The Textual Criticism Series Rolls On

Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona. This is the dividing line

The Apostle Peter commanded Christians to be ready to give a defense for the hope that is within us Yet to give that answer with gentleness and reverence

Our host is dr. James white director of Alpha Omega ministries and an elder at the Phoenix reformed

Baptist Church This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with dr.

White call now It's 602 nine seven three four six zero two or toll -free across the

United States. It's one eight seven seven seven five three three three four one And now with today's topic here is

James white and welcome to the dividing line on a

Tuesday Morning, I guess it is Whatever it is. We continue with our textual criticism seminar our textual criticism

Introduction we there are a number of things we didn't get to last time that we sort of need to get to before we move into things if by the way you are listening live and you haven't looked at the

At the website this morning then you need to get hold of it and You need to download the

PDFs. And if you're on dial -up Probably not gonna work to try to listen to the program and download the

PDFs the same time One of them's about I don't know two or three Meg. There's 12 Meg. So pull down those

PDFs because they will provide you with What we're going to be looking at eventually over the course of this hour

But not not right at the start because there are a few issues We still need to take a look at before we can get into actually looking at some textual variants and looking today at the

UBS fourth text The first file the smaller the two files has the

UBS fourth material in it and If you want to take a look at that and I suppose yes, if you're listening via archive

And you want to get these things they are linked on today's date Which is well,

I think it posted that post first ones last night 5th or 6th of November 2007 you can find them in the blog archives at that point and Grab them that way of November.

I say November February February of 11 down here February 2007 six seven somewhere around there is where you'll find the links to the

PDFs and Those will provide you with what we'll be looking at in the context of the program today.

But before we get there didn't get a chance to finish up some of the Information that so we sort of need

I Suppose you could get away without it, but Honestly, it's it's helpful if you have this this information available to you in the context of what?

Especially what you read in the Internet today. There's just so much Stuff that floats around the

Internet that I would say that in some ways You know last night as I was surfing around for high quality images of manuscripts and stuff that was really neat to find how much stuff is out there that that image

I pulled down from the British Museum 12 megs just a Massive resolution and that's that's kind of stuff

It's going to be available in a much more general format in the future that you'll you'll be able to utilize

That was neat. But aside from those positive aspects The Internet has done has done more to confuse people about the subject textual criticism than it has done to help people

That's because you know, I get people coming to channel all -time. Hey, I just I just read this on a website and is that true and Frequently what they're asking about is just plain silly.

I mean, it's just it's just so far removed from reality I mean, well remember we have an example of this remember what happened when the

Bree and call when Dave Hunt put out his own version of what love is this with the

The first 15 chapters of Acts Hebrew original argument and when people started challenging them

They they go surfing. They go googling through the internet until they find a cultic web page

With something about Hebrew and Matthew and they're quoting from a cultic web page.

They try to defend this whacked -out Thing that that slid into what love is this somewhere, you know

Gives you an idea, you know people come in and and since churches don't talk about this

And it seems most Christians don't think they could even ask their pastors about this and you know what? They're probably right

Because I know my experience I was the only person and I minored in Greek in college

I was the only person who really found textual criticism to be fascinating and interesting and and Pursued it and read about it and and read outside of class about it and stuff like that most folks are just like, you know, please, you know,

I'm the last thing you want to be talking about something like this in church and So, you know, I understand why why people would be

Pretty naive when it comes to any claims concerning the Bible and and things like that I heard somebody say that the whole

New Testament was written in Aramaic. Yeah, it's exactly Paul's we do He's been writing to the Ephesians in Aramaic.

Yeah, right, you know That's like I'm gonna I'm gonna be speaking at a church, you know in New York someplace

And so I make my arrangements by writing to him in Italian. Yeah, that's brilliant It's just it's just a lot of dumb stuff floating around the internet and as long as it said with some

With is on someone says it with confidence. Well, then it must be true So there's a lot of stuff out there and I understand that and that's why we sometimes have to discuss things it may be you know wouldn't technically be a part of normally the discussion anyways, but Because we live in the age we live in we have to talk about those things.

For example, I mentioned last time that I have frequently been identified by King James only advocates as the high priest of the

Alexandrian cult and Which just still makes me chuckle and if these folks didn't break up churches and ruin ministries the whole thing would be exceptionally laughable and and The fact that last week someone could do what they did with Ruckman denying the existence of Greece and putting out a map

Demonstrates just how weird some of this stuff can actually actually become but When you talk about things like the

Byzantine manuscript tradition the Alexandrian the Western the Caesarean And then you start talking about the texts that come from them.

You start talking about the textus receptus You start talking about specific Manuscripts such as Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus and Codex Vaticanus and Vaticanus.

Oh, no It's just I you know,

I understand the you know, especially for fundamentalists for certain certain fundamentals

Sorry, sorry But for certain the fundamentalist if a codex is found in the

Vatican Library, it must be corrupted You know just so quick on the conspiracy theories the

Vatican Library is huge. I Imagine all my books are in the Vatican. I bet you they have all of Peter Ruckman's books in the

Vatican Library They've got in a comic section, but they've got in the Vatican Library. So does that does that somehow mean something?

I mean the genetic fallacies and all the fallacies that people come up with on this stuff is just Enough to make the you know again

It becomes rather humorous, but people take this stuff really really seriously and and just don't even think really clearly for example

I Posted this morning and this of course for some people proves just how terrible and horrible I am.

