A Textual Critical Geeky Dividing Line

Alpha & Omega Ministries

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

Comments are disabled.

00:36

And greetings, welcome to The Dividing Line. My name is James White, and we have a lot to get through today.

00:43

It'll be really helpful if I can see what I'm gonna be showing on the screen, but there's nothing up there at the moment.

00:51

That's better. Yes, you will notice for the guys up in South Dakota, basically, they said we'll give you these nice shirts only if you wear them on The Dividing Line.

01:07

So it was sort of a, I don't know, a blackmail type thing, but I thought, yeah, really cool logo.

01:15

I imagine Crash did the logo. I have a feeling Crash did the logo. I could be wrong. I said,

01:20

I'm coming up. I haven't gotten to know them all well enough to be able to come up with nicknames yet, but we had

01:27

Giggles, Crash, and Aaron's Deathwish. So, yeah, really hard to explain unless you've been around them for a while.

01:38

But there you go. Anyway, I wasn't gonna talk about this, but 13 minutes ago,

01:46

Albert Moller tweeted something that, I don't know, just got me thinking. So before we get really, really technical and geeky for a while,

01:57

I wanted to look at this tweet. In fact, I can actually,

02:05

I think I can go over to it. Yeah, TweetBot. Main window. Do you have that?

02:15

Right here, this says, at Vartburg Castle, I was reminded, right here, here's the dungeon,

02:24

I was reminded of Anabaptist Fritz Erb, who was imprisoned in this dungeon 1540 to 1548 for refusing to baptize his infant children.

02:36

He died in this dungeon after eight years of captivity for his convictions. If you look at this, just a hole in the ground here just goes down to this dank old dungeon.

02:50

Eight years. Eight years for refusing to baptize his children. And my response to Dr.

03:03

Moller was somewhere up here.

03:10

Where did I put it? Yeah. Tremendous reminder of how sacralism hung on even in the minds of the

03:19

Reformers. Basically, there's a book that you either love or you hate, but you should read one way or the other.

03:32

Presbyterians, at least some, tend to hate it. it is entitled, or that's improper, is titled

03:45

The Reformers and Their Stepchildren. And there's a movie you should watch as well.

03:57

There's a movie called The Radicals and what

04:02

I would do when I would teach church history is I would, you know, go through the standard presentation on Luther, on Zwingli, and the standard stories you hear

04:20

Luther standing before the Emperor and he probably did not say with a whole lot of bravery as it's frequently shown in later pictures.

04:37

No one had any cameras with them. All their iPhones or their batteries were dead by then. But he's standing there, you know, gesturing and Here I stand,

04:49

I can do no other, God help me. Here I stand, I can do no other, God help me.

04:56

But yeah, you know, I show them the Martin Luther movie. Actually, I show them

05:01

Martin Luther Heretic. Even to this day, I like the shorter BBC presentation of Martin Luther Heretic more than the movie that came out just a few years ago.

05:13

That's probably about a decade ago now. But anyway, so well, I do the

05:20

Reformation thing, and then I show on the Radicals. Then in the

05:26

Radicals, you see the Radical Reformation. You see the fact that Luther and Zwingli is focused upon.

05:40

Luther doesn't have a role, though he's mentioned. But Luther is focused upon,

05:46

Zwingli is focused upon in the Radicals. And you see the state church and when

05:59

I was teaching church history, I had the opportunity of doing that, I would talk about the fact that the

06:05

Council of Nicaea really marks a watershed. It's not when sacralism started. In fact,

06:11

I really wouldn't even say that the declaration that the

06:16

Roman Empire was Christian under Theodosius was really the start. Obviously very important, it started everything, but where do you really end up with the union of church and state?

06:32

Sacralism. And the impact that had upon the church, upon doctrine, practice, life.

06:42

But you see by the time of the Reformation, this had been the reality for a thousand years.

06:50

And yes, there had been changes and developments and things like that, but the

06:56

Reformers had no idea initially of the idea of a free church.

07:03

They had no idea of the concept of having multiple churches in one particular area.

07:12

When you have the Lutheran Reformation, all the churches in an area become Lutheran. When the

07:18

Counter -Reformation comes along under the Jesuits, then all the churches in a particular area change perspectives, and it's all based on politics and who's in charge and everything else.

