The Pre-95 NASB Used TR

[Rippon]

Which is one reason I moved to the NASB from the KJV and the NIV.

The NASB is very honest and does usually mark areas of disagreement.

Another area is the last chapter of Mark 16.

Knowing that Mark actually stopped writing at the end of verse 8 is clearly marked in the NASB.

Where the NIV may add a bitty footnote at the end. Seemed a bit deceitful when one has to go back and remember that the last 12 verses were not part of what Mark wrote.

Such is the weakness of reliance upon the work of others who mislead - intentionally or not.

So why are you being deceitful?

In the NIV for Mark 16, verses 1-8 are in regular font. Then there is a clear line sectioning of what is below. Below the line in smaller and non-standard print are verses 9-20. There is also a notice:[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.]

 

[agedman]

So why are you being deceitful?

In the NIV for Mark 16, verses 1-8 are in regular font. Then there is a clear line sectioning of what is below. Below the line in smaller and non-standard print are verses 9-20. There is also a notice:[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.]

Really?

My hard bound doesn't include anything but a footnote at the end.

But then why would a scholar such as yourself, rely upon less than the closest word for word translation that does take English grammar into account.

The NIV isn't as close to the originals as even the KJV is, yet so many want it or the ESV to be their final authority.

 

[Martin Marprelate]

Philip Comfort knows his business as a textual critic. My examples do demonstrate that there are harmonizations --enhancements scribal expansions going on --in the Byzantine tradition.

I see no evidence for it. It seems far more likely to me that the early copyists, who would not have been professional until the 4th Century, missed out words and phrases. Most of these were caught and the copies destroyed, but a few have got through.

Regarding Mark 15:28 --does it move you at all that it is not present in any Greek manuscript before the late 6th century?

No. Why should it. When I studied textual criticism at university, almost all the earliest secular MSS were dated 7-800 or more years after the autographs. It never worried anyone. A 6th or 10th Century MS may have been copied directly from a 2nd Century one. Or it may have been faithfully copied fifty times while the 4th Century document may have been badly copied once. Who knows? What I would look for in a reliable MS is one that has a lot of others very similar to it. That suggests that it is a faithful copy.

I see you are still into nose counting. I am into quality, while you are solely into quantity.

How do you judge quality? I judge it by the approval of its peers. When I see a 6th or 7th Century MS which is similar to many 9th and 10th Century ones, I know that the earlier ones had the confidence of the people of the time who therefore trusted it enough to copy it. Inferior MSS like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus would not have been copied nearly so much.

Well, if those verses are not present in the original text it would not matter if there were 9,000 manuscripts produced at a late date.

That is true, but it applies to the 4th Century just as much as the 6th.

You prefer a multitude of copies, mostly made after the 10th century. I generally prefer the fewer ones made much closer to the time of the autographa. You like the newer. I like the older.

I do not expect to see very old copies. I would expect a Bible to be used, passed around and, when it is worn out, copied and discarded. Really old copies are only going to be found in Egypt, because the dry atmosphere preserves the material better. A 4th Century MS produced in Britain would have rotted away hundreds of years ago. But why have these old copies like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus not been used to destruction and hundreds of copies made of them? Because they were bad products and therefore not used but discarded and have survived because of the dry atmosphere..

How late do you you want to go anyway? There are some Greek texts made in the 16th century. Do you want to try and convince me that they have greater import than those made in the 4th century, for instance?

I have covered this above. If the 16th Century MS is a faithful copy of what has gone before, then what's your problem? It is evident that the errors in the MSS occurred early- in the 2nd and 3rd Centuries. It is true that when one sees an interpolation in a very few late MSS- the Johannine Comma for example- one has to be very careful, but by and large, the Byzantine MSS have been faithfully copied.

BTW, it is said that no two Byzantine Text MSS are identical. Pickering disputes this. He claims to have a number of copies that are exactly the same. Obviously, I don't know the truth of this, but it can be easily checked. I don't imagine that Pickering would lie for that very reason.

 

[Rippon]

Really?

Yes, really. It's right in front of me.

My hard bound doesn't include anything but a footnote at the end.

Perhaps you are looking at a 1984 edition. When I say NIV it's taken for granted that it is the latest edition --2011.

But then why would a scholar such as yourself,

I am not, and have never said such a thing.

rely upon less than the closest word for word translation that does take English grammar into account.

If you really want a word-for-word "translation, get an interlinear.

