Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

John T wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:13 am

Ulan wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 5:44 am I don't think we need to invoke Origen in order to understand that changing the text of gospels was done deliberately many times. In the beginning, those texts had nothing holy to them. They were just stories.

Stories as in fiction?

No implication of that kind intended. What I meant is that the accounts themselves were not seen as "holy" or untouchable. There was also no concept of copyright, so if you thought you could improve on the text while copying, you did.

John T wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:13 am How I see it; gMark was the first non-fiction account of the gospel of Jesus and was quickly spread throughout the region. Q was older but little more than a collection of the sayings of Jesus.

The other gospel writers read gMark and saw the need to fill in the left-out details including the life and times of Jesus before his baptism. The other gospels were not intended as stories or fables but an attempt to fill in the gaps with details and yes, a few embellishments here and there crept in. But by in large, the writings were a work of non-fiction, not mythical stories.

Yes, but however you look at it, even the way you describe it you look at major edits to an existing text or existing texts, done by someone who thought he had the right to do so.

John T wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 7:13 am By the time of Irenaeus, the basic tenants of the gospels including Acts 8:37 were pretty much established.
So, why remove Acts 8:37?

Erasmus saw the marginal notes of the oldest version of Acts 8:37 and decided to put it back in.

Erasmus saw the marginal notes in a manuscript from the 15th century (see here). Erasmus had no access to any old versions of the texts. The manuscripts he used were hardly older than he himself (12th to 15th century).

The verse is missing in P45 which is our oldest manuscript containing this passage.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:24 am The verse is missing in P45 which is our oldest manuscript containing this passage.

Andrew Criddle

Thanks.
By any chance can you pull up the image of Act 8:37 in Papyrus 45?

I would like to translate it for myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_45

Sincerely,

John T

John T wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 12:24 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:24 am The verse is missing in P45 which is our oldest manuscript containing this passage.

Andrew Criddle

Thanks.
By any chance can you pull up the image of Act 8:37 in Papyrus 45?

I would like to translate it for myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_45

Sincerely,

John T

http://www.cbl.ie/getdoc/71d8acd7-5e05- ... bf1/3.aspx

DCH

John T wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 12:24 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Thu Aug 30, 2018 11:24 am The verse is missing in P45 which is our oldest manuscript containing this passage.

Andrew Criddle

Thanks.
By any chance can you pull up the image of Act 8:37 in Papyrus 45?

I would like to translate it for myself.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Papyrus_45

Sincerely,

John T

See http://csntm.org/Manuscript/View/GA_P45

Andrew Criddle

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Wed Aug 29, 2018 2:03 pm That's kind of a dumb argument. It is based on some sort of providential notion that a powerful overseer in heaven is in control of the universe. Why couldn't manuscripts have just disappeared?

OK, that is positively the worst argument you ever made. It belongs alongside the Creationists "why couldn't humans have walked the earth with Dinosaurs? Maybe the evidence just disappeared."

You realize the same argument could be made for Pericope Adulterae, and it's textual provenance is perhaps a century earlier. (In general the concept that a Church Father citation is earlier than manuscript evidence is tricky at best, and generally frowned upon as a practice in textual criticism.)

This is a burden of proof fallacy.

Ummm. So we have manuscripts which cite the passage from the earliest Church Fathers but these readings don't show up in the oldest manuscripts of Acts and so the likely conclusion is ... the passage in Acts should be dated to the surviving manuscripts of Acts? This is not the best explanation. This is the worst explanation. Why is that? First the attested witnesses for Acts 8:37:

1. Irenaeus Adv Haer Book 3 (c. 180 - 190 CE)
2. Clementine Recognitions REHM B., GCS 51 (1965) 10 70 § 3 (p.370, l.15) BP2 (c. 200 - 300 CE?)
3. Acts of Thomas WRIGHT W., Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 2, London 1871, 146-298 (p.203, l.18) BP2 (c. 200 CE)
4. Cyprian Ad Quirinum 3 43 (p.134, l.2 - <) BP2 (mid third century)

What more is there to say?

The primary witnesses are Irenaeus and Cyprian. There is some relationship between the two authors. Irenaeus quotes one half of Acts 8:37 and Cyprian quotes the other half of the verse. Come on there wasn't some big conspiracy to plant 8:37 in two Latin Patristic texts.

And furthermore Codex Glazier (which has Acts 8:37) is dated 4 - 5th century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Glazier and Augustine is another witness to the reading. So again - stupid theory.

The Western text type seems to be generally much longer than the Alexandrian one (from Wikipedia):

"Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts.[Thompson R. P., 2010]"

Which means we are not just looking at that one occurrence in this topic as a difference.

Ulan wrote: ↑Tue Sep 04, 2018 4:07 am The Western text type seems to be generally much longer than the Alexandrian one (from Wikipedia):

"Western texts of Acts are 6.2–8.4% longer than Alexandrian texts, the additions tending to enhance the Jewish rejection of the Messiah and the role of the Holy Spirit, in ways that are stylistically different from the rest of Acts.[Thompson R. P., 2010]"

Which means we are not just looking at that one occurrence in this topic as a difference.

Indeed, the Western text of Acts has so many differences from and additions to the other text types that it has been considered virtually an expanded edition of Acts. There is even an often neglected "we" passage at Acts 11.28 in the Western text.