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

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andrewcriddle
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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by andrewcriddle »

Steven Avery wrote: Plus, the Egyptian provenance of the two desert Syriac manuscripts extant should be a warning sign. Aland emphasizes that papyri from Egypt should be considered very cautiously because of the strong gnostic influence. Why not apply this warning to the Old Syriac mss? (And Vaticanus for that matter, which may be considered a papyri descendant.)
The two Syriac manuscripts are not Egyptian in any meaningful sense. Centuries after composition they ended up in an Egyptian monastery but that is a different matter. Vaticanus is not an Italian text just because it ended up in Rome.

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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by Steven Avery »

andrewcriddle wrote:The five missing books were never fully accepted among Syriac speaking Christians. Their omission does not require a date for the Peshitta before 400 CE.
Andrew Criddle
No, it does not "require" such a date. However, it is evidence for an early date. By the 400s the Greek canon was settled. Any new translation would most likely include all the books.

Incidentally, Ephraem is said to have quoted those books, per Johann Matthäus Hassencamp. So they were known.

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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by spin »

Steven, I don't remember where I picked up the fact that the Peshitta is a revision, but I'll try to provide a few indications from Metzger...
Steven Avery wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=294&p=69120#p69120
George Kiraz's edition shows the clear relation between these different Syriac translations.
Andrew Criddle

There is nothing specific there on our earlier page.

As for relations between Syriac translations, often the same evidence has multiple explanations. The fact that the texts are so radically different mitigates against one being a direct revision of another. "Relation" is loosey-goosey, meaning little. A familiarity with a text does not mean it was an exemplar used for a revision.
There is no content in this reaction. Go back and read the brief citation I gave from a review of Kiraz's work by Wm L. Petersen here. There is nothing empty in Andrew's statement concerning the relation between the various Syriac versions. Petersen clearly noted the developmental nature of the revisions toward the Greek text. He strongly implies a trajectory as Syrus Sinaiticus or a text similar to it was revised resulting in the Curetonius which with further revision gave the Peshitta.

Metzger (Early Versions of the New Testament, Oxford (1977) 2001, 59), tracking when the Peshitta was clearly noticeable in Syriac writings, cites Mt Black on the form of the biblical citations Rabbula used in one of his works, being "a kind of half-way house between the Old Syriac represented by S(inaiticus) and C(uretonius) and the final and definitive form of the Syriac Vulgate (ie Peshitta) which has come down to US". (The parentheses are mine.) Black citing Baarda: "The text of John used by the author of Rabbula's life was a more revised one than that of the extant Old Syriac manuscripts, although not yet the very same text that we have in the collated manuscripts of the Peshitta."

On page 60, he writes, "The presence of a diversity of mannerisms and style in the Peshitta Gospels and Apostolos suggests that the revision of the Old Syriac was not homogeneous, but the work of several hands."
Steven Avery wrote:Here Kenyon says of the Curetonian that it is:

"containing a completely different text from any manuscript previously known."
https://books.google.com/books?id=2Q4LAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA153

Making it unlikely to be a direct exemplar or target of any extant manuscript.
At the time of writing Kenyon did not have the full deck to play with.

And you need to consider what he meant by saying that one Syriac version was "a completely different text from any manuscript previously known" of the same material.
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Re: Greek and Latin textual traditions unified?

Post by Ulan »

accidental double
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Re: Greek and Latin textual traditions unified?

Post by Ulan »

Steven Avery wrote:
Steven Avery wrote: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.)
Ulan wrote:I hope you didn't just read over my "respectively".
Earlier, you had claimed that the Greek and Latin had been unified by the church in the early centuries. All this above is simply a meandering way of saying "I was wrong".
No, it was an extended answer, because I had still hope you wouldn't just be disingenuous and read over my "respectively", as I clearly said in what you quote. This was a warning for you to go and look back at what I wrote and not just accuse me of making a claim that I didn't make. I must now assume that you are disingenuous on purpose.
Steven Avery wrote:The superb scholarship behind the Received Text is a fine discussion. They were very well familiar with both the Greek and Latin traditions.
Which of the many versions do you refer to? Erasmus grabbed seven Greek manuscripts, all recent (12th to 15th century), and there was no choice made, but these were manuscripts that were locally available in Bâle by chance, all from the same text tradition (one from a different subtradition). The translation was done in 5 months. There have been some corrections made in later versions, and he also got pressed into including the Comma Johanneum, although he was convinced it wasn't original. There were lots of disagreements over later versions of the TR by other people, too. So which one is it?
Steven Avery wrote:However, my question above was highlighting your error in saying the Greek and Latin textlines had been unified in the early centuries.
I said:
Ulan wrote:When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the now powerful church hierarchy unified the Greek and Latin text traditions, respectively.
"Respectively", as I pointed out. Which means " in particular: separately", according to Merriam-Webster. One is the Greek majority text, the other one the Vulgate. The error is all yours.

