Textual Criticism Series Continued on the DL

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Webcasting around the world from the desert metropolis of Phoenix, Arizona, this is The Dividing Line.
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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.
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Our host is Dr. James White, director of Alpha Omega Ministries and an elder at the Phoenix Reformed Baptist Church.
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This is a live program and we invite your participation. If you'd like to talk with Dr. White, call now at 602 -973 -4602 or toll free across the
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United States. It's 1 -877 -753 -3341. And now with today's topic, here is
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James White. Good afternoon. Welcome to The Dividing Line.
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We continue our series on the subject of textual criticism today, getting a lot of positive input, a lot of positive responses.
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Has it gotten any nasty King James only emails? I didn't think so. You hadn't mentioned any. People ask me, you know, these people writing and getting mad at you or these people writing and getting mad at you.
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So that's good to know. They must not be listening. Maybe they just don't know what to say. It's possible.
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It'd be a first. Well, yeah, prerequisite being that they have to have something to say in the first place has not been our experience in the past, is it?
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Well, no, it's not. They always have something to say. Whether or not there's any merit to it, whether or not it's irrelevant, but they always have something to say.
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Wasn't there a guy calling you the past couple of weeks? Why are you attacking King James?
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Well, he's been calling me for three years. Yeah, that's what I mean. So now I finally send him packing. I know.
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I understand that. I'm just saying that it does happen. Anyway, that's not how
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I want to start, but that's okay. Hopefully you have downloaded the documents on the website. And please keep the website open as well, because I have some graphics there that I want you to look at.
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If you are listening by archive, you will find the documents, Lord willing, in the blog articles for, let's see here.
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This would be February 6th. There's some there.
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Just go from February 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, around in there today, looking at some in the 7th range, and so on and so forth.
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Just look in early February 2007, and you should find what you need to be able to follow along.
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If you have the United Bible Society's 4th edition Greek New Testament, you can go along as well.
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And Nestle All -in -27th edition. I even have, see, there's my Texas Receptus sitting here.
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And did you know you're on the webcam today? Everybody's looking at you today, and he's waving at everybody at the webcam.
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There you go. Just keep that in mind in case you do this number, because people will save that, load it up to my family.
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It's really bad. And so the lights go out.
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Yes, so much. Now there is a shadowy figure in the background.
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That's good. That's all rich. All right. If you have gathered all of your materials together, and I hope you all are enjoying the videos, you can tell
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I recently got the software I needed to do video capture and to pull down not only, you know,
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I've had these videos for a long time, obviously. It was just doing the transfer stuff that was a bit of a challenge.
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But now DVDs, VHS players. Last night I conquered the real media thing that was in my way.
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And so now we're going to be dangerous. No two ways about it. We're going to be very dangerous with these things, because I think it's much more effective to listen to someone saying something and then respond to it than it is just to read, well, they say this, and here's my response.
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And I think people will find that to be most useful. I just recorded two more clips that I'll put up later in the week and so on and so forth.
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But anyhow, last week we were looking at, if you're looking at your
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UBS text, we were looking at a variant. We were using the variant at Luke chapter 23, verse 34 as sort of a baseline.
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Now, obviously, it's also an important variant for those of you who weren't with us. Just a brief recap. The phraseology,
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Jesus said, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do, is a textual variant.
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And what we're doing right now is we are looking at the various signs and symbols that you will find in the
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UBS 4th edition. Then we'll go over the Nestle Island 27th edition. And how to read that information.
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That information has been provided to you in the critical editions of the Greek New Testament.
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And I think it's really nice to have a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. One of the points that I made in my debate with Shabir Ali is we don't have a critical edition of the
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Quran. One hopefully someday will be made, but we can't do that right now.
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And I think there is a very important point to be made at that juncture. We want to find the earlier and earlier manuscripts of our scriptures, but not a whole lot of Roman Catholics necessarily.
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Roman Catholics. See, that's what happens when I start reading the channel at the same time I'm trying to talk. Not too many
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Muslims want to do that. So anyway, we had just gotten to the point of basically starting to look at the variant.
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But then I realized, well, wait a minute. We need to back up and we need to talk about sort of the canons of textual criticism.
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And that's with the 1N, not with 2. That is the general rules and regulations.
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When you look at, for example, the variant not in Luke 23 there, but let's look at UBS2 .pdf.
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It's the one that I uploaded just last evening or sometime around that time for you all.
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It also is from the UBS 4th edition and it is pages 812 and 813.
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It provides you 1 John 2 .22 through 1 John 3 .10.
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And let's look at two of the variants that are found here just to give you an idea of the practice of textual criticism.
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We're not going to go super in -depth here. We're going to look at a number of different variants. We'll be able to pick up some of these canons as we're looking at variants.
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But basically what you need to try to do is to reconstruct in your mind the process whereby hand copying would take place.
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This morning I was heading home and I couldn't help to start thinking about the fact that we even struggle today with my generation,
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Rich and I's generation, and the next generation. For example, when I talk to my kids about what it was like when
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I was in high school writing reports, that was B .C., before computer.
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And my kids can't even begin to understand what it would be like to type a report on an
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IBM Selectric. They can't even figure out what it would be like to try to leave room for a footnote, to leave that spacing in there, what correction tape looks like.
