The Textual Criticism Series Begins

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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 This is a live program and we invite your participation.
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If you'd like to talk with dr. White call now at 602 973 460 to or toll -free across the
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United States. It's 1 877 7 5 3 3 3 4 1 And now with today's topic here is
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James white And good afternoon. Welcome to the dividing line on a
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Thursday afternoon His name was Desiderius Erasmus.
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I don't know who would name their child Desiderius But that doesn't really matter in this particular context
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He was known as a great humanist the term humanist back. Then did not mean what it meant what it means today it was not necessarily a insult used by Christians Erasmus Was a man who wanted to see the
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Greek New Testament more widely available to people Primarily scholars for study.
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He was a Renaissance man and their great cry was ad fontis to the source and so Erasmus wanted to Publish a
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Greek New Testament and he worked the man by the name of Johannes Froben Froben actually and he was put under a lot of pressure to come up with the
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Manuscripts upon which to utilize and to collate and to put together a
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Greek text. He was also under pressure because his publisher John Froben had known already that Cardinal Jimenez had already printed a very fine
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Greek New Testament a very large very ornate very well done
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Greek New Testament and So he was under a lot of pressure. He had to He had hoped that Basil Switzerland would have a number of good manuscripts in his libraries
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It did not he only had about half dozen manuscripts to work with and when he got to the book of Revelation Remember his printer his publisher is putting him under a lot of pressure
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There's a race going on here The other guys have already printed theirs and they're waiting for papal approval just to publish it and once they publish it
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Well, these guys are going to be out all the money. They've been spending on this project When he gets the book of Revelation, he discovers he can't find any manuscripts at all
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And so he borrows a manuscript from a man by the name of Johannes Reikland Reikland was also a humanist scholar a
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Renaissance man and In fact he had risked his life to Learn Hebrew.
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You may ask why would you risk your life to learn Hebrew? Well, it is a difficult language to learn but not deadly
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But in that days it could be because the only way you could learn it was to go to the Jews and of course
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The Jews were heretics. This is around the beginning of the 16th century and so to be seen cavorting with heretics would of course
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Lead you to being suspected of being a heretic yourself and there was this little thing called the the
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Inquisition going on in those particular days and therefore He had snuck at night to meet with a
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Jewish rabbi to learn Hebrew to write the first Hebrew grammar Something sometimes we need to be reminded that people have risked their lives in the past To give us the ability to have all the linguistic resources and the text of Scripture available to us
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But anyway, Erasmus borrows from Reikland the only text of the book of Revelation he can find and so he and his assistant are working hard upon this particular project in Trans transcribing this
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Handwritten as all of them were at that time Greek manuscript and they get to the last portion of the book of Revelation and discover that the last page has fallen off of the manuscript and Erasmus simply doesn't have time to try to find another
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Handwritten copy of the text of the book of Revelation and so he takes the Latin Vulgate the default text of the day and he translates
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From the Latin into Greek for the last few verses of the book of Revelation and this then becomes his novum instrumentum is the first edition of his
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Greek New Testament and he rushes it into print and He does so without getting papal approval, which was a very dangerous thing to do.
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But what you need to realize is that The Gambit that he takes is to dedicate that first edition of his
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Greek New Testament To Pope Leo the 10th the current Pope at that time who if you know your church history fairly
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Well is also the same Pope who? excommunicated Martin Luther Erasmus's text would go through five editions in his lifetime.
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The third was the most popular and Is the one that is utilized by Martin Luther in his study of Romans and is so important in his recognition of the characteristic of repentance over against doing penance as found in the
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Latin Vulgate now another man that Erasmus was impressed with who had passed away earlier was a man by the name of Lorenzo Vala Lorenzo Vala lived from 1406 to 1457 didn't have a really long life then again a lot of people back then didn't and Vala Broke out of the mindset of what we today would call anachronism if you've ever noticed if you've looked at art
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That is done in the 1400s 1300s 1400s You will notice that for example, even when treating biblical characters
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They dress them in medieval European dress and they put them in castles and on horses with You know, they they make them look like they were contemporaneous and that's because many people suffered from anachronism they thought things had always been this way and things had just been going on this way for a long time and always would and and They didn't recognize the reality of the the changing times and So Lorenzo Vala was a literary critic and He for example was the one to prove that the donation of Constantine which had been used by the
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Roman Catholic Church for many many years to demonstrate the supremacy of The Roman Sea was in fact a forgery
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He was able to detect that it contained anachronism contained information that could not have been known at that particular point in time when it was allegedly written and he also noticed something rather interesting and That is that He looked at Jerome's Commentaries the great early writer
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Jerome. He looked at his commentaries in the Bible and he saw something odd. He saw that Jerome's Commentaries when they quoted from the scripture at times would differ from the
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Latin Vulgate which of course Jerome was the one who translated the Latin Vulgate and which had become the default text of the
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Western Church for a thousand years and He reasoned properly
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That the Vulgate text as the Bible itself would have been copied many many many many many times
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Because it was in general use whereas Jerome's commentaries would not have been copied nearly as often and That that of course was a good a good guess and His follow -up guess to that Was that the text found in the commentaries?
