Iasion

Greetings all,

A manuscript of Homer from 13th C. BCE would be very different indeed

Homer is usually dated c. 750 BCE.

Hundreds of Greek manuscripts FRAGMENTS of Homer are extant, dating from 3rd C. BC to 7th C. CE.

Complete versions of Homer are found from 10th C. CE

There is a LOT of variation.


In the earliest times Homer's poems were copied by rote memory from mouth to ear - learning and reciting Homer was probably a career for life.

Then,
writing arrived in Greece, and eventually someone had the idea of writing down this famous poem for the first time.

Imagine some poor lad, apprenticed to be a poet, spending all day long learning by rote from his teacher the lines of the Illiad ... phew... Only 17,000 lines to remember - probably only took a year or two

Now imagine some Phoenician travellers arrive in town to ply their wares, and they are seen to use strange marks on flat surfaces which somehow mean words and numbers - amazing, incredible, useful!

Our hero, Homer, realises what this means - he can write the great poem down in these magic markings, and not have to remember it all any more.

So, he sets to work to learn how to make and interpret these magic markings (which all the smart people were talking about), and soon, one day, he proudly writes his first line(s) :

" The Illiad
by Homer "

What did he write it on?
I think clay was earlier (Akkadian e.g.), and wax tablets were later (Roman) - I hope someone can enlighten us on the details.

I understand in those times it may have been :
* strips of wood (cheap),
* leather (good, but expensive).

So, the first version of the Illiad, probably written on strips of wood, would probably have FILLED a HOUSE (a complete guess, I didn't work it out.)

All our hero Homer had to do was interpret the magic markings from the strips of wood, reading them out loud, one by one - I imagine the real problem was keeping thousands of pieces of wood and/or hides in order.

Perhaps Homer even lived longer enough to see this invention progress to a truly faboulous marvel - a copy of the Illiad that was actually small enough to carry around on a horse. A portable book - and it only takes 1 horse! wow

Perhaps he even dreamt that one day, books might be small enough to be actually carried by one man!

Nowadays
we can fit Homer in a cubic mm - way down from the size of a house - in only 27 centuries

Iasion

Bobzammel

I wouldn't trust Mcdowell's "sources". He fell for those "ancient pictographs" of "Dinosaurs" in Mexico seen on many creationist websites(But which were later revealed to be phony).

Kosh

The point of all this is...so what? Repeat after me: "It just doesn't matter". I could care less if you actually had 24,000 copies of the earliest full manuscript from 200 ad. They're still just copies of a document which dates to 200 years after the fact. Plenty of time for mythmaking and redacting, and no way for anyone to verify it's validity. Heck, you only need 10 to 20 years for that kind of fabrication, esp. in a low tech world populated by ignorant bronze age goatherders!

CX

1)The Diatessaron is a gospel harmony NOT a copy of the gospels.

2)There is no surviving complete MS of the Diatessaron consequently the same text critical issues that we face with gospel MSS we also face with Tatian only moreso as we do have complete NT codices within 300 years or so of the originals.

3)There is considerable debate as to the original language of the Diatesseron it may have been Greek, but stylistic considerations indicate Syriac.
Basically, Tatian's Diatessaron is very valuable for textual critics it undoubtedly preserves some very ancient readings, but it has no bearing on or relevance to this discussion nor my original discussion of NT MSS evidence.

4) We do not have anything approaching an MS of the Diatesseron anywhere near the composition of the original. The fact that it was written between 170 and 175 is totally irrelevant to my argument since I'm talking about physical MSS fragments.

*********************
The more I think about it the more incomprehensible this reference to the Diatessaron becomes. The text we have today is a reconstruction. There are relatively few MSS and none before something like the 6th century. Of those a couple are Arabic translations. In addition there are some syriac fragments and 1 possible Greek fragment. Based on the reconstucted text itself, the Diatessaron contained about 2/3 of the text of the 4 gospels, favoring GJn the most. It is a continuous narrative that weaves together all 4 gospels and leaves considerable portions out inaddition to altering the order (though mostly it follows Matthew). Having thought about it at more length I'm not even sure why it was brought up in the context of the present discussion.

Sauron

Well, not really.

The one chapter I looked at in detail (Prophecy Fulfilled in History) McDowell used a research assistant (a student) named James Davis, who is (or was) associated with Louisiana Polytechnic University. It’s unlikely that a college specializing in engineering and technical education would have the necessary research material to do serious archaeological or biblical investigation. Basing one’s research upon whatever source material is readily available, instead of basing it upon the highest quality source material relevant to the topic at hand, is shoddy research. McDowell gets no slack for making a poor choice of research assistants.

As for his sources - we can start out with the fact that McDowell quotes Henry Morris (the creationist) as a reputable source.

His references are no better. Many of them are very outdated sources, or ones that were little more than gospel tracts. Here are some of his sources:

3. Badger, George Percy. The Nestorians and Their Rituals. London: n.p., 1852.

19. Gillett, E. H. Ancient Cities and Empires. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Publication Committee, 1867.

32. Layard, Austen H. Discoveries Among the Ruins of Nineveh and Babylon. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1853.