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They have no idea. They've always had computers. And so for them, copying out of a book, you can use a scanner to do that.
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When I was in college, you had to have the book and you had to have it where the typewriter was.
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And you had to be sitting there typing away. And what would happen if you skipped a line? What would happen if you messed up and forgot where your footnote was supposed to go?
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You had to start the whole page all over again.
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And they look at me and go, wow, how did you people live before computers and microwaves?
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How did you ever get anything done? You must have been up from morning to night and stuff like that.
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So I'm just demonstrating how elderly we are becoming. But anyway, we have to try to get way farther back than my
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IBM Selectric. But there was I did have an illustration there. I would have to sit there and I would have to be very careful in copying.
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And I wrote some big papers when I was in high school. I remember writing a 52 -page paper on evolution when I was in a public high school in my sophomore year.
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And so I was doing a lot of copying out of books, these long quotes and stuff like that. And you had to be very, very, very careful while you're doing that.
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But I'd still make mistakes. And I remember the mistakes because it would cost me so much time.
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It was so costly to rip the page out, look where you were, restart the whole thing. And today you just go up and insert, put it in.
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Well, the problem is this is the first generation where you've been able to do that. And so the parallels, it was actually easier years ago to talk to people about scribal errors, mistakes that you make while copying from something, an open book, a piece of paper, whatever.
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It was a little bit easier to illustrate those things back in the days when there was still more of a connection. Now with computers, we can just move the cursors, stick things in.
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If you misspelled something, it's underlined in red and it suggests what the correct spelling is. And sometimes it'll just correct it for you.
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And you don't even realize you're misspelling it. It corrects it for you all the time. We have a guy who must use that a lot in a channel named
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Whistle. Actually, I think his spell corrector melted. It committed suicide as the first word program that ever just refused to start because he was going to use it.
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But anyway, today people struggle with that. But we still have to illustrate these things.
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Because when you were copying from another manuscript, let's go back in time here.
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You do not have fluorescent lights. You do not have a climate controlled environment.
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You do not have nice things to write on. You do not have nice things to write with. Now we're talking about the earliest period here.
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But even once you had scriptoriums, even once you had all of that kind of stuff, still you didn't have
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LASIK. You didn't have glasses. You were copying by candlelight or sunlight or whatever it might be.
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So there's all sorts of those issues that go in. And then remember what you're copying will always have been handwritten.
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Now I know that handwriting is almost a completely lost art today. Is it not? I mean, my cursive is horrible.
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My printing is not half bad. But I prided myself on that when I was in school. But anymore does anybody really do that?
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You just need the right font. Yeah, you need the right font. Yeah, exactly. You know, it looks really pretty.
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That's just it. There weren't fonts back then. And so you would be copying almost always what someone else had written.
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And very frequently it would be someone who's no longer around.
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So you can't take it over to their office or to their cell at the monastery or whatever and say, what is this?
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I can't read your handwriting. How often do you have to go to people today in your office? What in the world did you write on this thing?
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I can't understand it. You get a fact or something. Something's handwritten on the bottom. You can't understand a word it says. I got a letter from somebody.
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Beautiful cursive writing. But it was so fancy and so distinctive. Just got it this week. I could not hardly make out a single word of it.
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I mean, I could only make out one or two words, had a general idea sort of what it was about. But there was all sorts of stuff.
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I simply couldn't read it. It was too pretty. So these are just some of the things that go into the background that lead to the constructions of the canons of textual criticism.
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What does that mean? Well, what scholarship has discussed and continues to discuss to this day, one of the reasons that there are differences of opinion, that people take readings in different ways, that's why we need a critical edition of the text, because sometimes people say,
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I don't agree with the committee. I want to know what the committee rejected. I want to know what their reasoning was. I want to know what the other evidence is.
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That's what's such a blessing about having a critical edition of the Greek New Testament. At least
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I'm not having to do what Muslims have to do and think Uthman got it right the first time.
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Can't tell you why he did. Don't know what he was choosing from. But I just have to believe he got it right the first time.
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I don't want to put that kind of trust in somebody else who doesn't even claim to be inspired.
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So with that in mind, scholars look at how human beings copy manuscripts and the kinds of errors that they make.
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And that observation of human nature then becomes the foundation of the general rules that you examine.
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Now, obviously, when you examine any variant, you have internal evidence and you have external evidence.
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What's the external evidence? The external evidence is the manuscripts. It's the hard evidence. It's what the manuscripts say.
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Now, as we have discussed, sometimes that's difficult to say. Sometimes the manuscript's difficult to read or sometimes you'll have a manuscript that's very, very helpful to you.
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But then when you come to one particular verse, there's a hole. You know, bugs ate through it over the years.
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That page fell out or whatever. Or sometimes it's just smudged. I mean, this is leather, folks.
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And you can understand how letters can be smudged and age over time. And, you know, someone spilled some coffee on that page or something like that if they had coffee.
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And whatever scribes drank to keep them going. Because, man, copying manuscripts was not easy, by the way.
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There are things called colophons, especially the medieval manuscripts, where scribes would make notes at the beginning and ends of books.