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would be considerably more accurate because it would not have been copied as many times and so in essence he was
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Suggesting that the accepted text the day be amended to fit with The actual original reading that Jerome offered in his commentaries
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Of course that was dangerous too. And in fact, he did not even publish his thoughts on that during his lifetime
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Erasmus was the one who found his notes and published them because Erasmus liked a good fight. So What are we talking about today?
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We are talking about textual criticism. We are talking about the history of the the text primarily of the
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New Testament But in general of the Bible itself and everything that I've mentioned to you so far are just stories that come from The history of how the text came to us today people that were involved interesting thing
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It's things that took place the reality that to this day In the
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King James Version of the Bible there are words in the 22nd chapter of Revelation that no
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Christian Had ever seen in the Greek language prior to Erasmus Being rushed to try to get his edition of the
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Greek New Testament to print In time to beat Cardinal Jimenez to the punch Because he was being pushed by John Froben his printer
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Those are very human stories and a lot of people let's face. It are more than just a little bit uncomfortable with the fact that well human beings are the ones who have been used in the
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Transmission of the text of the Bible yes Despite Mormon beliefs to the contrary no angels have come down with golden plates
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It has been human beings and there have been times There have been times when those human beings did not have exactly the best motivations in mind for what they were doing and We recognize that and some people to say well that that means we just can't know what the
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Bible has to say well You know that's that's not exactly true. That's that's a pretty major leap to make we can of course recognize the history of the text and we can go beyond just simply what
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Erasmus did or or Lorenzo Valla found or the the changes in the Vulgate text over a thousand years all of these things that require us
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To have some some background, and it's that very background That is not a part of the vast majority the discussions of the
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Bible within the Christian Church today Let's let's let's be very very honest about this
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Most Christians don't have any idea where the Bible came from well my Bible came from the brain
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Christian bookstore That's where I got my Bible about 15 years ago I bought it and he was in a blue box That's where a
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Bible came from well, and that means it came down from heaven with thumb indexing and a very nice leather cover and and and the whole nine yards and That's not really how it worked to be perfectly honest with you.
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There is a whole lot more that goes into the history of the text now
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I Recognize the first times that as a young person I heard the phrase textual criticism
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I had a visceral negative response to the phrase and What do
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I mean by that? It sounded like Mankind judging
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God's Word and there are a lot of people who see it that way King James only advocates consider the the idea of textual criticism to be
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Destructive and there is a destructive form of textual criticism obviously when an unbeliever or Even more so a person with a chip on their shoulder and by the way
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There's no such thing as an as a neutral unbeliever to begin with so any Unbeliever approaching the biblical text is gonna have a chip on their shoulder, but some in a much wider sense than others anyway when an unbeliever comes to the text of Scripture and they can do so in a destructive fashion in a in a way of trying to Attack the consistency of Scripture attack the text of Scripture.
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There's no question about that, but but believers must engage in Textual criticism as well if you don't then you're just simply taking as a default text something that somebody else did for example
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Erasmus had a huge impact upon the readings of the King James Version of the Bible the New King James Version of the
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Bible Through the printed text that he put together at the beginning of the 16th century now
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Was Erasmus inspired Now Erasmus was a pretty pretty neat guy. I've written a number of papers on Erasmus I've taken a number of classes relevant to his work and things like that and Erasmus was a was a was a very insightful fellow but he was also a
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Roman Catholic priest and he wrote in defense of such things as transubstantiation, so most of us would have problem with this theology, and if you're going to Determine someone's worth in their work on the
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New Testament and the biblical text based solely upon things like that then you'd want to definitely check out what
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Erasmus did and In fact, I would think we'd all want to know something about the people that we are trusting to do
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Textual critical work and that would require that we ourselves know some something about the subject so that we would at least know what questions to ask
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Know what methodologies we might want to to inquire about When we talk about these things and so I understand when when people get a little bit
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You know people get a little bit on the defensive side I know that the first time
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I saw those little squigglies the bottom of the page the Greek New Testament I was a little concerned. What do you mean manuscripts vary from one another and Of course someone could very rightly say that there are no two manuscripts of the
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Greek New Testament Handwritten manuscripts of the Greek New Testament as a whole that agree with one another 100 %
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Then again, that's sort of a simplistic statement Anybody who makes that statement then just leaves it hanging is probably just doing it for some sort of a of an effect
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That doesn't really accomplish anything. What do I mean by that? well, if if we took just the audience listening right now and I asked you to get out a pen and paper and and I provided a single text that Everybody has the exact same text which of course today we can do
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Electronically we can make sure that everyone receives the exact same text let's say of a couple chapters of the
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New Testament or even make it something that we're not familiar with a couple chapters of of some popular book today and I were to ask everyone in the audience to hand write
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The text of ten chapters it would take you quite some time but most of us today would have
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Pens and pencils that are of high quality. We would have paper of a consistent quality in nature we'd be sitting under fluorescent lamps and and some of us have eyeglasses or LASIK or or various other things that help with us with our eyesight and and We're in a climate controlled environment and despite all of that Despite all of that You would not find in this audience any two handwritten
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Versions of that same identical text that would be identical to one another we Human beings when we copy things we make mistakes not just when we type them out in and even if we type them out the same thing would happen you would have times where Individuals would because of They might get it.
