remez

Long post............. more time then I have now.
Thanks for the challenge. Hopefully I can get back to it today.
Have a great day.

-Jay-

The take-away here, remez, is that any claim that depends on a comparison to the original autographs is necessarily hamstrung from the start, since we don't have them. All claims regarding comparisons to the original autographs are speculative.

We can legitimately make comparisons between extant mss, but that's it.

Now, if you want to keep trying to put this number in Metzger's mouth, cite some page numbers and we'll discuss why you're misinterpretting what he said.

regards,

NinJay

Roger Pearse

I think this veers perilously close to the idea that we have no real idea what the autographs of ancient texts said. This is not so, and to assert it consigns the classics to the rubbish bin.

It is certainly the case that we have the autograph of no literary text prior to the 13th century. But we can see how texts change in transmission from the manuscripts that we do have. If we see that a transmission over 5 centuries displays little worse than typos and the odd lacuna, are we not justified in supposing that the same probably obtains during periods when we don't have manuscripts to examine? If we see that there are periods such as the 9th and 12th century when restoration occurs, when scholars gather manuscripts to restore lacunas and fix damage, are we not justified in supposing that this has occurred before?

I really feel that we need to oppose pretty strongly any form of argument relating to ancient texts which suggests that texts that have managed to make the long and hazardous journey down the centuries have, in fact, for practical purposes, not done so.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

-Jay-

No, Roger. It says, simply, that since we don't have the originals, we can't legitimately make comparisons against them. When we do make such comparisons, we're speculating.

While this argument does, in point of fact, generalize to any ancient work, it doesn't say, nor does it imply, that there is no value to the exemplars that we do have. To suggest it does is to overstate the matter.

Obviously, we can make some suppositions about what restorations might have involved, and those may be very good suppositions, but we're not justified in claiming a "99.5%" fidelity to the originals. We simply don't have a warrant to do that.

regards,

NinJay

Roger Pearse

I see no practical difference between this (which seems to be simply a reiteration) and what I posted, tho.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Toto

As page numbers? :Cheeky:

Please provide an exact citation.

JoeWallack

JW:
As Vernon said to Bender in the classic The Breakfast Club, "That's what I thought." Lecture it is.

Regarding the OP Assertian:

We need to rightly divide related issues here:

1) What exactly is the Text under examination?

2) Quantifying known textual Variation which is relatively objective.

3) Speculating as to Unknown textual variation which is relatively subjective.

Regarding the starting point 1) above there is no Uniform text to consider so any related discussion of the OP would first have to identify a Text to use. The dominacal critical apparatus is Nestle-Aland. But simply moving forward to questions 2) and 3) above, without first qualifying 1) is Misleading because it Implies that the quality of the TransMission of the Christian Bible can be easily and fairly compared to the Transmission of ancient documents in general. Related important qualifications are:

1) There was no original Christian Bible.

2) None of the Gospel authors intended their Gospel to be included in a Canon with other Gospels.

3) "Matthew" and "Luke" were specifically intended to correct "Mark".

4) The Christian Bible includes entire letters that Christianity now confesses are Forged.

5) NA is largely a product of Christian clergy so it is Biased (understates Variation as to quantity and quality).

6) The variation within Christianity as to what makes up (so to speak) the Christian Bible varies significantly:

1 - Early Christianity = No Canon

2 - Marcion Christianity = Version of "Luke" & 10 Pauline Epistles

3 - Catholics = Apocrypha

4 - Mormons = Book of Mormon (surprise)

7) The Christian Bible version of The Jewish Bible. Here the textual variation increases exponentially.



Joseph

The Word According To [Garp], (Mork), Mark. Significant Editing Of The First Gospel

Johnny Skeptic

In my opinion, it all gets down to the intent of the writer. In court trials, as far as I know, the intent of the defendent is always a primary, if not the primary issue. If a God exists, and wanted to use written records as a primary means of communciating with humans for thousands of years without any changes, it is reasonable to assume that he would not have inspired anything remotely resembling the Bible, especially if spending hell in eternity without parole was at stake, and especially since even Christians themselves have fought wars over which side has correctly interpreted the Bible.

It is an utterly absurd notion that God wants people to hear the Gospel message, but only if another person tells them about it, but that is what Christians must claim. Do you consider the spread of the Gospel message to be more important than the spread of a cure for cancer? If you invented a cure for cancer, and were able to make the cure available to everyone in the world who had cancer within one week, would you do so, or would you choose to allow the existing means of distributing cures for diseases to distribute the cure, which would result in needless suffering? Does God consider the spread of the Gospel message to be more important than the spread of a cure for cancer?

Now Roger, why in the world would a God use copies of copies of ancient texts in order to communicate with people when he could easily telepathically or verbally communicate the same message to everyone in the world, thereby eliminating a lot of confusion, and more effectively achieving his primary goal of trying to convince people to love and accept him? Did God use written records to communicate with Adam, Eve, Noah, Abraham, and early native American Indians?

