Steven Avery

You are conceptually wrong. The Byzantine & Received Texts inerrancy positions clearly accept the Pericope 100% as the original and true text, part of the historic Bible of the Reformation .. and many will say inspired. Folks with those views are often the individuals demonstrating the fallacious nature and confusions and misrepresentations of the anti-Pericope position.

You are also right to a degree. Those wallowing in confusion on an issue like the Pericope or the ending of Mark are, in terms of the Bible, skeptics or cornfuseniks - even if they are in other realms doctrinally Christians.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Jack the Bodiless

Even if one particular sect holds up one particular text and cries "THIS is divinely inspired!"... the existence of other, differing texts is sufficient to dispel the general principle that "God preserves Biblical texts".

They'd have to come up with some special pleading for their "holy text" (impossible, as all extant texts are errant).

Steven Avery

This is true from your external view. However I will point out one aspect you miss. Those who oppose the Pericope rarely if ever have a doctrine that there is a tangible divinely inspired text in any language. So there is in fact a qualitative as well as 'sectarian' distinction.

Similarly and complementary we totally disagree on your assertion that "all extant texts are errant". If I agreed with you on that claim I might agree we you on other aspects.

Anyway, I think we should get back to the actual Pericope discussion.

Shalom,
Steven

Amaleq13

I'm interested in the answer to this question as well but I think it should probably have its own thread.

Nazaroo

One reason that Principal Component Analysis is not the 'fix everything' tool that people think, and that things can go dismally wrong in its misapplication, is that it must be very carefully, appropriately, and intelligently applied for it to have scientific value.

To assist non-experts in understanding the dangers and inherant flaws in too-liberal applications, we have created the mini-series,

PCA for Dummies.


Here is installment 1.


Science Class



Its the high school physics class, and our two students, Abbott and Costello, are struggling to complete their lab assignment, on balloon expansion. They inflate and deflate their balloon, taking careful measurements of the height and width at various times. Abbott measures the width, and marks the graph with blue squares, while Costello records the height using red circles.





Abbott: Hey, you're copying my measurements.
Costello: What? No I'm not. I'm measuring the height.
Abbott: Look at the chart! Now stop taking the width, and take the height, like you're supposed to.
Costello: hmf! I'm NOT measuring the width, I'm measuring the height. You must be copying me!
Abbott: Don't talk nonsense. Here, YOU measure the width then, and I'll measure the height.
Costello:Fine!
Abbott: You're doing it again.
Costello: What?
Abbott: Now you're copying the height. I told you to measure the width. Quit clowning around.
Costello: Look: First I measure the height, then the width, now I don't know what I'm measuring!
Abbott: Hmm. There seems to be something strange going on here. Lets ask the teacher.
Costello: Look, all I want to know, is who's measuring the height?
Abbott: Don't start that again!

Abbott: Mr. Gravol. Look at our chart. No matter what we do, our data is always on the same line.
Physics teacher: Hmm. Yes, well your data is correlated. You will have to plot this differently. Talk to the math teacher if you don't know how.
Costello: Corregated? Is that serious?
Abbott: Cut it out. The man said correlated. Now lets ask Mr. Count.

Abbott: The physics teacher said our data was correlated, and that we should plot it differently.
Math Teacher: Hmm. Yes I see. Try measuring the height and width at the same time. Then plot the height on the Y axis and the width on the X axis. This will show what the correlation is.
Costello: But what about the time? where do we plot that?
Math Teacher: Oh, that doesn't matter.
Costello: I don't get it. First we have to measure at the same time, then time doesn't matter!
Abbott: Oh be quiet and don't bother the man. Lets just get this done. We're running out of time.
Costello: See? That's what I mean!




Abbott: Now what have you done? You're copying me again.
Costello: What? No I'm not. I'm measuring the height.
Abbott: No. Look, you are just using the exact same number as me.
Costello:Fine!
Abbott: You're doing it again.
Costello: Aha! No I'm not. I'm not doing anything at all.
Abbott: What do you mean?
Costello: I refuse to measure anything, height or width, until YOU stop copying ME.
Abbott: That's ridiculous. How did you plot these last points?
Costello: I simply drew a line, and marked them there.
Abbott: How did you know where they'd be?
Costello: Elementary my dear Watson: They're corregated.
Abbott: I've had enough. I'm showing your work to the professor.

