NT Manuscripts

[Iasion]

Greetings all,

I thought readers may be interested in my investigation of te NT MSS.

I especially draw 1John2_26's attention to the 2nd section, and look forward to his reply.


NT manuscript attestation

Claims about the NT being the "best-attested" confuse two UN-related issues -
* reliability of the text,
* truthfulness of the contents.

Firstly, it is not true that the NT is "the best-attested document in all of antiquity" because there are some documents even older than the NT for which we have the ORIGINAL literally carved in stone (e.g. Behistun inscription, Egyptian tomb inscriptions, the Rosetta Stone, the Moabite Stone) - making them absolutely 100% accurately attested from the original because they ARE the original, and thus much better attested than the NT.
http://visopsys.org/andy/essays/darius-bisitun.html

It's true the NT is fairly well-attested (in terms of quantity) compared to SOME ancient writings - in the sense that we have many old copies (24,000 or more in total). However the vast majority of these copies are from the middle-ages. The number of NT manuscripts from before the dark ages is about a hundred.

But there are NO originals for ANY of the NT writings - all we have is copies of copies, all varying from each other (that's right - every single manuscript we have is slightly different from every other - not counting very tiny scraps) from long after the alleged events :
* NO copies from 1st century,
* a few tiny fragments from 2nd century (e.g. P52, P90),
* a few UNCOMPLETE copies from late 2nd / early 3rd (e.g. P75, P46),
* several fairly complete copies in 3rd / 4th century.
List by century :
http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/extras/Robinson-list.html
Detailed contents of all NT MSS :
http://www.tyndale.cam.ac.uk/Tyndale/st ... /EGBMP.htm

And, there is considerable variation in Gospel manuscripts, and it often DOES reach to core beliefs and events :

The words of God at the baptism in early MSS and quotes have "...this day have I begotten thee" (echoing Psalm 2) - later, as dogma about when Jesus become god had crystallized, thus phrase became "..in thee I am well pleased". If scribes can change the alleged words of God, they can change anything.
Another important variation is the ending of G.Mark - there are four different endings to this Gospels in various MSS, the original ending being 16:8
Other MSS variations include :
* the issue of salvation through the Christ's Blood,
* the Trinity - found in no MSS before the 16th century!
* the Lord's prayer - much variations in manuscripts,
* the names of the 12 apostles are highly variable in MSS and indeed the Gospels.
http://members.aol.com/PS418/manuscript.html

These are just some issues of manuscripts variations - contradictions between different Gospel's versions of the Jesus stories is another very smelly kettle of fish :
* the widely variant birth stories,
* the names of the 12 apostles vary among Gospels.
* the completely irreconcilable Easter morning stories :
http://www.ffrf.org/books/lfif/stone.php



Quantity of manuscripts irrelevant to truth

But more importantly, 1John2_26, like many apologists, has confused two fundamentally different issues - he is arguing that because we have so many copies this proves the contents true. Well, this is obviously not true - the number of copies has nothing to do with the truth of the contents. Consider -

* the Iliad - over 600 manuscripts, more than the NT until after 1000AD - does this mean that the Iliad was more true than the NT until about 1000AD, but from the middle ages on, the NT became MORE TRUE than the Iliad?

* the works of 10thC. Yen-Shou of Hangchow - about 400,000 copies exist, about 4000 times as many copies as NT copies at that time - does this make the work over 4000 times MORE TRUE than the NT?

* the Book of Mormon - there are millions of copies of this work, many dating maybe a FEW YEARS after the original - would this make the Book of Mormon much MORE TRUE than the NT?

* the Lord of the Rings - there are many millions of copies of this work, (including the original manuscript AFAIK), dating from very soon after its writing - does this makes the Lord of the Rings of vastly more true than the NT?

No.
It should be obvious that the NUMBER of copies attesting to a work gives no support to the truth of the contents - yet apologists like 1John2_26 repeatedly bring this point up as if it proves something.


