Featured The objective truth of God's word.

I hate to say but that is not always the case. The current mainstream theory ignores the vast majority of resources to focus on a tiny number of manuscripts that are full of errors and so come to the wrong conclusions. In other words mainstream scholarship is mistaken. There is some scholars that use all of the evidence and are much more accurate because of it.

Various being mostly of one school, and so are not really independent of each other. Read from scholarship that disagrees with the main camp for true alternative views. There is the mainstream critical text folks and a smaller but growing number of Majority Text or Byzantine Text scholarship.

Ignore what you hear from KJVOnlyist.

 

As I said we do not have the original texts, what we have, as you rightly said, are parts and quotes that biblical scholars have used to reconstruct the bible we have. I am sure you are aware that a translation from one language to another can not be word for word so judgements have to be made according to context.

 

That is quite the leap when you say "The current mainstream theory ignores the vast majority of resources to focus on a tiny number of manuscripts that are full of errors and so come to the wrong conclusions." Based upon who's judgement?

Yes most of the manuscripts we have came through one stream Antioch as compared to Alexandria. Since I am not a biblical scholar I have to trust that the bibles that I have are accurate to the best of they ability. And that is why I uses various bibles from different lines of transmission.

 

As I said we do not have the original texts, we have copies and quotes of the original texts. You pointed out what the main problem is and also the corrective that God has put in place, the use of different methodology in how they deal with the information available.

You like how Dr. Pickering deals with the text, but we are not discussing scholars but the text "and fasting". If you feel that the words should be in the bible, ok, but as I said the main point is prayer. Logically Christ did not say, I'll come back in a few days as I have to fast first before I can raise your son. So those words we most likely add by a scribe.

 

#& as you said different methodology is used by different scholars and this gives us different results in the text we have before us. When you add in the fact the the ancient words can be translated via various modern words we end up with the various bibles we have.

I agree with what you posted but we do not have the original texts as written so we have various readings produced. The words under consideration prove my point. We have to depend upon bible scholars and they do not all agree.

 

You do realize that they did not have a copy paste function back then so when they said quote it was nor necessarily what we would call a quote. Question, do you think the bible is inerrant or accurate?

Textual variants in the New Testament manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to the text that is being reproduced. Textual criticism of the New Testament has included study of its textual variants.

Most of the variations are not significant and some common alterations include the deletion, rearrangement, repetition, or replacement of one or more words when the copyist's eye returns to a similar word in the wrong location of the original text. If their eye skips to an earlier word, they may create a repetition (error of dittography). If their eye skips to a later word, they may create an omission. They may resort to performing a rearranging of words to retain the overall meaning without compromising the context. In other instances, the copyist may add text from memory from a similar or parallel text in another location. Otherwise, they may also replace some text of the original with an alternative reading. Spellings occasionally change. Synonyms may be substituted. A pronoun may be changed into a proper noun (such as "he said" becoming "Jesus said"). Most of these variants are not of any importance, since the meanings do not really change.

Origen, writing in the 3rd century, was one of the first who made remarks about differences between manuscripts of texts that were eventually collected as the New Testament. He declared his preferences among variant readings. For example, in Matthew 27:16–17,[1] he favored "Barabbas" against "Jesus Barabbas"[2] In John 1:28,[3] he preferred "Bethabara" over "Bethany" as the location where John was baptizing.[4] "Gergeza" was preferred over "Geraza" or "Gadara".[5] At Hebrews 2:9,[6] Origen noticed two different readings: "apart from God" and "by the grace of God".

John Mill's 1707 Greek New Testament was estimated to contain some 30,000 variants in its accompanying textual apparatus[7] which was based on "nearly 100 [Greek] manuscripts."[8] Eberhard Nestle estimated this number in 1897 as 150,000–200,000 variants.[9] In 2005, Bart D. Ehrman reported estimates from 200,000 to 400,000 variants based on 5,700 Greek and 10,000 Latin manuscripts, various other ancient translations, and quotations by the Church Fathers.[10] In 2014 Eldon J. Epp raised the estimate as high as 750,000.[11] Peter J. Gurry puts the number of non-spelling variants among New Testament manuscripts around 500,000, though he acknowledges his estimate is higher than all previous ones.[12]
Textual variants in the New Testament - Wikipedia

Note: I am not saying we should not trust the bible, I do. What I am saying is that a copyist could and did make changes and that is why the scholars study various texts so as to come to the best modern text we have.

 

I'm still uncertain what you think "God's objective word" is.
Please provide a definition that allows one to make objective textual decisions.

Rob

 

I agree with what you are saying. I was taught that the bible is it's own best commentary. We should not use subjective feelings but do you really think that the scholars that translated the bible used their feelings to do so? Yes I know that we all have a bias and that is why a translation team that has different theological backgrounds is IMO better than one for the same background.

But we are not talking about a subjective feeling here in regard to Mark 9:29. It is a matter of which manuscript is given more weight.

As I said earlier the text ending in "but prayer" logically fits the context whereas adding "and fasting " just adds a time constraint. Jesus would have had to leave and fast then come back latter which is most illogical. Logically when should we fast since we do not know when the "prayer and fasting" would be required. God, the author of the bible is logical so we should approach it expecting it to read that way.

 

Did he happen to tell you what line of transmission they were from?

 

I found an extensive article on textual criticism of Mar 9:29 here:
Omission of 'fasting' in Mark 9:29

You will find good arguments for both views and you can make your mind up from the information provided.

As I said before the bible is logical and from that point of view I do not see that the addition of "and fasting" to be a logical inclusion in the text of Mark 9:29. Does the exclusion damage what Christ was saying, no. What did Christ do when He raised Lazarus John 11:43, or raised the widows child Luke 17:14. Did He fast, would He have had time to do so? What are we told to do for the sick? James 5:14

The question you have to ask yourself is does the context Mark 9:14-29 militate to the addition or exclusion of "and fasting". I think the latter.

 

So, how about the first 17 verses of John chapter 1? John 1:1-17. Do we know what the original text is for the first 17 verses? I would say yes because of the almost overwhelming evidence. I mean all English Versions agree virtually. I know of 2 manuscripts , codex's Aleph and D, considered "western text" that have a variant at verse 5, but no textual critics consider it original. Since all Textual traditions agree on verses 1-17 wouldn't we have the original text there?

I mean Nestle/Aland, the Greek Text used by the overwhelming majority of modern Bibles, the Majority Text, and the Textus receptus, behind the KJV tradition (Reformation Bibles) all agree here. Wouldn't this be the Original Text?

 

Did you actually read what I wrote or are you just being a troll. You may disagree with various scholars as is your right. I do not always agree with what scholars say. As I said I trust the bible that we have, don't you.

As to anything in the bible being the "original text" since we do not have the autographs we will never know. The bibles we have are the best that scholars can produce with the current manuscripts. I noticed that you even said "I mean all English Versions agree virtually." so you have just show that you do not really know if we have the original text or just the best version of it. Take a look at a Greek English dictionary and see how various Greek words are translated into English or just look at various bible translations to see how the Greek is translated in different bibles.

 

As you know various bibles KJV. NRSV, NSAB, NET etc. will often have different wording for the same verse. I often compare bibles when I come across a questioned passage. But one thing that I hold to no matter what version is context. The text has to fit the context and it should also be logical. I know you like the longer ending to Mar 9:29 but IMO it does not fit with the context nor is it logical. Read my post # 36.