dbz wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:57 am
mlinssen wrote: ↑Tue Dec 20, 2022 7:19 am
Listen, it's all very easy: the only objectively verifiable facts are in the texts - in the original MSS, in their original language.
and quoted @ "
ESSAY:Critics of the historicity of Jesus".
RationalWiki.
Perhaps I will show it to my great grandson someday and recount how good scholarship works
A statement without substantiation is a mere opinion, and I don't value opinions at all, not even those of my own - although I do like to hand them out like candy sometimes, yes.
So let me elaborate:
The texts that we have are all "translated" by Christians, and wherever Christians come they twist and turn the truth, they falsify the facts: some of that stems from confirmation bias, but some of that also happens intentionally and is done deliberately in order to hide the facts
1. Attridge falsifies Thomas, e.g. in logion 3:
λέγει ι[ης ἐὰν] οἱ ἕλκοντες ⟨ὑ⟩μᾶς [εἴπωσιν ὑμῖν ἰδοὺ] ἡ βασιλεία ἐν οὐρα[νῷ ὑμᾶς φθήσεται] τὰ πετεινὰ τοῦ οὐρ[ανοῦ ἐὰν δ’ εἴπωσιν ὅ] τι ὑπό τὴν γήν ἐστ[ιν εἰσελεύσονται] οἱ ἰχθύες τῆς θαλά[σσης προφθάσαν] τες ὑμᾶς καὶ ἡ βα[σιλεία τῶν οὐρανῶν] ἐντὸς ὑμῶν[ἐσ]τι [κἀκτός ἂν ἑαυτὸν] γνῷ ταύτην εὑρή[σει καὶ ὅτε ὑμεῖς] ἑαυτοὺς γνώσεσθ⟨ε⟩ [εἴσεσθε ὅτι υἱοί] ἐστε {ὑμεῖς} τοῦ πατρὸς τοῦ [ζῶντος εἰ δὲ μὴ] γνώσ⟨εσ⟩θε ἑαυτοὺς ἐν ̤ [τῇ πτωχείᾳ ἐστὲ] καὶ ὑμεῖς ἐστε ἡ πτ[ωχεία]
Note the three emendations by Gathercole here - two of which aren't supported by
Grenfell & Hunt!
G&H keep the "us" of ἡμᾶς and don't change it into the "you" (although they do remark on the discrepancy between that and the "you" that follows) that Gathercole does, and neither does Attridge (Brill Codex II page 114) - yet the devious devil that Harry is does translate it with "you" instead of "us" on page 126, and I think the entire goal of his setup is precisely that: to make his translation harder to trace, and to indicate the fact that his diplomatic transcription doesn't match with good different yet unemended Greek representation which in turn doesn't quite match with his English translation.
G&H don't keep the γνώσεσθ⟨αι⟩ but change it into γνώσεσθ⟨ε⟩ like Gathercole does, which Attridge doesn't, but again he translates it with "you(PL) will know".
γνώσεσθε is a correct form of the 2nd person plural (middle voice future indicative) "you(PL) will know" whereas γνώσεσθαι is the infinitive (middle voice future infinitive) "will know"
Attridge then adds a little footnote to his translation that ends with "in this translation, Lambdin's version of the Coptic is adapted to the text of the Greek fragments" and that is that, there is no further comment on it nor explanation, but this says what it says: "Lambdin and I have conspired to give the reader the same English translation for both the Greek and the Coptic without leaving much of a trace, let alone a motivation"
All emend γνώσθε to γνώσ⟨εσ⟩θε, loud and clear - I have no problem with that, such is good scholarship - even though ⟨ε⟩γνώσθε is a perfectly possible alternative, facilitated by the lacuna even and not an emendation, and it would be ἔγνωσθε or ἤγνωσθε, and both forms exist in middle voice as well as passive voice, as perfect indicative 2nd person plural or pluperfect indicative 2nd person plural. But let's continue
Needless to say, Lambdin falsifies the Coptic as well when in logion 96 he translates colostrum with leaven so it is harmonised with the NT. Does Layton emend on page 86? Of course not, he couldn't possibly draw attention to it, yet it is evident that the
ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲣ of Thomas logion 96 says precisely that: colostrum - and Lambdin happily translates it with leaven instead, likes all others save for Koepke and me
What does Gathercole do? He emends, yet translates the οἱ ἕλκοντες ('they dragging') with 'those who drag'; 'of the heavens' gets translated 'of heaven'; προφθάσαν gets harmonised with 'precede' (φθήσεται) whereas it means 'outrun'; λέγει and εἴπωσιν both get translated with the verb 'to say', and so on: Gathercole needs a neat and harmonised Greek that doesn't attract attention because it in fact is an outrageously wild and incoherent copy of the Greek, and he does that throughout Thomas for the Greek and Coptic. Why? So he can deliver on his false and bogus claims on page 15 that "Nevertheless, a case will be made here and in the course of the commentary that (a) the differences are often exaggerated and that there is a great deal of similarity between the Greek fragments and the Coptic manuscript" and this is precisely how that happens: emend the Greek first, then give it a favourable translation that is harmonised with the Coptic, et voilà
Plisch is even worse; he presents Greek and Coptic yet gives only one single German translation - and while it is obvious that there is only one translation for both, it is evident that such suggests that both languages always are in perfect accordance - which never is the case. Moreover, Plisch never emends the transcription yet gives a translation that fits with the emended versions alone - and that is far below academic standards
DeConick does the same in the latter case, but I suspect that het Greek isn't much better than her Coptic: the latter contains even more errors than the clumsy work of Grondin, which certainly is an achievement of some kind
To finish it all of, we have
Schaff who falsifies Tertullian and "translates" kingdom of the heavens as well as kingdom of God with one and the same kingdom of heaven - because he is a Christian as well, and a falsified and a cheater like all others
And that is the state of biblical academic, and even amateurs like Grondin participate in the falsification. I asked him why he did that, why he translates colostrum with leaven, and his spineless response was along the lines of "I can't pretend to know better than the great minds who went before me" and in turn he gets his desperately desired scholarly pat on the back, which is not a bad deal for handing over your integrity, is it not?
And that is why I keep telling everyone that the only way to research this specific area and field is via the original manuscripts, in their original language: not because I like to say that, on the contrary: I like, love and desire to level all thresholds and to give everyone the chance and opportunity to study anything, and all of my work serves that purpose by being open access to all, by referring almost solely to freely, publicly and directly obtainable sources via handy hyperlinks: this so-called academic area is entirely dominated and controlled by Christians, which is the sole reason for its lack of advancement.
I am certainly aware of the fact that very few possess the linguistic skills that come with this advertisement, and I am confident that in the next 2-3 decades this problem will be overcome: we will have every possible MS online by then, and OCR will advance greatly in the coming years, and so will automated translation. By 2030 we will have the first MSS that can be scanned and translated "at will" against 95% accuracy, which may seem much but which isn't the case, and we must have 100%
- don't say what something is, but merely reject what allegedly isn't