07:29

Sacralism died hard and when it died, you know, historians will say here was the beginning of the

07:35

Enlightenment or the beginning of the destruction of Christian society and all the rest of it. Well, how

07:42

Christian is a society that has a majority of unregenerate people who think they're

07:51

Christians? But anyway, the way that the

07:57

Reformers treated rebels against their

08:03

Reformation was no less severe than how

08:09

Rome did, and that's the result of sacralism. That's the result of the state church.

08:17

And it's really something to think about. It really is something to think about and you get a picture there.

08:25

You know, we think of the Vartburg Castle and we think of Luther's time there hiding from the governmental powers, and yet those same governmental powers, when they became

08:39

Lutheran, murdered a man by imprisonment for not having his children baptized.

08:46

Now, why would that be? Because you have to remember, and this is what's good about the film The Radicals, it pictures this clearly, the baptism roles of the church were the basis of the tax roles of the state.

08:59

If you don't baptize your children, that's treason against the state. It's available.

09:09

I'm not sure if it's on YouTube. Think it is? Really? Maybe it's been long enough because you know what?

09:19

You know who I went to see that with? Jeff Neal. I went and saw that with Jeff Neal when it came out sometime, wow, late 80s,

09:28

I think. I think it was late 80s. It was only in the theaters for a brief period of time.

09:35

But, great little movie, and it helps you to think about these things, and they can be uncomfortable things to think about.

09:43

They really can. But we will be thinking about said things on our tour because we're gonna go to the

09:49

Vartburg Castle in September, and I will probably repeat some of what I just said while standing there.

09:57

And no, no, no, no, no, no, no, standing there next to where Fritz Erb was in prison.

10:05

No, I'm not gonna pose. So anyway, so we have 1990, there you go.

10:18

Is it on YouTube? If someone in channel can find it, let me know if it's available on YouTube because I'd like to let people know if they can watch it there because it's...

10:27

And see if Martin Luther Heretic's on YouTube too. I'd like to, I'd like to know. I've never even looked. I have them in my iTunes library, so I just have never, never bothered to look.

10:39

All right, I've got some geeky things to get to today, which I enjoy, and some of you enjoy if you're geeky, and if you're not, well,

10:48

I'm sorry. I'm not gonna be doing anything overly, overly controversial today, though we may get to some things.

10:57

When you see this over here, you know that there's gonna be some controversy because you may, may recognize it.

11:11

It's my hour, the ministries, 1550

11:18

Stephanus, one of the primary texts used by the

11:23

King James translators. This is an original. This is the real thing. This baby's a little bit on the old side.

11:33

It's the third edition of Stephanus, and what is really, really interesting is that this is the first edition, printed edition of the

11:49

Greek New Testament, to contain textual variants referenced to Greek manuscripts right here.

11:58

Right there. Now, I'll go ahead and talk about this before we get into the other stuff.

12:05

I can open the pages here, and I was looking at some stuff in, in Romans before, and you can look in the columns.

12:15

I'm not gonna hold it up to the camera. It's a little bit hard on the binding, but, and you can see in the, what would be the right -hand column, references to Greek manuscripts with a

12:31

Greek word next to it. In other words, it's giving you variant readings. Someone is telling me that link to the

12:40

Radicals on YouTube and link to Martin Luther Heretic by BBC on YouTube, so I guess that means they're both available.

12:46

I would highly recommend and read the, watch them, not sure what just blew out of the book there, but watch them in the order of Martin Luther Heretic, then the

13:05

Radicals. Don't watch it backwards, because that would be strange. I mean, nothing's gonna happen to you.

13:13

It's not gonna create a universal paradox or something, but it just would be easier for you to do it that way, if you get a chance to do that.

13:20

So, what we have here, the cover is just barely on that, that's why I'm holding on to it that way.

13:26

What we have with Stephanos then, the next edition after this, introduced, it was

13:36

Stephanos, Robert Estienne, who introduced the verse enumeration that we use today.

13:45

Now, Estienne is primarily basing his work on Desiderius Erasmus.

13:51

Erasmus had done five editions between 1516 and 1535, and then

13:59

Robert Estienne, who is Calvin's printer in Geneva in the years after this, produced that particular volume there.

14:10

This one, prior to the verse enumeration, oh, look at that, fancy -dancy.

14:16

I could have held it up if we really needed to, you know, be pointing it out to people. Rich is just bored in the other room.

