Julian

I do not. Dr. Robinson has many excellent qualities and much useful knowledge. His contributions have been quite handy to me over the years. He is also a good source of data in a variety of areas. All in all, a definite plus in the balance sheet. I still disagree with his conclusions in many areas but that's fine. That's science, after all.
I pointed out that I didn't expect Steven to change his mind since he has precluded that option for himself. I am also sorry I got carried away since I got a Mod warning and got edited (yes, Steven, I got slapped by the other mods, too. The rules apply evenly, imagine that). [Edited myself before I get edited by the mods again. ] Let's just say that I love reason and my patience is running out dealing with people who seem not even to understand what the word means. I am trying not to be angry and disappointed with the human race as a whole. Probably a good thing I am going on vacation right about now. I am bringing a stack of Greek grammar books, however.

Oh, yeah. Shameless plug: http://www.julian.textcrit.com/?page_id=13

Julian

Julian

Boy, is your face red! Go back to the thread where this whole silliness started and check out my first reply to your. Notice the part of my post where it says <edit>. I got edited by a moderator (Damn you, Doug! ). I got sent a warning. I guess you are wrong.

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And also notice how the folks like Julian never seem to acknowledge and learn. Even something as simple as "oops, I was wrong on how I represented Dean Burgon" or "oh, ok thanks for correcting me on the Dean's views on the KJB" or "oops, I was very wrong to make a big harumph about the proper term 'Traditional Text' ". Nope, such a simple and proper response does not come forth.

Wrong again. I have been corrected a number of times during my time here at IIDB. I love being proven wrong because it means that I learned something, that I grew in knowledge and as a human being. My self-esteem, my self-worth, does not reside in my being right. It resides in my actions and my knowledge. Being wrong doesn't hurt me in the least. Just the opposite, every time I am wrong I grow stronger and better because my knowledge grows. I am willing to accept that maybe there is a marked difference between Burgon and his society and that I am wrong. I shall read one of Burgon's book and see if I change my mind. I will even ask you for a recommendation. If I can only read one book by Burgon, which one should it be? You tell me and I will read it. Afterwards, I will tell you what I think and why.

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Its almost as if they go out of their way to create a HPE (Hostile Posting Environment) towards believer sharing. Various issues are really a bit uncomfortable to be shared and discussed in a cordial level playing field - so lets be sure to jump in with strident noise, diversionary and draining harangues, goading and attacks. (To be fair, Julian actually believed his own mishegas about the Dean for awhile, although his earlier 'fallacy' post was utter nonsense of the type I am discussing.) And maybe we can get in a dossier 'Warning' to get to a ban if the responses are vibrant and dynamic and edgy. We can get the Christian poster on the grey area words and really shut him up, knowing how the 'administration' works.

I am sorry that you do not understand what logical fallacies are. I don't care if you are a believer. I have a huge respect for Ben Smith's opinion, as well as that of Stephen Carlson and Andrew Criddle. Even Roger Pearse, when it comes to manuscripts and related topics (sorry, Roger but you and I too far apart in other matters ) I make sure I pay attention to him becuase he shows good factual knowledge in those areas. They are all believers, yet I listen to them and pay attention because they know much more than I do in many areas. You add nothing other than opinion and tendentious assertions. How is this useful? How is this supposed to convince anyone? You are blind to your own methods. I suggest that you look to yourself before looking to others for any discontinuity.

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His last post seemed to have a tone of realization that he was in unknown waters, looking for the straits.

Always true for someone with the wisdom to know what he doesn't know. And, more importantly, to know when he thinks he knows but really doesn't. I know that I need to know much more than I do. I know that I know next to nothing.

Julian

spamandham

No he isn't. He's claiming superiority based on historical grounds according to his 7 tests of truth, none of which are unreasonable for his time period. What you are doing is tantamount to calling Newton an idiot for failing to give us relativity.

Steven Avery

Hi Cheerful,

Largely true, the Dean was not a King James Bible defender, in the way of the folks like Thomas Holland or William Grady are today, or even was Edward Hills. The Dean spoke powerfully against the revision because it substituted a corrupt underlying text. That was the key issue.

