NT text corruption
Quentin David Jones
Greetings,
> Carping about the allegedly poor transmission of the text,
Allegedly?
I beg your pardon?
The text of the NT is fraught with numerous errors and corruptions -
examples can be found in many works - e.g. B. Ehrman's "The Orthodox
Corruption of Scripture" in which he provides detailed evidence for 4
specific corruptions of the NT by the early church.
Theologian D. Parker states that be "upwards of 30,000 variants for
that Gospel, so that we have, for example, 81 in the Lord's Prayer" (qtd. in
Wells, p. 230).
Ehrman points out just how corrupt our NT copies are:
"Interpreters of the NT are faced with a discomforting reality that many of
them would like to ignore. In many instances, we don't know what the authors
of the NT actually wrote. .... It is difficult to know
what the authors of the Greek New Testament wrote, in many instances,
because all of these surviving copies differ from one another, sometimes
significantly... No one knows for sure how many differences there are among
our surviving witnesses, simply because no one has yet been able to count
them all. The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps
it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more
differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"
(Text and Tradition, Lecture to Duke Divinity School, 1997).
> especially when all the *actual* evidence testifies to accurate
Pardon?
The evidence shows quite clearly how corrupt and in-accurate the
transmission of the text was - perhaps you can provide evidence of your
claimed "accuracy" ?
Perhaps you can explain some of the well-known additions, changes,
contradictions and corruptions :
* Markan appendix -
not found in early manuscripts - there are now FOUR differing versions of
endings to Mark.
* Matt. 6:13 -
to this day, there are different versions in various bibles - the early
manuscripts show that "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the
glory, for ever. Amen" is a later addition.
* Luke 3:22 -
early witnesses have :
" . . . and a voice came from heaven, which said, Thou are my son, this day
have I begotten thee"
later manuscripts have the KJV version :
"...Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased"
* John 9:35 -
The KJV has "...son of god", but the early manuscripts show "..son of man".
* John's pericope of the Adulteress -
not found in the early witnesses - generally agreed to be a later addition.
* Colossians 1:14 -
the phrase "through hs blood" is a later addition.
* Acts 9:5-6 -
Absent from early manuscripts - a later addition.
* Acts 8:37 -
"And Phillip said, if thou believest with all thine heart, thou mayest. And
he answered and said, I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God"
Absent from early manuscripts - a later addition.
* John 8:59 -
"...going through the midst of them, and so passed by"
Absent from early manusripts - a later addition.
* 1 John 5:7
The Trinity formula found here only originated centuries after the events -
Bruce Metzger notes :
"The passage is absent from every known Greek manuscript except eight, and
these contain the passage in what appears to be a translation from a late
rescension of the Latin Vulgate . . .
"The passage is quoted by none of the Greek fathers, who, had they known
it, would most certainly have employed it in the Trinitarian controversies
(Sabellian and Arian). Its first appearance in Greek is in a Greek version
of the (Latin) Acts of the Lutheran Council in 1215.
"The passage is absent from the manuscripts of all ancient versions
(Syriac, Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopic, Arabic, Slavonic), except the Latin;
and it is not found (a) in the Old Latin in its early form (Tertullian,
Cyprian, Augustine), or in the Vulgate (b) as issued by Jerome (codex
Fuldensis [copied AD 541-46] and codex Amiatinus [copied before AD 716]) or
(c) as revised by Alcuin (first hand of codex Vallicellianus [9nth century])
"The earliest instance of the passage being quoted as a part of the actual
text of the Epistle is in a fourth century Latin treatise entitled Liber
Apologeticus (chapter 4), attributed either to the Spanish heretic
Priscillian (died about 385CE) or to his follower Bishop Instantius . . ."
(p 647-48).
In short - the NT shows over-whelming evidence of having been tampered with
by the early church during the early arguments over doctrine.
And its increasingly clear that there was no historical Jesus at all - the
original Jesus of Paul etc. was a spiritual being - there is NO mention of
the Life of Jesus in the 1st century - just spiritual formulae about a
higher being.
