hi rev,
You seem to have taken umbrage at my remarks concerning the "Received Text", somehow concluding that I consider it the product of some sort of heresy. That is certainly not the case. I specifically spoke of the Authorised Version as being a work of scholarship (of its time) and beauty. And Erasmus himself was the most moderate of the reformers and remained a son of the Church. Not only was he a priest but an Augustinian monk until he was released from his vows in 1517. His Greek New Testament was dedicated to Pope Leo X who described him as "a true Christian". And when a critic wished to print a pamphlet charging Erasmus with heresy on 60,000 counts he was forbidden to do so by all three popes in his lifetime. But scholarship of the sixteenth century was only beginning to appreciate the value of early Greek manuscripts and the Latin Vulgate was often the preferred reading. Textual criticism was in its infancy to the extent that Erasmus felt free to make press corrections on the manuscripts themselves and use them as printers copy!
The only aspersion that I cast was upon yourself where I suggested you were misleading in saying there are more surviving Greek manuscripts that agree with the Received Text than there are with the more modern "Critical Text". Your statement is true but misleading because, as I explained in my previous post, the implication that there is stronger support for the Received Text is false. However, much of what you said about textual criticism was accurate, particularly the article on uncials by James Adair.
I must also say that I am in complete agreement with the comments made by James Frazier in the previous post. But there are some additional comments I would make on your response:
You spoke of my blanket statements like: "The KJV was primarily based on the text Erasmus had collated.", "it clearly lacks authority."
It is true I dont corroborate everything I say. I treat this forum as I do my local pub - a place to pop into and exchange a few thoughts, learn a thing or two, have a bit of a laugh. I doubt that most posters want to know chapter and verse of everything I write but if anyone does all you have to do is ask. The dependence of the KJV on the text Erasmus collated is quite a lengthy discussion so in order not to make this post longer than necessary I have provided further information in a new thread which I trust will be sufficient: http://www.jehovahs-witness.com/forum/thread.asp?id=31639&site=3
My statement that "it clearly lacks authority" was specifically about the reading of Alpha and Omega in Revelation 1:11, not about the KJV in general. Further, I supported my statement by saying the text has no manuscript support prior to the ninth century, and provided the means to check that in a list of all early Greek manuscripts containing the book of Revelation.
You spoke of my "very long cut and paste of research material he obviously has never himself read but which was punctuated in such a way as to suggest that he had."
There was no intention to suggest that I had read all the research material. I have read some but not all. My intention was not to demonstrate my learning but to provide BugParadise and others with the necessary tools should they wish to do further research on the textual support for Revelation. I gathered the information from three books I have at home: "The Text of the New Testament" by Kurt and Barbara Aland, "A Bibliography of Greek New Testament Manuscripts" by J. K. Elliott, and the sixth edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek-English New Testament. I have also borrowed Hoskier's two volumes on "The Text of the Apocalypse" from the library to see if I can identify just when "Alpha and Omega" was added to the text of Revelation 1:11. I will keep the forum informed on what I find.
You said that my statement about the lack of uncial support for the passage in Rev. 1:11 may have been answered by one simple statement from Charles Sitterly written almost a century ago: "in the Gospels the great uncials A and C support [the Antiochian or Syrian group of texts] as well as Codex N, S and F, most of the later uncials and almost all miniscules, the Peshitta-Syriac version and the bulk of the Church Fathers from Chrysostom."
Unfortunately not. Although both A and C both include the book of Revelation neither of them support the reading of "Alpha and Omega" in Rev. 1:11. The other codices (N, S and F) as well as the Peshitta-Syriac version all lack Revelation. So the invitation remains to cite any uncial, any manuscript, prior to the ninth century which contains such a reference. I accept that you have time constraints and are in the midst of a world of other tasks. But if you had no evidence to the contrary then I think you should not have been so quick to suggest I was misleading. The fact is that we are all subject to the textual evidence and it is quite clear Alpha & Omega is a very late reading in that verse.
