Roger Pearse

Not that I can see, I'm afraid. Sorry!

Are you quite comfortable appealing to presuppositions which are NOT part of the argument but supposed to exist elsewhere...? Um.

I am unable to see how this is anything but a reiteration (unless I am missing something), and I would respond as I did the first time.

The idea that texts are 'not available' to us if they have copying errors, if Ehrman really thinks that, disqualifies him from any role in text criticism whatever, in my humble opinion.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Ray Moscow

Roger, copying errors are not the troublesome ones, since these can often be sorted out.

It's the purposeful changes that bothered me, when I still believed in biblical inspiration.

sky4it

Roger: Greetings

yeah, thats what I said, that they had neither Chapter or verse subheadings.

I am aware of that. Sorry I didn't make that more clear. The idea is that one "deletes" the italics word, and it causes one to consider more the passage as to its meaning. The emphasis is by deletion of the italics word, which forces one to re-consider or consider it. (which is what I said) The italics in the KJV were added to make the sentence "More complete" The concept it that if the Holy Spirit did not finish a sentence in "complete structure" then God is emphasizing it for consideration.

I was fairly impressed with him in that he doensn't make any flying leaps and say things in general that he can't support. Thats about what one should expect from a Professor. Still, I think he likes to window dress a tad, and draw implications of unreliability, that if you understand the dynamics are not there. You know Roger, I learned some good things from Ehrman. Like the compassion to anger word change, which helps my understanding not harms it.

I guess I would have been a little more impressed if Ehrman was reconciling text's rather than shooting down texts. For example, it would be interesting to know, how many copies we have that appear to be from the original manuscript. If one could not know that, surely some one like Ehrman could make an intelligent guess, based upon similarities of some copies. I believe it was Paul (I didnt look this up so I am going by memory) who talked about parchments. Parchments, I believe are writings on animal skins which were cured a certain way for writing. I believe paul was talking about Old Testament writings. It would be interesting to know, at what time in history writings came about on non-parchment material, in an effort to know what happened to the originals.

Julian

Parchment was around for many centuries before christianity (and probably Judaism, as well) and was perfected in the city of Pergamon, from which it derives its name, in the 2nd century BCE. Papyrus comes from Egypt and has been around even longer.

There is currently no good way of reconstructing manuscript trajectories in such a way as to say much about the number of copies between our earliest manuscripts and the originals. Given the sheer number of copies and the distance between the early copies and the originals, even given a late dating, it would be reasonable to assume that a great many copies existed between those two points and that we have nothing that is close to the originals. However, that doesn't directly say much about the quality of the early copies other than suggesting a broad statistical conclusion that they are different to a noticable extent. Considering the early split into the Western tradition, one could assume great early variety that we don't see anymore. Still, I doubt that the differences would be big enough to disturb any reasonable believer. The importance of any given textual divergence is, after all, a subjective issue. The fundamentalist/inerrantists/literalist, however, well...

Julian

BH

Exactly.

How do we know the "purposeful changes" are in fact purposeful changes and it's the vast majority of texts that lack the "purposeful change" that have been tampered with?

Julian

Simple question, incredibly lengthy, complicated, and esoteric answer. While nothing can be stated with complete certainty, it is possible to state certain probabilities based on the history of christianity and the christological/theological implications of variants. If you feel up for a challenge I can recommend Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (or via: amazon.co.uk). It is easily the most brilliant book I have ever read on biblical studies* and it answers your question to some extent. His 'Misquoting Jesus' is based on this earlier work because this book was not written for the lay person. It was, in fact, the book that got me turned toward the more scholarly side of biblical studies. I read the book but didn't fully understand many of his arguments and technical notations. My frustration with that drove me to learn most of what I know today about the topics I speak out on here at IIDB. I did have an opportunity to talk to Ehrman in person, blaming him for his aid in my fall from complete ignorance (implied: to partial ignorance).

It is not an easy book but quite rewarding. He is not always correct in all his claims but he argues well and, I suspect, is right most of the time.

Julian


* There are other brilliant books written on biblical topics where I may use the same exuberant phrase, having become more versed in the literature, for example, I might say the same about Hurtado's Text-critical Methodology and the Pre-caesarean Text: Codex W in the Gospel of Mark (or via: amazon.co.uk) or Brown's monumental Death of the Messiah (or via: amazon.co.uk), both volumes. Honestly, though, Ehrman's book holds a special place in my world and is well-worth any time spent on it. Even if one does not follow the Greek and the MSS references, there is much, easily accessible, information on 'heretical' christianity.

sky4it

Julian, Greetings

I have paid some compliments to Ehrman. I do have one area where his bias is showing quite a bit. This is the following:

Ehrman goes into a story of one particular scribe who translated one of the Genologies from the Gospels. (Its actually a humorous story by Ehrman) The skinny is, the geneology by the time this particular scribe gets done is real messed up and inaccurate. My point of contention with Ehrman is this: There has to be, some scribes who copied with great detail, these weren't stupid people. Yet, Ehrman illustrates the story of one of the ones who in all likelihood was the worst. Why? To descredit the bible. Scribes of that day, were listed in the same breath as lawyers and doctors. These were not stupid people.

My point it this Julian. The copies that lack spelling and transpositional error, should be highlighted in people like Ehrman's work, if in fact he is being truly objective, in order to show who did the credible work. This type of thing Ehrman could easily do. Thus, I think Erhman has plumbers butt, his crack is showing a little.

Anyway regards,

sky4it

Julian

Some specifics would be useful here. I am familiar with most of his work.
Most lawyers and doctors are idiots. Their profession is not a testament to intelligence but to study and perseverance. Both professions rely upon learning, memorization, knowledge, but not applied intelligence, wisdom, or understanding to an extent that would automatically earn them respect. Now, I do know several lawyers and doctors who are quite bright but that has nothing to do with their professional background.
How would you judge who did credible work? How would you determine if their copy was good if you didn't know what they were copying from? How would you assess their religious bias? If you look at the rules of textual criticism you will notice that the 'quality' of the scribe doesn't have any weight at all. Support your position with examples and/or methodology. Your appeals to orthography holds no weight in light of the era of the text, i.e. there were no such thing as orthographical conventions at the time. Why do you think that periblepsical, like homeoteleutonical or other mechanical issues reflect the understanding/bias of a scribe? How does that affect the MS quality? Ehrman is being objective and explains his position quite well. You are not being clear in your criticisms and you state no specifics.

Julian

Diogenes the Cynic

A lot of scribes couldn't even really read. They were just copying the letters, laboriously, one at a time.

Chris Weimer

Do you have specific figures or a study on this? I'm curious about how many is "a lot".