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They might get tired their eyes might become tired. They might skip a line. They might misspell a word. They might just Inadvertently as they go back to look at the original they might
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Go to the line below or they might see similar endings on an ING or a
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TION And they've just typed TIONs their eyes go back They find another word that has TION they start from there and therefore they delete a portion of it
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If it's something that they're familiar with they might add something because they think they know what it's gonna say There's all sorts of what are called scribal errors
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That would demonstrate themselves even today and so now transport yourself back before glasses and LASIK and contact lenses and Transport yourself back especially to a period of time where not only do you not have climate controlled
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Situations you don't have fluorescent lights. You don't have medical procedures allow for excellent eyesight But go back to the primary primary primary period of time where text covariance arrived
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Arose in a in the text and that's when the Christian Church is under persecution So you're probably doing this by a single candle or you're doing it out in the woods to hide from the
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Roman soldiers And you're not even trained in these particular things and you can't ask the person
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Who wrote the manuscript you're copying what they meant somewhere because they're dead There's all sorts of the reality of the text of New Testament is not that it contains textual variation
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The amazing thing about the text New Testament is contained so little in comparison to how much it could have in fact contained given its historical backgrounds and so there are reasons why we absolutely positively must engage in textual criticism and Why we must give consideration to These particular issues now, by the way for those of you who are listening live right now
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Or if you're not listening like right now, I guess it's relevant to you as well. I have placed some graphics on the blog for February 1st 2007 so if you're listening this dividing line three years later
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Lord willing the blog for February 1st 2007 will still be available to you if you go there
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You will see one two, three, four five six graphics that I threw up there Just briefly before the program started
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In fact that I will be making reference to as we discuss some of the background issues Obviously, I'm giving you the background issues so that on Tuesday We can begin looking specifically at the
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United Bible Society's fourth edition Greek New Testament and the Nestle Alland 27th edition
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Greek New Testament Novum Testamentum, they like to use the Latin given that they're coming from Germany and we're gonna be looking at the the textual data that those provide to us today a tremendous amount that previous
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Generations did not have access to and how to read the textual Variant material that is found in those particular texts now what
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I will attempt to do On the blog is I will provide you with links going to hopefully sufficiently
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Well done scans of particular pages in those books
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And in fact, I'm just sitting here thinking I will have to scan the actual Textual data sections so that if you don't have those books you can still follow along you can you can pull them up you can download the images to your system pull them up in a viewer and hopefully be able to read them with With sufficient clarity to follow along I don't want people feeling that especially next week as we're going through specific textual variants that you're not
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Welcome to be a part of it just simply because you don't do not own those books, of course It would be nice if you would pick them up too bad.
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We don't have them in our own bookstore you could get them from us, but I Don't want you to feel left out if you do not have these critical editions of the
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Greek New Testament Available within your your particular context, so I will do what I can to provide the graphics that you will be able to download by next
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Tuesday and Be able to follow along there now
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Here I am trying to talk with Rich and he's at the wrong the wrong name There's AOM studio and channel and I'm in the studio
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So then there's AOM working and and I sort of doubt that we can those are
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United Bible Society things and I really sort of doubt that I think that those are Obviously the best place to get them is
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Amazon basically and they have a very small discount on it. So Probably wouldn't be worthwhile of our attempting to track those down So what we're gonna try to do today is just give you some of the background so that when we look at these texts
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You'll have some idea not obviously in the period of time that we have a real deep idea, but some idea of What we're talking about and why some of these variants take place why some certain manuscripts are given more weight than others
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Etc, etc. Now, let's talk a little bit about the the Types of manuscripts that we encounter and the types of writing that we encounter as we look at the
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New Testament text on the blog You will see one of my favorite texts.