I posted this morning part of that Super high resolution and I had to cut the resolution down.

I mean, it's 4 ,000 by 5 ,000 resolution on this one image A Graphic from Codex Sinaiticus so that this the indicated in For example, even if you're looking if you happen to have already opened up the

UBS PDF on the first page if you look down at the textual variants start with 34 a

If you go down the line, you will find a p75 and then you'll find the Hebrew letter

Aleph In this case the one next to it that is the sign for Codex Sinaiticus and Sinaiticus is detested

Detested not only by King James only advocates but by by others as well Because of the role that it's played in history, and I'll never forget when you hear someone

Saying that Sinaiticus was found in a trash basket. You know, that person is not serious in what they're saying and Why do

I say that? Well because it wasn't there's there's no evidence that it was Instead and I I've had to correct a number of people on this over the years.

I remember in the at the same Meeting in st. Louis where I first saw what love is this from Dave Hunt?

He was one of the plenary speakers I was one of the plenary speakers ironically speaking on the King James only issue and giving my presentation on that and We were at this restaurant having a dinner frequently

They'll have a dinner for the for the speakers and you go into one little back room things and and everybody sits around talks

And it was fascinating Conversation, but as we were leaving Somehow, I I don't remember how

Codex Sinaiticus came up and Dave Hunt as he's standing up to leave goes. Yeah. Well, what do you expect for a manuscript found?

a trash can and I in front of everybody said well, of course Sinaiticus was not found in a trash can that is a popular myth but it is just that it is a myth and he's a and But you hear people saying this all time and and myths in this area for some reason tend to take on a life of their own as long as you hear somebody you trust saying it then it absolutely must be true and You know

Dave Hunt says this and then somebody hears Dave Hunt say that and since they trust what Dave Hunt said about the word Faith movement then they trust

Dave Hunt about Codex Sinaiticus and so on and so forth In reality the story of the finding of Codex Sinaiticus is fascinating we need to realize that we can sit around in our in our the comfort of our homes and To see high -quality images these manuscripts, but that was not the case 150 160 years ago when

Individuals primarily of British origin are traveling the world Searching for such manuscripts looking to where they can find these things to Find older and older manuscripts and the man who found

Sinaiticus at least brought Sinaiticus to light It's hardly fair to say he found it. It's not like it was lost

But brought it to Western attention, I guess would be the appropriately political way of saying it was a man by name of Count von

Tischendorf Constantine von Tischendorf Constantine von Tischendorf obviously had the funding to be able to be gallivanting around the world looking for such things and when he

First went to st. Catherine's Monastery on Mount Sinai He The story is told this is where that this by the way is where the trashcan story comes from okay?

One day he sees the monk a monk walking by with a container What we might call a trash can but some sort of a basket and He is able to see

As the man goes by and he's heading he's heading for the kitchen. He's going to burn these scraps in the ovens and He stops the man and and he recognizes by looking at what's in the in the basket

That these are very very old manuscripts from the Greek Old Testament now to the monks

These were just old unused Old Testaments to them. That's that's all it was

I mean when you live amongst ancient stuff All the time is this well, you know remember books back then

Had had ever like gone through The the let's say your your grandma your grandpa dies

And you're going through their of their personal belongings or something like that and you find some of their old old books when you pick the book up pages fall out well

That's always been a problem with books and especially in the books a thousand years old It's quite likely to have pages fall out and once enough pages fall out

It's sort of like the hymn books. We have a pure BC in this Bible study group Sometimes turn to him 105.

I don't have him 105. I think we'll have to look for another him here You know sometimes stuff falls out and once a few pages fall out.

It's the usefulness of the book becomes greatly diminished always and So, you know, they weren't it's not like they were trying to destroy

Massively important things and there was no conspiracies or stuff. They're just they're just stoking their fires, man

I mean papyri burns. Well our leather burns. Well, especially with real old and dry and crusty. So anyway he he

Asks if he can put yourself in the position of these monks. You got this foreigner, dude, you know and He freaks out about your trash cans

Okay, if we if we had anybody doing that We wouldn't think a whole lot of this guy and he's saying look you can't burn this stuff

This is this is valuable. So you've got some whacked -out guy from England going your trash is really valuable

All right, so you understand why he's sort of sort of got the monks a little bit unhappy and the little bit confused and So he warned them don't burn any more of this stuff

But because he got all excited about it they became shall we say somewhat less than cooperative in Showing him anything else.

This isn't as I recall 1844 went off top my head here, but in 1844 and he doesn't get anything more, but he also has had his his interest whetted a good bit and So he goes back a number of years later doesn't find him finally 15 years later 1859

He's back again, and he's been there for a while hasn't found anything and So the last night he's going to be there he

Has had an edition of the Greek Septuagint the Greek translation the Old Testament published back in his homeland and and so to Say thanks to the steward who has been taking care of him and providing him with what he needs while he's staying there

He gives him a copy of the Greek Septuagint that he has had published and the monk says oh

I have one of these two and he takes him to his room and From his what we would call a closet he pulls out a very large book that is wrapped in red cloth

It is not in a trash can It is he doesn't pull it out of a trash can next to his bed

He pulls it out from his prized belongings wrapped in red cloth. Okay.

