On Jul 7, 6:24 pm, "Ralph"
yahoo.com> wrote:>
>>Yes, quite true that we do not have the originals -and good thing too!
>>For what would men naturally do with such things? They'd deify them!
>
> As you have with the copies.
>
How so? I don't know anyone who worships his bible. I rarely
find anyone who reads it! But does historical Christianity hold
to sola scriptura? Yes, except for primarily the "catholic"
denominations who cannot because of their system of
ecclesiastical government. Reformed Protestantism holds the
bible as its final authoritative until the return of Christ. It is
our standard in which everything else is judged and verified,
including all traditions, creeds and confessions.
What is your standard?
>
>>However, what we do have is beyond any other example. I don't
>>have all the facts and figures at my finger tips but generally I know
>>it to be true that we have roughly 5000 complete manuscripts of
>>the entire Greek New Testament which all are dated prior to
>>200 AD.
>
> You don't have any of the facts and figures either at your hand or anywhere
> else on your body. There are approximately 5,700 manuscripts of the New
> Testament, most of them fragmentary and not many before 200CE. In addition,
> none of the fragments agree with all of the other fragments. In other words,
> they don't say the same thing.
>
I don't know where you come up with this. Perhaps you are confusing
the differences between the Textus Receptus and the Majority Text.
Pickering
counts 1,838 differences between these two. However, the Majority
Text
stands much closer to the Textus Receptus than it does to the critical
text.
(i.e., UBS3 [=NA26]) According to Daniel Wallace there are 6,577 dif-
ferences between the Majority Text and the critical text. Yet as
Daniel
himself states, this does not tell the whole story. Quote:
Textual variants are customarily placed in one of four categories:
omission, addition, substitution, and transposition. The general
character of the Byzantine text-type is normally described as smooth,
conflated, harmonistic, complete. Therefore one would expect it
especially to imbibe in the error of addition. That is, since it is
an
allegedly later form of text, it must have adapted and adopted
earlier
traditions. But of the 6,577 differences between the Majority Text
and
the critical texts, in only 1,589 places is the Majority Text longer
than
the critical. This is less than one-fourth of the total differences.
[And
hence the category of “additions” is actually smaller than the
average
category of variation.]
Further, the Majority Text is sometimes shorter than the critical
text.
Though this is generally acknowledged, it is severely downplayed
—by both friend and foe. Hort, for example, suggests that while
“inter-
polations…are abundant,” “omissions…are rare.” [Westcott and Hort]
Metzger, in a suggestive study on the parallels between the textual
criticism of the New Testament on the one hand, and The Iliad and
The Mahaœbhaœrata on the other, quotes with approbation Franklin
Edgerton, one of the editors of The Mahaœbhaœrata:
I have come to believe that any passage, long or short,
which is missing in any recension or important group of
manuscripts as a whole, must be very seriously suspected
of being a secondary insertion…probably not one of the
some fifty MSS. [that] I have studied for Book 2, nor any
of their genealogical ancestors, ever deliberately or intention-
ally omitted a single line of the text…. It appears that no
scribe, no redactor, ever knowingly sacrificed a single line
which he found in his original.
End Quote
Metzger draws the parallel for NT textual criticism that the rule
that
the shorter reading is to be preferred (brevior lectio
praeferenda est) is generally sound and that by this canon the
Byzantine text-type, in being long, comes up short.
......... how deep do you want to go into all this?
>
>> We have several individual manuscripts of NT books
>>that date within 30 yrs of the original.
>
> Source? Cite? I don't think so my little fundie friend.
>
One, this whole thing was something I waded through
30 yrs ago in seminary. I revisit the doctrine of the Trinity
every 5-7 yrs, but as to accuracy of the text in declaring
what God's providential care has preserved, well,
BTDT. I'm satisfied. That you're not, well, I think you
god has short arms.