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I've mentioned this on the blog before The very first graphic that is provided to you is a page from manuscript p72 now when you see a
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P it's And and I I should have put these these up beforehand, but we'll get to it
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When you see a frac tour P frac tour is a type of very formal old -style
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German printing a frac tour form of the the capital letter
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P with a Superscript number next to it. This is the mechanism by which these
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New Testaments indicate a papyri manuscript and papyri 72 is the earliest
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Example we have of first a second Peter in Jude and The one that is shown on the blog is the page that I saw up in 1993 in Denver And I gave some story of some of the story about this
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I believe back in November on the blog if you want to go back and take a look at that in November of 2006 and the graphic right below it is
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A blow -up of one portion of that same graphic in a little higher resolution
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So that you can see something. I'll mention here a little while now you're you're
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You need to sort of grasp hold of a couple of specific terms here most of the time the the way to demythologize scholarship
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Is to find out it's the secrets of its language Normally, it's not so much the scholars are just all that much smarter than the rest of us
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It's just that they've got the language down and and they can use terms. We don't P72 is a papyrus manuscript that refers to the
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Material upon which the writing is found, but it's also an unseal manuscript or a majuscule
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Because it is written in unseal script unseal script in essence Generally is all capitals with no punctuation and no space between the words and If you look at what is found there in the first two graphics, you will see how this works.
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You will also see That you can easily see the the the type of material that it's written on That's because papyrus is made from taking the leaves of the papyrus plant
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That grows along the Nile in Egypt and laying them at right angles to one another And in general that can by the drying process and the brushing process can produce a a fairly smooth surface on one side
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Christians probably because they were poor and they were persecuted May have been the ones who even invented the codex form of the book
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Where you write on both sides and bind them together, you notice the p72 is a codex form
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You can see where the binding was there in the middle and that meant they even wrote on the side That wasn't overly smooth.
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Now think about for a second. You're writing with a quill. Okay on Bumpy paper to put it in modern terms that has something to do with why the writing that you see
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Is not all that It ain't pretty. Okay. I mean compare that with some of the
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Saanaa manuscript finds that I posted I posted a a graphic a little while back and very regular very very nice because it's written on a much nicer form of That was written on leather and in fact if you look to the third graphic on the blog you will see another example of an unsealed text but this is specifically from codex
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Alexandrinus and This is from a later period of time. It's written on vellum That is leather leather of different type types didn't have to necessarily be from a cow it could be from a donkey or a sheep, but it's a it's an animal skin and It has been treated and you can you can create a very very very smooth
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Surface when it comes to vellum and to leather along those way those lines so Both however, both the codex alexandrinus and the fourth graphic might as well mention it to you codex sinaiticus the
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Rather black and white looking image that is right beneath you will see codex alexandrinus and codex sinaiticus are much much nicer texts
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Clearly the the person writing these texts is a professional is this has been done in a scriptorium
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There's some money behind this part of the theory is That's a constantine.
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There's one reference to the fact that constantine After he uh after the peace of the church one of the things that he uh mentions in a letter
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And I mentioned this in the da vinci code stuff. I believe it was eusebius I could be wrong about that, but in a letter constantine mentions the fact that the the roman state had had
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Really wreaked havoc upon the christian scriptures seeking to destroy them and so He gave money imperial money for the copying of the scriptures
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Close this one go to this one now. Yeah, we'll do that I just got stuff popping up all over the place because rich is playing find me in the chat channel.
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I'll move over here now Uh, yes, we will do that. Uh so anyway He gave money to uh to produce these texts and so obviously it was done by people who knew what they were doing
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And they look much different than p72 which is done during the period of persecution of christians
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It's probably and this is what excited me so much about seeing p72. Is it this is probably the work of a christian businessman
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A person maybe he did trading maybe maybe he's in the military Who knows but he's probably traveling
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And he comes across a group of christians And of course in those days sadly, uh, those christians always wanted to get together with other christians and uh, so he's gotten together with these other christians in this maybe far away place and He discovers that they have
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Some letters from peter that his church has never heard of And so he asked well, can
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I make a copy of this to take to my christian fellowship? And the christians say of course
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And so it's not like you have a lot of time to get the best materials Uh, so you get the papyri and he's not a he's not a professional
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But he loves god's word and so here you have an image in front of you if you're looking at the blog of someone
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Someone who loved god's word so long ago that they actually risked their lives Because this is illegal to do at this point in time in the roman empire
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If he had been caught with this he could have been uh, uh, He could have been imprisoned.
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He could have been beaten. He could have been killed and yet he loved uh this
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This inspired word of god so much that he took that risk and he he wrote this manuscript that we have today now, obviously
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Papyri manuscripts don't last as well as vellum or leather manuscripts do
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And papyri manuscripts, especially if they are if they are put in a context where there's going to be moisture
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You're going to have rot you're going to have decay and and even if they're in a dry place You can see the edges of p72 are very irregular.