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And one of the common colophons was the end, as a traveler rejoices at the end of his journey, so I rejoice at the end of this book.
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And think about it. I mean, you're not talking about a couple hours here, folks. We would start complaining just horribly if we had to spend ten minutes handwriting something.
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We'd put our pens down and we'd rub our poor little aching hands. Can I get a scanner or something like that?
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OCR, man, optical character recognition. That's the greatest thing ever designed by man. These people would spend days and weeks copying these books.
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And so you can imagine the backaches and everything else that went along with it. And when you're not feeling that good, what is really very, very amazing is how excellent the
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New Testament manuscript tradition is. Not that there are variants in it. It's amazing that it is so pure, given all the opportunities there were for really messing up in making copies of copies of copies.
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So when you keep that in mind, there are certain rules that in general come into play.
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You look at the external and the internal evidence. The external evidence is the hard evidence. It's the evidence given to you at the bottom of the page there.
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It's what the manuscripts read. And when the manuscripts were written and so on and so forth.
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And that's the external stuff. Internal evidence would be what you are able to derive from looking at the text itself.
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And what would be the best way. I don't know how that happened. Oh, I know how it happened.
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Dell support struck again. And it's not even plugged in. Isn't that cool? Everyone now knows
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I've got a Dell laptop in front of me. Yes. Anyway, I've got to turn that silly thing off.
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I just haven't found a way to do it. It doesn't like to turn itself off either, I assure you. Anyway, let's just look at this as an example.
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Look at the page 813 of the UBS fourth. It is the first variant noted at the bottom of the page.
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And I am going to blow mine up just a little bit here to about 150%.
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So it's a little bit easier to see. And you will see up in verse 2.
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Verse 2 says, Beloved, now we are the children of God. And it is not yet manifest what we shall be.
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But we know that when he is manifest, we shall be like him. Because we will see him as he is.
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And this is a presentation of what Christ is going to be like in our relationship with him.
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And, of course, the variant is in the preceding verse. Right before that it says, Because of this,
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And that is talking about the fact that because of this the world does not know us.
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Because it does not know him. Why is that? You go back one more line. And you go to the very beginning of chapter 3 verse 1.
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Behold what great a love the Father has given to us.
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In order that we might be called. In order that we might be called the children of God.
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And we are. Because of this the world is not knowing us. Because it does not know him.
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Now right next to, that is the very first line on page 813. You will see the little superscript letter 1.
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And it is after the word Esmen. Now, this one you can track without a
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Greek New Testament. Why? Well, if you would like to follow along. If you have your Bible nearby.
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If you have a King James or a New King James. Turn to 1 John 3 .1.
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Or if you have basically almost anything else. If you have the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses, repent.
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If you have the Joseph Smith version, ditto. We are not going to be worrying about mistranslations.
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And purposeful perversions and things like that. At this particular point in time. But if you have basically almost anything else.
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Did I say the letter 1? Okay, the number 1. Sorry. I'm reading off a PDF here. And it wasn't allowing me to get where I wanted to go.
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It just did not want to load properly, unfortunately. So, we were having to play around with it.
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Anyway, if you look at that particular passage.
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In the ESV, NASB, NIV. Any of the translations that are modern translations. You will see that the phrase, and such we are, is there.
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For example, if you look at the New American Standards. It says, see how great a love the Father has bestowed on us. That we would be called children of God.
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And such we are. ESV, and so we are. All of it is right there in front of us.
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But, if you have other translations. Like the New King James Version. It's not there.
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That phrase, and such we are, and we are. Is not to be found there in that translation.
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Now, is this some sort of a conspiracy.
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On the part of the New King James. And the King James. To hide the doctrine of the adoption of sons.
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And so on and so forth. No, of course not. There is a difference between the TR. The Textus Receptus.
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And the modern critical text. At this particular point in time. And in this instance. And this is somewhat unusual.
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In this instance. It is the modern text. That have a phrase that is not found in the
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TR. Normally, that's the other way around. Because, one of the canons of textual criticism.
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Is generally, scribes tend to conflate and expand. Not delete. So, generally, the shorter reading.
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Is the better reading. Generally. There are exceptions to that rule. Obviously, depending on context.
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And other reasons. And this is one of those exceptions. And we will see why. Now, when we look at it in a regular
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Greek text. We might not immediately be struck. By why it is that scholars can be so very certain.
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And I would argue, honestly. This is one of those texts where. You can really find out if a King James only advocate.
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Is a King James only person. Or is a really reasoned person. Because this kind of error.
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Is very easy to recognize. And very easy to see. What do I mean? Well, if you go back to my website.
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Go back to the blog. And if you go to the entry that I made yesterday.
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Called another document for today's. Actually, I guess it was this morning. Another document for today's textual critical
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DL. Well, it was supposed to be this morning. But our clock on the website is an hour off now.
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Ever since the time change. So, I posted this about 1230 in the morning. And I thought it was 1130 last night.
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So, it's off one. It's ever since the time change. But, hey. The time is going to go back. Pretty soon anyway.
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Who cares? Anyhow, 2 -7 -2007. You've got a nice pretty graphic from Codex Sinaiticus there.
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And then I provided you with three lines of Greek text. Now, if you can't read that.