The NIV isn't as close to the originals as even the KJV is,

Are you kidding? The NIV, (if you are specifically speaking of the NT)is based on the earlier documents --not the much later ones the TR is based upon.

 

[Rippon]

It seems far more likely to me that the early copyists, who would not have been professional until the 4th Century, missed out words and phrases.

No, it is clear that later scribes did their best to "correct" what they thought were weaknesses in their exemplars. They wanted to nudge things along so that's what accounts for their harmonizations,interpolations and enhancements.

Most of these were caught and the copies destroyed, but a few have got through.

That claim is laughable.

Who knows?

Well,you have been making your fair share of pronouncements. Apparently you are in-the-know.

What I would look for in a reliable MS is one that has a lot of others very similar to it. That suggests that it is a faithful copy.

Or it could suggest just the opposite --a poor copy has been dupicated hundreds of times.

Inferior MSS like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus would not have been copied nearly so much.

You call them inferior. I call them superior and very valuable --as does nearly every Bible scholar.

If the 16th Century MS is a faithful copy of what has gone before, then what's your problem?

I have no problem if a 16th century MSS was a faithful copy of faithful copies of the original. But most late copies in the Byzantine tradition --though generally very orthodox do have a number of additions that were inserted along the transmission line.

There some faithful MSS that are solid, such as Minuscule 1739 of the tenth century. Research has shown that it actually dates back to a very early exemplar.

 

[TCassidy]

Hort on "counting noses."

A theoretical presumption indeed remains that a majority of extant documents is more likely to represent a majority of ancestral documents at each stage of transmission than vice versa.

(Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1881), 2:45.)

 

[Dr. Bob]

Always fun to dig up long-dead threads just to slam 'in your face" to other posters.

Want to take some out behind the woodshed.

BTW, you call a brother a "liar" and you will get flagged. Enough times, and you will be outside looking in the window of the BB. :BangHead:

 

[Van]

Which is one reason I moved to the NASB from the KJV and the NIV.

The NASB is very honest and does usually mark areas of disagreement.

Another area is the last chapter of Mark 16.

Knowing that Mark actually stopped writing at the end of verse 8 is clearly marked in the NASB.

Where the NIV may add a bitty footnote at the end. Seemed a bit deceitful when one has to go back and remember that the last 12 verses were not part of what Mark wrote.

Such is the weakness of reliance upon the work of others who mislead - intentionally or not.

And I seldom agree with Agedman, but he is spot on!

 

[Rippon]

In the NIV for Mark 16, verses 1-8 are in regular font. Then there is a clear line sectioning of what is below. Below the line in smaller and non-standard print are verses 9-20. There is also a notice:[The earliest manuscripts and some other ancient witnesses do not have verses 9-20.]

That's the NIV. When reference is made to the NIV I will assume it is the current edition (which incidentally is the #1 selling Bible translation). When reference is made to the NLT it should automatically be assumed that it is speaking of the current one --not the 2004 or 1996 editions. When reference is made to the NASB it would automatically be assumed that one is speaking of the current edition --not the pre-95 ones. The same thing applies to any other version --the current one is in view.

But even the 1984 edition of the NIV has a clear line of demarcation after verse 8 with a note below, and then verses 9-20 below that.

There is no deception going on --that is an immature statement.

 

[Rippon]

Hort on "counting noses." (Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1881), 2:45.)

TC: Would you mind giving a fuller quote than the one you supplied? Context would be helpful. Hort knew, even in his time, that there were more Byzantine texts extant than Alexandrian or Western ones. So the way you have just Hort's lone sentence seems puzzling.

 

[TCassidy]

Go to https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Click on II THE METHODS OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM . . 19

At the upper right select "Page 39" then scroll down to page 45.

Paragraph 57 contains the quote just short of half way down the page.

I can't figure how to cut and paste it from my Kindle copy so this method will have to do.

 

[Rippon]

I can't access the site. Could you please type out the sentence before and the sentence after the quote?

 

[Deacon]

TC: Would you mind giving a fuller quote than the one you supplied? Context would be helpful. Hort knew, even in his time, that there were more Byzantine texts extant than Alexandrian or Western ones. So the way you have just Hort's lone sentence seems puzzling.