Your criticism is also irrelevant with regard to the point I made, which was about why most later Greek manuscripts (>9th century) look rather similar, and that this process took centuries. This is why the "number of manuscripts" argument is irrelevant to the question of authenticity. My "error" (or better "your reading error") doesn't change this.
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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by andrewcriddle »

spin wrote:Steven, I don't remember where I picked up the fact that the Peshitta is a revision, but I'll try to provide a few indications from Metzger...
Steven Avery wrote:
andrewcriddle wrote:See viewtopic.php?f=3&t=294&p=69120#p69120
George Kiraz's edition shows the clear relation between these different Syriac translations.
Andrew Criddle

There is nothing specific there on our earlier page.

As for relations between Syriac translations, often the same evidence has multiple explanations. The fact that the texts are so radically different mitigates against one being a direct revision of another. "Relation" is loosey-goosey, meaning little. A familiarity with a text does not mean it was an exemplar used for a revision.
There is no content in this reaction. Go back and read the brief citation I gave from a review of Kiraz's work by Wm L. Petersen here. There is nothing empty in Andrew's statement concerning the relation between the various Syriac versions. Petersen clearly noted the developmental nature of the revisions toward the Greek text. He strongly implies a trajectory as Syrus Sinaiticus or a text similar to it was revised resulting in the Curetonius which with further revision gave the Peshitta.

Metzger (Early Versions of the New Testament, Oxford (1977) 2001, 59), tracking when the Peshitta was clearly noticeable in Syriac writings, cites Mt Black on the form of the biblical citations Rabbula used in one of his works, being "a kind of half-way house between the Old Syriac represented by S(inaiticus) and C(uretonius) and the final and definitive form of the Syriac Vulgate (ie Peshitta) which has come down to US". (The parentheses are mine.) Black citing Baarda: "The text of John used by the author of Rabbula's life was a more revised one than that of the extant Old Syriac manuscripts, although not yet the very same text that we have in the collated manuscripts of the Peshitta."

On page 60, he writes, "The presence of a diversity of mannerisms and style in the Peshitta Gospels and Apostolos suggests that the revision of the Old Syriac was not homogeneous, but the work of several hands."
See also p.82 of Metzger (translation of Lagrange)
If one compares the Old Syriac the Peshitta and the Palestinian Syriac, one will easily recognise the first two as a single version revised, while in the third ... it gives the impression of an entirely new translation.
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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by Steven Avery »

Ulan wrote:When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the now powerful church hierarchy unified the Greek and Latin text traditions, respectively. This took a few centuries.
Before you go haywire wth criticism, you should try to write clearly.

So your claim is that two distinct church hierarchies were involved, but your Greek one is unnamed and without a locale. And was not Roman, as you wrote abov, and had nothing to do with your "state religion of the Roman Empire" above.

And the Latin unification allowed for the Vetus Latina manuscript tradition to not be unified. And if the Latin tradition was so unified, why did you have rather extensive variations in the post-Trent editions?

Also, where do the dozens of later Alexandrian mss fit into this proposed scenario?

Could you unpack your claim into a sensible proposed history.

Thanks!