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That's because you have not installed the proper Greek font. And if you go down to the bottom of the blog.
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There is a link to BibleWorks. And you can install the proper Greek font. So that almost all the time.
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Unless I'm posting something that came from an old book. Where I'm still using the mouse font. Especially an older mouse font.
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That's not going to work. But most of the time, you'll be able to read the Greek on my blog. If you'll install the proper fonts on your system.
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I gave you three lines of unsealed text. And remember, as you see in the graphic.
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The ancient manuscripts are written in unsealed capital letters. As we would call them today. Without spaces between them.
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Words break between lines. Et cetera, et cetera. And it's not nearly as easy to read as our modern text.
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The first line gives you what 1 John 3 .1 would look like. In an unsealed text.
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And for most of us, it's like, okay. And then the second line that I did. Is I gave you the important aspect of this text.
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Which is the Greek term, kleithomen. Which means that we should be called. And then the
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Greek term, chi. Which means and. And then the verb, esmen.
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We are. And so you see kleithomen, chi, esmen. They're all run together in the darker red.
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Of the second line on the blog article. Then the third line. What I gave you is the reason why.
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We have a textual variant here. The term kleithomen.
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Ends with mu epsilon nu, men. That would be similar to one of our words.
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Ending with an ing. Or a tion. Or an es. These are common endings.
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In the English language. For various forms of words. And we see ings and tions all the time.
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I mean our minds don't even see them after a while. They're just factored in as we read. And what we're looking at here.
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In 1st John 3 .1. Is a classical error called homoiteleuton. Homoiteleuton.
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Which means similar endings. And here's what happens. You're a scribe.
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And you are writing along. And you are writing the word, kleithomen.
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And you have just written mu epsilon nu.
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And now your eye goes back. To what's called the exemplar.
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What you're copying from. And since you just wrote mu epsilon nu.
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Your eye is going back to look. For what you just wrote to continue on from there.
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But there's a problem. It's very easy for your eye to find.
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The next mu epsilon nu. Which in this case is the last three letters of esmen.
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And so if your eye goes back. And you see that mu epsilon nu. And you don't even have to be overly distracted.
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For this to happen. Especially because in this case. The grammar continues to be correct.
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There's nothing. It doesn't become gibberish. Sometimes when a scribe make an error. The result would be gibberish.
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But sometimes a scribe can make an error. And the result isn't gibberish. And sometimes when we're copying.
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We don't actually go back and reread. What we were writing. When we do sometimes.
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We go what on earth did I do. But very frequently. Let's face it. Even in today's age. We're in a hurry.
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And we don't go back and proofread. And so if you see similar endings. What happened is.
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An early scribe writes kleithomen. His eye comes back. And he sees the men at the end of kleithomen.
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And so he just goes on from there. With diatuta. And because of this.
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The world does not know us. Because it did not know him. And two words have been deleted.
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Inadvertently. There's no conspiracy here. There's nobody going. Oh I don't like this idea of adoption.
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Into the family of God. So I'm going to get rid of it. No. Nothing like that at all. Instead. It's just as if we were writing.
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And we saw. We wrote ing. Our eye goes back. We find an ing.
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Right afterwards. And we continue on. And don't even notice. That the error that we made. That's what happens.
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At 1st John 3 .2. And so. When you. When you look at it.
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In ubs2 .pdf. You might not necessarily see that.
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Just by looking at the text. I mean you can see. Mu epsilon nu. Mu epsilon nu. But there's a comma. And a space.
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And another space. And things like that. Remember. That wasn't a part. Of the original text.
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So when we look down. At the. Variant listing. You will know. That they put.
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In parentheses. An A. Which means we are. The. The. The committee is certain.
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That we have here. The proper reading. Kai Essman. Notice it says.
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P74 vid. Next to it. P74 is difficult to read. At this point.
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And so we're. Sometimes what happens. Is. If a portion. Of the one column.
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Is missing. They can still go. All right. If it was there.
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It would have taken up. About this much space. And they can tell. By the. Column that's still there.
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Basically how many letters. Were in the missing portion. See. And so.
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They can. Even if it's not. Even if the. The sides missing. And you can't. Yes. It had it.
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Or no. It didn't. Sometimes. They'll be able to say. Well. If it didn't. Then this line. Would have started up here. Someplace.
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There's. Too much space. There. That if it. If it. Had to have been there. In other words. And so.
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They say. P74. And say. That. You know. Can't tell. But it seemed.
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To have had it. Then. In. All of ABC. You can see. A whole. List of. Of minuscules.
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And. Unseal. Manuscripts. That contain this. You. Also have.
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Lectionaries. And. The Latin. The Vulgate. And the Syriac. And the Coptic. And Ethiopian. And Georgian. And Slavian.
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And Augustine. So on. So forth. And then. Under the omission. You have 1175.
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The Byzantine text. Including. Unseals. K. And L. Some lectionaries.
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And a few manuscripts. The Vulgate. So. Again. If we were to.
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Just count this. You know. I didn't look at this. I'm going to get out. The majority text. Those of you. Watching on the webcam.
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Here is the. Majority text. Right there. And. I have a feeling. Let's. Let's find out here.