14:23

He doesn't care about this stuff, so he's just playing with camera angles. This one was very popular amongst the

14:32

King James translators, and hence is very important in the translation of the

14:39

King James Version of the Bible. So, the King James translators used the five editions of Erasmus, the various editions of Stephanos, and I think

14:47

Beza did, what, 12 editions, something like that, but the 1598 was particularly popular.

14:54

And so, these were the printed editions, but what that means is, when you look at the

15:00

King James Version of the Bible as it was originally printed, it had thousands of notes, including notes relevant to not only other ways of translating, but they did note when there were textual variants known to them in the manuscripts, and they would have seen that right there in Robert Estienne's work, and I think

15:20

Beza did similar things as well. Now, why is this relevant? Well, those that promote the idea, you know, we've talked about it before, of this ecclesiastical text concept, like to point to the

15:38

Westminster Confession of Faith, or the London Baptist Confession of Faith, where it talks about God keeping his word pure through the ages, and say, see, if they used the

15:50

Textus Receptus in the formulation of the theological monuments of the

15:58

Reformed Faith, and to be confessional, then you should do the same thing. And one of the problems with that is that when you look at something like this 1550

16:12

Stephanus right here, if that's what you were using, if that was what was available to those individuals who translated the

16:25

King James, or, you know, still would have been available less than a hundred years later, when the

16:32

Westminster divines were putting together their, or doing their work, you would have been faced right there in your text with the existence of textual variation.

16:46

So they could not have meant that the simple text that was chosen by the editor, you know, they knew of Erasmus' annotations,

17:00

Stephanus' listing variants, Beza's listed variants, so the idea that, well, we have this this one text, you know, the, here's our, here's our text, the

17:13

Textus Receptus, and unlike unlike Stephanus there, there aren't any, hmm, aren't any textual notes in this.

17:28

Now, if it was a critical edition, you could even have a critical edition of the Textus Receptus, because there are numerous variants in the about 105 or so printed editions, that when you add them all up would be generally based on Erasmus, and hence would be the general text of the

17:52

Textus Receptus, which is going to differ from the Byzantine text platform.

17:57

Very similar, but it's going to differ from it. You could put together a critical edition.

18:06

You could go back and compare all the editions of Erasmus and Stephanus and Beza and up through, you know,

18:14

I suppose you could do the Elsevier edition, which is where the name Textus Receptus came from.

18:20

I've always called them the Elsevier brothers. They're not the Elsevier brothers, I found out recently. They're family members, but they weren't brothers.

18:27

But anyways, you know, if you did like through the 1633, or something like that, that'd be a rather useful, interesting thing.

18:35

But you'd have variants, and the fact is the people who want to promote this don't want to talk about the variants.

18:41

They don't want to talk about the variants that are in here, and that's troubling.

18:48

What it means is to say that I'm not confessional, because I use something other than the

18:57

Textus Receptus, is to ignore the reality of the very nature of the group of printed texts that comprise the

19:06

Textus Receptus. And it's to demonstrate that the people that produced those manuscripts didn't even hold the viewpoint you're holding.

19:13

And this is one of the parallels between those who promote the TR and King James Onlyists, because the

19:22

King James Onlyists ignore what the King James translators themselves said.

19:27

Because the King James translators never held a King James Onlyism. You cannot read their works and think that they would ever have held to King James Onlyism.

19:39

And so, if the people who produced the printed texts that eventually become known in general as the

19:49

Textus Receptus are noting textual variants, then you can't think that they would have taken the viewpoint that even the general realm of,

20:02

I keep saying manuscripts, but printed editions is supposed to be taken as the final authority or something along those lines.

20:10

It is fascinating to note those things and to recognize that reality.

20:16

So when you see this sitting back there, it's normally sitting back there, you see that other book from 1689, it normally sits on top of that.

20:23

That's the 1550 Stephanus text sitting on top of Codex Sinaiticus and things like that down there.

20:33

It's actually a pretty impressive shelf down there. So anyway,

20:39

I had gotten that out to make a comment on that, but even geekier than that is what

20:46

I'm sending you via Desktop Presenter.

20:52

There was just there was just released, and see, this is how it needs to be done.

21:02

This is what should have been done with what's called the Green Project and the fragments of Mark from the

21:10

Egyptian funerary mask and all the rest of that kind of stuff. This is how it should be done.

21:19

Here you have edited fragments from Oxyrhynchus. Now, Oxyrhynchus is one of the greatest literary finds in regards to papyrus, going back to the ancient world, that we have.