Let's keep that one straight This is the the historical evidence okay, and He takes the red cloth off and von

Tischendorf finds himself staring at What certainly in his day was the oldest existing biblical manuscript?

Containing a large portion of the Old Testament all of the New Testament at that time. It was at least 1 ,500 years old and This time von

Tischendorf is 15 years older and much wiser And instead of going wow

Instead he's like oh Okay. Yeah, well, that's interesting. Hey, you mind if I take a look at that?

And so he retires to his room for the evening and of course does not sleep at all Because he is simply

Turning the pages of at that time the the oldest biblical manuscript known

To anyone and of course the next day tries to buy it They won't do it the story of how it eventually ends up Today in the

British Library when I wrote the King James only controversy was in the British Museum But it's been transferred since then and some of you may recall when

I was there a couple years ago. I got to see both Sinaiticus and Alexandrus right next to each other at the

British Library and So That story is is is a fascinating one and of course the reality is very different than the critics in regards to Sinaiticus, but People will vilify a manuscript just because it disagrees with what evidently they think the

Bible should say which in of itself is should tell you a little something about the lack of a balance of many who address this particular subject and the

Sad level of emotion that frequently takes over another term that you need to understand.

Oh, by the way back up the truck now Sinaiticus Sinaiticus and Vaticanus probably especially when you look at them and compare them at one another they they do not have an identical text they disagree with one another a given the size they are that's not unusual for handwritten manuscripts, but two things they they seem to date from around the time of the

Council of Nicaea 325 AD and As I mentioned we know that Constantine Used imperial money to fund the copying of a certain number about 50 copies of the

Bible in light of the fact the Romans had been destroying scriptures for so long and A lot of folks think it certainly seems probable given the quality of the handwriting.

There's a it's very consistent very consistent handwriting that these probably

Sinaiticus and Vaticanus are probably both from that batch that printing if we could call it that of course remember these are handwritten of The Christian scriptures that were that were made at that particular time which would put them getting close to 1700 years of age at this point in time from 325 and So that gives you some indication of the of the value

That these these texts would have just as far as their their age is concerned but the one the primary reason that they're hated is because they represent what's called the

Alexandrian text type primarily and When the papyri were discovered the papyri are mentioned what papyrus was when when papyri started being discovered especially in 1930s

The papyri demonstrate that the readings of those ancient manuscripts were they disagreed with the later

Byzantine text are what are generally found the papyri as well and so the Alexandrian test text type is very ancient and has been proven to be ancient in in that particular fashion and So that's why they are they're detested now people say yeah, well there's there's all these corrections in them, too

There's all these, you know multiple hands and if they were so good and why would there have to be multiple hands?

well, think about it for just a second a an ecclesiastical text type developed over time a

Text type that was that was familiar with the church. I mean we know this historically We know what happened with the Latin Vulgate.

For example, Latin Vulgate translated the beginning of the fifth century for a thousand years It's the it's the text of the church and and it took on its own

Form over time and anyone who would question the Latin Vulgate you were questioning the very

Bible itself I mean, there's so many parallels between Vulgate only ism as you see in Roman Catholicism and King James only ism as you see it in Protestant churches today that it's not even funny

But it it became the default text. Well, there was a default Greek text as well the Byzantine text type.

So if you're looking at Sinaiticus you're looking at Vaticanus and these are texts that are are in use

Not just burying the sand someplace, but they are in use for literally a millennia of time and They differ from the standard text that's developed outside then people are going to make emendations and It would certainly be like taking your

New American Standard and trying to put notes in it to make it read like your New King James Okay, there's gonna be a lot of notes if you're gonna do that And so when people are there's all these changes it knows it that's because it's been used for a thousand years

Let's see what your Bible looks like in a thousand years You know, there's a brother church has been using the same

NIV hardback study Bible Which is unusual in our in our circles anyways for I don't know how many years we call it

Codex Ricotonius Because it's it's been around so long Well, I didn't anywhere near a thousand years and so people forget about these rather basic little things

In in making their attacks upon these particular manuscripts that you know, they're there

No one's claiming that this is an exact copy of the original but at the same time these are extremely valuable sources and to dismiss them just because you have a

Prejudice is not how you do textual critical studies, so Keeping those things in mind

Codex Vaticanus, like I said, very similar to Sinaiticus and it's in the Vatican Library and you know, that's why everybody that doesn't mean absolutely anything whatsoever, but they are they're there and they are exceptionally important witnesses

Vaticanus is B in the textual apparatuses as we look at it, so Another term we need to get to before we turn to the

UBS text is the term textus receptus Textus receptus is a

Latin term that was used in an advertising blurb in 1633 and yes, that does mean that people used to advertise in Latin If in case you're confused we did not see any

Latin advertisements during the Super Bowl this year And I don't think they would have gone real real well

Had they happened but in those days people even Widely read people regular people people who weren't necessarily scholars were often trained in Latin and so in 1633 there is a

There is an advertisement By the Elsevier brothers for the edition of the Greek New Testament And they called it the textus receptus.