Iasion

[Bart007]

Greetings,

Every scholar is well aware that there are many writings on ancient pottery, tablets of stone or clay, building walls, tombs, and the like, and that these are all originals. When scholars use a term like 'best attested' in reference to ancient or medieval manuscripts (i.e. hand written books), they are obviously not referring to originals, but to copies of originals where the originals are missing.

Pardon?
You mean if you EXCLUDE all the writings which ARE attested by originals,
then the NT is the best attested,
after you exclude all those writings which are better attested?

Who are you trying to kid?

Noone. You must understand the purpose of their work. They are involved involved in the reconstruction of missing original MSS from copies and extraneous materials relating to the missing MSS. They would be stupid to perform attestation on an original MSS, there would be nothing to reconstruct. An original is what it is and needs no attestation.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament are the best attested literary works of the ancient world.If any here know of an ancient manuscript or collection of manuscripts better attested to, please share it.

Sure.
The works of Yen-shou.
We have 400,000 copies -
FAR better than the NT.

You are comparing apples with oranges, so to speak. Yen Shou lived in the 10 century AD. Any writings by him are not ancient.

Also, China had printing by the 6th century AD which was quite developed by the time Yen Shou came on the scene, this had a dramatic effect on preserving original documents.

BTW, how many books did Yen Shou write? Are any of his original works still extant? Who are the scholars who have reconstructed Yen Shou's original writings from the 400,000 MSS? Did they Describe and label each MSS? What were the variants they found? Where can I read both the 400,000 MSS and the reconstructed writings Yen Shou based upon the attestation that was performed? Was Attestation by qualified scholars actually performed?

Ditto for Chuyen.

Or the 20,000 tablets found at Chuyen, containing complete original texts of 75 works -
Far better attestation than the NT.

Or like I said up front - the various ancients texts for which we HAVE the ORIGINAL, such as the Behistun inscription, or the Egyptian funerary texts. Your attempt to exclude these better attested documents fools no-one.

The eqyptians are an interesting case, because they used a durable medium, stone (compared to papyrus and parchment, or even worse, palm leaves, wood strips, shoulder blades.)

For instance, we have a vast amount of Egyptian writings from the Amarna period, in the form of tablets, from over a millenium BCE. We also have a large body of writings called (very unimaginatively) "The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts" from about TWO millenia BCE.

These are 100% perfectly attested ancient religious writings - we have the ORIGINALS (because they chose STONE to write in.)

These documents are FAR better attested than the NT, but you want to exclude them, and any other works that ARE better attested than the NT (such as the examples I mentioned in the OP like the Rosetta stone) for no clear reason (apart from then being able to pretend the NT is the best attested.).

You are simply incorrect, you are repeating Christian apologetics without checking the facts.

The NT is not the best attested ancient work.

And,
even if it WAS - so what?

I see there is no reasoning with you. It has become very clear to me that you have a bee in your bonnet on this issue, you have a very real animosity toward the christian scriptures. I did a search on Yen Shou to see what scholarship was performed on his writings and I could not find any. However, your name came up quite a bit in your use of him to argue against the NT. Your sole source seems to be a search by a Brian Lindsay who was obviously looking for ammo to attack Christian belief in the reliability and accuracy of the NT scriptures. There was no scholarship on that website.

Very well known scholars who specialize in performing attestation of ancient Greco-Roman-Syriac manuscripts have constructed a NT that is very accurate and faithful to the the original MSS. The NASU version of the NT is one excellent example of the fruit of this very good scholarship.

As I show below,
the accuracy of the MSS means nothing about the truth of the contents.

How about Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard?
The founder of Scientology.
I think we have the original MSS, or close to it -
does that make it TRUE?

Obviously not.

Nor does any level of accuracy in NT MSS tells us anything about the truth of the contents.

Iasion

The 'truth of the contents' is a different subject. Attestation has nothing to do with the truth of the original text, it merely is a process whereby current copies of a missing original MSS are faithful and accurate copy of the original Author's text.