21:43

Last week word came out of the publication after editing and vetting and examination and so on and so forth of two fragments of New Testament manuscripts that have already been given.

21:59

They're Gregory Allen numbers, which are the, you know, when you hear me talking about p52, there are three or four, you know, three or four methods of identifying manuscripts, but the

22:15

Gregory Allen numbering system has become standardized. And if you have the

22:23

Nessie Olland text, then, let me see here, the papyri ended, this thing does not want to turn very quickly, the last papyrus, oh goodness, there it is, p98.

22:59

P98 was the last papyrus listed. Is this? No, this is, oh, this is only 27.

23:08

Where'd my 28 go? Hmm. Well, I don't have a 28 in here.

23:15

I'd have to fire up, I'd have to dig around through through Accordance to see what they had listed.

23:21

I think, yeah, I went well past 98. I think it was in the 120s someplace. Well, these are already, have already been given their numbers, and they are p133 and p 132.

23:35

Yeah, 133 and 132. So we're up to papyrus 132 and 133.

23:43

So, yeah, that's, that's gonna look even better. The first here, p132, is a small codex fragment of Ephesians dated to the third, fourth century.

23:56

The first fragment of this work to surface from Oxyrhynchus. So, that's interesting. It's first portion of Ephesians that we have from Oxyrhynchus.

24:07

And it says, Nomena Sacra are present, written in an informal hand on both sides of the papyrus. Now, how is that relevant to your life today?

24:18

It is, actually. The, the fact that Christians, that's why, when it, when it says, when it says written on both sides, that's why you have here two sides.

24:36

You have, this is on the one side, and then you have what's called a lacuna, because that's what, you've got one portion of one page on one side, then the back side, so this is 321 through 412 and 414 through 416.

24:51

So, obviously, 4 -3 through 4 -13 would be the rest of what was on the front side, and the top of what was on the back side, before you get to this.

25:04

Almost all of our papyri fragments have this form.

25:10

And what is fascinating is, even though, if you look at what's something called

25:15

LDAB, LDAB, it's a, it's a library, it's a digital library of ancient works, describing what they're written on, the form they're written in, things like that.

25:28

If you look at LDAB in the 1st and 2nd century, the vast majority of literature is written on rolls, scrolls.

25:37

But the Christians, though they did use some scrolls, clearly have, as a group, a predilection for the

25:50

Codex, the book form. And that's fascinating. Why did they do that?

25:56

There's a lot of discussion, a lot of discussion as to, were they trying to differentiate themselves from the synagogue, which clearly used scrolls at this point in time for their scriptures?

26:07

Was it easier to be able to compare Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? Because if you have a scroll of the

26:15

Gospels, you can't really flip back and forth to parallel passages.

26:22

All sorts of discussion of why this might be. And then it says it contains Nomina Sacra.

26:29

Why should that matter to you today? Well, take a look at it. You can see right here is what they're talking about, is right here.

26:39

Nomina Sacra, right there. So, to him, the glory in the church, and then you see this backwards bracket?

26:47

So what's actually in the fragment is what's between brackets.

26:54

So you have... Now, what's interesting here, there's the actual...

27:00

so this is what... this is not in the fragment. But this is, and since it's in brackets like this,

27:09

I have not been able to find the actual, if they've even been published. The first thing that gets published is the transcription.

27:16

Then the picture is later on. I don't know if there's just a hole here.

27:21

I don't know if it's missing. But the line above this indicates this is a

27:32

Nomina Sacra. Here's another one right here. And given that it's outside of brackets, then evidently, just as I, the desmios, the servant, the slave, as servants in the

27:52

Lord, in the Lord, is what you have here. Walk worthily of your calling which you received with all tapaira safruneh, humility of mind, and gentleness with patience.

28:11

Okay, so you can see why it's sort of hard to identify these fragments, because they normally just have the middle portions of lines.

28:20

And of course, this is transcribed in minuscule text, but that's not what you'd have.

28:27

You wouldn't have these spaces, and this would be maguscule or uncial text, which is a lot easier,

28:33

I'm sorry, a lot harder for most people to be able to read. But the point is, this transcription is saying is you have a

28:39

Nomina Sacra right here. Now, the

28:45

Nomina Sacra, we've explained them before, but if this is new to you, you might be saying, do you really think this is stuff that Christians should know?