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Why are they irregular because stuff falls off uh these these you know
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This type of material is going to decay. I've I mentioned to someone recently i'd Dug up a a box of books and I had found some notes that I had taken in college which are like 20 years old now and they're turning yellow and that the paper is not as is not as supple as it once was and it's uh,
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The edges are are not as are you can see where the edges Edges are and this is modern material that we're talking about here.
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And so obviously there were more papyri manuscripts in the back and we in in the ancient days and We may even find more in the future.
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I mean, obviously many of these papyri Came to light within the past hundred years and and we may find more um, and we're excited about that unlike our
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Our muslim friends who are not excited about finding earlier and earlier manuscripts of the quran. We are excited about finding uh earlier and early manuscripts of the new testament now
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You'll notice something else you might think to yourself my goodness an unseal text, how did anyone read that?
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uh, no spaces between words no punctuation But if you're looking at the second uh, uh
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Particular graphic there or or even the third for that matter You might notice something you might notice that there are some lines
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For example in the second graphic in the second line at the beginning for those who are greek able
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You have the letter theta that looks like a circle with a line through the middle then it looks like the letter y that's actually not that's that's an epsilon, but It looks like a a circle line across it and a y with a line on top of it
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That's called a nomena sacra nomena. Sacra Uh sacred names words that were repeatedly used in the text would be abbreviated and in the third graphic in the third line
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Halfway down. You also see a little line over the text looks like it's over either the letter c or o
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It's actually a capital c which is the final form sigma in that particular form And then the letter in front of it is very difficult to make out and we will find out that that is
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That is the text Of first semithree sixteen and that's codex alexandrinus and and whether that means theos god or has
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Uh is is up in the air and we'll we'll talk a little bit about that later on but these nomena
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Sacra existed and were utilized in the unsealed text. Now if you scroll down a little bit more the last two
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Graphics are of a minuscule text. Maguscule is unseal Minuscule text starts developing eighth and ninth century becomes predominant before the year 1000 and the unsealed text just simply ceases to exist and as you look at the blow up the the final graphic is actually just a blow up of the left hand page of the of the picture that's above that That if you are familiar with a greek new testament looks much more like what you're accustomed to It'd be a lot easier for most people to read that Than the unsealed text though still there are still some odd forms of letters there, but you can see start seeing
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Spaces between the words you have both capital forms and what we would call small letter forms and you're starting to see the introduction of punctuation marks
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Accenting marks the things that you're accustomed to seeing in a greek new testament today This becomes the minuscule form and the vast majority of all greek manuscripts that exist today do so in uh, the minuscule form over against the unseal form because obviously, uh, the vast majority of manuscripts come from after 1000 a .d
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up until uh, you know 1600 is pretty much where you have an end of any more handwriting of manuscripts the uh
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The printing press having been invented in the middle of the 15th century and so you have that invention changing how the text is is
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Transmitted at that particular time so there you have the differences in the kinds of writing and uh in the differences between a vellum text a papyrus text and what you have coming after after that now
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With uh with those things in mind then uh, we need to address the the controversial stuff, uh, the really controversial stuff and and that is uh, why are there differences between uh modern translations and between scholars today as to what greek text we should be utilizing
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The vast majority of your bible colleges the vast majority of your seminaries Are going to be using the two texts that we will be looking at and that is the ubs4 or the nasi allan 27th edition of the new testament and those greek texts
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Are are eclectic in their form. What does that mean? Well those texts are put together by a committee
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And uh, if you want to know how the committee voted on things and did things you can you can look at metzger's work on that subject
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But uh, they proceed along these lines that you should determine the
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Reading of the text when you have variations between manuscripts You should determine the reading of the text based upon A weighing of the text rather than merely a counting of the texts
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Now, what does that mean? I mean i'm not obviously talking about carrying a scale around And saying whatever text weighs the most gets gets to be the one you take.
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No Obviously i'm talking about Giving more weight or more value or more importance to certain texts than you do to other texts
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Maybe the best way to illustrate this is to go from the other direction and to make reference to those individuals who
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Support what's called the majority text type What is the majority text type?
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The majority text in its purest form would be where you take any particular variant
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And you find out how many manuscripts first and foremost greek manuscripts
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Contain that particular passage now, please remember when you hear people saying that there are 5400 5500
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Manuscripts of the new testament in greek a lot of people assume that what that means is
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That they there are 5400 Exact copies of the new testament from matthew to revelation in greek.
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That is not The case that is not the case at all What then is that they're referring to that's 5400 manuscripts full or partial
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And the farther back you go The more partial they are for example Even the manuscript revelation that erasmus used was only of the book of revelation and it was partial because it was missing the last leaf
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And so some papyri manuscripts that you have Uh only contain just one page
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For example p52 is a small scrap of of papyrus that contains a couple words
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Phrases from john 18 on one side and on the back side And that's one manuscript.