Now. What is the textus receptus? well, no one really knows to be perfectly honest with you as much as you hear people talking about the

TR as Much as you hear people defending the TR as much as you hear people trying to turn the

TR into the Ecclesiastical text the received text of the church as if the church one day in Glorious plenary session all got together and said ah yes, this is the text of the church it never happened

That's it's that's that's wishful thinking. It's it's woo -woo thinking, but it's it's not it's not historical thinking

The textus receptus refers to a body of printed manuscripts all sharing particular

Aspects of the readings in general in general

What you have especially amongst fundamentalists Fundamentalist schools, especially King James only schools is you will have the little blue case bound

Trinitarian Bible Society's edition of the New Testament, and that's what people think the textus receptus is the

TR is I forgot to bring mine in today Yeah, I'll have a extra one sitting here next to me.

Anyway. It's the blue case bound version of the of the New Testament doesn't have any textual variants listed and People say ah this is the

TR. This is the received text. This is the text underlines underlies King James version of the Bible well

Sorta but not quite and here's the problem if you want to try to locate inspiration in The TR and there are people who do there there people say this is

God has preserved the TR Okay, which one? Art farstad

Mentioned in the John Ankerberg series. We did there about a hundred and five versions of it and in reality

What you need to recognize is what happened with the initial publication remember

I told you what happened in the book of Revelation in the last few few verses the book of Revelation when Erasmus is rushing to put

His text out well Erasmus puts five editions out and his five editions all disagreed with one another.

He made changes in every one of them and so you got five editions of Erasmus and then in the 1550s

Stephanus Puts out his text which as I said,

I keep lobbying a certain good friend back in New York to put me in his will so I get his 1550s to find his text and Not that I would want him to pass away before me or anything or these that much older than I am

But should something happen, you know, we wouldn't want that 1550s to find his text to fall in anybody else's hands Then Theodore Beza Calvin's successor at Geneva He puts out a text in 1598

So basically the the fundamental materials that the King James translators have remember you don't have one translator

You have a whole group of translators. They're working in different places. There's certain people doing the gospel certain people doing the the

Pauline epistles and They're not going back to Handwritten manuscripts.

They're basically using these editions of the New Testament The five editions of Erasmus Stephanus's text and Beza's text but there are differences between all of those two and so there has to be some textual critical study being done by the

King James translators and so if you're one of those King James only folks and thinks that just by accepting the

King James you can avoid all this messiness of making choices between readings you're

You're totally naive All you're doing is closing your eyes and entrusting the decisions made by Desiderius Erasmus a

Roman Catholic priest Stephanus a convert from Roman Catholicism Theodore Beza Calvin's successor

Calvin's successor and in Geneva and then all those nasty

Calvinist King James translators You're they still had to do textual critical

Studies they had to make decisions between variant readings and even the King James translators Then had to make decisions between the printed editions that were available to them.

And what most people don't understand is that that little blue case bound Greek New Testament that people are running around with is

Not really a Greek text And you go What do you mean?

It's not really a Greek text. What what do you mean? Of course, it's a Greek text It's a Greek New Testament But there is no manuscript in the world that reads like that text

I've run into so many of these The TR is the preserved text people who think that by running around the

Trinitarian Bible size text. They have The text chosen by the church. There was never a

Greek manuscript written by man that reads like that and You go Well, then how did it come into existence

Actually Scrivener came up with it Scrivener a

Great scholar went back to the King James version of the Bible compared the

Greek texts that they were using charted out which decisions the

King James translators made based upon the differing texts that they had and Created the

Greek text that's in that little blue case bound Texas receptus based upon the textual decisions made by the

King James English translators So it's a Greek text based upon an English translation.

Now, that's a historical fact. That's where it came from That doesn't stop folks from turning it into the final authority in all things

But that's where it came up. Can you imagine if if I stood here in or sat here as I'm sitting here and I Decided that I was going to I came up with a text based upon a

Dutch translation of Well, I've used this illustration for the

Constitution United States originally written in English and So I come up with a

I say we must use this version of the Constitution which actually is translated from a

Dutch version of the Constitution and So it has differences from the English But that of the original writing, but I insist that we should base it on this

Dutch translation I mean that's as silly as what King James only ism is really all about when it when it tries to make a defense of Itself these days, but people don't recognize that and most

Americans are monolingual They don't know any other foreign languages any other foreign language. They don't know any foreign language at all

It wouldn't be an other foreign language because if there's an other foreign language than English should be a foreign language, too Okay, anyway

You know people buy into this stuff and go ah that makes sense to me because it can it can give us powerful preaching

There's no questions here. And that's what I call trading truth or certainty trading truth or certainty

That's that's when you decide you're just gonna make one text type. This is it I'm not going to I'm not gonna defend this

I'm not going to provide you with any reasons for this but I've heard God speaking in this translation or these manuscripts and therefore they are the be all and end all of all things and You just you just go

Well, you've just given up all basis for defending the Christian faith against attacks upon it because your choice is irrational

And you cannot defend irrational choices. That's really all there is to it. So textus receptus

Ask somebody who uses the phrase what is it? What what is the textus receptus are you talking about Erasmus is first second third fourth or fifth edition you're talking about Stephanos You're talking about Baza.