However as I point out above Dean Burgon was not 100%-TR, there are some verses where he he took a non-TR approach. One example was Bethebara/Bethany where some of the research (Madaba, the Burkitt article on the Old Syriac) was yet to come forth and the Dean was not amicable towards the view of Origen. And there is another verse that is more well-known where he did not take the TR-view, if that is defined by what was used in the KJB, mostly Bezae and Stephanus. Overall I am hoping to determine more definitively the verses where the Dean differed from the TR text.

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Originally Posted by spamandham Quote: Originally Posted by Julian Let's start with some of the opening blurbs. Right away we see where this is going. He is claiming divine inspiration for the supremacy of the KJV. No he isn't. He's claiming superiority based on historical grounds according to his 7 tests of truth, none of which are unreasonable for his time period. What you are doing is tantamount to calling Newton an idiot for failing to give us relativity.

Hi spam,

Nor are they at all unreasonable for today, since the only real difference is that a lot of folks get indoctrinated into the Westcott-Hort confusions and can't think clearly. Dean Burgon offers a consistent view, with a textual analysis that is sensible.

Look at Julian, a perfect example, he even has some sort of webpage about textual criticism and he didn't even know the basics about Dean John Burgon, one of the true textual giants. Not even the basics. Amazing.

And from his own abject ignorance of the subject, to his embarrassment he starts a thread accusing one of the true geniuses of the textual arena of being an 'idiot'. A man whose analysis of patristic evidences remains today the gold standard.

(Yes usually there is some tweaking because of the century-plus that has gone by. You will find one scholarly article on the web that tries to critique his fairness in evaluating the patristics but if you read it closely and check the examples you will find the critique is very mild and even a bit strained .. however that does not mean it should be ignored. Personally I have found one important case where the Dean went overboard in claiming an evidence. However the flip-side of that is that often there are additional evidences that have come to light supporting the Traditional Text.)

Ok, now, after he has the rants hopefully out of his system, Julian is looking to read and research and study and learn. Very good. Probably start with the 'The Causes of the Corruption of the Traditional Text' if you can overcome your horrendous response to the term 'Traditional Text' and you don't yell and whine 'fallacy' at the top part of every page you turn.

(Oh, I am quite aware of what are real fallacies, btw, and what is the strained type of convoluted attempt that you came up with to divert and falsely accuse. Remember, you even were so confused that you called using the term 'Traditional Text' a fallacy, thus accusing even Bruce Metzger as well as the Dean and my post.)

You will find basically that Dean Burgon offers cogent thinking as to how the variants arose, with voluminous detail and wonderful analysis. In fact, ironically in a sense, Bart Ehrman made his own name by taking Burgon's concepts and falsely reversing them, which is why there is lots of interesting comparison.

Personally I am only coming up to speed on the Dean myself, being helped by the fact that so much has recently been placed on the web. That is why I developed the web-bibliography I posted this month, for myself and others. Thus, although "The Traditional Text of the Holy Gospels vindicated and established" is the precursor to "Corruption" and together they make a set, I do not know whether someone as originally hostile as yourself is better off to read "Vindicated" first. It likely is not necessary but others may be able to say more clearly. I do have one web-friend (Marty Shue) who is, at least by comparison, an expert on the Dean's writings, much more familiar, but I don't think he has graced IIDB with his presence.

As for Erasmus, I notice you don't mention his voluminous research and correspondence over many years looking at manuscripts throughout Europe. Nor how his textual work was tweaked and confirmed by the textual analysis of others such as Bezae and Stephanus and the Elziver brothers. Even the Complutensian Polyglot is in essence this type of confirmation, working with an independent set of manuscripts, although afaik a good scholarly comparison is wanting. Anyway, clearly your understanding of the history of the Textus Receptus today is about on a par with your understanding of the writings of Dean John Burgon.

Oh, I do hope you understand that when manuscripts are homogeneous, as generally are the Greek Byzantine manuscripts, the needed sampling size is very small. Simple probability. The situation is very different when looking at manuscripts like Vaticanus and Sinaiticus and Bezae, any resultant text will be guesswork only, since they often disagree with most all other manuscripts and even with each other and often with the patristics. That is why a true textual analysis will consider such manuscripts as marginal at best, the most unreliable manuscripts.

<off topic discussion of moderation issues removed>

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Chris Weimer

I disagree, the parallel you drew isn't there. For Newton, relativity hadn't been discovered yet, but there were already decent methods of textual criticism by Burgon's time, thus the reason he constantly bemoans Westcott and Hort.

