Who axed Acts 8:37?

[Ulan]

And yet the logic is wrong if you look at history, no matter what anyone writes. It's as simple as that.

And I do look at history. Can you explain your thinking here?

You do? After your last debacle with regard to Roman history, I somehow doubt it. Everyone else would probably have used this as opportunity to get a refresher, but I guess that wasn't on your priority list.

Anyway, just a short history sketch to get a few cornerstones right.

~200 AD Koine Greek is a language that is spoken as first language in much of the Eastern half of the Empire, as second language pretty much everywhere in the East, by most of the Christians in the city of Rome and generally by educated people in the Western part. It's the language all Christian texts are composed in.

200s: The big crisis of the Roman Empire brings an end to education in the Latin parts of the Roman Empire. Greek isn't understood anymore in those areas. Not even most of the Latin church fathers can read Christian texts in their original language. That's where Latin translations branch off and a first shrinking of the Greek world takes place.

300s: The Roman capital is transferred to Constantinople in the East, which becomes the center of Christianity. Christianity gets first tolerated, then state religion till the end of the century. Church divisions mimic those of the Roman state. All seven ecumenical councils (325-800) take place in or around the new capital or not far away.

400s: The Empire is divided. The triple assault of the Hun invasion, the plague and severe famines lead to the end of the Roman Empire in the West and a near collapse in the East. The last large library of antiquity in Constantinople burns down. Efforts to replace some books are reported, but the library is never heard of again. Two thirds of the Christians in the East Roman Empire separate from Constantinople after the Council of Chalcedon and are mostly in opposition to the church leadership. They now basically only write in other languages than Greek, like Coptic or Syriac. This includes formative regions of Christianity, like Antioch or Alexandria. The struggle between the state church and the others will be a constant source of strife for the next two centuries.

500s: Justinian tries to renew the Roman Empire. He is the last one who spoke Latin and is generally considered the last Emperor of antiquity. This attempt is very short-lived. Slavs settle the Balkans and come very close to Constantinople. Even after accepting Christianity in the 800s, they don't want to deal with Greek but use Church Slavonic.

600s: First the Avars, Slavs and Persians nearly destroy the Byzantine Empire, then the Arab conquest leads to a permanent loss of most Christian areas. The monophysite churches (Oriental Orthodox) seem to be happy to get rid of their Byzantine overlords. The Greek-speaking world has now contracted to a small country. It's basically the city of Constantinople and the lands around the Aegean Sea. On the plus side, this small area is now very uniform in culture and the constant inner strife of the former multinational state with its different churches is now gone. The year 630 sees Koine Greek introduced as the one and only official state language. This new small, uniform country is where all future Greek Bible manuscripts come from (sometimes indirectly, but that doesn't matter).

Here is a map of the Roman Empire in 717. Only the Eastern part around the Aegean speaks Greek:



Most areas connected to textual history, like Antioch, Alexandria, Caesarea and the whole West (some Italian areas are formally Byzantine vassal states, but are not part of the core Empire and its themata), are cut off from the development of the Byzantine text. The Byzantine state was completely restructured, administratively and culturally, and it was a strictly centralized state. Anything that happens after this date regarding Greek manuscripts is a local phenomenon and does not matter in any way for the textual history of the Bible. As this was the only Greek speaking area left, it's not a surprise that pretty much all Greek manuscripts from that time originate from that area (unless produced as learning exercise) and all look more or less the same. That's the product of a small, centralized, state-run church.

And now I spent much too much time on something that should be common knowledge.

[Steven Avery]

You do? After your last debacle with regard to Roman history, I somehow doubt it.

Your common technique of a vague allusion to .. something unknown, weighed by you.

Most of what is after that does not connect to your claims against the masses of Greek manuscripts, which were of course transmitted, generally, by church scribes who knew Greek fluently (or weakly, as in some Alexandrian texts). You are talking more about what language is popular where, a whole different question than the value of 1,000 Greek or Latin mss.

e.g. You do not go into the cross-translation of Latin and Greek. You do not acknowledge the fact that many Latin writers could read Greek. That Jerome represents solid skills in both languages, along with textual savvy. And Aquinas referencing Greek authors. You do not go into the dozens of church writers in Latin from 900-1400. And some of those still Greek and Latin savvy.

It is a reasonable history you picked up somewhere else, or that you pieced together in your historical studies, that has next to nothing to do with Bible textual issues.