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I didn't. Didn't look at this beforehand. But. This is live. Webcasting. So I can go ahead. And look at it.
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Yep. They do not have it. They. They have the note. In the bottom.
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You can see. Chiasma. At the bottom. That's. One of the advantages. Of having this. But it's the. Egyptian versus.
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Majority text. So. That's a.
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A very clear. Distinction. Between. The Byzantine text. Type. And.
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The. Alexandrian text. Type. In having. That phrase.
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There. Now. This. To me. Is. One of the text. That demonstrates. The secondary nature.
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Of the Byzantine text. Type. Evidently. What happens. Is. Early on. In the area. Around Byzantium.
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One of the important manuscripts. Maybe K. Maybe L. That. Become the prototype.
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Of the Byzantine text. Platform. This. Simple scribal error. Takes place. And nobody notices it.
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It. Then. Becomes. A predominant reading. In that one. Particular area. This. Is why. I reject. The majority text.
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Type. Reading. Because. It results. In. Enshrining.
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What is clearly. A scribal error. As if. It is.
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The actual text. Itself. You see. So. It's. That. This. Is called. A.
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Scribal error. That's. I. Think.
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Hopefully. An excellent. Example. For you. Now. Another. Kind. Of error. Is an error.
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Of pronunciation. Now. There. Are different. Errors. Of sight. For example. Similar. Endings. Could also.
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Cause you. To skip. An entire line. Because. If you had. Mu epsilon. Nu. On the next line. Down.
31:07
You could lose. An entire line. But normally. When. That kind. Of error. Would take place.
31:13
That would really. Stick out. That would almost. Always. Result. In. In. You know. A real.
31:18
Mess. Something. Really. Didn't make any. Sense. Anymore. And when. You encounter. A text. Doesn't make.
31:24
Much sense. There's probably. Been an error. Though. Though. One of the other. Canons.
31:29
Of textual. Criticism. Is the more. Difficult. Reading. Is more likely. The original. Reading. Why. Well. Because later.
31:35
Scribes. Didn't like. Difficult readings. Later. Scribes. Like. Things. To be smooth. If. The scribe. Himself.
31:40
Didn't understand it. Then. He might. Think. Well. Someone. Must have. Made an error. Here. And. So. That's.
31:47
Factors. In. Many times. As well. But. After. The piece. Of the. Church. When. Prosecution.
31:53
Against. Christians. Ended. The. Scriptures. Could. Be. Copied. Within.
32:00
What was called a. Scriptorium. Now. In a. Scriptorium. Can. Be. Done. Couple. Different. Ways. But. One. Of the. Ways. We know. It was.
32:05
Done. Was. You. Would. Have. One. Person. Sitting. Up front. Reading.
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Text. And. Then. That. Person. Is. Going. To. Be. Doing.
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Small. Chunks. Of. Text. At. A. Time. And. Then. You. Have. Copyists. Sitting.
32:24
At. Desks. Who. Listening. To. Him. And. They. Are. Writing. Down. What. He. Says. Now. Obviously.
32:29
If. They. Have. A. Question. They. Can. Raise. Their. Hand. They. Can. Say. What's. Spelling. On. That. Whatever. It. Might. Be.
32:35
But. Generally. This. Is. The. Way. You. Could. Make. More. Than. One. Copy. At. A. Time. You.
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Would. Have. To. Listen.
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Carefully. And. Frequently. It's. Something. That's. Been. Said. That. It. Sparks. A. Thought. In. Your. Mind. And. All. Wake.
33:22
Three. Minutes. Later. Because. You. Have. Chased. That. Rabbit. Off. Into. The. Woods. Someplace. The. Pastors.
33:28
Now. Way. Down. The. Road. And. You've. Been. Sitting. There. Like. Zombie. You've. Become.
33:34
Distracted. Well. That's. You know. Distracted. Distraction. Is. A part. Of. The. Of. The.
33:41
Human. Experience. Shall. We. Say. And. So. Not. Only. That. But. Sometimes. People.
33:46
Accents. Sometimes. People. Don't. Speak. All. That. Clearly. Ever. Gone. Through. A. Drive. Through. Perhaps. Ever. Got.
33:54
Into. The. Window. And. When. They. Read. Back. Your. Order. You. Or. Have.
34:00
No. Clue. What. The. Other. Person. Is. Saying. Because. They. Don't. Actually. Speak. English. Or. Something. Like. That. You. Know. And. So. There's.
34:07
All. Sorts. Of. Reasons. Why. Could. Happen. Now. When. We. Pronounce. When. When. I. Was. Reading. For. Example.
34:13
When. I. Look. At. Say. Verse. Twenty. Eight. Of. Chapter. Two. When. I. Look. Twenty.
34:37
Of. When. I. Look.
34:46
Of. When. When. I.
34:54
Look. At.
35:13
Verse. Chapter. Look. thongs they did not make.
35:20
So on the other page of that same scan that I gave you
35:26
UBS 2 there is a variant in verse 25 and actually if you go through UBS text especially first John chapter 1 you'll find this kind of variant over and over and over and over again.
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And that is the difference between pronouns and the pronouns you and us.