36. Maurice, Thomas. Observations on the Ruins of Babylon, Recently Visited and Described by Claudius James Rich, Esq. London: John Murray of Albermarle St., 1816.

40. Myers, Philip Van Ness. General History for Colleges and High Schools. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1889.

51. Smith, George. The Book of Prophecy. London: Longmain, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1865.

58. Wright, Thomas. Early Travels in Palestine. London: Henry G. Bohn, 1848.

I count seven sources over one century old; a remarkable amount. With the exception of Austen Layard, who was the actual on-site discoverer of the ruins of Nineveh and whose writings are useful for their first-person viewpoint, the rest of these sources are all severely outdated.

Other sources are circular; one author wrote a book "Prophecies Fulfilled in the Bible". That same author then wrote a 2nd book titled "Bible Prophecies Fulfilled Today".

Kosh

Yeah, but there are THOUSANDS of copies of those sources! They must be right...

CX

And a note about church fathers. The majority of them wrote in the post-nicene period. Of the ante-nicene fathers there is not, so far as I know, any manuscript of any ante-nicene father which quotes the NT that is contemporaneous to the Greek papyri, uncials and minuscules of the the first 3 centuries. I challenge Meta to provide a reference to any MS fragment from the church fathers that dates prior to 200 C.E.

All told there are perhaps 10 or so church fathers before the turn of the 3rd century including: Basil, Clement, Irenaeus, Justyn Martyr, Julianus, Marcion (heretical), Ptolemy and possibly some others who make reference tou canonical NT quotations. Of these only Justin Martyr and Irenaeus make any extensive use of the canonical NT. Justin Martyr makes perhaps 11 references total to GMt, GMk and GLk. Irenaeus makes citations too numerous to mention, but none of his writings has come down to us in the original language. Rather most of it is excerpted in translations and other church fathers, notably Eusebius. And of course things get even more dodgy when we start talking about MSS attestation.

Taking all this into consideration, the reference to Church Fathers in discussions of the earliest MSS attestation to the NT add nothing whatsoever to the discussion and my analysis still stands that in the first 170 years or so we have a tiny number of MSS attesting to the canonical NT.
I would again like to remind readers that I am not making any argument with respect to the bearing this has on the textual validity of the NT, but rather this simply serves as a counter to misinformed apologetics which try to assert various outrageous arguments about the MSS support for the NT.

Jackalope

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Iasion

Now imagine some Phoenician travellers arrive in town to ply their wares, and they are seen to use strange marks on flat surfaces which somehow mean words and numbers - amazing, incredible, useful!


Wait a sec, we have at least fragments written out in Linear B, which predates the phoenician alphabet. We were taught that when I took the classes in the mid-1980s, so I know someone's done more research since then.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Hi, CX,

This is not quite correct. In fact, there's a huge difference between gospel citations as found in Justin, and those found in Irenaeus. Justin's citations show a much more fluid text. As to Irenaeus, his citations are much closer to today's canonical gospels. But both Justin and Irenaeus clearly used the gospels in their Western versions.

Quote:

Justin Martyr makes perhaps 11 references total to GMt, GMk and GLk.

This doesn't seem accurate. For one thing, Justin never names the gospels as "Matthew, Mark, or Luke".

Quote:

Irenaeus makes citations too numerous to mention, but none of his writings has come down to us in the original language.

This is incorrect. Some did.

Quote:

Rather most of it is excerpted in translations and other church fathers, notably Eusebius. And of course things get even more dodgy when we start talking about MSS attestation. Taking all this into consideration, the reference to Church Fathers in discussions of the earliest MSS attestation to the NT add nothing whatsoever to the discussion and my analysis still stands that in the first 170 years or so we have a tiny number of MSS attesting to the canonical NT. I would again like to remind readers that I am not making any argument with respect to the bearing this has on the textual validity of the NT, but rather this simply serves as a counter to misinformed apologetics which try to assert various outrageous arguments about the MSS support for the NT.

Well, I realise that my comments are somewhat tangential to the previous discussion... But still, I would like to say that gospel citations from the early fathers are extremely important for our understanding of the early history of NT. The most important lesson that they teach us is that the earliest text of the gospels was Western (Syro-Latin). But this is of course what our crooked NT establishment would like to cover up...

Regards,

Yuri.

CX

Perhaps my language was ambiguous. I should have said only those two make extensive use of quotations which could be construed as being derived from written gospel texts. That they probably used Western versions is not something with which I'm inclined to disagree.


Again, sloppy language on my part. I should have said "...references which might be considered references to the gospels." The truth is I don't think either author was using gospel texts as we have them today since I beleive they are products of 4th century Xianity.


Agreed. My point was that they are largely secondary for the purposes of reconstructing and attesting to the canonical texts.

You had me, then you lost me. I'm not much for conspiracy theories as they generally present far greater problems than they solve. I don't think it's really disputed that the Western text is quite ancient (going back to perhaps the 2nd century or earlier as Metzger says). Clearly the text we have today is a fully developed corpus which did not exist until the 4th century. That does not prove however that the Alexandrian text is not just as early. But I know your views on the subject and am not inclined to debate them.