CX

I have two problems with this position. A)Believe on what basis? Just because? B)Since it is noncontroversial that the autographs of every single book of the Xian bible are not currently available and likely never will be, so what if they were free from errors?

Not so. I recommend reading a few of the threads on MSS attestation of the NT. At best the MSS we have tell us what the Xian canon said as of the 4th century or so.


I may have missed it but you did not support this assertion. As I said already the evidence we have in the form of MSS and patristic citations, significantly limits our ability to discern the text prior to the late 3rd early 4th century.

Vorkosigan

That doesn't change the issue. What is the correct reading of John 1:34, and why? I will happily accept that the scholars are all wrong but I want to know: How do you which is right?

Chief, I don't think you quite get the issue. If "chosen one of god" is correct, then that passage may well be Docetic. If "son of god" is correct then we have a different Christological view. You are simply importing your understanding back into the text. Depending on what the text says, there are two different views of Jesus here. This trivial example is in reality non-trivial.

No, the problem is that, as everyone here has pointed out, there is no "original text." The Bible you read is a construction of scholars.. No single manuscript contains our current Bible, Chief. Instead, scholars sift through thousands of manuscripts and quotations in the patristic fathers, and other evidence from other sources, and try to decide what the text said "originally." In some cases that is not possible, and no one knows what it said. In other cases, particularly the gospel of John, there is no "original" text, because John is a combination of at least three different texts from three different hands in its final form. With the Gospel of John you cannot even speak of getting back to the original text. The entire text is a "humanly-induced deviation."

In other words, our current "bible" text is a reconstruction based on existing texts that may or may not reproduce an original text.

All but a handful date from the early medievial period.

Out of the thousands of biblical manuscripts, only a tiny handful, less than 200, date from that period. Just three date from the second century. Some some books (2 Peter) there is no text prior to the late third/early fourth century.

Actually, this is hardly the second greatest manuscript volume we have. Someday conservative apologists are going to bone up on the history of manuscripts in other parts of the world....and find out that the NT is a rather low figure, comparatively.

There are about 300,000 variations between the manuscripts. There are more in fact, but nobody counts. Why bother?

What's even more incredible is that you are using texts that are out of date, and don't take cognizance of the recent redating of Rylands to the second half of the second century. We just had a thread on it.

This is standard apologetic stuff. The large number of texts is actually a problem, since it shows how the texts have been deliberately altered and constructed over time. And it still doesn't explain why you believe as you do (that has nothing to with the Bible or Christianity -- that is simply a particular doctrine that you have which you import back into the text) The "original texts" are reconstructions that are no more than reasonable, educated guesses by the scholars whom you despise. Perhaps I should really be asking why you accept a Bible that is produced by scholars whose methods you disparage.

Vorkosigan

CX

Just a clarification but there are a grand total of approximately 34 MSS of the NT prior to the 4th century all of which are fragmentary and attest to less than half the text of the NT (if memory serves). Additionally there are roughly 7 books that have no MSS attestation prior to the 4th century codices.

This has been hashed over a zillion times. It should be a sticky or something.

CX

I hate to keep referring to it ad nauseum, but I wonder what Chief would make of this thread

Amlodhi

Hi Vorkosigan,

You are, of course, correct that Chief seems to miss the import here. And as we have discussed before, this is but one example among several.

I am unsure, however, why you would see the phrase, "chosen one of god", as possibly Docetic. Isn't it the ideology of Adoptionism that is the issue here? Were you just typing too fast, or does Docetic thought have an influence here that I am unaware of.


Thanks,

Amlodhi

Vorkosigan

No, you are right. Typing too fast, should be adoptionism, not docetism. What a space cadet I am!

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

OK, CX -- you volunteered. Is it really only half the NT? It's even worse than I thought.

Here's what I wrote on China once on a similar topic:

The most useful database for you is probably this site:
<a href="http://humanities.uchicago.edu/depts/easian/earlychina/research_resources/databases/early_chinese_manuscripts/" target="_blank">Database of Ancient Chinese Manuscripts</a>

There are many pages; it is simply a giant catalog of certain ancient Chinese manuscripts and other texts. Here is a typical entry:

Serial Number: 029
Site: III.26 Hunan, Changsha shi, Zidanku (ammunition dump), tomb no. 1
(73ChangziM1, of a c. 40 year old man, a shidafu of the 1st rank?;
disturbed)
Report: Wenwu 1974,2
Discovery date: 1973.05
Period: -375 to -270?: Middle to late Warring States Chu (dated through stylistic comparison)
Whereabouts: Metropolitan Museum, New York
Distribution:
Total pieces: 1
Total graphs: 904

The Chinese also put their various religious corpii (corpuses?) on stone many times. The Confucian classics were inscribed seven times, the first around 180, and the last 1791-94. The Buddhists also did this a couple of times, inscribing four million characters on 7,000 stone steles in a four hundred year effort beginning in 605. As did the Taoists, also beginning in the seventh century. Individual emperors also did that, inscribing steles with the accomplishments of their reign. The religious texts were inscribed to prevent corruption in transmission.

Needham, writing in 1985, noted:

"Since the end of the 19th century, no fewer than 40,000 tablets of bamboo and wood have been unearthed from various locations in China. The cover a span of almost 1000 years of Chinese history."

