Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Original

[Steven Avery]

When you look at the Peshitta and compare it with Byzantine and Alexandrian variants, in a 3-way comparison, the result is about 75% Byzantine. This is a study of 200 major variants.

[spin]

The TR is a restoration text, not evolutionary. Quite simply, it represents the mass of Greek mss (Byzantine) preservation refined with the Latin preservation. The Greek corrupting the Latin, the Latin corrupting the Greek. Fortunately we have manuscripts that are earlier and considered by most modern scholars in the field superior.

[Steven Avery]

When you look at the Peshitta and compare it with Byzantine and Alexandrian variants, in a 3-way comparison, the result is about 75% Byzantine. This is a study of 200 major omission variants.

I challenge spin to find 25 places where there are radical differences between the Syriac and both text lines. He is welcome to use Gwillam. Clearly, cross-language translation will often lead to small differences in minor elements.

The Peshitta primacy folks can be of help.

I would like to see 25 major differences in the 8,000 verses (closer to 7,000 if you omit the five books that were not in the original Peshitta.). Even 10 would be interesting.

[spin]

When you look at the Peshitta and compare it with Byzantine and Alexandrian variants, in a 3-way comparison, the result is about 75% Byzantine. This is a study of 200 major variants.

Because the Peshitta is a revision, one needs to look before it. The Old Syriac versions though extremely lacunous frequently favor Sinaiticus and Vaticanus. The scribes who revised the earlier version apparently used what might be referred to as an Antiochian text type as a comparison for revision, increasing traces of that version.

[spin]

Talking of George Kiraz's Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshitta and Harklean Versions (1996), William L. Petersen writes (JBL 118/1, 177):

What is especially fascinating is how one can see the Syriac tradition developing over time, moving ever closer to the Greek, both in terms of variant readings and diction.

[JoeWallack]

JW:
Steven, here is Black's position on 16:8:

• 1) Peter gave sermons about Jesus' supposed life.
  
  2) "Mark" was privately requested to write down Peter's sermons.
  
  3) After Peter died "Mark" wrote and attached a resurrection reunion and called the whole thing a Gospel for public distribution.

Black is just Catherry-picking Patristic traditions about "Mark". See my Award winning Thread:

The Tale Wagging The Dogma. Which "Mark" Wrote GMark? A Dear John Letter (The Marks Brothers (of the Lord)

I see Black's claim above as qualifying 16:9-20 to be "original". You do not. What's the big deal. Stop being such a Pharisee.


Joseph

Yassir Arafat Was Gay

[Steven Avery]

Even know that you finally actually read Black you omit the basics.

=======================

David Alan Black:

Mark published an edition first, without the ending.

Years went by.

The new ending may or may not, "most likely", have been written by Mark.

=======================

This is not authenticity, it is another variant on Snapp, that you properly claim is inauthentic.

You were wrong in your claim of two authors claiming that Mark originally wrote the full gospel.

[Ulan]

Hi Ulan,

If the church hierarchy unified the Greek and Latin textual traditions, over some unspecified centuries and some unspecified geography, why are the Syriac Peshitta manuscripts largely In agreement with the Greek Byzantine mss?

Our oldest manuscripts of the Peshitta are from the 6th century. The Peshitta was produced to replace older versions that contained the Diatessaron instead of the single gospels, as was the habit there into the 5th century. It did not exist in the 4th century. It still supports some Alexandrian and Western readings. As an aside, the Diatessaron in some form was also popular in the West (see Codex Fuldensis, unambiguously dated to the 6th century). If you want to look at old Syriac manuscripts, look elsewhere, like the Syriac Sinaiticus from 4th century (it also lacks the last 12 verses of gMark and the usual other suspects for late inclusion) or the fragments of the Curetonian gospels. They seem to have most in common with the Vulgate, or better the Old Latin bible.

I don't think I have to become more specific about the text history of the Vulgate. That history is known in detail.

And, more basically, why were the Greek and Latin textual traditions so different from one another, until the unification by the Reformation-era scholarship? (The development of the Received Text in the 1500s.)

I hope you didn't just read over my "respectively". They mostly lost contact already after the 3rd century. The eastern church fathers had a classical education and were mostly interested in philosophical questions (nature of God, trinity, etc.). They refused to learn and talk in a "barbaric" language like Latin. The western church fathers were mostly educated in rhetoric and politics and were interested in legal questions (original sin, etc.). Most couldn't read or write Greek, and after the Vulgate was written, there wasn't any need for it. Today's Protestants still carry the whole Catholic baggage with themselves, no matter what text they use. Needless to say that the Byzantine text type wasn't fully developed by then, either.

I don't understand your infatuation with the Textus Receptus. It was a remarkable effort for its time, but in the end, it's just a subpar text taken from manuscripts from the 12th century and later, which were available by chance. Why would this be the gold standard of anything?

[Charles Wilson]

Because the Peshitta is a revision, one needs to look before it. The Old Syriac versions though extremely lacunous frequently favor Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

spin and Steven --

It seems to me that no conversation can take place here. If either of you wish to claim that "The Sinaiticus Forgery used the Old Syriac as the Basic Document from which the Forgery was written", then go for it. It appears to me, however, that spin is having none of that. spin evidently believes that Sinaiticus is that old, Steven believes that it cannot be "old" at all. There is no common evidence to promote a discussion.

CW

[spin]

Because the Peshitta is a revision, one needs to look before it. The Old Syriac versions though extremely lacunous frequently favor Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.

spin and Steven --

It seems to me that no conversation can take place here. If either of you wish to claim that "The Sinaiticus Forgery used the Old Syriac as the Basic Document from which the Forgery was written", then go for it. It appears to me, however, that spin is having none of that. spin evidently believes that Sinaiticus is that old, Steven believes that it cannot be "old" at all. There is no common evidence to promote a discussion.

CW

The clear evidence from the earliest Syriac versions to the Peshitta is that the earliest were not based on the Antiochian text tradition, but the revision of the Old Syriac was brought more in line with the Antiochian, ie it was through scribal intervention on a text not based on the Antiochian that gave us the Peshitta. It just so happens that the Old Syriac has a number of similarities with the Codex Sinaiticus. The literature available is from a century ago in which people like Agnes Smith Lewis (The Old Syriac Gospels, 1910) did the data crunching and lists many examples of the Old Syriac favoring Codex Sinaiticus.

So we have traces of the earliest Syriac gospels translated from a Greek source with similarities to the Codex Sinaiticus, then over a century later it was revised to be brought into line with the Antiochian text tradition.