CT or MT

JoJ has still not answered these questions.

 

So you simply say that there is poor reasoning behind the passages from the CT which are present in the MT. You haven't fleshed anything out. Simply saying it's unbelievable to you isn't very convincing.

 

Whatever a "pre-understanding" is, I haven't said all the scholarship is on the side of the CT. And no one else has said any such thing. I have said that most conservative biblical scholars favor the CT and are not in favor of the RT and MT.

 

What does that sentence mean? A generally more "smoot Peter" lost me!

 

Your questions are much too broad. I've not read the whole MT with this in mind. But tell you what, give me a specific MT reading in Greek and I'd be happy to tell you whether or not I believe it is an interpolation.

 

Sorry, it should have been "smooth".

 

I agree with Dr. Bob. Its definately the method bible scholars hold to. It seems Metzger is in agreement with this.

 

Hmm. Funny, I thought a few posts back I listed books by textual criticism scholars who did not hold to this method. There is by no means agreement across the board among Bible scholars on textual criticism. In fact, many if not most textual critics nowadays are eclectics, not strictly holding to the Alexandrian text type.

The truth is, since Westcott and Hort changed everything with their theories in the late 19th century, textual criticism itself has changed quite a bit. For the eclectic method by which the most recent CT Greek NTs were edited (UBC 4 and Nestles 27), the scholars no longer go back only "to the oldest document," as Dr. Bob puts it. I'm afraid Dr. Bob is somewhat behind the times.

According to Dr. David Alan Black, a leading scholar of today (and an eclectic in textual criticism), "New discoveries (especially the papyri) have led contemporary textual critics to lay aside Westcott and Hort's Neutral text. (That's called the Alexandrian text nowadays--John.) In practical terms, this means that at any given point even the oldest manuscripts (such as Aleph and B) may be wrong" (New Testament Textual Criticism, copyright 1994, p. 33).

 

You're right most hold an ecclectic view with regard to text but I still hold a supportive view of the older text. I note Metzger was not in your list who prefer the Majority text over the CT. To disregard the Alexandrian text would be a mistake. Noting that scriptures are writen in an organic fashion I would not necissarily bet that Aleph and B are necissarily wrong. In fact, I often view text that are "cleaned" in the syntax and gramatical usage to be questionable.

 

Well naturally Metzger's position is not Byzantine priority. I wouldn't expect that. But I don't know if he has become an eclectic or not. I only have the 3rd ed. of his textual commentary.

Please explain what you mean by "an organic fashion."

So it is your view that God would be more likely to inspire inferior syntax and grammar? (Actually, syntax is a part of grammar.)

 

Absolutely, Catholics, Gnostics, apostates and unbelieving scholars would agree with your comment above because they are naturalistic scholars.

 

I have been waiting this whole thread for Askjo to use the word "naturalistic".

:laugh:

 

which isn't as bad as it's sometimes made out to be, i suppose.

it's "in no Greek MSS" becos no Greek MSS are absolutely perfect. the various TR n MT editions themselves don't represent any Greek MS in that sense either. they all attempt to reconstruct--artificially--an ideal, by comparing MSS or families of MSS, counting MSS, etc., in order to come up with that desired ideal.

i think it's a credit to the CT/Eclectic Text that it's moved beyond a slavish allegiance to a particular family of MSS, the Alexandrian. if it cld be shown where the Majority or Byzantine or even the TR do a better job, is better attested, then why not?

but that courtesy probably can't be reciprocated due to the text crit principles of the other side.

 

Though God inspired Scriptures, scriptures were writen by men in context of their culture and experience not all at once with table of contents. And even with particular books it may have been compiled over time. that should answer both the Organic question and your last question. If I am a bad speller (and I am) and God inspires me to write a text my bad spelling may come through. It doesn't mean the text is any less inspired or that consepts are altered in any fashion. Like it is supposed that Paul had poor eyesite possibly he needed to write larger leters when he did it in his own hand. However, it would be different if he had a scribe working on his notation. See my meaning of organic and syntax? Just like there are no extant works that don't have some sort of errors in it today that are transcriptional. It doesn't invalidate the word of God.

 

While no Greek mss may be absolutely perfect, as you put it (I'm not sure how that can be proven without the autographs), the point I made is not that the mss themselves are imperfect, but that the most recent critical texts (UBS4 & Nestle27) have verses that appear in that form in no mss whatsoever! Doesn't that bother you?