This is very different from the West, where the ancient manuscripts were transmitted, and in many cases we have a medieval copy, as with Tacitus, of a manuscript almost a thousand years old. Imagine finding the DSS or Oxyrhynchus not once but every time you cracked open a Chinese tomb.

Consider this entry from the database:

Serial Number: 002
Site: I.02 Henan, Wenxian, Wude zhen, Xizhangji, 124 sacrificial pits
Report: Wenwu1983,3
Discovery date: 1930, 1935, 1942, 1980-1982
Period: -497: Late Springs and Autumns Jin (many pieces dated to 16th January -497)
Whereabouts: Henan Provincial Institute of Cultural Artefacts, Zhengzhou; Qinyang mengshu: Archaeological Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing
Distribution:
Total pieces: 10,000
Total graphs: 300,000

Note that the actual day of inscription is known for many of the pieces. These would mostly be divination and funerary items, probably inscribed on shells, bamboo, ceramics and wood.

I haven't even begun to discuss the thousands of finds of inscriptions on bronze, sometimes as long as chapters on books, or the quality of the finds. For example, the 20,000 tablets uncovered at Chuyen contain 75 documents in the original format, all complete or near complete. A Chin tomb at Mawangtui yielded 1100 bamboo tablets, all legal documents. The Western Han tomb at Lin-i gave up 4490 documents on military classics. There's simply nothing like it in the West.

Here's a manuscript entry from the database:

As for later attestation and number of manuscripts, there's simply no comparison. For example, of the several dozen sutras, charms and portraits printed in Hangchow in the tenth century by the monk Yen-shou, 400,000 copies are known to us. I could list more, but don't see the point. Suffice to say that volume printing was a hallmark of medieval China.

In sum, McDowell's claims on attestation and age are pure ethnocentricity, as far as China is concerned. For any particular superlative (most, earliest, more precisely dated, broadest set of topics, most copies of a single document) ancient China is by far the leader.

Vorkosigan

judge

One place where we can fairly clearly see some versions were changed is by comparing the western peshitto with the eastern peshitta. Two verses in particular stand out those being Hebrews 2:9 and Acts 20:28.
The western peshitto is/was used by the SOC which has a different Christology to the COE, which uses the eastern peshitta.
Surprise surprise the western version reflects their Christology and the eastern one reflects their Christology.
It seems pretty obvious one side changed their version.

gregor

Chief - while you seem to have adopted to apologetics party line, you need to keep your arguments straight. Please square your two statements:

Hmmm??

Next, please provide us with a reference to actual, inerrant original documents, please.

Or is your argument that there was, at one time, an inerrant version. However, that has been lost in the ravages of time, and all we have now is errant copies. If so, which passages remained inerrant? How do you know?

chapka

You really do need to understand these issues, since they're central to your claim.

First of all, there were no "Catholic additions" to the Bible except for the names of the books, which are still accepted by Protestants as far as I know. The Bible, from the time it was formed (by either the Catholic Church or the Early Church, depending on your point of view) included certain books such as Esther, Tobit, 1 and 2 Maccabees, etc. I believe that textual evidence indicates that the Septuagint, which included all of these books, is the translation used when Jewish scripture is quoted in the New Testament, and therefore the version used by the writers of the New Testament. These (or some of them) are still considered canonical by Roman, Eastern, and Greek churches. They were part of the Bible from its creation for more than a thousand years, until the Reformation. "Catholic additions" is false. "Protestant excisions" would be more accurate.

At the time of Jesus, Judaism itself didn't have a "bible"--that is, a collection of sacred literature that was considered canonical. It wasn't until the late first century C.E. that the Jewish canon was reduced to its present twenty-four book form as the "Tanakh" (similar, but not identical, to the current Protestant version of the Hebrew Testament.

But since the Bible was not written, but compiled, inspired authorship is not sufficient. Remember, until the first century even Judaism didn't have a standard set of scriptures. A hypothetical should show you some of the problems.

Assume for the moment that the original "authors" of Genesis and the Revelation of John were both inspired, and the original "authors" of Tobit and the Revelation of Peter were not.

You must then believe that Christ somehow forgot to mention to his disciples that Tobit was not inspired, and that most of the leaders of the early church failed to omit Tobit from their canon, while at the same time believing that their selection was inspired enough to omit the Revelation of Peter.

The selection of the Pharisees, however, would have to have been inspired on the Tobit question, since the judgment of the Pharisees (who were mostly responsible for solidifying the Tanakh) was the judgment eventually (mostly) accepted by Luther in refashioning the Hebrew Testament for modern-day protestants.

Luther also would have to be inspired enough to omit Tobit, and yet not inspired enough to recognize the canonical status of the Revelation of John, which (along with three other books of the modern Protestant New Testament) he placed at the end of the bible to reflect his judgment that they were not inspired.

In other words, to get the canon we have today, you have to believe that the Pharisees were right, the Apostles and the Early Church were wrong, and Luther was both right and wrong. In short, if you (as it seems you do) accept the modern Protestant bible as the "correct" one, then your only claim can be that the Bible hasn't changed significantly since 1544, when Luther published his German version with the doubtful Old Testament books omitted. Before then, the Bible which would have been known to most Christians would have looked very different than the one we know today.