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It's only got one portion of one book, but that's one of the 5400 And so keeping that in mind then
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And recognizing that in the vast majority of instances if you have a complete new testament matthew to revelation
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With nothing missing in between that's probably come from much later period of time First of all, those would have been much more expensive to produce in the earlier periods.
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They wouldn't have had You know nearly as much ability to do so Uh, and it took time
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For books that were written in one area to become distributed to other areas and become accepted and things like that And so finding an entire new testament, that's what makes a codex sinaiticus for example
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Exceptionally important is here. You have a early fourth century manuscript probably around the time of the council of messiah in ad325
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Uh that contains the whole shoot and match and that's why it's so incredibly valuable
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As a manuscript resource, so going back to how you determine your text
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The majority text would say let's say you're looking at a text for variant in the book of matthew, okay
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That's that's going to be your gospels are going to have a large number of manuscripts representing them and so let's say that there are
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Just for the ease of comparison 2 ,000 manuscripts 2 ,000 greek manuscripts that contain
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The text you want to examine in the book of matthew because remember If as we get into the text and as you look at the listings in the ubs fourth and nestle and 27th
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You will see that when they list the major manuscripts They will show you that sometimes there are portions that are missing or they'll start in the middle of a book or something.
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So You could have manuscripts that only have if you're looking at a variant in matthew 11, they might start in matthew 15 see and so Uh, let's say just for the sake of comparison, we have 2 ,000 manuscripts that contain the text
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We're examining in the book of matthew. The majority text type argument is quite simple uh, if 1 ,750 and uh 50 of them read one way and 250 of them read another way
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Then you go with the 1 ,750 if you have 1 ,100 to 900 you go with the 1 ,100. I guess if you've got 1 ,001 versus 999
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You go with the 1 ,001. It's a majority vote situation Is what we're we're talking about here?
40:35
And that's how the majority text would be found now The problem is that the majority text sometimes really does split especially in the book of revelation
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It's next to impossible to even come up with a majority text in the first place. So um There are times what you know, what do you do when you've got a variant?
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That's not just one of two ways of reading some variants have four or five ways of reading Uh, then you're you're no longer giving the majority reading but just the largest minority reading in that particular context
41:04
But that's what the majority text is. There is a majority text out there Hodges and farstad Edited it back in I think the 80s or late 70s and uh, but there are no translations of it
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Many people think the new king james version because of its connection with those names hodges and farstad Was actually translation the majority text but it's not
41:22
The new king james version is a translation of what is known as the textus receptus just as the king james
41:28
Is as well as far as the new testament is concerned And uh, it is not a translation majority text now
41:35
Next phrase we need to understand is called the byzantine text type the byzantine text type there are those today
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Dr. Maurice robinson, for example Who promote the supremacy of the byzantine text type byzantium as you probably know modern day istanbul
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Constantinople all names that have been used for that same ancient city which stood out stood for so long against the the muslim invasion from uh from the east, um the the byzantine text type is
42:09
Is The majority text type. I mean, let's just put it very bluntly if you were to look
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I I have a a graphic that's uh that I use in my king james only presentation
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That gives you biblical manuscripts by century and if you were to look you would see that the the numbers explode by by a tremendous amount after one thousand uh, and uh, these are all byzantine manuscripts and so From the majority perspective the byzantine text type is is the majority text type as well
42:43
And there is a reason why this is the case now. It's not the majority text type in the early church
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It's not the majority text type for the first thousand years. It's not the majority text type uh in uh in the seventh century or the fourth century and people argue for various reasons as to why that might be but my
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My concern is that people recognize the impact history has upon the transmission of the text in the new testament
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And what I mean by that Is let's let's remember something some things that happen in church history
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Uh, if you're familiar with early church writers, you know that the most primitive ones you're always looking at at greek
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But then you realize that uh in the third and fourth centuries you start seeing a transition in western writers
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To where they are no longer writing in greek they're writing in latin latin becomes the language of The western church greek remains the language of the eastern church
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And so Production of greek manuscripts in the latin west, especially after the fall of rome is going to fall off rather precipitously
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Mainly because they don't need them That's not the language that they're using and the ones they have are going to last longer because they're not being
44:05
Thumbed through and utilized as much especially after the fall of rome. You have a tremendous Decline in scholarly study and things like that.