28:58

Yeah. I mean, it's not necessary, but we live in a day where, hey, the more information you have as to the reliability of scripture, where it came from, the better.

29:09

That's my opinion. No one knows, there's lots of theories as to why

29:15

Christians developed the Nomina Sacra. Nomina Sacra simply means sacred names. Nomina Divina, the names of God.

29:26

Pretty much every single Christian manuscript we possess, certainly in the

29:34

New Testament, I don't know of any exceptions there might be, utilized this system called the

29:42

Nomina Sacra, where for some reason, we don't know, it wasn't, you know, there was a time in the past I had suggested it maybe was because they were trying to save on space because of writing material.

29:53

No, they used, they would have used all the papyri, and they wouldn't have had such wide margins and top and bottom margins and stuff if they were concerned about that.

30:07

No, that's not probable either. We just don't know why they did it, but there are certain words, and then as time went on, the list of words expanded, but certainly

30:21

God, Lord, Christ, Son, Spirit, these words,

30:29

Jesus, were abbreviated and a line replaced above the abbreviation.

30:38

It depended on the manuscript. Some manuscripts would regularly use two -letter abbreviations, some three -letter abbreviations, some mixture, so it depends.

30:49

And it is fascinating because it allows you almost just by sight to go, ah,

30:57

Christian scribe, Christian manuscript. Lots of speculation, were they following Jewish tradition here and not pronouncing divine names?

31:08

Well, no, I don't think so. We just don't know why this system developed.

31:18

We just know that it did. And here we have an example of a nomina sacra in the new

31:25

P132, and there's almost no variation between the standard text that we have today, and the only variant is found in 321 where the chi is not found, the word and.

31:48

Other than that, it's only a matter of letters, a few words, grand total.

31:57

But what that demonstrates again is anyone who has the idea that the text of the

32:04

New Testament is just this free -flowing, could -be -about -anything type thing, the manuscript evidence just simply does not substantiate that idea at all.

32:16

The text of Ephesians that came into Egypt, and this is the earliest we have in that area, the same thing you got in P46, which is the earliest, which is even earlier than this, and is a very complete collection of Paul's major works.

32:38

Now, what's interesting is P33. Now, what's weird here is that P133, the transcription that was given over on the left here is teeny tiny.

33:01

It's not even readable, but it's much larger over here. So, what I did is

33:07

I went online and I'm not sure. Let me see if this is actually going to work because Rich is now distracted.

33:16

Oh, it does work. Look at that. That's sort of cool.

33:26

So, I will be able to sort of drag that over there and show it to you here in a second.

33:32

But what is interesting about P133 is that it is 1

33:38

Timothy 3 .13 -4 .8. Now, what that means is that's the verse range that it covers.

33:49

It's not all of that. It'd be nice if it was all that. But the most significant fact that the authors note is that this is also called

34:04

Papyri Oxyrhynchus 5259. So, all the

34:10

Oxyrhynchus papyri have their own numbers. And then, if it's a New Testament manuscript, then it gets assigned a

34:17

Gregory Allen number. So, we have Nomena Sacra. We'll take a look at them. There are only two variants and they're spelling variants.

34:29

One is an article and the other is whether you spell something sunnidesin versus sunnidesin.

34:40

So, again, but that does... That means we have a few more variants to add to the list.

34:49

But again, it's the same text. Now, here's one of the...

34:57

Well, let me zoom in on this one. Well, you can see a

35:04

Nomena right here, but it looks like it cuts off right at the end of that one.

35:13

Because remember, stuff like this, this is outside. This is within brackets. So, it's not included within it.

35:20

So, there is a Nomena there. And then, there was a really interesting Nomena right there in 4 .1

35:29

and here as well in regards to the spirit. And then, here's another one right here.

35:38

So, some interesting Nomena Sacra in regards to that.

35:47

But those of you who can read

35:53

Greek know that, oh, drat it all.

36:01

There are some times when you look at where the page breaks off or the damage to the papyri is and you just go, ah.

36:19

Because what's in 1 Timothy 3 .16? Major textual variant, vitally important one.

36:31

Notice here, great is the...

36:37

Probably need to put that up because... There we go. Great is the...

36:44

And then, taste goes... Well, godliness, musterion.

36:51

And so, we've got the ust, the middle of musterion. But remember what the variant is?

37:00

Great is the mystery of godliness, has, ephanerothe, and sarche.