You presented some information from Dr. David R. Brown who seemed to be promoting the versions as having greater authority than the Greek texts. He claimed to cite Scrivener as saying "The Old Latin version was likely translated from the Greek in roughly 157 AD." In fact Scrivener says no such thing. He not only rejects the theory of the Old Latin originating in Rome in the time of Pius I (142-157) but recommends the Vulgate as superior to the Old Latin which, he says, "was either formed from manuscripts early interpolated, or (what is perhaps more likely) was corrupted at a later period." ("A Plain Introduction to New Testament Criticism", II, 1894, pp.302,303,315) Does it matter that he misrepresented Scrivener? Yes, on two counts. It reflects on the legitimacy of other quotations he makes, and it gives a greater weight to the versions than is warranted when we have Greek papyri of a very early period. One of the basic rules of modern textual criticism is that "the primary authority for a critical textual decision lies with the Greek manuscript tradition, with the versions and Fathers serving no more than a supplementary and corroborative function". ("The Text of the New Testament", Kurt and Barbara Aland, 1987, p.275)
You refer to "all that other humeral about who had to rush to beat whom to press" as "a bunch of irrelevant harrumph". When Robert pointed out it was not irrelevant as the first edition was full of errors as a result of the rush, you implied those errors were similar to the different readings in Aleph and C.
They are far different. Erasmus says himself that he did the work of six years in eight months and that it was "thrown together rather than edited." This is most obvious in the book of Revelation. As mentioned previously, Erasmus had only one manuscript for Revelation which he had borrowed from Reuchlin. This manuscript contained the commentary of Andreas of Caesarea which was completely imbedded in the text, as interlinear comments, and indistinguishable in parts. The text had therefore to be extracted and copied freshly for the printer. Erasmus entrusted this job to one of his assistants, Nikolaus Gerber. He made many errors in transcription and in several places he clearly took the commentary for the text. Erasmus did not take time to check these errors for the first edition, nor adequately at any time. And when the manuscript was illegible or missing he appears to have relied on the Latin Vulgate and translated the required verses into Greek himself.
There were hundreds of typographical errors, so much so that Scrivener spoke of it as "the most faulty book [for typographical errors] I know." ("A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament", second edition, 1874, p.383) To his credit, Erasmus immediately set about revising the text for a new edition which corrected most of the typographical errors but made comparatively few alterations in the Greek text.
You say that Tischendorf was the first outsider permitted to visit St. Catherines Monastery and imply that the Sinaitic codex is defective because Tischendorf found it in a wastebasket. While you subsequently confirmed that simply because a manuscript is found in a trash can does not necessarily imply it is trash I think it would be helpful to review the history of the codex in question.
First it should be said that Tischendorf was not the first "outsider" to visit St. Catherines. In the mid-eighteenth century an English bishop named Richard Pococke visited the monastery. William Turner and William John Banckes visited at different times in 1815. Johann Burckhardt visited in 1822, and so on.
In Tichendorfs account of his first discovery of the Sinaitic codex he speaks of finding a wide basket full of old parchments and being told by the librarian that some had already been committed to the flames. On finding parchments of the Greek OT he says that they were given to him "all the more readily as they were destined for the fire." However, in the book "Secrets of Mount Sinai" (James Bentley, 1985, p.87) to which you refer it says: "[This account] seems to me hardly likely to be true. Quite apart from the fact that the forty-three parchments he supposedly rescued from a basket of rubbish are in remarkably good condition, the highly suspicious circumstances under which Tischendorf took the Codex Sinaiticus from the monk in 1859 made him (as we shall see) desperate to prove that the original owners of the manuscript were unfitted to keep it." I have to agree with Bentley that after all the time the monks had cared for these manuscripts it does seem an amazing coincidence that Tischendorf should be on the spot just as they are about to be destroyed. I also rather doubt whether anyone travelled to the monastery to hear the monks' version of events. It is not a big issue whether Tischendorf was telling the truth or not. But it is rather silly to suggest that a manuscript might be defective because some monk ignorant of its value was going to burn it after the monastery had cared for it for a thousand years.
I dont expect to persuade you to share my understanding of textual criticism. At least, not in this post. But I do hope it has made you aware that association with JW does not necessarily mean one is ignorant of current scholarship. Hoping to share some more information with you about Rev. 1:11 shortly.
Earnest
"Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun the frumious Bandersnatch!" - Rev. Charles Dodgson
Edited by - Earnest on 7 July 2002 19:45:38