44:12
You have a whole decline in civilization for that matter during that period of time and so if you look at uh
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At a graphic you will see that after the fall of rome There is a a decline a number of manuscripts found anywhere in any form at that particular point in time
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What else happens though that is extremely important to remember that helps us to to I think from my
44:33
And for me, you know disagree with me if you will, but for me is the fatal flaw Both in the majority and byzantine platform arguments
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Well, it's something we've talked a lot about on this program of late over the past couple of years uh, there's this little thing called the rise of islam
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And between the the the century of islamic expansion 632 to 732
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You have islam taking over all of the The area of palestine what would be called israel today palestine that that area uh, you have of course all of saudi arabia and all across north africa and then across into Portugal and spain until finally the battle of tours were
45:23
Where charles martel charles the hammer stops the islamic expansion and and then they're beaten back from there now obviously
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Having islam become the predominant religion in your particular area is not good for the production of greek manuscripts and The majority of the area taken over in the islamic expansion really the islamic explosion uh is
45:50
Area that is still producing greek manuscripts. So after islam has done its duty there between the 7th and 8th centuries
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You only have a small area left around byzantium constantinople istanbul today, uh that is
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Utilizing greek manuscripts and hence producing them To meet the need for greek manuscripts the latin west isn't doing it north africa is gone uh palestine and many of the areas where eastern orthodoxy the eastern church had existed
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Are now under islamic control and so the production of greek manuscripts is limited to one particular area
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So it is hardly surprising That the text type that had become predominant in that area
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Becomes the predominant text type of all greek manuscripts being produced that time but by ignoring that islamic explosion
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Uh, and just going well, we just need to count the majority of of manuscripts. You're you're ignoring history
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There's there's a book that's been put out put out many years ago by pickering where Uh, he argues for the majority text based upon incredibly complex calculus
47:06
Saying that you see that the the real readings are going to be the ones that produce the vast majority of manuscripts
47:12
And it's all these charts and graphs and everything else And I go wait a minute.
47:18
There's a major problem with that The new testament text has come down through human history
47:26
And you can't plot human behavior and human history on a computer. It just doesn't work
47:33
If you don't take into consideration The switch to the to latin in in the latin west if you don't take into consideration the islamic expansion
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You're not going to have a realistic perspective uh concerning how
47:48
The the new testament text came to have the form that it has today and which manuscripts are in fact the the most representative of the original text
47:57
The vast majority of scholarship today and i'm i'm not overstating this and i'm not making it an argument. I'm just stating it as a fact
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The vast majority of scholarship today uh Sees the byzantine text type as a whole as a whole
48:15
As a secondary text. What do I mean by that? uh as a text that gives demonstration that it is one step farther away from the original than Another text type called the alexandrian text type
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There are conflations Within the byzantine text type where you have uh readings from other
48:39
Text types put together in the the byzantine text type and in the majority of situations when you have a conflation that means
48:47
Someone's looking at two manuscripts. They see both they put them together. That means your Resultant text is secondary to those original texts and is not as primitive as those original texts
48:59
Now there can also be other reasons why that kind of thing appears, but but that's the general consensus
49:06
The alexandrian text is the text that is so vilified And I too mean vilified
49:13
By king james only advocates. I have been called the high priest of the alexandrian cult by king james only advocates
49:23
Because of my book on the king james only controversy The uh, you will find folks like da wait uh insisting that this text because it comes from alexandria egypt and of course
49:35
It doesn't come from alexandria. Egypt. We we we these text types are are named by a major city in the region
49:44
Uh where you find this text type being predominant, but it doesn't mean that they came Specifically from that city or anything like that but be it as it may you'll find folks like da wait saying that well the bible tells us that egypt is you know a place of slavery and And uh, so there were heretics in egypt and and of course there were heretics everywhere in church history but there are heretics in egypt and and they've influenced the text and and all the rest of this stuff and And uh, this kind of preaching and argumentation is exceptionally uh regular in king james only argumentation, but in essence the alexandrian text type is a
50:20
Is a simpler form of the text. What do I mean by that? Well If you've ever seen some of the books put out by people like gail rippling or peter ruckman or da wait or Sam gip and and all these folks
50:34
And their current generation of followers. Um, they will have A whole group of charts where they will compare
50:46
Uh the readings of the king james versus the niv or the nasb or other modern translations and they will
50:55
Be able to demonstrate rather clearly. In fact, I start off my king james presentation with a uh a chart like this um
51:04
For example in matthew 4 18 the king james has jesus modern versions has he
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Acts 19 10 the king james has the lord jesus modern versions just have the lord First corinthians 9 1 the kjv has jesus christ
51:20
Modern versions just have jesus Second corinthians 5 18 king james jesus christ modern version is just christ
51:27
Act 16 31 lord jesus christ and the king james just lord jesus in the modern version second john 3 lord
51:32
Jesus christ the king james just jesus christ in the modern versions in each one of those particular texts
51:40
The king james has a fuller name for jesus Normally just a little bit, you know the lord for the lord jesus and things like that, but they'll say see
51:50
That's there. You've got this this tremendous example of how the modern translations are always seeking to undercut the uh
52:01
The deity of christ or the honor of christ or the glory of christ. This is just a small A small sampling of what
52:08
I could have brought up in uh in examining this particular aspect of these things and so when
52:14
I say that the alexandrian text is a is a Uh a simpler text it is a shorter text.
