Biblical Criticism & History Forum - earlywritings.com

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:26 am

gMark was the first non-fiction account of the gospel of Jesus

What is the likelihood that an illiterate scribbling on a tablet in antiquity would match what we mean by 'non-fiction'? Clearly that's not the case.

The use of the modern categories of "fiction" and "nonfiction" seems to throw everybody off in these conversations, and nobody is sure exactly what the other person is claiming. Those categories probably ought to fall into disuse for discussions of ancient or even medieval texts.

Secret Alias wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 8:26 amThe lower you go down the social ladder the more prone to lies. Hence the torture of slaves for admitted testimony.

Whoa there. It sounds like you are deliberately succumbing to imperial propaganda here. Tell me Virgil is full of gospel truth when it comes to the Augustan hegemony.

No I am simply using the social metrics of ancient society to establish 'trustworthiness' and 'untrustworthiness.' To go back to my frequent use of examples drawn from prostitution, a sex worker is typically someone who succumbed to sexual abuse as a young girl/young boy. It has made its way into popular culture - i.e. Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman 'If you hear bad things enough you start to believe it ...' The same thing is true in antiquity with regards to the untrustworthiness of slaves. As Nietzsche notes in the back pages of Beyond Good and Evil 'noble' had the connotation of 'good' and true and - by inference - poor with 'bad' and untrue. I am not a Hollywood movie writer rewriting history. Truth was controlled by the aristocracy. A person of the lower ranks of society wouldn't be expected to tell the truth. Nor would a person from the lower ranks expect himself to 'stick' to the facts. And to it's true today. Had the Germans won the second world war we'd all be writing about how 'truth' or the good guys overcame the bad guys in the opposite way that we do now. Power determines truth.

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:02 pm

Steven Avery wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 2:27 pm

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:45 pmThis all means that Acts has witnesses that go back to 2nd-3rd century (101-300) CE, whereas the earliest witness for vs. 8:37 date no earlier than 6th century.

Selection fallacy. There are numerous early church writer references that are written in early centuries, even 180-250 AD.

There are some fairly early extant mss as well, but since the ECW are far more important, I will not check dates and languages at the moment.

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

JW - where is Acts 8:37 an early confessional statement? You have any documents?
And, if true, you are arguing for authenticity, since confessional statements were built upon scripture.

However, since Acts 8:37 strongly supports believer’s baptism, and contradicts infant baptism, there would be a strong inclination od scribes to prefer the lacuna text. Note that this is different than the embedded confession.

Are you just making up fallacies at this point.

There is just one papyrus that has 8:34-9:6, which Ben S has already demonstrated, for the benefit of JohnT, could not possibly have included 8:37, and that was p45 (ca 250). 8:37 was not there. Period.

Steven, this is the kind of legwork that *you* should be doing.

Papyrus#	Approx Date	What's in it
P.008	350	Acts 4:31-37; 5:2-9; 6:1-6, 8-15
P.029	250	Acts 26:7-8; 26:20
P.033,58	550	Acts 7:6-10; 7:13-18; 15:21-24, 26-32
P.038	300	Acts 18:27-19:6; 19:12-16
P.041	750	Acts 17:28-31; 17:34-18:2; Acts 18:17-18, 22-23; Acts 18:24-25, 27; Acts 19:1-4, 6-8; Acts 19:13-16, 18-19; Acts 20:9, 10-13, 15-16; Acts 20:22-24, 26-28; Acts 20:28-30; Acts 20:30-31; Acts 20:32-35; Acts 20:35-38; 21:1-3, 26-27; Acts 22:11-14, 16-17
P.045	250	Acts 4:27-36; 5:10-21, 30-39; 6:7-7:2, 10-21, 32-41; 7:52-8:1, 14-25; 8:34-9:6, 16-27, 9:35-10:2, 10-23, 31-41, 11:2-14, 11:24-12:5, 13-22, 13:6-16, 25-36, 13:46-14:3, 15-23, 15:2-7, 19-27, 15:38-16:4, 15-22, 32-40; 17:9-17
P.048	250	Acts 23:11-17, 23:25-29
P.050	400	Acts 8:26-30, 8:30-32, 10:26-27, 10:27-30, 10:30-31
P.053	250	Acts 9:33-10:1
P.056	500	Acts 1:1-5, 7-11
P.057	400	Acts 4:36-5:2, 8-10
P.074	650	Acts 1:2-5, 7-11, 13-15, 18-19, 22-25, 2:2-4, 2:6-28:31
P.091	250	Acts 2:30-37, 2:46-3:2
P.112	450	Acts 26:31-32, 27:6-7
P.127	450	Acts 10:32-35, 40-45, 11:2-5, 11:30-12:3, 5, 7-9, 15:29-30, 34-41, 16:1-4, 13-40, 17:1-10
P.136	601-700	Acts 4:27-31; 7:26-30

DCH

True, but since he's never taken a course in Textual Criticism and yet arrogantly thinks he knows more about it than any living human being, you get nonsense like he types.

