Textual Criticism?

I am not here to justify your trust in the F35 family that is what you have to do. I have asked both you and Canon to provide reviews from other scholars that support Pickering's view. The only reason that I can see that you have not done so is because you can not find any that do. Your blind loyalty to the F35 does seem not to be warranted.

 

37 I am not questioning the word of God. As I have said before, the bible is it's own best commentary. I am questioning your errant view regarding Pickering's conclusions on F35. That is a big difference. This is just you trying to deflect from the real problem. Provide independent reviews that support Pickering's view. You and Canon have continued to circle round the problem but will not deal with it.

 

Why on earth would we provide you with independent views? That has never been anyone's purpose but yours. We wanted you to use your mind and To check out Pickering for yourself. To learn what Pickering found. We could care less if you agree with him or not. But if someone found a gem wouldn't you want to look? It may not be the best gem. It is certainly not the only gem. But it is a treasure none the less. But you will miss the treasure because you are offended at his claim. You could not get over that. Don't miss the treasure that 37818 reveled. Family 35 doesn't have to be perfect to be a treasure. And it does not have to be the only treasure. Perhaps just one among many.

 

You must have missed the post where I said what Pickering did was useful in furthering the search for the best text of the bible. His work is just not the autographs which is what has been claimed.

If his work was the be all and end all that you and 37 seem to think it is then you should have no problem providing reviews by other scholars the support that claim.

I have checked Pickering's work out and unlike you I am not head over heels for it. He has chosen to make claims that other scholars have shown to in error but you have just dismissed those other scholars as you do not like what they say.

I do not have a axe to grind or a scholar to prop up. I let the evidence be my guide. You said I should use my mind, I would suggest you do the same.

 

I listened to three YouTube videos with Dr Maurice Robinson







From the second video
7:14 just within the byzantine hodges and

7:16 farstad's majority text for example

7:19 happens to follow what von soden called

7:22 his m6 group the robinson pierpont text

7:26 happens to follow the m5 group and

7:29 wilbur pickering in his edition follows

7:31 the m7 group and each of those has

7:34 somewhere around 30

7:36 of support and then in the remaining 10

7:39 percent von soden had found other groups

7:42 very small groups the m1 m2 m3 and m4

7:46 group you've got all of these divisions

7:48 and for what i see there may be more

8:01 and there is no one byzantine type so


8:16 and farstead favorite we ignored the m7

8:19 group contrary to pickering primarily

8:22 because the m7 group is the kr group

8:25 family 35 of which no manuscript exists

8:28 earlier than about the mid 11th century

 

37 I know you like the F35 but you continue to ignore everything else. Watch the videos I posted in # 247.

 

37818 and Silverhair seem to be talking PAST each other instead of TO each other. Makes for an interesting day I guess.

 

If you spend any time on the net you will find scholars that support the various lines of transmission. What I have not found is any that will say that we have the actual autograph text. Reason being that we do not have complete agreement on the Greek wording between or even in any line of transmission.

Some refer to Matthew 5:18 in support of an inerrant text but a clear reading of the verse shows that Jesus said that the law would not be set aside.

 

I hope many people will read this. IMO it makes a lot of sense.
Two other points to consider:
1. In the first two centuries, when Christians were still being persecuted, copying of MSS would have been mostly by untrained people. They may have been fine Christians but lousy copyists. Therefore unintentional errors are more likely to have occurred then. After the time of Constantine, the churches could have employed trained copyists, who may have been less good Christians, but were much better at copying. Hence, the later MSS show much less deviation from one another after that date.
2. There were two eras of particularly fierce general persecution under the Roman Empire. One was under the Emperor Decius around 250 AD. This did not last long, because Decius died the following year, but was very vicious. Roman citizens were required to worship the old gods under pain of death. The second was under Diocletian, commencing in 303 AD. All copies of the Bible were commanded to be given up and were burnt in public. Obviously, this would have caused a dearth of good quality MSS at these times.

 

Jesus was speaking to Jews was He not?
Joh 7:19 "Did not Moses give you the Law, and yet none of you carries out the Law? He was not speaking of the letters but the law that was to be observed.

But I take it that you listened to the three videos that I posted # 247. So which line of the Byzantine text do you think is perfect where not one "jot or tittle" is missing or changed. Or do you think we should just mix and match from all those texts and then what about the other lines of transmission. And who is qualified to determine which "jot or tittle" is to be included and which to be excluded?

 

As I have asked many times where is this text of the autographs? Which line of transmission M5, M6, M7 or perhaps some non byzantine line. You have held onto the idea that Pickering has recovered the autographs but I have shown you in post # 245 that Dr Maurice Robinson points to a number of lines even in the byzantine text type.

For one to say we have recovered the text of the autographs is the height of hubris. Are we close, yes I think we are but we still have questions as to which is the correct text. As Dr Robinson said, within a text family they will say they have 99% but overall he places it at 94% when you consider the manuscripts available from the various lines of transmission.

From video # 2


Is the Byzanine text the Closest?

0:00 do you believe that the byzantine text
0:02 form that you and william has produced
0:04 is like the closest that we have to the
0:06 original text yes that simple answer
0:09 there easy answer the thing is though
0:11 you have to keep an account that all
0:14 texts whether the critical texts or
0:16 others that are published all of them
0:18 are going to
0:19 agree at approximately from my own
0:22 estimate comparing the nestle text with
0:24 the byzantine at approximately 94
0:28 of exact identity we're only talking
0:31 about a six percent level of difference
0:34 between the critical text and the
0:36 byzantine text so in that regard i do
0:39 think that the byzantine text is the
0:41 closest within that six percent for the
0:43 other 94 were already in agreement i've
0:46 heard that number you know people often

How do you get your percentage of agreement?

0:48 say you know the manuscripts are 99
0:50 and you're saying 96 and and some people
0:53 have said 98. what i did i compared
0:55 directly the nestle 27th edition with
0:58 the robinson pierpont 2005 byzantine
1:01 tech which edition also has all of the
1:04 nestle 27 variants in its footnote and
1:06 so by counting those and calculating
1:09 according to the number of total words
1:10 in the new testament that's where the 94
1:12 percent identity comes from okay gotcha
1:15 now those who say 99
1:17 that is usually based on theory for

Those who say 99

1:19 example if someone holds to the eclectic
1:22 theory that underlies the nestle 27 text
1:25 they may say that the text is 99 certain
1:28 for them
1:30 for my own practical purposes i would
1:32 say that the byzantine text is 99
1:35 certain except for those very small
1:37 number of variant units where the
1:39 byzantine text is itself sharply divided
1:42 it depends on theory who holds a theory
1:44 will say well my theory will lead me to
1:47 99 certainty and this would even be for
1:49 the people that hold the tr because you
1:52 say which tr and they're going to say
1:54 well it doesn't matter because they're
1:55 all 99 certain things right

 

So all your saying is that Pickering made a choice of various readings. In other words he did not know which was the text of the autographs. Which is why scholars say we can know a % of but not the exact autographs but there is a small % that we do not know as we do not have the manuscripts that prove the case.

I agree with the following quotes found here
The Difference Between Original Autographs and Original Texts

Eldon Jay Epp notes, “The point is that we have so many manuscripts of the NT . . . that surely the original reading in every case is somewhere present in our vast store of material.”

Gordon Fee concurs: “The immense amount of material available to NT textual critics . . . is their good fortune because with such an abundance of material one can be reasonably certain that the original text is to be found somewhere in it.”

But as always as the say, the devil is in the details. Where are those texts and how will we know when we have found them?

We can trust our bibles as God has preserved all that we need to know, whether that is how to live or how to be saved.