> There's no particular reason to go on a fishing
> expedition to disprove the tenets of Christianity unless you have made a
The reason is to get to the Truth by examining the evidence - and the
evidence shows that the Gospels were late productions - totally unknown to
the 1st century writers and still not generally known even in the early 2nd
century - neither Clement, nor Ignatius nor Barnabas shows knowledge of the
written Gospels.
The Gospels did not even receive their current names till well OVER a
CENTURY after the events. And the early Christians (e.g. Papias, Clement,
Tertullian) agreed the Gospels were not by eye-witnesses.
Quentin David Jones
(thanks to ps418' site for details).
"C. Wingate" <whi...@erols.com> wrote in message
news:OSAJ8.46552$R_4....@nwrddc02.gnilink.net...
> harlech wrote:
> Surely it is pathetically easy come up with reservations, more or less
> substantial. Carping about the allegedly poor transmission of the text,
> especially when all the *actual* evidence testifies to accurate
> transmission, is a symptom of the real problem. This problem is the will
> to *dis*believe. There's no particular reason to go on a fishing
> expedition to disprove the tenets of Christianity unless you have made a
> commitment to disbelief. But this is not compelling as a motivation;
> such arguments are as transparently rationalistic as the kind of kooky
> theories one runs across which attempt to explain how Jesus wasn't
> really a Jew, or how the modern Jews aren't really Jews, or any number
> of contortions to explain how things are not as they obviously are.
>
> C. Wingate
>
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Wieland Willker
"Quentin David Jones" <quen...@iinet.net.au> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:adg1ig$amh$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> The text of the NT is fraught with numerous errors and corruptions -
> examples can be found in many works
The problem with this is that we don't know what the correct text looked
like, so we don't know what errors and corruptions really are. If we know,
fine, then we also know the original text and there is no problem. So, what
do you really want to say?
Ch. Rajinder Nijjhar Jatt
"Wieland Willker" <wil...@chemie.uni-bremen.de> wrote in message
news:adifia$25c$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
>
>
>
> "Quentin David Jones" <quen...@iinet.net.au> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
> news:adg1ig$amh$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > The text of the NT is fraught with numerous errors and corruptions -
> > examples can be found in many works
>
> The problem with this is that we don't know what the correct text looked
> like, so we don't know what errors and corruptions really are. If we know,
> fine, then we also know the original text and there is no problem. So,
what
> do you really want to say?
>
>
For Gospel being received through revelations, Word of God cannot be written
down in ink on paper as what is written down is corruptible.
But many dead of spirit people memorise the Books and vomit out when I asked
a question.
Now, Gospel cannot be taught in the Universities and Colleges. Eusibius has
pointed out a few corruption and the one specific one was "Go and teach
Gospel in the name of Holy Spirit, son, etc."
Gospel is for the twice-born people and not for the once-born.
--
Ch. Rajinder Nijjhar, M.Sc.
Mussallmaan of Pir Nanak Shah,
Gnostics are the living christs (satgurus) and NOT Christians, of Living
Allah (Spirit),
This Dark Age is the Age of Al-Islaam of heart and NOT of any Book.
For articles on sister Christian and Sikh communities, visit:-
http://www.nijjhar.freeserve.co.uk/gnostic.htm
http://www.nijjhar.freeserve.co.uk/sikhism.htm
>
)))
Matthew Johnson
On 3 Jun 2002 15:21:52 GMT, "Quentin David Jones"
<quen...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
[snip]
>Theologian D. Parker states that be "upwards of 30,000 variants for
>that Gospel, so that we have, for example, 81 in the Lord's Prayer" (qtd. in
>Wells, p. 230).
This is really misleading, since the _overwhelming_ majority of these
'30,000 variants' can be dismissed as orthographical variants or
copyists blunders. This step of textual criticism is often called
'verbal criticism'.