Steven

[Ulan]

You do? After your last debacle with regard to Roman history, I somehow doubt it.

Your common technique of a vague allusion to .. something unknown, weighed by you.

Oh, you don't remember one of your most embarrassing performances on this board? Sometimes, dementia seems to be a blessing.

Most of what is after that does not connect to your claims against the masses of Greek manuscripts, which were of course transmitted, generally, by church scribes who knew Greek fluently (or weakly, as in some Alexandrian texts). You are talking more about what language is popular where, a whole different question than the value of 1,000 Greek or Latin mss.

e.g. You do not go into the cross-translation of Latin and Greek. You do not acknowledge the fact that many Latin writers could read Greek. That Jerome represents solid skills in both languages, along with textual savvy. And Aquinas referencing Greek authors. You do not go into the dozens of church writers in Latin from 900-1400. And some of those still Greek and Latin savvy.

It is a reasonable history you picked up somewhere else, or that you pieced together in your historical studies, that has next to nothing to do with Bible textual issues.

Well, your roundabout comment that doesn't really tell us anything was somehow expected. None of what you say actually modifies what I said. Anyway, I leave that up there for reasonable people to judge.

[Steven Avery]

It can be sort of fun watching sruptd personal attacks offered in place of an honest answer.

If you ever find your Roman history thread,share away.

Similarly, if you ever actually make a real argument for 1,500 Greek ms. being unimportant, share away.

[Secret Alias]

I think he just did you nitwit.

[Steven Avery]

I think he just did ...

He gave a type of language history.

Where in there was there any type of genealogical or textual connection to the value of the mass of manuscripts?

Maybe you could say he argued for a minor increase of importance of the Syriac mss..

He rails against localized or centralized mss and make ridiculous ad hoc assertions that such-and-such “does not matter.”

It is just supid argumentation. They all point baxk to earlier exemplars, and 500 mss point back with far more strength than 5 mss. Plus the mss, Greek and Latin, are from a wide geographical area. Latin and Greek mss were frequently translated to local languages. There is a fair amount of variation among the thousands of Greek mss, refuting the idea of centralized control.

Ulan is skilled with maps, howeveer. Or finding a map.

[Secret Alias]

No you just aren't skilled with thinking. He answers your bloody question in a way that is obviously correct and you can't see it because as I said you are hard-wired to think only one way. You won't let yourself hear what he is saying:

The Byzantine state was completely restructured, administratively and culturally, and it was a strictly centralized state. Anything that happens after this date regarding Greek manuscripts is a local phenomenon and does not matter in any way for the textual history of the Bible. As this was the only Greek speaking area left, it's not a surprise that pretty much all Greek manuscripts from that time originate from that area (unless produced as learning exercise) and all look more or less the same. That's the product of a small, centralized, state-run church.

If you want to continue living your life as some sort of freak - hard-wired to see things only one way like Gollum chasing after his ring. Fine. Continue to behave like an idiot. But he's answered why your life mission is stupid and misguided. He provides a very good explanation. Read it a few times so it sinks in. Of course you won't and all this effort will be for nothing - but he tried.

[Ulan]

I'm at a loss what to add here. Do I really have to point out that Bible manuscripts were not made for Bible scholars to mull over, but for use in Christian worship? Any mass production of Greek manuscripts was obviously only done in areas where Greek was read and understood. It's as if someone asked me why I would suggest that you mostly find English language Bibles in the US.

My post explained why whole text families disappeared from text history and why the Byzantine text became dominant after about 700. I could have filled in details how the Byzantine government asked their Syrian subjects to turn in their Bibles to have them burned and take the Byzantine text instead if they wanted help against people who threatened to massacre them. But that's just one of the ways text traditions disappeared.

And no, Latin-Greek translations became very rare around that time. Even famous church fathers had to wait centuries to be translated.

[Secret Alias]

I thought it was very impressive. But don't expect an alcoholic to espouse the virtues of temperance.

[Steven Avery]

The idea that localized manuscripts don’t matter is simply stupid. Ulan could argue rhat centralized mss don’t matter.

He is just giving a circular, presuppositional nothing.

==========

Now he adds that text families disappeared. Be specific. Or you can’t name them because they vanished?.

Hortians are always claiming the opposite.

And if he has not read Maurice Robinson, he really is writing in a textual intellectual vacuum.