Featured Does the Greek Text Matter?

So on the side of the theory we have half a dozen recognized scholars, and on the other side we have you--not able to read Greek and having read a few articles, Wikipedia, and a book partly on textual criticism.

What is "adelph"? Borgianus only has Gospel fragments so there is no big deal about it not having the PA. Admit it--you've been consulting Wikipedia again, right?

Whatever mss the PA is in or not in, the UBS kept it, though in brackets. Metzger says, "At the same time the account has all the earmarks of historical veracity" (A Textual Commentary on the Greek NT, p. 188). The jury is still out. I'll not pursue the PA in this thread, but eagerly look forward to the book about to come out on the SEBTS seminar, and the collation currently being done by Dr. Robinson of all the mss that have it.

Yes, well Aleph and B do have the notorious spear thrust in Matt. 27:49, so that shows how accurate they are.

But seriously, patristic support by Justin Martyr and Irenaeus support the LE, so I think I'll stick to it (Perspectives on the Ending of Mark, p. 46). They were both 2nd century, long before the mss in question.

And once again you have no proof of your completely positive statements of your version of facts.

Yes, because it shows the unreliability of those mss. And as I mentioned some of the correcters were in the scriptorum, not later.

Sigh. The fact that you are starting as a beginner in textual criticism makes it hard to interact with you. If you understood the Byz-pri methodology you wouldn't even be saying this. I don't have to cite a scholar. It's part of the theory itself, not simply my opinion.

 

Guilt by association--ethically speaking, a very questionable tactic for debate, even on the Internet.

But I'm right. It is a very similar issue that helped Bart Ehrman to apostasize.

 

Sure. As someone who is bilingual, I have written or copied things in my second language hundreds if not thousands of times. I am a witness that it is much easier to copy or write in one's first language.

In Alexandria, most copiests would have had Egyptian as their first language, with Greek being the lingua franca. Since they were copying their second language, they were much more likely to make mistakes than copiests in the Eastern empire, where the first language of a copiest would be Greek.

It is no accident that even today the Greek Orthodox scholars use a Byzantine Greek text as their source document.

 

You do make a good point, and I should have been more careful in my post.

The Alexandrian text type was from the general area. Simply being Alexandrian in the text type does not mean that the ms was copied in that city.

Again, assuming a ms was actually copied at Alexandria does not mean it was copied by someone with Greek as their first language. It was still in Egypt, and there were no doubt many Egyptians living there.

Regardless, Alexandria did not have much of a Christian population in the first couple of centuries. The likelihood is small that it would be a center of NT mss copying in the early years of Christian history. On the other hand, the Byzantine text tradition is from the area of Antioch, which had an influential church from the very beginning of Christian history (Acts 6:5, ch. 11, etc.). It is much more likely that the area of Antioch would have a tradition dating directly to the autographs than Alexandria would.

 

Since Rippon has not corrected his earlier statement about the papyri in spite of this chance, I'll correct it. None of the papyri have are concerned with the longer ending of Mark.

Also, though the 4th century Sinaitic Syriac doesn't have the Markan LE, the Curetonian Syriac from the same time does (The Early Versions of the NT, Metzger, p. 37.

Again, Rippon is being very demanding that I answer all of his statements, major and minor. Okay, when will he answer my point about the early church fathers that had the LE? (Perspectives..., p. 46) In fact, Iranaeus who I mentioned even quotes from the LE of Mark as the end of the book. His witness predates by many years the mss that Rippon is insisting are the final word on the subject.

 

1. I never said footnotes are undesirable. I'm in favor of them.
2. Yes I do think such a statement is invalid, since it is from the eclectic perspective and I'm not an eclectic. (Duh! :tongue3

 

Yes, this is a big difference between the eclectic and Byzantine-priority positions.

What Rippon wishes me to address:

I'll reserve judgement on pietistic expansion until you actually proves it exists.

Harmonization with "sister texts"? Never heard of "sister texts." I assume Rippon means harmonization within the Synoptics or with other parallel passages. It occurs. Does it occur more in Byzantine mss? I'd like Rippon to address this, or his statement is meaningless in the context of this discussion.

That is correct. I think the smoothness of the Byz. mss is actually due to the fact that the writers of Scripture were better writers and better at Greek than the eclectics think they were. There is no historical proof that they were lousy writers. :type:

 

Oh, wow, you presume to speak for all of these guys? How you know what they think about the subject? How do I know what they think about the subject just by your statement? Give me actual quotes and then maybe I'll believe you. You're kind of doing, "I've got more scholars than you do, so I know I'm right," which you know is a non-starter in the search for truth.

And we've had the discussion before about how many Byz.-pri. scholars there are and I gave you a long list. The tribe increaseth.

Prove it. I suggest it's only denied by scholars unfamiliar with the research I've already referred to by Colwell, Robinson, and others.

 

Actually, there are no brackets in the main text of The New Testament in the Original Greek, ed. by Robinson and Pierpont. What they did is put alternate readings in the margin. I'm perfectly comfortable with that--use it all the time and recommend it to my students.