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The first and second plurals for example. I pronounce the text in verse 25 as haimin because I've been taught to pronounce the eta as a long vowel and the iota in a certain way.
36:13
And then the other variant this is down at the bottom of the page in the in the variant it's a verse 25 this is first John 2 25.
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I would see the second variant which is found in B 1241 1292 and a few others as haimin.
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The difference is between hey and who. I differentiate between the pronunciation of the upsilon and the aida.
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That's how what I was taught to do that's what I'm comfortable doing and when I'm reading to somebody else they can make the difference between the two.
36:46
It seems that in the ancient world they were just both haimin. They sound the same or could be easily confused for one another or the genitive form umon.
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And so we frequently have questions in regards to especially pronouns.
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Is it so that my joy might be that our joy might be fulfilled or that your joy might be fulfilled?
37:18
That's not like that exactly makes a huge difference but there are common textual variants where the two could be interchanged and many manuscripts show the difference between those two.
37:30
They yeah they look alike too so it could be an error of sight but probably that one given its commonality actually comes as an error of hearing within a scriptorium.
37:43
Alright so errors of sight errors of hearing errors of mind another of the errors of mind to keep to keep in mind and I didn't
37:53
I didn't provide this and I don't want to leave anybody completely out in the in the dark here but I wanted to I knew there was another text
38:02
I wanted I wanted to scan and now all of a sudden middle of program it hits me. My apologies but I I think it is important enough to at least mention it and that is in well
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I can I can scan it and and upload it to to the same thing when people listen the archive they can pick it up.
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So alright if you're listening live wait a few hours and and I will scan this one in and attach it to UBS 2 and I'll update that file and so when you pull you can pull it back down and all will be well and for those of you listening on archive you won't even care that I said any of this because it'll be all there anyhow so I'll just do this out of the text if you go the what will be the second page technology is fun isn't it man you couldn't do this we were on radio you know what
38:50
I mean you had one shot and that was pretty much it what will be the the scan of Ephesians chapter 1 do
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I want to I don't want to now I'll tell you what's in Ephesians chapter 1 but I actually it'll be from Colossians chapter 1 and this will be do -do -do -do -do -do this is called doing it on the fly here is this not going to show it oh this could be interesting well there's a that's interesting enough in Colossians chapter 1 you have a who moss versus hey moss variant in verse 12 which is what we were just talking about there it is
39:28
Colossians 114 and I'm gonna have to find other UBS text because I have my entire text underlined in Colossians 1 so that's not gonna look good but anyway that's still readable in Colossians 114 some of you in fact
39:42
I think you were around rich if I recall correctly we were at the south gate of the
39:47
Mormon temple in Salt Lake City and this big tall guy came up to this is obviously many many years ago probably about 1995 or 96 maybe as early as 94 but probably 95
39:59
I'd say big tall guy comes walking up to us and he's passing out tracks the
40:05
Mormons that probably indicates he's not a Mormon but he comes walking up to us and he's passing out tracks he's been watching us doing our thing for a while and finally comes up to us and he he looks at me and he says so do you use the bloodless
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Bible now we've run into some odd things outside the gates of the
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Mormon temple in Salt Lake City but I knew exactly what he was saying as soon as he said it
40:31
I could tell by his demeanor I could tell by the by the look and and I knew what he was talking about and he was talking about this text see
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King James only advocates say the NIV is the bloodless Bible they've taken out the blood and if you will compare
40:47
Colossians 114 in the King James the New King James with the
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New American Standard NIV and others you will see that there is a difference in the reading of the text the
40:59
King James has in whom we have redemption through his blood even the forgiveness of sins the
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New American Standard NIV says in whom we have redemption even the forgiveness of sins and so they say see those people are offended by the blood of Jesus they've taken out the blood of Jesus and I tried to reason with him and I you know once in a while I've had some success but I said well you know it's funny you would say that because as we know
41:26
Colossians is is the is parallel in many places with the book of Ephesians and if you look at Ephesians 1 7 you have a very similar phraseology in Ephesians 1 7 and there in all the manuscripts and in all the translations it says we have redemption through his blood so if the
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New American Standard NIV so and so was were ashamed by the blood why didn't they take it out Ephesians 1 7 instead what we have here is what
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I have what scholars have identified what I called in the King James only controversy parallel corruption parallel corruption scribes function a lot like King James only advocates they wanted parallel text to read identical to one another and in fact when you when you look at the
42:15
Gospels I've been teaching to the synoptic Gospels and if you look at the Greek version the synopsis quattro euron gallium the which provides you with textual data from I think that's
42:27
Nessie Allen 25 or something like that but it provides you with textual day the bottom page almost every time there is a substantive difference in the phraseology in the wording in the synoptic
42:38
Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke you will find some scribes someplace trying to change their manuscript to make them all harmonized to one another almost always now normally it's just one or two that can be purposeful or like this one it doesn't have to be purposeful you might say how could this not be purposeful real easy
42:59