And speaking of fallacies, every single post of Steven Avery Spenser's that touches on Textual Criticism and Greek is - by definition - an argumentum ad verecundiam, but good luck getting him to shut his piehole.

Steven,

Whenever I see more than occasional use of different sized fonts in a post, I tend to withdraw from the discussion.

I'm really not into apologetics at all.

DCH

DCHindley wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:32 pmSteven, Whenever I see more than occasional use of different sized fonts in a post, I tend to withdraw from the discussion.

You might want at leasr to acknowledge your error in missing P74 before you withdraw.
After all, it was your error in reading your own chart.

Integrity first.

Steven Avery wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 5:43 pm

DCHindley wrote: ↑Mon Oct 08, 2018 4:32 pmSteven, Whenever I see more than occasional use of different sized fonts in a post, I tend to withdraw from the discussion.

You might want at leasr to acknowledge your error in missing P74 before you withdraw.
After all, it was your error in reading your own chart.

Integrity first.

P74 is 7th century, which was covered by DCH's statement that "the earliest witness for vs. 8:37 date no earlier than 6th century", to which you heavily objected. This objection was what DCH answered. Try to keep up with your own shenanigans. Before we get any other inane comment, let's be clear that this specific discussion was about textual witnesses, not secondary ones. Everyone here knows Irenaeus.

Please. I think DCHindley knows the English language and logic better than that.

He lists all the Acts papyri and writes:

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:02 pm There is just one papyrus that has 8:34-9:6,

Simple enough.

And a simple mistake.
It was ironic, though, that he tried to lecture me about the chart.

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 7:02 pmSteven, this is the kind of legwork that *you* should be doing.

My objection to his 6th century statement was based on Irenaeus, Cyprian, etc.
And DCHindley simply did not address that at all.

Steven

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:31 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:01 am

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:45 pm .........................
This all means that Acts has witnesses that go back to 2nd-3rd century (101-300) CE, whereas the earliest witness for vs. 8:37 date no earlier than 6th century. All those variants and the dates of the witnesses convinced W&H and NA to omit vs 8:37 as a scribal gloss. Since it serves as an expansion, it is surprising not to see it witnessed by Uncial D (Bezae, 5th century, the "western text"). IMHO, it may have been an expansion created in imitation of the western text type readings, which are usually expansions.

Codex Bezae is missing here.

Andrew Criddle

Well, codex Bezae (D) does have a gap of about 8 leaves, which includes 8.37, so I concede that this is likely why 8:37 is not supported by D.

Are you suggesting that the mss that do contain 8:37 are perhaps based on the same mss tradition as Codex D?

The sheer number of variants in vs. 37, IMHO, argue against this.

DCH

Given the Old Latin support for inclusion I would guess that D had the verse. But that is only a guess.

Andrew Criddle

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:36 am

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:31 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:01 am

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:45 pm .........................
This all means that Acts has witnesses that go back to 2nd-3rd century (101-300) CE, whereas the earliest witness for vs. 8:37 date no earlier than 6th century. All those variants and the dates of the witnesses convinced W&H and NA to omit vs 8:37 as a scribal gloss. Since it serves as an expansion, it is surprising not to see it witnessed by Uncial D (Bezae, 5th century, the "western text"). IMHO, it may have been an expansion created in imitation of the western text type readings, which are usually expansions.

Codex Bezae is missing here.

Andrew Criddle

Well, codex Bezae (D) does have a gap of about 8 leaves, which includes 8.37, so I concede that this is likely why 8:37 is not supported by D.

Are you suggesting that the mss that do contain 8:37 are perhaps based on the same mss tradition as Codex D?

The sheer number of variants in vs. 37, IMHO, argue against this.

DCH

Given the Old Latin support for inclusion I would guess that D had the verse. But that is only a guess.

Andrew Criddle

I share that guess with you.

Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 12:05 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Tue Oct 09, 2018 10:36 am

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 12:31 pm

andrewcriddle wrote: ↑Sun Oct 07, 2018 11:01 am

DCHindley wrote: ↑Sat Oct 06, 2018 12:45 pm .........................
This all means that Acts has witnesses that go back to 2nd-3rd century (101-300) CE, whereas the earliest witness for vs. 8:37 date no earlier than 6th century. All those variants and the dates of the witnesses convinced W&H and NA to omit vs 8:37 as a scribal gloss. Since it serves as an expansion, it is surprising not to see it witnessed by Uncial D (Bezae, 5th century, the "western text"). IMHO, it may have been an expansion created in imitation of the western text type readings, which are usually expansions.

Codex Bezae is missing here.

Andrew Criddle

Well, codex Bezae (D) does have a gap of about 8 leaves, which includes 8.37, so I concede that this is likely why 8:37 is not supported by D.

Are you suggesting that the mss that do contain 8:37 are perhaps based on the same mss tradition as Codex D?

The sheer number of variants in vs. 37, IMHO, argue against this.

DCH

Given the Old Latin support for inclusion I would guess that D had the verse. But that is only a guess.

Andrew Criddle

I share that guess with you.

Codex Glazier, which is one of the closest texts to Bezae ever found, also points into that direction.