Are you talking about Scrivener's? eclectic text where he goes back to the King James translators and uses their textual choices to create a

Greek New Testament and Why should I feel that I am under any

Obligation to consider these as originals at all. That's that's what I want to know All right with that said now we know something about Sinaiticus and Vaticanus and Alexandrinus and some of the great

Texts there. We know what the TR is As I was looking at providing images now if you have your

UBS 4th edition Greek New Testament Then I would obviously point you to the fact that the best way to get started using

UBS 4th is to read the introduction I know for guys that's not how you're supposed to do it You're supposed to just open it up and her you know, go go for it

But this in this case, it really is okay. In fact, it's manly to read the introduction

Otherwise, you're gonna be completely lost and beginning on page six You have listed for you in the same information.

We'll look at the Nessie Allen text later, but the same information is available there You will have for example the listing of the papyri.

You have a little frac tour That's a very formal German script P with a superscript number next to it for example papyri one and the next column says contents e

For evangelists that is Gospels. It's located in Philadelphia dates from the 3rd century

That's very old. Obviously papyri to also has the Gospels Florence that comes from the 6th century.

That's pretty late for for a papyri Manuscript but and then you can you can just go down through the list pages 7 through 9

You have the 97 papyri listed where they are located the the date and of course dates

Until you get into the miniscule period, you know, I have people actually putting dates on stuff So you don't necessarily know once you get in the miniscules will actually find specific years listed on some of the miniscules like on page 17 of the

UBS 4th, you'll see for example miniscule 826 I'm sorry 2050 has the

Book of Revelation is dated to 1107. We know exactly what date it was because they dated it but that's pretty unusual generally you have to Guess by orthography where it was found where their books was found with stuff like that anyway, you can look at the papyri here and You can see the listing and you can see what they contain and you can see that only a few contain

Anything more than a particular section of Scripture? Most of them contain the Gospels P45 for example has the

Gospels and Acts but remember that doesn't necessarily mean it has Matthew Mark Luke John and Acts in totality

There are other listings in the Nestle on gives you more specific listings that point of exactly what they contain and You know, it'll tell you there's a lacuna a whole

Let's say these chapters are missing in Luke or these chapters are missing in John or something along those lines and that's normally not because they didn't originally contain those things, but because the book is old and stuff falls out of books and You know the rest their pages might exist someplace else and no one's ever made the connection between Between the two something like that, but there's your papyri manuscripts

Then next beginning beginning page 9 you have the unseals listed and I would have liked to have scanned all the stuff but it would have been huge, you know, it just would have contained a lot of material and So I only did the the two variants that we'll be looking at here in a little while but the the unseals begin on page 10 and they go for quite some time and They go all the way to page 16 before the minuscule start and remember we talked about the difference between unsealed text minuscule text

Most of these are written on vellum leather things like that And so for example, you have on page 10

Sinaiticus. It's its number is 0 1 It's contents EAPR, which would be the

Gospels Acts Paul Revelation found in London called Sinaiticus Dated to the 4th century which would be around the time of Council of Nicaea a

Alexandrinus manuscript number two also EAPR also found London that was sitting right next to Sinaiticus when

I saw it Dated to the 5th century. It's a little bit older. It has a has a slightly different text

Outside the Gospels than than the others and so it's dated a little bit older than that B Codex Vaticanus does not have notice notice something here

If you look if you're looking at this on page 10 in the UBS 4th edition EAP No revelation in Vaticanus which may be why

Certain folks who don't want to be left behind don't like that But that's one of the other reasons.

Sorry, that's one of the reasons That I started gave you a little bit of an inside story a number of months ago about the role

I had in editing the Bethany house version of King of the cults was

I had caught a mistake on Walter Martin's part because he listed Vaticanus as having a certain reading in the book of Revelation Well Vaticanus doesn't contain revelation.

So you couldn't know what it's reading was if it ever had it in the first place There you have the listing of it and it goes down from there.

And of course there's a little bit more information provided in The appendices in the

Nessie Alan text. We'll look at later and this is where you might want to pick up You know

Certain elements Certain books at Amazon that go into more detail, you know

Metzger's put out some real nice books. That's That provides some pictures and background location special characteristics, they'll give you

There are certain manuals you can buy Kurt Ohlins, you know in English translations available in German as well

Of course, it's original language You can buy these books some are very expensive the Alland Text is about $100

But you can buy less expensive versions those that'll give you more of the background. I'll tell you something about the manuscript.

What what? textual affinities it has Some interesting aspects of it you can you can buy these types of books if you really want to get into looking at them and and Getting an idea.

I for example You have Bezos codex basic had a bridges which is

D Manuscript number five. It's got a lot of really weird readings in it.

I mean, it's so frequently off by itself It's a it's a

Greek and Latin manuscript and It it's way out there and the enemies of faith like that They love to cite that one because it's frequently way out there.

And so I have it in in transcription form In my library so you can sort of look stuff up if you have to stuff like that.