Here is how Dr. Maurice Robinson puts it: "It can be demonstrated with success that more than 100 whole verses as printed in NA217 have no apparant support within the Greek manuscript tradition; in most (if not all) cases, no support exists for such whole verses even within the versional or patristic traditions" (Robinson's essay in Translating the New Testament, ed. by Stanley Porter & Mark Boda: "Rule 9, Isolated Variants, and the 'Test-Tube' Nature of the NA27/UBS4 Text").

So basically the eclectic textual critics are making up verses. That bothers me, and makes me think there is something seriously wrong with their method.

The problem here, to me, is that on the one side we have the Westcott-Hort crowd who sneered for many years at the Byzantine text, starting with W-H themselves, because the made the Alexandrian their "Neutral Text," or in other words, "the only one that can be right." On the other side (actually beyond the other side) we have uneducated radicals who sneer at some made-up "Alexandrian cult" (Ruckman's invention).

So it's hard to get the two sides together. I credit the eclectics for apparantly trying. I also credit men like Zane Hodges and Maurice Robinson for their genuine scholarship, which has brought the Byzantine back into respectability, against all odds.

 

I'm not sure it does. I'm still not sure what you mean by organic in reference to the Scriptures. Are you sure you have the right word there? Look it up in your Funk & Wagnell's. But let it pass.

True, God used imperfect men. But He used the process of inspiration, qeopneustoV, which means "God-breathed." He inspired every word of the originals. Granted, there are human differences, such as the sophistication of Dr. Luke's syntax and vocabulary as compared to fisherman Peter's. And there are differences in spellings, such as how Moses' name is spelled (but actually there was no such thing as "correct spelling" in NT times). However, I still believe that the smoothness of the Byzantine beats all the deletions and sometime roughness of the Alexandrian when we think of the Bible as being God's word.

 

Which by its very nature makes me pause. because it must be later translators that "cleaned" up the version and who's to say that it isn't cleaned up to favor the translator's preferrence rather than the originator?

 

Actually many scholars who advocate the "critical text" have pointed out the likelihood of omission as opposed to addition as a matter of scribal habit (see below).

Also there are reasons why words and clauses may be omitted, both intentional and accidental, just as there are reasons why scribes would add things, such as when the Alexandrian heavyweights (Aleph B C L) add a variation of John 19:34 into the text of Matthew between 27:49 and 27:50. This place alone indicates that the source of the Alexandrian manuscripts itself was "corrupt" far before any additional errors occurred (as Dr. Bob points out) in the copying process from the ancient time of the source of the Alexandrian documents to the later times of the Alexandrian source's descendants, which are exhibited by such manuscripts as Aleph, B, L, etc.

For evidence that individual scribes far more often tended to omit rather than add, here are scholarly sources (all "critical text" guys with the exception of Robinson) taken from Robinson's "The Rich Man an Lazarus" article in Porter's Translating the New Testament book that John of Japan has mentioned:

E. C. Colwell, “Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of P45, P66, P75,” in his Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament (NTTS 9; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968), 106-24; J. R. Royse, “Scribal Habits in the Transmission of New Testament Texts,” in The Critical Study of Sacred Texts (ed. W. D. O’Flaherty; Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1979), 139-61; idem, “Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri” (Th.D. diss., Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, 1981); idem, “Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis (ed. B. D. Ehrman and M. W. Holmes; SD 46; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), 239-52; M. A. Robinson, “Scribal Habits among Manuscripts of the Apocalypse” (Ph.D. diss., Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, 1982); P. M. Head, “Some Observations on Early Papyri of the Synoptic Gospels, Especially Concerning the ‘Scribal Habits,’*” Bib 71 (1990): 240-47; idem, “The Habits of New Testament Copyists: Singular Readings in the Early Fragmentary Papyri of John,” Bib 85 (2004): 399-408.

 

To me, you simply using the term "cleaned up" shows a prejudice in favor of the Alexandrian text. It says, "The Alexandrian text type is apriori the right one. The Byzantine 'cleaned up' and made nicer the original Alexandrian." But the most recent mss evidence doesn't support this--hence the development of the eclectic view.

Why is it not "cut up" (a term I have not used)? (As in, "The Alexandrian lopped off verses and phrases from the original.") Why not approach the subject with an open mind, something I tried to do years ago when I first studied the issue. I was taught Greek in college and seminary with the CT, UBS 2 and then 3. I had no idea of the nature of the mss and text families, something that in those days was only discussed in scholarly circles. After much study and reading many books on both sides (from Burgon to Metzger) I came out Byzantine priority.

Textual criticism is by no means a science, since we have no time machine with which to go back and witness the events. It is a subjective scholarly discipline, and very complicated, and I for one believe we should not use such prejudicial terms.

 

Very good and relevant post by Jonathan. :thumbs: