I am no authority on copying or scripture origins, but I have understood that when biblical texts were copied, the copyists understood they were on a mission from God, (what could be more blessed than being entrusted with accurately copying the Holy Word of God?) and that intentionally doing anything other than a perfect job would be considered bearing false witness and blasphemy. Also, they were checked and double checked, letter by letter, and if even one letter was in error, the entire page was scrapped and the source recopied. Maybe this explains the texts found in the trash. Maybe they had a letter wrong. Or a smudge.
Perry
From: "David Miller" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: [email protected] To: <[email protected]> Subject: [TruthTalk] Copying the Bible Date: Mon, 16 May 2005 11:16:32 -0400
*Note Subject Change Subject was "Rikk Watts on Genesis 1" and is now "Copying the Bible"
Caroline Wong wrote: > Both errors are likely. People could deliberately > add words to bolster the text and make it sound > better.
Wait just one minute, please. If you were copying the Scriptures, you would
try real hard to copy it accurately, would you not? Would *YOU* truly add
words to bolster the text and make it sound better? I'm talking about
*YOU*. Think about this carefully. I would venture to say that if you were
copying the Holy Scriptures, you would not add any words at all to make it
sound better. I know that I would not.
Caroline Wong wrote: > In fact, Christians have been known to write whole > books and letters and attribute them to Paul or John > or some other Apostle. There was a lot of controversy > and uncertainty so adding words make things more plain.
You are confusing outright forgery with monks copying the sacred text. When
scribes were copying texts, they were very careful NOT to add words and NOT
to subtract words. With this underlying paradigm at work here, which
mistake is most likely to take place? Would the addition of words or the
omission of words be the most likely to occur if your modus operandi was
trying to copy the text exactly and not add or subtract words? I think the
omission of words would be the most likely mistake.
Caroline Wong wrote: > Biblical scholars were quite surprised when they found > early manuscripts which did not contain lots of stuff like > the ending to Mark or the story in John about the woman > caught in adultery. Mark can be explained by saying the > manuscript lost its ending but how do we explain John :-) > We don't. We just put a note and say it's not in the early > manuscripts.
You give up on explanations way too quickly! It could be that the guy doing
the copying was called to lunch by his buddy and when he came back, he
picked up his copying efforts in the wrong place. It also could be that the
part of the text he was copying from was damaged. Maybe he spilled his
coffee on it, and so he planned to come back later when he could get an
undamaged copy. I haven't examined these manuscripts myself directly, but I
have read reports of those who have that passages like Mark 16 actually have
a large blank space where the omitted passage would fit. It looks like
indeed the copyist planned to come back later and fill it in. This suggests
to me that the copy he was working from was probably damaged in that place.
Caroline Wong wrote: > If copyists lost words as they copied, the later manuscripts > would have less words than the early ones.
Now you are thinking, but your assumption here is that all later manuscripts
were copied from all earlier ones. This is not true. Many times copies
were made that became a dead end. In other words, no further copies were
made from them. I think this is the case with these two older manuscripts.
We need to keep this fact of TWO manuscripts in mind because you talk about
older manuscripts and some people might get the idea that there are a bunch
of them. The truth is that we are talking about TWO manuscripts which
differ significantly from about 5,000 manuscripts that have a more recent
date. The big question is how this could be, which is why Westcott and Hort
came up with their Syrian recension theory. They postulated that these
older Egyptian manuscripts were right but the majority of other manuscripts
were wrong because there was a big mistake made early on from which all
these other copies were made. It makes much more sense that these two older
manuscripts in Egypt are the ones which were mistaken, especially when you
consider that the Sinaiticus text was found in a trash can at Saint
Katherine's monastery. (Incidentally, for trivia's sake, I would like to
mention that I have visited this monastery and spent the night there.)
Furthermore, the text was in all capital letters with no spaces between the
words. Was this perhaps some fun experiment some monk was doing because of
his boredom with copying texts all day long? For all we know, it was a
teenager given the task as homework, and he didn't even want to be doing it.
Maybe he was playing around with it like a modern day teenager does with
video games. If he was not a teenager, maybe he was someone just trying to
make the Word of God more encrypted? Who knows, but when we consider that
the monks at this monastery had such little opinion of this Bible that they
threw it away in the trash can, one must wonder why the modern scholars want
to put so much stock in it. The only thing it has going for it is its older
date. Is that really enough?
Peace be with you. David Miller.
----------
"Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
If you do not want to receive posts from this list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you will be unsubscribed. If you have a friend who wants to join, tell him to send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and he will be subscribed.
---------- "Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that you may know how you ought to answer every man." (Colossians 4:6) http://www.InnGlory.org
If you do not want to receive posts from this list, send an email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and you will be unsubscribed. If you have a friend who wants to join, tell him to send an e-mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and he will be subscribed.