This this stuff is available Codex, Washingtonia is down there at the bottom that I was noticing just last night that the

Center for a study of New Testament manuscripts has Codex, Washingtonia is available and in image you can you can download images of that and take a look at it

Then after the the unseals which Once you dump using letters to represent them

Greek or Arabic letters you go to just numbers like 0 4 8 0 5 0 the unseals always start with a 0 at the beginning

And you'll notice those extend for quite some time to the miniscules begin on page 16 and those just have a number 1 6 13 2 30 23 44 and you notice there's a

Minimal listing of many miniscules and that's because there's so many of them now you're starting to get into the Byzantine manuscripts of you know, a thousand years and more beyond the time of Christ and therefore

You if you again you can buy listings of all of them, you can find out what all of them are But most of the time since they have very similar text types, they're just listed under the big

M Majority text or the BYZ on page 18. You're also given some information

You know, I think about I should have I should have scanned this one page Those of you don't have it. I apologize, but I'll mention these to you if you if you have let's do it this way

I don't want to leave anybody out here if you've opened the text UBS PDF and You will if you look at the primary

Variant you see the Greek text the Greek text ends with verse 38. This is this is

Luke chapter 23 it ends with verse 38 then there's a line and then you have a small superscript 5 a bold 34 a

Parentheses a and then in English italics omit verse that is the first variant.

There are two variants listed on this page one variant verse 34 and One variant in verse 38 then there is another line and the material beneath that is a comparison of various printed texts and how they punctuate things and Then there's another line and then you have reference material down there basically cross reference material down below below that We are primarily concerned with the textual variant material

In sort of the the middle of the page there bottom bottom third, I guess You can see if you go up to 34 in the

Greek text you find the bold 34 You'll see two brackets a double bracket

Around a Greek phrase had a Jesus elegant pater office a toys

Lugar Lugar wait us in the T. Poison, which is a very very very famous saying

That very very few people recognize is actually a major textual very that is the only place in the

Gospels in the crucifixion account where it is said and Jesus said father forgive them for they know not what they do and That whole section is double bracketed and The UBS for is is saying that they give as a level a that That a in parentheses honestly doesn't mean a whole lot

It's the relative certainty of the committee on this subject but all those changed massively between the

UBS third and UBS fourth, so I I take those with a very large grain of salt.

They're not overly relevant, but anyway The point is what they're telling you is that they believe that that this verse

Should not be Taken as the original text that omitting the verse is the best reading and We will go through those things.

We'll look at how to read that variant a little bit later on okay But what

I'm wanting to do right now is as I go through What is found in the in the text pages 18 and 19?

I want to show you What I'm looking at by looking at this variant because it contains most of most of what we will see for example on the third line of the variant that begins with an a a

CD L Delta Psi 0 to 5 0 then you have two

F's Italicized F's with a superscript 1 and a superscript 13 on Page 18 this is family 1 which is manuscripts 1 1 18 1 31 209 1582 and others

Family 13 manuscripts 13 69 124 174 you'll see is a whole number of them 69 1709 etc etc

These are families of manuscripts that are cited as a group with one another and Due to the consistency of their reading they are clearly related to one another.

There's a clear genealogical connection between these particular manuscripts so they are listed as a group under one symbol family 1 family 13 and Since they don't tend to be a thoroughly

Byzantine in their in their text type. There's they're cited separately as You'll see them here in in the third third line then beneath that on page 18 again, we have the discussion of the

Byzantine manuscripts and That is found on The Fourth line if you go one line below where we were the line starts at 1243

After the number 1505 you see B Y Z capital B Y Z That is the

UBS way of indicating the Byzantine manuscripts The Unesion is going to use a frac tour

M majority text for the same thing But that is way of saying the body of Byzantine manuscripts now if you put a little

PT Superscript PT next to the Byzantine then it becomes part of the

Byzantine manuscript tradition because it's not absolutely homogenous There aren't there are differences between the

Byzantine manuscripts. This is their differences between the various textus recepti As well and sometimes especially in Revelation.

You've got the Byzantine manuscript Tradition splits a dozen different ways and so you have to have take a look at that Now the next one that they that they illustrate here is the asterix which indicates the original reading if you want to see the asterix look at the variants and Look at the first line in the first line after p75 you will have the

Hebrew letter Aleph right before the capital B and You'll notice there is a superscript one next to that But then drop one line down go to the end of the line and You'll see all if again and You go wait a minute

How can you cite a manuscript more than once? Because a manuscript might have more than one reading especially something like Sinaiticus Which as I explained about 20 minutes ago, so now was in use for a thousand years so changes were made and you can see where those changes were made and So the

Aleph at the end of the line of line number two Has an asterix next to it and then a period then a number two

This illustrates something that we see in a number if you a number of manuscripts if you go back up a line You can see a

D with an asterix next to it. That means original reading original reading

Then one will be the first corrector which frequently was almost indistinct indistinguishable from the original because especially after the time of persecution ended and scriptoriums come into use

Where you would have a person sitting up front reading and you have a whole group of scribes two three four ten

Copying what he's reading then you'd have a reader go through and check each one of those and So the first -hand correction might take place within minutes or hours of the original writing or It could be a hundred years later sometimes it's difficult to tell and Sometimes somebody will come along and correct the corrector sometimes taking it back to the original and that's what happens here the original reading of Sinaiticus includes

Verse 34 that phrase 34 a actually the first part of it Jesus is saying father forgive them for they know what they do.

It was there originally then the first hand struck it out and Then the second hand struck out the struck out

Struck out the strike out. Okay, let's put that way it reinsert it puts it back in. I have a

I have on Tischendorf's Version of Sinaiticus that he put out

And I was checking the there are some notes on that and Though they're in Latin there are notes provided that this was originally there then it was struck out and then it was restored you can you can see it right there in the text of The bound version of Sinaiticus that I have so that's what the when you see a manuscript and you see it asterisks

What that means is you're going to see that manuscript cited again a little bit later in such a way as to Give you variance within one manuscript so you can have variance between manuscripts and you can also have

Variance within a manuscript that's that's something to keep in mind as well.