>Ehrman points out just how corrupt our NT copies are:
>"Interpreters of the NT are faced with a discomforting reality that many of
>them would like to ignore. In many instances, we don't know what the authors
>of the NT actually wrote. .... It is difficult to know
>what the authors of the Greek New Testament wrote, in many instances,
>because all of these surviving copies differ from one another, sometimes
>significantly...
I haven't seen the entire 'Text and Tradition, Lecture to Duke
Divinity School', but I strongly suspect that this is deliberate,
sensationalist ovestatement of his.
Yet even if my suspicion is wrong, notice the key phrase: " differ
from one another, _sometimes_ significantly". That 'sometimes' is far
less often than that 30,000!
>significantly...
> No one knows for sure how many differences there are among
>our surviving witnesses, simply because no one has yet been able to count
>them all.
This too is misleading. People could have counted them, but nobody
thought it was worth the bother. Counting _significant_ variants would
be much more useful, yet even here, people usually settle for
estimates.
> The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps
>it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more
>differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"
Now this part is _clearly_ sensationalist. Again, if you count only
_significant_ variants the number drops precipitously.
[snip]
>In short - the NT shows over-whelming evidence of having been tampered with
>by the early church during the early arguments over doctrine.
I might have thought that I might have to agree with this unsupported
assertion, but then you weakened your own credibility beyond hope of
repair when you said:
>
>And its increasingly clear that there was no historical Jesus at all
This is obvious nonsense. It has been disproved so thoroughly and so
long ago, I am amazed you even bother with this ridiculous assertion.
No _serious_ historian will agree with this today.
Visit http://decani.yunet.com/doctrine.html for sound interpretation
of Scripture.
Wieland Willker
"Matthew Johnson" <matthew...@newsguy.com> schrieb im Newsbeitrag
news:adnpfm$oek$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> On 3 Jun 2002 15:21:52 GMT, "Quentin David Jones"
> <quen...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
> > The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps
> >it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more
> >differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"
>
> Now this part is _clearly_ sensationalist. Again, if you count only
> _significant_ variants the number drops precipitously.
My analysis of the Gospels shows that there are about 1000 variants in the
Gospels that are worth discussing at all. Of these again 500 are *really*
interesting from some point of view. Of these only about 100 are so critical
that there is real dispute in the scholarly world about them.
MHO of course.
Rick
matthew...@newsguy.com wrote:
<<<And its increasingly clear that there was no historical Jesus at all
<<This is obvious nonsense. It has been disproved so thoroughly and so
<<long ago, I am amazed you even bother with this ridiculous assertion.
<<No _serious_ historian will agree with this today.>>
This myth has gained full urban legend status on the internet, where it is easy
to assert false knowledge and have it go un-checked.
Much like "My Kidneys were Stolen" and "The US Postal Service will Charge for
E-mail" and "Microsoft will pay $50,000 for replying to this chain letter."
The idea that there was no historical Jesus is popular on many atheist web
sites, and unforunately, is handled with intellectually dishonest means.
My personal opinion is that people fall for the dishonesty simply because they
want to (it tickles their ears, so to speak).
"Those who doubt the historicity of Jesus show themselves to be more ingenuine
than learned"
- Voltaire
(going by memory on his quote - I think I'm pretty close)
Joel Graebe
Matthew Johnson wrote:
Very true and one of the few times that someone has made it on to my
'delete' filter list with a single post!
The Boog-man Seven7s
matthew...@newsguy.com (Matthew Johnson) wrote in message news:<adnpfm$oek$1...@bob.news.rcn.net>...
> On 3 Jun 2002 15:21:52 GMT, "Quentin David Jones"
> <quen...@iinet.net.au> wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
> >Theologian D. Parker states that be "upwards of 30,000 variants for
> >that Gospel, so that we have, for example, 81 in the Lord's Prayer" (qtd. in
> >Wells, p. 230).
>
> This is really misleading, since the _overwhelming_ majority of these
> '30,000 variants' can be dismissed as orthographical variants or
> copyists blunders. This step of textual criticism is often called
> 'verbal criticism'.