Ephesians 1 7 is a part of the liturgy of the ancient church blessed be the
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Godfather in whom we have redemption through his blood and if you happen to have memorized
43:12
Ephesians 1 7 or you happen to be familiar with a liturgical phraseology that uses Ephesians 1 7 when you're copying
43:20
Colossians 1 and it's a shorter version of the text totally inadvertently aren't without purpose or malice or anything else you can just simply see the phrase in whom we have redemption and and I've done this while typing the keyboard
43:38
I'm sitting there and I'm conflating passages and on whom we have redemption through his blood I look back oh it doesn't say through his blood but that that's just just the way your mind works that's what you're used to hearing in the church same thing good example here is the
43:54
Lord's Prayer the Lord's Prayer in Luke is much shorter than it is in Matthew and yet the
44:00
Lord's Prayer is a part of I'm almost anybody who's a Christian can say the Lord's Prayer and so when you're copying
44:08
Luke if you're not aware that it's shorter it's gonna be real simple for you to start expanding stuff even without trying to and so when you look down the bottom of the page in Colossians chapter one it actually sort of surprised me that they included this as a variant
44:27
I think they only did so because the fact in the King James then the New King James people to make a problem but I actually was surprised included because there's such little attestation of the readings in the
44:38
King James Version if you look at this on page 686 of the UBS fourth it's the second variant variant listed it again is given an a and there's this long long list and what should cause you to go whoa this is odd is not only do you have olive and a and be those dreaded terrible horrible
44:59
Alexandria manuscripts but then you have BYZ KLP election areas election areas are almost always
45:06
Byzantine the the Vulgate Syriac Coptic all these early church fathers I mean it's it's it's everybody including the majority text in fact
45:18
I'm gonna double double check myself here before you know you make one mistake when you're going you know
45:24
I'm not even using notes this presentation all I've got is what you guys have got I'm doing the rest of it off top my head and if I make one mistake that's all people ever look at some of my yeah
45:33
I just okay page 605 of the majority text does not have through his blood in in verse 14 so even the majority text people must have produced a bloodless
45:48
Bible no they're just going with the text the vast majority of text including all the ancient texts do not have this phrase so where does it come from well whenever you see in the
45:59
UBS or in the parentheses C and then text parentheses closed so you have
46:07
C Ephesians 1 7 that's their way of telling you this is a parallel corruption this is a phrase that has come over here because of the parallel text elsewhere which is similar by the way once we could finally get a wrap back around to it the text in Luke 23 but anyway then you have one two three four minuscule manuscripts the earliest 424 that's not the date that's the number of it you have one two three four five lectionaries the
46:36
Clementine Vulgate which again is very late one version of Syriac Armenian Slavic and a couple early church fathers well early church and again when you soon as you get to the fathers there be the exact same impetus in especially here oh man this is excellent how do you thought about this before think about this with me this is an excellent example of the limitation of the usefulness of patristic sources for textual criticism in other words the early church fathers there they're important in some ways but there are certain kinds of textual variants that the evidence really just cannot come near having the same thing as manuscript evidence here's a good example of it why because everybody who listens to this program regularly knows what text
47:27
I'm about to parallel this with what if you today tried to reproduce the text of Matthew 2337 based upon radio preachers and Arminians and Dave Hunt's newsletter the phrase and your children would be deleted from the text because no one ever remembers to quote it right
47:52
Dave Hunt can't get it right and Norman Geisler can't get it right my goodness we've heard
47:59
R .C. Sproul miscited because he's just he's not looking at it it's just you're doing it by memory and so that's exceptionally common especially in preaching we all do it and will conflate things and especially when it's a text like Colossians 114 it sounds so much like Ephesians 1 7
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I bet you if we started digging around we could find so much evidence of good solid teachers who have miscited
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Colossians 114 and added in not because the King James because the parallel to Ephesians 1 7 so the same thing is here when you see this listing of early church writers and you see a
48:38
Cassiodorus or you see Gregory of Nyssa does that mean that the manuscript that Gregory of Nyssa had of Colossians did he actually write in his writings
48:49
Colossians 114 reads like this or is this just simply a citation we go well
48:55
I think he was in Colossians there but he might have been Ephesians yeah there's no way of knowing we can't tell or is it in this case for a deletion is it just that Gregory of Nyssa stopped and didn't finish quoting the whole verse see that's where when you see these things you can't just automatically jump to the conclusion that oh since this person's name is listed here that means that the manuscripts he had in his possession actually contain these words it is very common to see non -specialist people who just don't know what they're doing in the internet throwing stuff like that out as if it is an absolute established fact it just it just has to be there and so keep that in mind when you when you see a kind of thing but you have just a small handful of late manuscripts in my recollection is the earliest of these that I could find was the ninth century so you're talking nine centuries after the time of Christ is the earliest that you can find this reading it's in a literal handful of manuscripts from a thousand years after the time of Christ and yet it's in the
50:01
King James Version and a true King James onlyest will defend it to their death that who cares if no
50:08
Christian for a thousand years had ever seen this reading it doesn't matter it's in the 1611
50:14
King James Version of the Bible and you might say well how did it get in there if it's in just a couple of these one of those miniscules was used by Erasmus is my recollection
50:21
I don't remember which one it is I think it was 2464 but I'd have to check that going off top my head again there don't have any notes in front of me but I think one of those was one of them utilized and Erasmus only used between 6 and 12 manuscripts anyways but it just so happens that one of the later ones and it's it's ironic