Various authors of the writings of antiquity had various motives. Since the Bible is the subject of this thread, it is God's motives that are the issue in this thread, not the motives of the authors of the other writings of antiquity.

Consider the following:

http://www.independent.ie/education/...0.html?start=2

Whether or not all of the copies that we have of Shakespeare's writings accurately represent the originals, we can be reasonably certain that whatever the originals said, Shakespeare, or someone else, wrote them for entertainment purposes. If a God inspired the Bible, why did he do so?

ksen

What? What is the evidence for that claim?

What!? And what is the evidence for that claim?

Equinox

Could A Stable Flux provide more detail here? :

I’d like to get the audio version, but wasn’t able to find it from the information given.


Next, Roger wrote:
Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

No, it doesn’t. The classics are still valuable as great human achievements even if they are significantly changed by humans after their first writing. Thus, a little uncertainty over their original words isn’t important – the text we have can be seen to be a great human achievement if our human judgment shows us that the classic in question is, say, fun to read, or emotionally moving, or poignant. (see the shakespere point in an earlier post). Even for historical reasons, if we are trying to find historical facts, and a text is, say, 90% correct, then that’s pretty good – compared to 0% if we lack that text.

That’s the exact opposite of saying something is the word of the eternal and supreme God. Such a claim means that any change, even of a jot or tittle, is of major importance. For a human to change the word of God and pass it off as God’s word should enrage anyone who really thinks this supposed God exists. And we are so far beyond just a jot or tittle. We have thousands of differences, and even if those are mostly sorted out, then we have the problem of the dates. Our oldest scraps of any text are much later than the supposed first writing. Looking over the dates, it looks like our earliest scrap of a given verse isn’t until around the start of the 3rd centruy for about 70% of the NT, around mid-3rd century for 50%, and it’s not until the middle of the 4th century, with Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, that we have even one version of each verse! Quotes by church fathers help this a little, but not a lot – especially since those don’t agree either, and often don’t say what (which letter, etc), they are quoting. Sure we have lots of late evidence. That shows that we have a pretty good idea of what most of the text that existed in the proto-orthodox church in the 4th century said.

Plus, we see over and over that Christians re-wrote sections to say what they wanted them to say, and that this was more and more common the earlier one goes back. Add that to the fact that we don’t know what changes were done before our earliest scraps (see above), and it’s clear that there were decades, even centuries, of change that we have no way say with any certainty what every line of those originals said.

For instance, take a given chunk of the text. Say, Mt chap 6. It’s supposed (based on some decent evidence) to have been written around 75 CE. Then if significant changes were made to that section (some by pre-catholics, some by Gnostics, some by thomasines, etc), then each major church would have altered versions that reflect their own views, and none may reflect the original. Then, by 250 CE, all are stamped out except the pre-catholics, who change the text some more because their doctrines have changed a bit. By the 4th century, things are pretty stable, and our earliest copy of Mt 6 dates from then. If this story were the case, then the evidence would look exactly as it does today, and our version of Mt 6 is very different from the original. That same type of progression can be applied with changes to every book in the NT.

The upshot of this discussion to me is that this is yet another sign that everyone already knows that the original copies of the NT books aren’t the word of God. Non-Christians obviously know it and are fine with that. Christians, however, act as if those aren’t the word of God, but still say they think they’re the word of God. Think of how you would act if you really thought these were the word of God – and you saw the history that we can’t know it for sure what part of them we still have. You wouldn’t spend all this effort trying to convince others (and yourself) that it’s “99.5%” accurate, but instead would be working out how to get closer to the originals, all the while taking each line in the (say) KJV with a big grain of salt. Christians would certainly learn Greek, and have copies of the oldest manuscripts that exist. Yet – indifference.

Why? Because Christians want to show that their church’s final doctrinal product (after years of cultural evolution and intentional change) is what is really their “word of God”, and the text of the NT is only important to them insofar as it can be used as a tool to advance their chosen doctrine. Thus, the refrain of “the Bible is inerrant” – because claiming to have some divine basis for one’s doctrine helps to push it forward.

What are we pretty sure of? This:

We have a pretty good idea of what most of the NT text that existed in the proto-orthodox church in the 4th century said.

Note the caveats:
pretty good idea of We have a lot of textual variants, most of which can be sorted out.

most of the NT text Some verses are more sure than others, but none are certain.

in the proto-orthodox church Nealy all our copies are from people with one set of doctrines, who would have all made the same or similar changes – thus much of the agreement between variants is likely due to similar direction of the changes.

in the 4th century We have very little evidence from before the 3rd century

That’s pretty good for a classic piece of literature, but that’s terribly poor if one is saying that this is the message of an all perfect, all powerful, and all loving God – and there’s a huge difference between the two.

Equinox