Families of Manuscripts

Askjo said "They are not what I talked about. I understand your 2 words above, but my point is to "invent" them. Who invented them?"

They were not "invented".

 

Oh, that clarifies everything.

God invented them. Rev 4:11 Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.

 

No, scripture says God made everything.

 

Then explain what you mean.

 

I *think* I understand Askjo -- although this is difficult and might be a wrong assumption:

I think what Askjo is claiming is that in his opinion the various texttypes simply do *not* exist, that in his opinion *only* the TR is correct, and any manuscript or texttype that differs is simply part of *one* single "corrupt text" -- is that what you are claiming Askjo?

Of course, if that indeed *is* what you claim, I will obviously demur, and return to my original comment that the four major texttypes indeed *do* exist, and that no one "invented" them.

 

Who invented that Matthew, Mark and Luke are the "synoptics," and not John? Should we simply accept on faith the opinion of this unknown person that the first three are more alike and can be grouped together as synoptics?

 

The evidence is clear, as regarding Matthew, Mark, and Luke being very similar and John being different. Every bible that you could pick up shows it.

But, as for the differences in types of manuscripts...well, that's a horse of a different color.

Askjo sees it as Ziggy put it. Askjo is looking for a way to discredit any other manuscript besides the one slapped together by a Catholic priest to please the Pope.

In Christ,
Trotter

 

In defense of that priest, that pope was a close personal friend of his.

 

Good thread. If interested, what Askjo references as the "Traditional family" is more recently referred to as the Byzantine Texttype or Byzantine Textform. Families have been located within this texttype, perhaps as many as a dozen or so in the Passage on Adultery (John 7:53-8:11), research compliments of Maurice Robinson. Do an internet search with his name and Pericope Adulterae and you'll find enough to feed on for a while. It would be nice to know more about this texttype, but, alas, only a fraction of this texttype's manuscripts have ever been compared in full.

The Byzantine Texttype is definitely one of the oldest texttypes and is obviously the most mainstream of them all. It includes many difficult readings which the other texttypes changed or deleted altogether in order to simplify the text. It has hundreds of shorter readings where the other texttypes could not resist expansion. It has hundreds of non-harmonistic readings where the others harmonized. It agrees most significantly with the texts of the Church Fathers from the areas of Asia Minor where the early church was most dominant from the 2nd century on.

The main detraction from the Byzantine Texttype is that early manuscripts (before the 4th century) do not heavily agree with it. But, interestingly, almost 100 percent of the "early" manuscripts are from Egypt, and that is not where Christianity dominated from early on. All of the "early" versional manuscripts (from before the 4th century) have also been recovered from the dry area of Egypt, including those of the early Old Latin, Old Syriac, and Coptic. But even these agree with the Byzantine Texttype such a substantive amount of time that they could easily have been derived from it.

Hope you dig deeper and find out more about this important discipline that undergirds all our modern translations.

Yours,

Bluefalcon

 

Bluefalcon,

I agree with your summary on the Byzantine family of mss.

Thank you for a gracious and refreshing spirit.

HankD

 

Perhaps one problem with such "families" is that sometimes a manuscript placed in one "family" often has some readings that are supposedly unique to another "family."

I know that KJV-only advocates sometimes deny that there are four families of manuscripts. KJV-only advocates seem to use a similar argument,
but they usually claim that there are only two lines or families.

James Sightler wrote: "There are essentially only two textual streams, and these have run parallel down the centuries" (TESTIMONY FOUNDED FOR EVER, p. 12). Perhaps one of the first to use the two-streams-of-Bibles argument in 1930 book was Benjamin Wilkinson (OUR AUTHORIZED BIBLE VINDICATED, p. 43). One problem is that the manuscripts and translations that are placed on
the claimed good KJV-only stream or line have some of the same readings and renderings as the ones placed on the claimed bad stream or line.

 

The reason KJVO advocates wish to deny the existence of the various texttypes and subtexttype families or transmissional lines of manuscripts is the need to proclaim a black versus white, true versus false, night versus day theological dichotomy regarding the NT text.

Basically, if it isn't the "God-approved" line, it necessarily MUST be the "Satanic" line. If varying texttypes are recognized and added to the mix, various shades of gray interfere with the neat division otherwise proclaimed.

 

Proof?