Math Teacher: Hmm. Yes, its just as I suspected. There is a hidden rule correlating your data. The height always equals the width. You can simply write this as h = w .
Abbott: A hidden rule? What is that?
Math Teacher: Probably a 'cause', some physical law affecting your measurements. But you'll have to consult the Physics instructor on that.
Costello: See? I was right. You don't need to do any measurements at all!
Abbott: That can't be right. Lets see what Mr. Gravol says.

Abbott: Mr. Count said there's a hidden rule, h = w .
Costello: Yes! I discovered, you never have to measure the width at all!
Physics teacher: But how can you be sure? Does the width cause the height, or vice versa?
Abbott: There, see? I knew it. You don't know what you're talking about.
Costello: What? Look: if you measure the height, I don't have to measure the width!
Abbott: Wait a minute, why should you get out of doing the work? If you measure the width, I don't have to measure the height! So we'll do it that way.
Physics teacher: Look. Neither of you knows what you're doing. You haven't shown cause and effect. You need to go the the philosophy professor to clear this up.
Abbott: Oh brother. Now you've done it. That's what you get for being lazy.
Costello: ...first they say time matters, then it doesn't matter, then I show width doesn't matter, now it does! That's science!

Philosophy Instructor: You say h = w !? Looks like you boys have discovered something profound.
Costello: Ha! I knew it!
Philosophy Instructor: The thing is, can you differentiate between the width and the height? If not, you may have an Identity.
Abbott: What? Height is height, and width is width: What do you mean professor?
Philosophy Instructor: But these are only conventions. What if the same substance, or idea was behind them both? That is, not only is " h = w " in size, but also h is identical to w .
Costello: Height is height, and width is width; height is width, width is height, up is down, and you guys are crazy!
Abbott: Quiet: the professor is saying something. How can we prove or disprove it, professor?
Philosophy Instructor: Let me think.... Rotate the balloon 45 degrees, and repeat the experiment!
Costello: What? All over again? So discovering a shortcut = twice the work! That's science!
Abbott: Quiet bumblebrain: Why 45 degrees?
Philosophy Instructor: Because if the orientation of the balloon doesn't matter, then you cannot really distinguish the height from the width! They are apparently identical, philosophically speaking. The balloon is the medium, but the height and width are just different forms of the same message.
Costello: Philosophically speaking...why don't we just say balloon is the height, which is the width, which is the medium, and the medium is the message?
Philosophy Instructor: What did you just say? ...the medium is the message...interesting...
Abbott: Okay, you've bothered the professor enough. Let's get going.



Costello: It's exactly the same! All that work for nothing!
Abbott: Don't be an idiot! Weren't you listening? We've discovered an Identity! Lets tell Gravol.

Physics teacher: ...Just a minute. You haven't proven this at all. You need to sample every angle, not just 45 degrees. Keep the same air in the balloon, and then take the height, but turn the balloon all the way round, through 360 degrees. If the height is the same, then you've got something.
Costello: I knew it! More work!
Abbott: Oh be quiet. What he's saying makes perfect sense. We'll plot height against angle.
Costello: height against angle? How do you do that?
Abbott: Don't be a sap. Anyway, you're only taking the height: that's only half the work as before.
Costello: Really? Thank goodness!





Costello: Whew! If that was only half the work, why did it take us twice as long?
Abbott: What are you complaining about? I saw you cheating. You just traced your line!
Costello: Hey, its my invention. Why can't I use it. Should we tell the professor?
Abbott: Are you crazy? Do you want to jeopardize our Nobel Prize? Just keep quiet.

Physics teacher: Okay, this is good, but your graph isn't clear. Get some help on the graphing.
Abbott: Right.
Costello: "height against angle". I knew that sounded wrong.
Abbott: Okay, okay. Lets ask the math guy.

Math Teacher:Wait. Is this balloon a sphere?
Abbott: That's right.
Math Teacher: Then what you've shown is that the balloon stays spherical during expansion. This simplifies things immensely.
Abbott: How's that?
Math Teacher: Well, we mathematicians have a special way of dealing with circles and such. And it makes writing down the information simple and compact.
Costello: What's simpler than a straight line?
Math Teacher: Well the problem is, your straight line doesn't tell us anything about your balloon, except a single measurement, its height. You can't reproduce the object from either of your equations ( h = w , or x = y ). And these equations don't really describe the location or surface of your object at all. Your straight line is simple, but it isn't a good description of your balloon.
Abbott: So what do we do?
Math Teacher: We use the Polar Coordinate System. Its perfect for this. Instead of a square, X and Y grid, we use a polar grid, based upon a central point called the Pole, like your (0,0) coordinates in the X/Y Cartesian system (the grid you were using). Now instead of X and Y coordinates, we use a pair of Polar Coordinates, one number r (for radius), which is the distance from the pole, and another number θ (for angle), which tells us in what direction from the pole to go.



Math Teacher: In this system, a circle is really easy to represent, since r, its radius, is constant. Other complicated shapes would need a pair of equations, one for r and one for θ , or an equation relating one coordinate to the other. But for a circle, the equation relating the two coordinates is simple:
r ( θ ) = a, where a is the radius, a constant.

The equation just says that for every angle θ , the distance from the pole (r) stays the same.



Math Teacher: For a sphere, the idea is the same. You now go to three dimensions, using either cylindrical or spherical coordinates. Again you define its shape by a set of equations. But its easy: A sphere's surface is found at a constant fixed distance from the origin, regardless of direction. For your sphere, you only need specify three things: (1) It is a sphere, (2) its location is, say (x, y, z), and (3) Its radius is r. And then you're done!
Abbott: Great! What exactly have we done?
Math Teacher: You've done a kind of Principal Components Analysis. (PCA) You have resolved your raw data into a compact, organized form, expressed by its principal components.
Abbott: When did that happen?
Math Teacher: Remember when you transformed your graph from a 45 degree line to a horizontal one? Essentially, by a change of the coordinate space, you changed the actual components (x and y) by which you expressed the data.
Costello: I'm now a PCA expert.
Abbott: Don't get cocky. Lets get back to physics class.
...

Physics teacher: Well, its compact, I'll give you that. But I'm giving you an F.
Abbott: What? Now what's wrong?
Physics teacher: The project was on balloon expansion. All you've done is shown its a sphere.
Abbott: Now hold on a minute! We've shown that the balloon stays spherical during expansion. Ask the Math teacher!
Physics teacher: Hmm. So you have. But how do I know this is even your work? What technique did you use?
Costello: Principal Components Analysis. by a change of the coordinate space, we changed the actual components by which we expressed the data. Thus, we have resolved our raw data into a compact, organized form, expressed by its principal components.
Physics teacher: Really. Then you should have no problem repeating your experiment, to prove its validity. Here's another balloon!
Abbott: Now you've gone and done it. This time you're doing the work.
Costello: Last time I did all the work.
Physics teacher: You heard the teacher. Don't start complaining, you'll only make things worse.

Amedeo

I am sure that what you mean is that at that time there was no COUNTRY by the name of Palestine. What I meant by "Palestine" was the territory or land that comprised Judea, Galilee, and Samaria. (Similarly, by the Italy of 1850 I mean the territory which comprised a certain number of states. If land is confused with country/nation, then there were no Italians in Italy in 1850, and no Palestinians in Palestine either in Jesus' times or in 1948.)

So, my contention was than in Palestine, which was Jewish country, there were no pig-herders. I should have said that there were no Jewish [Israelitic] pig-herders, since it is quite possible that there were some Gentiles in Palestine or therabouts, and that they might be pig-herders. Such hypothetical Gentiles would speak or know Hebrew, which would make it possible for them to go to a town and announce the wondrous thing he saw: what Jesus said and did, and the loss of his herd once that demons were allowed to go into the pigs.

It goes without saying that I am discussing the tale in its own terms and uncritically; so, you did not me hear saying that there are no demonic possessions of either men or animals and, therefore, and, therefore the fable or myth is purely imaginary or, at best, it is an allegore to say this in many words, "Jesus has divine powers." But in truth, "having divine powers" -- stated in any kind of language -- presents some difficulties. Does it mean that he IS divine [divinely powerful] or that he HAS divine powers place into him?