37:09

Is it has, which is what is put here. And when you collate a manuscript like this, somewhere in the publication, there would have been an indication of what the standardized text against which it was being collated was.

37:25

Probably Nessialon 28 or something like that. It's not the TR because that's not what TR reads here.

37:31

This is the variant between he who, has, and god, the has.

37:40

God was manifest in the flesh. And as you can see by the brackets, this would have been a huge textual witness because this is our earliest fragment of 1

37:58

Timothy now. This is the earliest fragment of 1 Timothy we have. It would have been so wonderful to know what was written there because if it was has, that would pretty much, in my opinion, end all the debate completely.

38:19

If it was theos, it would totally change the entire discussion.

38:26

Totally change the entire discussion. But sadly, it's not there.

38:37

Wish it was. Wish it was. But it's not there. Now, I want to drag that out of the way.

38:49

And yesterday, I did a 100 mile bike ride. I'm sorry, 100 kilometer bike ride.

38:56

That's not 100 miles. It's only 62 miles. And it was a sometimes those who follow me on Twitter or Facebook or something, you'll notice

39:03

I put a study ride. That's what I'm trying to plow through as much material primarily in preparation for this program.

39:11

Believe it or not, I do prepare for the program. It may not appear that way, but I do.

39:17

And one of, I was listening to a fascinating, and I need to listen to it again.

39:23

I may just double up on it. Fascinating lecture from RTF Charlotte, from Chuck Hill, from just recently,

39:35

Toward a Theory of New Testament Origins, which is on YouTube.

39:41

So if you want to listen to, if this kind of program you actually enjoy, there's only three of you, but if you do, you might want to go track that one down.

39:49

It was quite interesting. So I listened to that first, and then I went back to rereading.

39:55

I had read this, I don't know, seven, eight years ago.

40:02

But Larry Hurtado has a book on Christian artifacts, and he treats manuscripts as Christian artifacts, which is true.

40:10

That's exactly what they are. And I was in the section on the Nomina Sacra.

40:18

And it was fascinating. And I was actually listening very, very carefully to what he was saying.

40:28

And I'd like to illustrate something for you. But interestingly, at one point, he indicated that P46, which is the earliest papyri manuscript we have of Paul's works.

40:49

Now, this one would be a fragment, and fascinatingly, of 1

40:54

Timothy, which is not in P46. P46 is extremely important.

41:00

It's in Chester Beatty. That's the one I almost got in trouble with, because I was trying to read it, and it was so dark.

41:07

The only way I could do it was to get down on my knees and look up at it, because the light sort of bounced off it. And I've always thought that the security people were watching us someplace else going, oh, great, the

41:19

Christians are worshiping the manuscripts again. Better go down there and talk to them. But P46, extremely important manuscript, extremely vital, vitally important witness to the text of the

41:35

Pauline Epistles, early collection of Paul's writings, contains the book of Hebrews, which is interesting.

41:49

But basically, Dr. Hurtado had said that the scribes were interpreting the text as they would use the nomena sacra.

42:03

Why would they do that? Well, in P46, when someone else whose name

42:09

Jesus is mentioned, but it's not the

42:14

Jesus, they don't use the nomena. And he made reference to the section in 2

42:21

Corinthians 11, 4, where it says another

42:27

Jesus, and he said P46 wrote out Jesus. So, I thought, oh, that's fascinating. So, I looked up P46, and I wrote to Dr.

42:41

Hurtado, and he was very kind enough, though retired, to write back and say, yep, whoops, because the scribe actually used the nomena there.

42:53

And you can understand why, another Jesus. It's still, you can take it either way.

42:59

You can take it either way. But he was exactly right on here.

43:06

Now, let me, stop that. How does that look?

43:15

Can you get that? Because I'm just simply dropping stuff on top of the window.

43:23

You blew it up, and that may be what's making it look weird. And so, why don't

43:28

I just do this? I will fix things on my side, okay? Window.

43:35

What am I using here? Preview. Yeah. It says three documents, three total pages.

43:43

Are you getting it? What we'll have here in a moment is

43:53

P46. There we go. This is really fascinating.

43:59

Let me see what's going to happen here. Ah, that works perfectly. Now, believe it or not, folks, that's the same thing.

44:10

Now, you say, wait a minute, how can it be the same thing? Obviously, this is a digitally enhanced version that is much easier to read.