50:39
Erasmus had one pretty decent miniscule text the data back to about 1 ,000 but he distrusted it because it was unlike the other ones he had which were newer to him but were actually farther removed from the original and so that's another little fascinating aspect of that so Rich don't let me forget to throw those scans in there because yeah oh yeah
51:05
I've got another I think I've got UBS 4 someplace it isn't all marked up so yeah well we'll just make sure to throw them into the same one so that people can open just one file and and it shouldn't make it all that much larger and that'll make it easier folks take a look at so with that in the last few moments here let's finally get to the
51:21
UBS variant here and and sort of try to apply some of the thinking here so you can just get a taste of why scholars come to conclusions they do and and how blessed we are to have the information so if you go back to UBS PDF page 1 when we looked at before the question is what about the phrase
51:46
Jesus said father forgive them for they do not know what they are doing we know that this is not found in the synoptic
51:57
Gospels outside of outside of Luke so this is not something you find in Matthew it's not something you find in Mark's not something you find in even
52:06
John outside the synoptics and so where did it come from well a lot of folks would would agree with oh you've oh you found them you found my cupcakes doggone it
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I just looked up and found rich eating one of my cupcakes do you know they have no sugar in them that's
52:27
Splenda man which you know I hope none of that gets on any of the keyboards in there if our whole system starts out because you're eating those cupcakes
52:36
Oh Matt found them oh great wonder are there any left that's the question I gotta find a better place to hide things well it's a live webcast there are many people sorry about that we'll have to cut that little element out with me a post -program notice on the second line it says include verse 34 a with minor variants see acts 760 a lot of people would say that what you have here is not so much a parallel corruption as it is a recognition that Stephen when he is being stoned says do not hold the sin against them forgive them etc etc and there would be many who scribes who would have a concern that a martyr could express such a phrase such an a a thought while Jesus does not and that this is where the phraseology comes from now
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I would point out that Jesus the early church praise in Acts chapter 4 and recognizes that what happened has happened to Jesus has happened at the direct predestined will of God that Herod and Pontius Pilate and the
54:03
Jews and the Gentiles they did what God's hand had predestined to occur and that Jesus was not like Stephen Stephen did not give up his life
54:14
Jesus had the authority to give his life and take it back up again so they're theologically there are issues to be addressed there but let's look at the evidence very quickly the evidence is only in the the verse is omitted in only a certain number of manuscripts and for a lot of people what they don't like is alright let's say there are again we'll use a round number 2000 manuscripts that contain the
54:42
Gospel of Luke and it's in the vast majority so why even care well when p75 when your earliest manuscript of a book doesn't contain it and then the first unseals show either that they don't contain it or or show a recognition of a variant at the text that that text already and why do
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I say that because look at all if one first line of the variant first page
55:16
UBS PDF the line that starts a little five then the bold 34 a omit verse you've got p75 papyri manuscript 75 does not contain this this is the earliest manuscript of Luke that we have why wouldn't have it when we look back up at it we go away what about homeboy tell you to nothing nothing there that would that would give us any reason for homeboy tell you time to exist anything like that that would be a pretty long phrase to lose to do to home okay then we have all of one which means it's originally in all of but then the writer of all of recognizes that it's not supposed to be there and so it's marked out and B doesn't have it at all the original hand of deed is not
56:01
Washingtonius does not have it there are theta does not have it there are a number of other 070 and what you could do if you want to do a complete and full study of this as you look at each one of these manuscripts you look up the date you look up its provenance what's it does its textual characteristics so on so forth you know if you want to do a really in -depth study that's what you're able to do then you have early translations part of the
56:29
Boheric of the Coptic this a headache certainly the old Italian old Latin I'm sorry does not have this particular verse why you have to ask yourself the question why would there be a deletion that has this kind of distribution to it then you have the inclusion of the verse in a wide variety well obviously the vast majority include the verse it's there and then interestingly knows at the very end of the variant include verse 34 a with asterix e so the writer of e knows that there are variants to this text he knows that this text is questionable now what do you do with that information well
57:19
I think we should always make it known that many ancient witnesses especially translations and and and writers included this phrase but I think one of the wisest conclusions we can come to in regards to textual variants is that you don't base an entire theological point on a textual variant now if this is a textual variant and the same phrase occurs elsewhere in the scriptures that's different that that's different thing but in this context where this is the only witness and it's not included by Matthew it's not included by mark that's that's a different that's a different thing
58:05
I think that there should be concern concerning the utilization of this phraseology this particular verse but let's face it folks was last time you heard anybody referring to this particular phrase and mentioning its textual variant
58:27
I've never heard mentioned the sermon not once not once I think the vast majority of people who preach on it just aren't aware of it should be rather important so anyways we're out of time for the program today obviously we will be pressing on next week with a textual criticism series and hopefully moving on to the
58:46
Nestle all in text and then eventually taking your calls with your questions about text here on the dividing line we'll see you later the dividing line has been brought to you by Alpha and Omega ministries if you'd like to contact us call us at 602 -973 -4602 or write us at p .o.
59:48
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59:56
that's AOMIN .org or you'll find a complete listing of James White's books tapes debates and tracks join us again next