We know from other parts of the scriptures that Jesus bade his apostles to for forth and baptize, cure, expels demons, and drink snake venom or something or other that would normally kill men. Did Jesus transfer divine powers unto them, or are humans normally capable of exorcising, immunely poisoning themselves, and curing sick people? Our salvation-selling preachers claim that they can do all of these things in Jesus's name, or because of the faith they have that can move mountains, quell the stormy seas, and so forth.

My question about the divine powers in the appointed preachers of Jesus is really useless, because in the last 2000 years or so, apostles have come and gone and they have never moved mountains, quelled seas, restored the lost limbs or organs of humans, or patently expelled subjects [devils, angels, or what have you, from human subjects]. So, those given powers are theoretical or verbal powers which are impotent (not powerful at all). As for Jesus himself, he never created arms or eyes for people who had lost them, but he created fish and bread, if the story that he did is true.

Now, the story of the demons and the pigs at its face value seems to present an evidence that Jesus expelled demonic subjects from a man and let them go in pigs, which became possed and unpredictably ran into their death. "You see, their running and dying was caused by the demonic powers in them." Unfortunately the demons in question were always subjects of activities existing within subjects [the man and the pigs]. They did not roam around hitting things, speaking to Jesus, or doing what any human subject might be doing to some other subject. So, the hypothetical demons that were in the afflicted man spoke though the man. They had the power to move a man's vocal chords precisely as his brain had the power to move his vocal cords. And if he had physical pains or mental disorientations and confusions, demons are the subjects which ancients humans posited as their causes. In all cultures, physical and mental diseases -- to use the old wording -- were due to invisible evil agencies. (The history of civilized man's medicine is the history of the natural ways of ... exorcising demons. The history of technology is the history of the ways to fly over mountaintops and of seeing behing long distances and obstructions -- to mention two of a myriad of things.)

Jesus and the pig-herders were men of the barbaric Age, which interpreted certain facts in terms of invisible gods and demons operating behind the scenes. But, let us proceed according to the tale of what occurred.

The demons thought according to the prevaing theology that there was an appointed time when they would be sent into the Abyss. So, fearing of their premature destiny, they begged Jesus to let them go into the pigs. Why the pigs and not the sheep or the lambs or the chickens? Because there were only pigs around in that situation, or because the lambs and the chickens were owned by the Israelites (kins of Jesus)? Let's remember that those possessing demons had superhuman knowledge: they knew of their destiny; they recognized the divinely might Jesus, and they saw and heard everything that happened to be around them. Like gods, they would know, too, of good and evil, and of the moral or immoral actions that humans perform. Now, knowing that they would drive the possess animals to their death, they knew that if they went into animals owned by Israelites, Jesus' permission would make Jesus an accomplice to their death. So, if they requested to be let into into sheep, Jesus would have refused. But the pigs that were around were not wild pigs; they were a shepherd's pigs, and their owner had to be a stranger (a Gentile). In that case, Jesus would consent, since they Commandments not to steal or not to destroy a neighbor's property, not to kill, etc., were divine orders as to how an Israelites had to behave or not to behave with respect to other Israelites. The Israelites have no moral duties toward strangers. (The Bible and the Talmud are too long to quote to the effect that El-Jah never conceived of a universal code of conduct.) It is a fundamental fact that an Israelite is an individual in the holy people of God, and that a non-israelite is not a holy man. If an Israelite becomes unholy, he has estranged himself from the People and may be treated in any manner with impunity.

So, Jesus did not have to think twice about the fact that his permission to the demons and the consequent destruction of the herder's pigs did not constitute an immoral act on his part.

Whoever constructed the tale of the demons and the pigs was either an Israeite or Jesus himself, who conveniently produced a herd of pigs for the disposal of the expelled demons without running the risk of committing an immoral deed. As for the pig-herder, he was so taken up with the wonder of the exorcism that he did not complain about losing his livelihood. His purpose in the story was to be the announcer of Jesus' deed to the people of the town. He had heard and witnessed, and he interpreted the facts just as Jesus and other brains of barbaric time interpreted them. Whether Jesus performed some exorcism or he invented the story that he did is irrelevant, because, if he did, the account of it would be the same as the account we read in the Gospels. There was no witnessing of demons.

Nazaroo

I'll wait for a moderator to split this off, before commenting on the absurdity of this discussion concerning the possession of the pigs.