And so If there is only one corrector of a manuscript, they'll just put a

C If there are multiple hands, they'll use one two, three, however many you need to use this you'll see on page 18

There are a number of other Sigla that are provided on pages 18 and 19 for example

The one thing that's very different and this is this is a big huge area right right here look back at At UBS PDF and You will notice that in looking at our variant verse 34

Starting about halfway through you have

Irenaeus Hippolytus origin Eusebius Eusebian canons pseudo -ignatius apostolic constitutions

Gregory of Nyssa Amphilochius Didymus Pseudo -Clementines Pseudo -Justin

Chrysostom Cyril Heskeus Theodoret Ambrosiastra Hillary Ambrose Jerome Augustine, etc, etc

You've got a bunch of guys names there. What's that all about? Well, one of the advantages of the

UBS text over the Nessie Allen text is a very full citation of early church fathers Now I mentioned this before but let me just mention it again

You have only two variants listed on this page in the UBS text the UBS text contains if I recall correctly less than 500 variants

But it gives it spends a lot of space giving you a lot of specific information about that variant the

Nessie Allen text Spends much less space on each variant Partly by using more symbols so you can sort of wrap stuff together makes a little bit harder to read

But also because it it Reproduces many many more variants than UBS as there will be times when

I remember For example Jehovah's Witnesses will try to throw out some variants to try to support the

New World Translation There are times if you if all you have is the UBS text it will not list the variant. It's not even there

But you go to the Nessie Allen text. It's there But sometimes Nessie Allen text doesn't have it

And so there have been other critical texts that have been produced primarily during the 1800s Tregellas von

Soden And you can take a look at them that Bible works has Tischendorf in it and they're going to be putting a new one in I think starting next month that's been being worked on a modern text and a lot of stuff is becoming available in a

Electronic form The the Tischendorf one will sometimes list variants that the that the

NA -27 doesn't So there are times I have to look at four or five critical texts before I finally find some information about a particular reading

Especially if it's just really rare There's only one or two manuscripts to contain it and the editors of these texts do not feel those manuscripts

Carry enough weight to make it relevant to make note of it Obviously they have to make a decision between how thick this thing is going to be

You know a thousand page book is just not going to be real easy to For people to carry around and so they have to make a choice

The UBS text is primarily designed for translators primarily designed for people that are translating the New Testament into other languages

You know Wycliffe type thing and so they want to only address the major variants that are going to impact

Translation and give you as much information as possible, but this leads us to another problem Aside from the fact the clock is going very very fast enough hardly even gotten going but you know what?

I haven't heard any complaints about anybody about how long it's gonna take us to do this series They just people just want to get to hear this stuff and and learn it and just go on from there

How do you know About these early church fathers, for example, look at the line that starts

Amphilochius the next word is Didymus Dub Which means dubious?

What does that mean well think about it you're now trying to cite

What someone put in their writings? Now, let me let me address maybe the pastors out there

Have you ever? paraphrased a text while preaching Have you ever paraphrased a text while writing?

how do we know when you're paraphrasing or when you're actually quoting and That of course is one of the major problems in the citation of The early church fathers because unless they're saying quote

Here it is How do you know when they're paraphrasing? how do you know when they're just giving you a portion especially when it comes to whether a word was or wasn't there or You know variants by various phones you can't tell from things like that and you'll also find

For example, look at the the line starts with ETH for Ethiopic goes down to Irenaeus lat

LAT that's the Latin version of Irenaeus which might differ from the Greek version of Irenaeus and There will be times you'll see

Augustine 3 slash 5 What does that mean? 3 out of 5 times he cites it he cites it this way and 2 out of 5 he cites it the other way

So you're sitting there going. Oh great Wonderful How do you decide on that?

And then here's the big issue And you want to go? Want to try to go?

Maybe five long the world come to an end if we went about five long We'll try to go about five long because I'd like to be able to try to get to the to the variant at least next

Time around so we don't make this too long. So we'll go a few minutes Long you killed the killed the killed music good.

All right Here's a problem remember what I told you about Lorenzo Valla remember the the

Italian guy who was reading the Commentaries of Jerome and He goes hey

When Jerome cites his home his own translation in his commentaries it differs from the version of the

Of the text that we have today and he came to conclusion since Jerome's commentaries aren't copied nearly as often as The Vulgate text itself that the changes had taken place in all that copying and so in the same way

When we're looking at the early church fathers, they're really In comparison to the amount of work that's been done

Critically on the New Testament text almost nothing has been done as far as the early church fathers are concerned

We don't really have a critical text of the early church fathers.

We just don't I mean, let's face it There's still there's still stuff Augustine wrote that's never appeared in English There's stuff that I mean origin had a scribe following him around 24 hours a day writing down everything

He said I don't know if everything origin wrote or said will ever be available in English Let alone

Would there be enough? Time or money or people with interest to produce a critical edition of the copies of the copies of these writings but when copying takes place the same kinds of changes can take place in Copying an early church father is in copying the

Latin Vulgate and if a Particular reading of a text is what's familiar to a scribe and he's quoting

Augustine. He's writing, you know He's copying an Augustine manuscript. It's gonna be very easy for him to change what

Augustine's quote was to what he's accustomed to but since there really isn't any critical edition of The early church fathers as a whole or any one individual, you know, maybe some of the really smaller

Primitive writings, you know the apostolic fathers. Yeah, you might you might be able to get through to something there but in general, you just don't have that kind of information available and so There's only so much weight that you can put upon these early church writings.

