
If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father:
for my Father is greater than I.

As pointed out, this is because spin does not seem to have looked at any textual theory at all in a decade or more, and is stuck in a timewarp of his loose and defective memories of Hort.

As for the early manuscripts being two in the mind of Hort, since spin has defacto acknowledged that W-H will take ANY reading agreed upon by Aleph and B, then any other early manuscript (eg. Alexandrinus, Bezae) are only of very limited use - when Vaticanus and Sinaiticus split, or if one of them is missing a verse. Two early manuscripts have absolutely primacy in the W-H text, a point that has been made crystal clear in the thread.

So far we have a couple of different positions from spin.

No support was given to this, and then spin took the opposite view.

spin has to attack me, as above, as the alternative to trying to come to grips with this documented double-confusion. Such attacks might play to some of his audience, but they do not make him look very sharp when his own quotes and memories are right here to see.

===================

The textual analysis world according to spin.

Shalom,
Steven Avery