44:19

That's what it really looks like. This is what it looks like when you utilize enhancement, basically, to greatly increase the contrast and make the writing much, much easier.

44:37

This is what you will read on the Munster website, not Munster. People go, oh,

44:42

Adam Sandler or whatever. No. When you go to the

44:48

Institute for New Testament Studies, they're the official people that hand out the designations for manuscripts, stuff like that.

44:57

They have a great manuscript room where you can go and you can look at almost all this stuff. This is the version that you'd read there.

45:05

Then if you go to CSNTM, CSNTM has this, which is from the Chester Bee Library.

45:10

So this is what you'd actually see. But I'll use this just simply because it's a whole lot easier to see.

45:18

And what I was going to do is I was going to show you, I've done a little experimenting because I've told you, I've started that PhD work on P45.

45:27

I've just got a plain Jane photo. It's not

45:33

Photoshop. That's way too complicated for someone like me to use. But I've got a program on my Mac that I can put images into and run filters on them.

45:42

I've got one that will basically do like an x -ray type thing where it turns, sort of reverses everything.

45:50

And it is a lot easier to read. It really is. And I've been using that when it's sometimes a little bit difficult to see.

46:02

But here in this one, this is 1 Corinthians chapter 8.

46:09

And let me remind you of what we have in 1

46:15

Corinthians chapter 8, because this is sort of important that you understand the context.

46:24

I really wish there was a, there you go. Therefore concerning the eating of things, sacrifice to idols, we know there's no such thing as an idol in the world and there is no

46:34

God but one. For even if there are so -called gods, whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords, yet for us there is but one

46:42

God, the Father, from whom are all things, and we exist for him, one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we exist through him.

46:49

And so here you have that section in P46.

47:01

And notice when it talks about lords, no line, it's written out, gods.

47:18

But to us, even ha -pater, nomena sacra, from whom and for whom, so on and so forth.

47:35

And one, it's over here someplace, Lord, kurios, nomena sacra,

47:42

Jesus, nomena sacra, Christ, nomena sacra. So what's going on here?

47:51

Why have theoi written out here and kurioi written out here but then you abbreviate and use the nomena sacra?

48:00

Well, here is an example of a scribe who's following what he's writing and understands the theology of what he's writing.

48:10

In other words, in all probability, the scribe of P46 is a

48:17

Christian, understands Christian theology. There were certain, you know,

48:23

P75, probably copied by a business individual one letter at a time, may not have been following the argument or interpreting the words, but here the fact is the scribe, and is he just simply, okay, we could be overreading here.

48:52

It could just be that that's what was in the manuscript before him.

48:59

But some scribe at some point, because the nomena had to be introduced at some point and you're really stretching it to think that it was the apostles that did it.

49:11

It's not like the apostles could get on, you know, the apostolic party line and go, hey, guys, as we're writing our

49:18

New Testament books, let's use, let's do something no one else has done and let's use this thing called nomena sacra that they will eventually call nomena sacra.

49:29

It's an abbreviation thing. It won't tell anybody why we're doing it. Highly unlikely, highly unlikely.

49:35

So at some point, some scribe in, and this used to say theos, heis, theos, and there were four letters and it was abbreviated to theta sigma with a line over top.

49:56

And pater was even more letters than that, but it became pyro with a line over top.

50:03

And at that point, whoever the scribe was, whether it was this or a scribe a hundred years earlier, there was an interpretation of the text going on.

50:16

And he realized, gods, lords, many, we're not going to use the nomena sacra.

50:24

So the point is the nomena sacra has a, there's an indication in it that you are saying something about the individual that you are.

50:41

In other words, the gods of the people don't deserve this. Well, it's reverence.

50:48

It is an indication of reverence. And it's also an indication that the scribe is understanding what he's writing and interpreting what he's writing, at least as far as once the nomena had to be inserted or were inserted, not had to be, but were inserted in the text.

51:07

Now, there was one other really interesting thing here.

51:17

This is my baby. I cannot claim ownership of P45, but I think everybody who does doctoral work on P45 can sort of claim it for themselves.

51:33

You know one of the ways you can tell this is P45, by the way? I know you all are getting sick of this, are going to get sick of this over the next three years.

51:42

Look at this. This is P46, all right? And I'm putting it so they don't, but they look similar.