There's only so much weight that you can you can invest in them because Yeah, you know

We can tell looking at this for example, that's a Jerome and Augustine both cite the phrase and Jesus said father forgive them for they know not what they do.

So it's there Whether they did it in the context of continuing that verse or whether they quoted it just as a fragment into itself

The fact is they knew of it. Okay, so you're talking fifth century the end of the fourth beginning fifth century

You have this this testimony from that all right but how much weight do you give that just because Origin and his

Latin knew this isn't like that. How do we know now? Often overlooked because very few people have any knowledge of these languages

Are the foreign translations? If you look back at our our textual variant here if you look at the second line

You have IT That is not information technology

Though there are many people who who probably are sitting oh, that's me. No, sorry that that's that's

Somebody else. Sorry about that beginning on page Do to do the early versions page 22 of the

UBS text you have a discussion the early versions Let's think for just a moment again, I know we've already thrown a lot of stuff at you

But that's why we have it on archive. You can go back and listen to it again One of the massive differences between the

New Testament and say the Quran is the fact that Christians wanted to have their texts get out As quickly as possible and that means there are early translations of the

New Testament writings into other languages and Those are very important They are very important in in many ways but At the same time a foreign language translation can only tell you so much

If one of your variants is in word order in the Greek that would not even be reflected in the receptor language

Then the translation in another language that can't reflect the word order isn't going to be able to tell you much about your original question can it

And there are also a lot of questions about When these particular translations took place sometimes we can nail that down sometimes we can't

The first ones listed will be the Latin the old Latin version and the various Manuscripts of the

Latin and so from starting page 23 you have all these Listings so for example lat a

D in our variant Tells you which manuscript that is

What Edition it comes from it's the Eulachir Alland come the fourth century.

It's found in virtue at the Vercelli it contains the Gospels etc etc and then you have

D down below and D is going to be in Cambridge Scrivener worked on it and That comes from the fifth century all right and then next what you have the

Syriac and you can turn over to page 26 and You have the

Syriac the old Syriac you have the Pashita You have got the

Harkleness version all of the various types this one

Honestly if I'd had actually have to turn to Luke 23 34 her real quickly because the scan Isn't overly clear on my screen as to what that is 23

I'm gonna get there in a second 20 the to Luke you talk a lot 23 34 there it is

Okay, that's the s Syriac s Will be defined for you on page 26 as the

Sinaitic That's the Syriac translation Sinaitic version and so there's that version of Syriac then you have the

Coptic with essay is sahidic Boheric part so you see that COP essay

BOPT the PT is superscript of the BO That's the Coptic translation in the sahidic

Boheric, but only part of the Boheric so what that's actually telling you And you can fascinate your family for hours this stuff over Kentucky Fried Chicken really can't is

Did you know that only part of the Boheric manuscript translation trans? Tradition actually contains

Luke 23. They're only a part. I mean the part has and a part doesn't isn't that fascinating We just lost the entire audience at that that's a good point

Rich's riches a computer just demonstrated that we went from 80 to 10

At that particular point if I have to know something about the Coptic sahidic Boheric partial thing

I don't want to know anything about it So so that's what that's was there, but if you go down two lines

You will also see others you'll see much more of the Latin that that has the verse

The Vulgate more of the Syriac the Coptic there's the see notice whenever you have a

PT You should see that show up later in the variant which you do here Coptic Boheric part is listed for having it and not having it's supposed to you have the

Armenian the Ethiopian the Georgian the Slavic These are all defined for you in those previous portions and Dates general dates are given as to when they are they're found things like that and so That's what you're going to be running into so the next time we get together look at verse 34 and you will see the

The brackets placed around this we're going to be looking at that And then if you go to the next page if you go to page 2

Which for some reason in mine looks a whole lot cleaner than page 1. I'm not sure why it did that in PDF, but You will see that we're going to be looking at a variant at Acts 9 31 and in Acts 9 31

You see the letter letter the number 3 After the word ecclesia, which means church does not mean called out ones.

Sorry about that It means church and you go down to the bottom and you see 31 a and it gives you the variants

And then we'll look at how to Notice that there are multiple Variants at this point not just two readings

There are multiple variants at that particular point. We'll be able to work through the UBS text of that and then

I have provided you with the pages that give you those listings We just went through in the na 27 because Nessie Allen to make itself smaller uses more symbols

To try to get more information into a smaller smaller space in essence I've often said if you're carrying

Nessie on 27th edition, you are carrying an encyclopedia with you It's just nice and small and easy to handle and easy to stick on top of your

Bible and take to church on Sunday morning So with that We will wrap things up for the dividing line today

Thursday afternoon regular time we will continue on with we'll look at those two Variants the UBS will go through all of them all the various symbols what they mean how you make decisions based upon them then move on Into the

Nessie Allen text. We'll see you next time here on the dividing line. God bless We need

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