52:21
It is not as long it does not have Expanded names in this in this way that you have in the in the king james
52:28
Now, of course the very idea that a scribe would want to shorten names doesn't make any sense not in the historical context but uh
52:39
It is quite understandable why a scribe would want to lengthen names the expansion of piety
52:45
Is well known I should have pulled this up, but bruce metzger gives an example in his book in the text of new testament of um a the title of the book of revelation in a medieval text that um describes john and The description of john has come to be an entire paragraph long
53:07
Of all of his titles and things like that. This was it's very easy to understand why a scribe would expand
53:13
It's much less easy to explain why a scribe would diminish any of the titles of christ or anything along those particular lines
53:23
So the the point is that the alexandrian text is also what we find Primarily in the papyri manuscripts
53:32
In the earliest manuscripts of the new testament and in the great unseal text Such as codex sinaiticus codex alexandrinus though alexandrus actually has a mixed text uh in portions of alexandrus, it's it does not have a purely alexandrian text but shows a
53:49
Later text form in those and so it's these are somewhat simplistic descriptions
53:54
But they are generally accurate descriptions of the fact that the alexandrian text predominates
54:00
In the earliest manuscripts that we have now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea as we wrap up this program
54:06
It's not just that the older it is the better it is. That's a sort of general maxim. I mean you know, uh the closer to the original it is the less opportunity of of scribal error exists within it, but You could also have a really really really really really bad ancient manuscript
54:27
I mean if someone was just just not good at copying and i've run into folks who are not good at copying
54:32
It's someone who's just not good at copying but is In that early period that doesn't mean that their manuscripts are necessarily all that useful uh to uh to later believers but assuming
54:45
That the scribe is doing his best to reproduce the text accurately Then the fewer number of generations between the original
54:56
And the copy that we have is going to be good It's going to be better than having a manuscript.
55:03
That's a thousand years removed from the original and has gone through 20 generations if you've got one that's 200 years removed from the original and has gone through three generations in general
55:14
That's going to be better than one that's a thousand years removed and 20 generations removed But please recognize there are some texts some even minuscule texts like 1739 1881
55:27
That seem to have been copied from very ancient texts themselves. In other words, even though their dating is later
55:34
It seems like the the exemplar that was being utilized was very ancient and hence those particular minuscule manuscripts become
55:44
They they have more weight given to them because they buck the trend shall we say of the
55:51
Standard text of their day and seem to go back to an even older form of the text in older manuscripts themselves.
55:58
So uh, it is a matter of weighing these manuscripts and examining their character and examining their provenance where they come from Uh the the characteristics you can if you have a long enough manuscript and many manuscripts are long enough to do this
56:16
If you have a long enough manuscript, you can actually start to recognize certain scribal traits
56:23
And you can start to recognize what you know certain problems that a particular Scribe might have had a particular kind of mistake that he tends to make and if you can recognize that then when he makes that mistake
56:35
You can in essence filter that out In a sense also remember this as we will see when we look at the greek new testament
56:43
Is that many of these especially? texts like sinaiticus alexandrinus that are written on In a high quality they're written on leather
56:55
They've been used for a long long long time I mean when count von tischendorf first saw sinaiticus in the middle of the 19th century
57:08
He was looking at a text that at that particular point in time was about 1500 years old
57:15
And it was still being used And I guess what happens when a text has been in use that long uh, you get a lot of uh scribal marks in that particular uh in that particular work and So when we look at the textual data in the greek new testament you will see
57:39
That there you'll have for example oliph the sign the hebrew letter oliph which is the sign for Codex sinaiticus, but then you'll see it like an asterisk or you'll see
57:48
A one or a two or a three superscript right next to it. You know what those are those are indications of a later hand
57:58
And what it read so if if a later if if the original reads one way and a later hand comes and And indicates a change in the margin or something like that That's how the the textual critical information is provided to you in the greek new testament
58:13
So you can know which one was which and so We will be looking at that As we look at examples of textual variation on tuesday here on the dividing line
58:24
I know it's a lot of information i've tried to give you as As broad a background as I can but there's there's so much more obviously than this
58:31
I go into a lot of detail in the king james only controversy because you do have to give that kind of background Which of course is available on our website.
58:39
There are also lots of other Books on the subject that are out there. We'll continue with this subject on the dividing line on tuesday.
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See you then. God bless For we need new
59:36
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59:44
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59:51
That's a o m i n dot o r g Where you'll find a complete listing of james white's books tapes debates and tracks join us again next tuesday morning at 11 a .m