51:50

See right here? Kai Ha Pater. See the

51:56

Omicron? All right, see the relative size of the Omicron there? Here's Poloi, relative size of the

52:04

Omicron. That's P46. Look at P45. Look at that Omicron there.

52:10

There, there, there, there. What do you see? Micro Omicrons, one of the stylistic elements of P45 is not only micro

52:25

Omicrons, but there is a full writing out of all

52:32

Iota subscripts as a full letter, not under the letter, but next to the letter.

52:40

This is why most people who've had even two, three, four years of Greek start trying to read a fragment of a papyrus in unseal or maguscule text and they just go, what on earth is that?

52:55

Yeah, it is. It's like reading a whole new language. But here, the point is, go ahead and there was something called a

53:06

Staurogram. Staurogram. And it's right here. You can see a line here.

53:12

And unfortunately, there is a hole. And given, you know, that could have been a hole in the original papyrus.

53:19

Unlikely papyrus doesn't do that. That's probably a bug. That's probably a worm and his lunch one day.

53:29

But what you have here is a very interesting phenomenon in the early, very earliest centuries.

53:39

This is referring, this is the one place in P45 where the crucifixion refers to, is referred to.

53:47

And a number of manuscripts, including P45, use a

53:52

Staurogram. Stauros is to crucify. They did something artistic and different to mark off the words for crucifixion from the beginning.

54:10

Well, okay, from the beginning. From the earliest manuscripts that we possess, we have examples of this.

54:20

And it really makes you, again, the person who did this either had to be instructed to do it or more probably is a

54:31

Christian. And as such is in some way, aside from the, you know, here's a, right here, see, here's the beginning of a nomina up here.

54:45

So, you know, P45 uses nomina, just like all the other early fragments do. So aside from showing honor for the sacred names, including the name of Jesus, which does give you an idea of the early belief in these things, despite what certain

55:00

Filipino religions believe, who would know what a nomina sacer was if it walked up and hit him. But also when it came to the crucifixion, to the cross, there was a something done to show reverence in regards to the crucifixion itself, just in the way that the, it's not a nomina, but it is an abbreviation with a big old line that draws attention to the crucifixion.

55:36

Now, you know, I've pointed out in the past that that very term, to crucify, would not even be used by certain people in polite company.

55:54

So I don't think that's what's behind this. Maybe it's just the massive change in the meaning of the word.

56:05

You know, you think of Paul's statement, God forbid that I should glory except in the cross for our

56:11

Lord Jesus Christ. I don't know, but there's a styrogram right there in P45 in Matthew 26.

56:21

I think it's 26 .2, if I recall correctly. Yeah, Matthew 26 .2. And it is fascinating.

56:30

And you are listening to or watching probably one of the only podcasts out there that will tell you about these things.

56:38

I know it's Alan Kersher's channel, and one of the examples I use when

56:44

I tell people about how weird this program is, is we once did an entire hour just with him on one textual variant.

56:58

We are really trying to get the big audience by just appealing to everyone's interest in really other stuff.

57:08

You can go ahead and take that down. We're done with that. So yeah, there you go.

57:15

So I hope you find that kind of stuff interesting and useful.

57:22

And to me, well, look, I'm just going to have to warn you ahead of time. You're going to be getting a lot of this over the next few years.

57:31

Sorry. You know, if you didn't hear the announcement, when

57:37

I got back to South Africa, I'm in a PhD program in South Africa under Dr.

57:43

Yordan. And P45 is what I'm working on and already making progress. Not easy right now, given my schedule.

57:53

And since it's research, you don't know what the end of your research is going to be, obviously. But I'm going to be spending a lot of time with that manuscript.

58:01

And something tells me, hey, if that's where my mind is, I might end up coming in here and telling you about it.

58:09

So it may end up being the best known papyrus manuscript of antiquity by the time we get done.

58:17

And like I said, I'm preaching through it. If you go to sermonaudio .com, look up PRBC, I'm preaching through it.

58:23

I'll be preaching Sunday morning into the next section. That was one thing I wanted to get done today and didn't.

58:28

I'm going to have to do it tomorrow is the bulletin insert for the bulletins with the next section of the papyrus and my translation.

58:36

Now I've had to push it back to Friday to get that done. I'm never going to get it all done, but I'm trying and pray that I get done what

58:43

I need to get done. So there you go. Hopefully you found all of that interesting, useful, and we'll talk more the next time on The Dividing Line.