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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by spin »

Steven Avery wrote:
Ulan wrote:When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the now powerful church hierarchy unified the Greek and Latin text traditions, respectively. This took a few centuries.
Before you go haywire wth criticism, you should try to write clearly.
Sorry about your reading problems, but Ulan's statement was quite clear. Use of words like "haywire" point to the usual Avery tainting the waters.
Steven Avery wrote:So your claim is that two distinct church hierarchies were involved, but your Greek one is unnamed and without a locale. And was not Roman, as you wrote abov, and had nothing to do with your "state religion of the Roman Empire" above.
There is no reason for you to confuse text traditions with church hierarchies. It should be obvious that things in different languages would have language based traditions. Tradents work in the language of the tradition they receive and pass on what they receive... in that language usually. The process of normatizing across languages is not an easy task, hence the centuries Ulan mentions, but it would not be a total process given the means of transmission, though the emergence of an orthodox text tradition would tend to spread so that other texts would be less frequently used though a few of them may have been preserved for "scholarly interest".
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Ulan
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Re: Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid For. Confirmation 16:8 Origina

Post by Ulan »

Steven Avery wrote:
Ulan wrote:When Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire, the now powerful church hierarchy unified the Greek and Latin text traditions, respectively. This took a few centuries.
Before you go haywire wth criticism, you should try to write clearly.
I was writing clearly. It's not my fault that you simply drop the "respectively" when you interpret my sentence. If you have difficulties with reading, don't blame it on others.
Steven Avery wrote:So your claim is that two distinct church hierarchies were involved, but your Greek one is unnamed and without a locale. And was not Roman, as you wrote abov, and had nothing to do with your "state religion of the Roman Empire" above.
Here you need some basic historical knowledge. We are talking about the Roman Empire that continued to exist another one thousand years after the fall of its western part (the "fall of the Roman Empire" in the 5th century is western historical fiction). Its name was simply "Roman Empire" (Greek: Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, transcribed "Basileia tôn Rhōmaiōn"), and its citizens were called "Romans". The name "Byzantine Empire" is a historiographical term that was only invented in modern times, long after the Roman Empire ceased to exist in 1453. This has mostly to do with the point that the western Roman Empire was revived as "Holy Roman Empire", and people from the Catholic tradition (which includes Protestants) were the people who wrote our history books.

The state religion of this Roman Empire was the Orthodox Church, which was basically a department of the government, and the emperors decided who leads it and had direct influence on church policies (which is why they are called caesaropapist). That's the environment where the Greek majority text emerged from (as in "gained its majority state"). The TR is basically (though not exactly) the text of the late Roman Empire. Of course, this doesn't mean that "the emperors wrote the text", it just means that the preference for a specific text-type is the product of a centralized bureaucracy. It helped that the Greek world of the Empire had become rather small at that point and there was not much space anymore for different text traditions, which means that you don't even need a conscious decision for this to happen. It's the text that survived the shrinking of the Greek world.
Steven Avery wrote: And the Latin unification allowed for the Vetus Latina manuscript tradition to not be unified. And if the Latin tradition was so unified, why did you have rather extensive variations in the post-Trent editions?

Also, where do the dozens of later Alexandrian mss fit into this proposed scenario?

Could you unpack your claim into a sensible proposed history.
I guess you are nitpicking my use of "unified" here. Make it a "mostly unified", if you must.

I mentioned the Vulgate for the Latin. It was the most influential text in western Europe, even if the Vetus Latina still existed. However, chasing the phantom of an authentic text is a uniquely Protestant problem (caused by the "sola scriptura" doctrine), which means that the continued use of the Vetus Latina in some areas, or phrases from it in local Vulgate editions, was not an issue. Still, the Vulgate (in our modern use of the term; the old use included the Vetus Latina) was definitely predominant, and Bede refers to the Vetus Latina as the "former edition", because it had been, already in his time (8th century), mostly superseded by the Vulgate. In this sense, the decision of the Council of Trent was just an acknowledgment of the state of affairs at that time. The Vulgate was already for all practical purposes the standard text, because it was more popular.

I gave a rough estimate of >9th century for the Greek versions to converge in the tradition of the Greek Orthodox Church (the so-called "Byzantine text-type"). This is not a fixed date, but rather the time when the balance had shifted. The Alexandrian-type manuscripts are obviously earlier, as are the Western-type ones. They make up the largest part of our early text tradition. It's slightly involved to make statistics of this from before the 9th century, as the manuscripts often mix text types. However, there are so few texts from that time that people have done it. Also, even the Byzantine text-type was not that unified between the early manuscripts. They belong to several distinct subtypes.

But you know all this. You just don't want to know it.
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