B. Genealogy and Number (p 1.43)

IRRELEVANCE OF NUMBER APART FROM GENEALOGY

57. Except where some one particular corruption was so obvious and tempting that an unusual number of scribes might fall into it independently, a few documents are not, by reason of their mere paucity, appreciably less likely to be right than a multitude opposed to them, As soon as the numbers of a minority exceed what can be explained by accidental coincidence, so that their agreement in error, If it be error, can only be explained on genealogical grounds, we have thereby passed beyond purely numerical relations, and the necessity of examining the genealogy of both minority and majority has become apparent. A theoretical presumption indeed remains that a majority of extant documents in more likely to represent a majority of ancestral documents at each stage of transmission that vice versa. But the presumption is too minute to weigh against the smallest tangible evidence of other kinds. Experience verifies what might have been anticipated from the incalculable and fortuitous complexity of the causes here at work. At each stage of transmission the number of copies made from each MS depends on extraneous conditions, and varies irregularly from zero upwards: and when further the infinite variability of chances of preservation to a future age is taken into account, every ground for expecting a priori any sort of correspondence of numerical proportion between existing documents and their less numerous ancestors in any one age falls to the ground. This is true even in the absence of mixture; and mixture, as will be shown presently (§§ 61,76) does but multiply the uncertainty. For all practical purposes the rival probabilities represented by relative number of attesting documents must be treated as incommensurable.
Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek 1.45,46

 

[John of Japan]

I am not impressed with this as an example of a "good" note, if this is indeed the entire note. It may deliver an accurate fact ("present in over 900 mss") but it does so without any context.

First, what kind of manuscripts are these 900? Are they Greek, Latin, Coptic, something else, or some combination of many? Second, is 900 a comparatively large or small amount of manuscripts? If there are nearly 6,000 Greek manuscripts alone then 900 does not sound proportionally like very many. (Of course, many of us here know that not all 6,000 MSS contain the complete Gospel of John). I just think this NKJV note assumes too much knowledge by a reader.

900 is definitely a very large number of mss. Furthermore, you say that "not all 6,000 MSS contain the complete Gospel of John." This is misleading. The large majority of the mss do not, not just "not all."

The NKJV note is quite inadequate. There are actually 1495 continuous text mss with the PA, and only 268 lacking it. That's 85% to 15%, a huge difference.

Add to that 495 lectionary mss with the PA and you have a pretty definitive figure.

 

[TCassidy]

I can't access the site. Could you please type out the sentence before and the sentence after the quote?

Anybody can access the site. Google books is free.

 

[TCassidy]

Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek 1.45,46

Thanks Deacon. Where did you find that? Every site I found that contained the work was photos of the pages.

 

[Rippon]

Anybody can access the site. Google books is free.

When I said I could not access the site --I meant just that. You have to note that I am in China. China is not Google-friendly.

 

[Rippon]

Google books is free.

Do you have something against are?

 

[Rippon]

57. Except where some one particular corruption was so obvious and tempting that an unusual number of scribes might fall into it independently, a few documents are not, by reason of their mere paucity, appreciably less likely to be right than a multitude opposed to them, As soon as the numbers of a minority exceed what can be explained by accidental coincidence, so that their agreement in error, If it be error, can only be explained on genealogical grounds, we have thereby passed beyond purely numerical relations, and the necessity of examining the genealogy of both minority and majority has become apparent. A theoretical presumption indeed remains that a majority of extant documents in more likely to represent a majority of ancestral documents at each stage of transmission that vice versa. But the presumption is too minute to weigh against the smallest tangible evidence of other kinds. Experience verifies what might have been anticipated from the incalculable and fortuitous complexity of the causes here at work. At each stage of transmission the number of copies made from each MS depends on extraneous conditions, and varies irregularly from zero upwards: and when further the infinite variability of chances of preservation to a future age is taken into account, every ground for expecting a priori any sort of correspondence of numerical proportion between existing documents and their less numerous ancestors in any one age falls to the ground. This is true even in the absence of mixture; and mixture, as will be shown presently (§§ 61,76) does but multiply the uncertainty. For all practical purposes the rival probabilities represented by relative number of attesting documents must be treated as incommensurable.
Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek 1.45,46

It looks as though TC's single line quote was not representative of Hort's thought at all. That "theoretical presumption is too minute to weigh against the smallest tangible evidence of other kinds."

"...a few documents are not, by reason of their mere paucity, appreciably less likely to be right than a multitude opposed to them."

 

[Deacon]

Thanks Deacon. Where did you find that? Every site I found that contained the work was photos of the pages.

Old technology, I got the book down from the shelf.

Rippon, Google Books is an a singular website site. Obviously he knows what is's, are. :smilewinkgrin:

Rob