>
>
> >Ehrman points out just how corrupt our NT copies are:
> >"Interpreters of the NT are faced with a discomforting reality that many of
> >them would like to ignore. In many instances, we don't know what the authors
> >of the NT actually wrote. .... It is difficult to know
> >what the authors of the Greek New Testament wrote, in many instances,
> >because all of these surviving copies differ from one another, sometimes
> >significantly...
>
> I haven't seen the entire 'Text and Tradition, Lecture to Duke
> Divinity School', but I strongly suspect that this is deliberate,
> sensationalist ovestatement of his.
>
> Yet even if my suspicion is wrong, notice the key phrase: " differ
> from one another, _sometimes_ significantly". That 'sometimes' is far
> less often than that 30,000!
From what I understand, that 30,000 is gained when the same mistake is
counted in different manuscripts, or something like that.
> >significantly...
> > No one knows for sure how many differences there are among
> >our surviving witnesses, simply because no one has yet been able to count
> >them all.
>
> This too is misleading. People could have counted them, but nobody
> thought it was worth the bother. Counting _significant_ variants would
> be much more useful, yet even here, people usually settle for
> estimates.
It's one of those things that people nitpick when they look for as
many errors as they can so they can have excuses to not do something.
> > The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps
> >it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more
> >differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"
>
> Now this part is _clearly_ sensationalist. Again, if you count only
> _significant_ variants the number drops precipitously.
>
> [snip]
>
> >In short - the NT shows over-whelming evidence of having been tampered with
> >by the early church during the early arguments over doctrine.
This depends on who you ask. There is no real evidence one way or the
other, and we have several of the controversies recorded, so we know
what was going on - like the Arian heresy.
> I might have thought that I might have to agree with this unsupported
> assertion, but then you weakened your own credibility beyond hope of
> repair when you said:
>
> >
> >And its increasingly clear that there was no historical Jesus at all
>
> This is obvious nonsense. It has been disproved so thoroughly and so
> long ago, I am amazed you even bother with this ridiculous assertion.
> No _serious_ historian will agree with this today.
>
Take it from an aspiring serious historian - any attempt to prove that
there wasn't a historical Jesus is hogwash.
The Boog-man Seven7s
Sarah Kanary
"The Boog-man Seven7s" <Seve...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:adqqaa$hks$1...@bob.news.rcn.net...
> > This too is misleading. People could have counted them, but nobody
> > thought it was worth the bother. Counting _significant_ variants would
> > be much more useful, yet even here, people usually settle for
> > estimates.
>
> It's one of those things that people nitpick when they look for as
> many errors as they can so they can have excuses to not do something.
Correct!
> > > The best estimates put the number at around 300,000, but perhaps
> > >it's better to put this figure in comparative terms. There are more
> > >differences among our manuscripts than there are words in the NT"
> >
> > Now this part is _clearly_ sensationalist. Again, if you count only
> > _significant_ variants the number drops precipitously.
> >
> > [snip]
> >
> > >In short - the NT shows over-whelming evidence of having been tampered
with
> > >by the early church during the early arguments over doctrine.
>
> This depends on who you ask. There is no real evidence one way or the
> other, and we have several of the controversies recorded, so we know
> what was going on - like the Arian heresy.
Unfortunately, most of the writings from the controversy that survive are
from ONE side only, those of enemies were destroyed. The God of the
Christians in the first century was the same God of the Jews, who did not
then and still do not now worship a triune deity.
> > >And its increasingly clear that there was no historical Jesus at all
> Take it from an aspiring serious historian - any attempt to prove that
> there wasn't a historical Jesus is hogwash.
Absolutely correct! Even Jesus' enemies never disputed his existence. His
identity, maybe, but never his existence.
But, I guess that if there are still those who would deny the holocaust ever
happened, despite there still being *eyewitness* survivors to testify to its
truth, it is a matter of course that some will attempt to deny the existence
of someone whom no one living on earth today has ever seen.
May you have peace.
--
for humble Christian Bible study:
http://www.watchtower.org/