Jack the Bodiless

"His time period" was the latter half of the 19th century. Anyone attempting to defend any form of Biblical inerrancy during this period must have been spectaculary clueless: the falsehood of Genesis, in particular, was common knowledge by then.

Steven Avery

Tears to shreds would be a more apt phraseology.

spamandham

Admittedly, I don't that much about Burgon. I wasn't aware he argued the Bible was inerrant. From what little I have read, he seemed merely to be arguing that the KJV was the most thorough and accurate version of the Bible.

Julian

Go back to post #5 in this thread and tell me, based on the quotes I present there, how they could be explained as anything other than divine inspiration/providence/whatever you want to call it.

His tests of truth are illogical, unscientific, and designed to bring about his conclusion. Reason was alive and well in his day and age, he is merely being tendentious.

Newton did not have available to him what Einstein did. One discovery builds upon another. Newton's discoveries were remarkable for their time. Einstein could not have defined relativity without Newton's work. Reason, however, one should expect in any age.

Julian

Steven Avery

First, Julian you should try to realize that "Divine Providence" is the historic view of the Bible, as from the Reformation authors like William Whitaker and many confessions.

And clearly believers in the Bible are a smidgen more likely to embrace the concept of Divine Providence than those who 'believe' there is no God. If your objection is that the Dean believed the Bible as God's word, he would likely give you a hearty amen, with a smile and a response along the lines of "guilty as charged, by the grace of the Lord Jesus". What you are kvetching about is that Dean John Burgon was not a Richard Dawkins or Bart Ehrman type of agnostic/atheist doing the textual analysis. Anybody could have told you that.

And if you think true believers look to atheists and skeptics and infidels to tell them what is the inspired and preserved Bible, again maybe we should discuss a bridge for sale. Or if you believe that modern textual criticism is a true science aptly applied to the Bible, maybe two bridges. This unruly 'discipline' is a mass of confusions and convolutions, as far today from having any idea what is the original Bible text as it has ever has been. In fact, it is actually designed to never see or recognize God's pure word (if such exists .. which I believe with 100% conviction).

Here is a longer quote from the Dean expressing his view of the Authorship and preservation of the Scriptures.

Revision Revised, p. 8:
http://tinyurl.com/3c3spj
http://www.puritanboard.com/showpost...7&postcount=31
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/Cri...ts/dbs2695.htm
"The provision, then, which the Divine Author of Scripture is found to have made for the preservation in its integrity of His written Word, is of a peculiarly varied and highly complex description. First� * by causing that a vast multiplication of copies should be required all down the ages, *beginning at the earliest period, and continuing in an ever-increasing ratio until the actual invention of printing *He provided the most effectual security imaginable against fraud.. True, that millions of the copies so produced have long since perished; but it is nevertheless a plain fact that there survive of the Gospels alone upwards of one thousand copies in the present day." [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, pp. 8-9]. "

You will see that he has rather a nuanced position. You may agree to any degree with his overall position, his genius and insight shines when he discusses the overall theories of the text and the individual variants.

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Originally Posted by Julian His tests of truth are illogical, unscientific, and designed to bring about his conclusion.

There is far more evidence of this problem with Westcott and Hort than anybody else. At least one spoke of the Textus Receptus as "vile" before they were active in the new textual 'revelations' (corruptions) that they trumpeted. They were involved in occult spiritualist dabbling. And from that background they started to develop their errant theories, which the Dean tore apart quite nicely, which is quite easy to see when you actually read the history.

Many of their tests were nonsensical and often they were actually designed (consciously or not) to create a highly inerrant version. And they would manufacture theories almost ad hoc, without any real evidence, to support their untenable positions, the classic one being the supposed Lucian recension.

In contrast, the Dean is actually one of the most consistent writers I have seen, and truly can be given the title 'eclectic' in a respectful and positive sense. His ideas and sense of consistency led him to reject some King James Bible and Textus Receptus verses (wrongly I believe) yet he always did so with and spunk and intellectual integrity.

So really you have the whole issue upside-down. However you painted yourself in a corner with your improper and unfortunate approach to the issue of the writings and views of the textual genius and giant, Dean John Burgon.

Shalom,
Steven