Steven Avery

Nazaroo, I was just curious if he had any sources for the pig-herders statement. The answer was no, plus an acknowledgment that Gentile areas would in fact have pig-herders. And there were areas that were mixed Jewish and Gentile.

It is an interesting question whether there non-observant Jews at the time who would go so far as to herd pigs. There is some pig herding in Israel today and Kibbutz Lahav, in the northern Negev, is the largest pig producer in Israel. Not everything is always as you might expect.

Shalom,
Steven Avery

Julian

To answer some points from various posts earlier in this thread I offer this.

PCA techniques cannot tell us whether or not the pericope belongs to John. The sample is simply too small to yield anything conclusive using the limited stylometrics that have used so far. Even so, PCA would not be the proper technique. Even with excellent stylometrics it is unlikely that we will ever arrive at a convincing probability, one way or another.

Because of Nazaroo's long-winded, boring, and wholly unhelpful 'clarification' of PCA that some of you may have suffered through, I will attempt a shorter and more concise explanation. A PCA is a linear orthographic projection with dimensional reduction. What this means is that it can take a lot of different data, scattered throughout a numerical space across any number of dimensions and condense them down to the desired dimensions, ordering the data so that the most important (i.e. the largest) survive and the noise does not. That is how Willker takes all those differences from many manuscripts (which he does not group despite claims that he does) and converts it down to two dimensions for easy plotting on a screen (which, of course, has two dimension). By using this technique the various text-types show up fairly clearly. This is not surprising since somebody decided to come up with families to begin with. The PCA also shows the distances between the various texts.

This is not a profound observation. It is simply a different, and somewhat more accurate, method of establishing what is already accepted, namely, that manuscripts can be classified into text-types.

One should be careful of putting too much emphasis on text-types, however, since the lines are not always clear. Many are hybrids, almost all of them, actually, to some extent or other. Sometimes in manuscripts that contain multiple books we see different text-types in different books within the same manuscript. Text-types provide a useful guide and quick-reference but not more than that. A careful study is required to understand the nuances of any given text.

There has recently been some talk of changing the paradigm of text-types and engineer a new system. I believe this is entirely warranted but so far I haven't seen good statistical methodology demonstrated by any professional text critic in the religious arena. The idea would be to come up with a system that concisely classifies a manuscript without being cumbersome or esoteric. We'll see what the future brings.

The Wikipedia article on PCA is quite technical but if you are pretty good at math then it is worthwhile: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_components_analysis

Linguistically, one can argue that the pericope is Lukan, while others show that it is Johannine. Unfortunately, this doesn't help us much since word count and usage of compound words are poor statistical indicators, especially where there is proximity in terms of physical text distance. With better stylometrics (syntax, for example) one can arrive at better numbers but studies (from outside the religious field) have shown that texts with under 1000 words invariably end up inconclusive. It will undoubtedly be the same in this case.

Those on this thread (and elsewhere) who strongly argue that it is genuine Johannine and in the proper place are tendentious and biased to such an extent that I have not wasted my time even addressing their silly claims. Those who argue just as strongly the opposite view have a similar problem. The unfortunate fact is that we simply don't know and, unless better evidence surfaces, we will never know. What is even more unfortunate is that some people seem to be unable to accept that.

Julian

Steven Avery

Hi Julian,

I have asked you to explain this Willker quote in the context of your claim above.

"Unfortunately I have no reliable information as to how many MSS support each group."

And I have asked you my question.

Why are the data points given as group ID's if groups have no relationship to the input ?

On top of that, since Wieland is using as a baseline for analysis what he calls the "reconstructed autograph" what possible utility or substance could there be in his analysis for the authenticity of John ? In that regard he has his conclusion before he begins. Thus his PCA analysis can't have anything to do with the question on this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian studies (from outside the religious field) have shown that texts with under 1000 words invariably end up inconclusive.

Your points on linguistics and style are well-expressed. These claims pop up on short sections with little regard for the lack of utility or validity or integrity of the conclusions drawn.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian tendentious and biased ... silly claims

Spoken like a true skeptic. We can never know anything about the Bible.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Julian we will never know.

Ultimately that is the view of the skeptic on every single verse of the Bible. The issue is heightened somewhat on full sections like the ending of Mark or the Pericope but really all you are expressing is skeptic theology.

Shalom,
Steven Avery