[Bart007]

Greetings,

P52 contains portions of John 18:31-33 and 37-38 and is dated as early as 100 AD.

As early as 100 ?
Misleading and inaccurate.
P52 is variously dated:
* 2nd century (100-199)
* early 2nd century (100-149)
* late 2nd century (150-199)

The most recent dating of P52 (by Schmidt IIRC) is late 2nd C. - i.e. 150-199 or so.

Earliest fragmens of NT support early date for John

Wallace:

Further, P52—the earliest fragment for any NT book—contains portions of John 18:31-33 and 37-38 and is to be dated as early as 100 CE5; and the Papyrus Egerton, which is to be dated at about the same time, draws on both John and synoptics for its material. Although the early patristic hints and the early papyri do not explicitly affirm Johannine authorship, they do illustrate its early and widespread use, an implicit testimony to its acceptance by the church. Indeed, there seems never to have been a time when this gospel bore any name other than John’s.*(see fn 5 at bottom)

5 For a survey of the dating of this MS, cf. D. B. Wallace, “John 5,2 and the Date of the Fourth Gospel,” Biblica 71 (1990) 177-78 (n. 6).]

One such discovery is the Papyrus Egerton written near the very end of the 1st century, and draws on both the Gospel of John and the three synoptic gospels for its material.

Incorrect.
P. Egerton2 is dated to 1st half 2nd C (e.g. by Ron Cameron) although some argue for earlier.

Scholars do NOT agree that it draws on the other Gospels, you are mistaken.

Jon B Daniels : "The Egerton Gospel's parallels to the synoptic gospels lack editorial language peculiar to the synoptic authors, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They also lack features that are common to the synoptic gospels, a difficult fact to explain if those gospels were Egerton's source."
From http://www.earlychristianwritings.com/egerton.html

This is what Ronald Cameron really says about the dating of Papyrus Egerton 2 : "Since Papyrus Egerton 2 displays no dependence upon the gospels of the New Testament, its earliest possible date of composition would be sometime in the middle of the first century, when the sayings and stories which underlie the New Testament first began to be produced in written form. The latest possible date would be early in the second century, shortly before the copy of the extant papyrus fragment was made. Because this papyrus presents traditions in a less developed form than John does, it was probably composed in the second half of the first century, in Syria, shortly before the Gospel of John was written."

What Daniels does in rejecting that Egerton 2 is referencing the synoptic gospels is to make the unsubstantiated claim that the synoptic Gospels and Egerton 2 share the same early sources, and it seems he makes this claim because of the fact that Egerton 2 was written as early as 70 AD, too close to have been from the synoptic gospels and not because they can't be from the synoptic gospels. e.g.

The Egerton Gospel healing resembles the Markan account in some ways:

Just then a leper comes up to him and says, "Teacher, Jesus, in wandering around with lepers and eating with them in the inn, I became a leper myself. If you want to, I'll be made clean."

The master said to him, "Okay - you're clean!"

And at once the leprosy vanished from him . Jesus says to him, "Go at once and have the priests examine you. Then offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded - and no more sinning."

It is extremely close to the phrasing of Mark's Gospel.

Other claims you make that you claim I have ignored I simply have not gotten to yet. As can be seen from the above, you play loose with the facts and appear to be consitently wrong.

You also have made the claim that the resurrection accounts of the four gospels can not be reconciled with each other. I have demonstrated that this claim is false. See the thread on this forum "Are there scriptural conflicts between the 4 gospels?"

[theleftone]

It is possible to reconstruct the entire NT, except for 11 versus from the letters of John: 2 & 3, from the pre-Nicene (325 AD) quotations of the early church Fathers.

I do NOT believe you.
If YOU believe this is true, then PRODUCE the evidence -
SHOW ME where some scholar has reconstructed the entire NT (less 11 verses) from pre-Nicean quotes.
Christians frequently repeat this claim, but never support it with evidence.

Can you show us all this re-contruction you mentioned?

He stated it was possible, not that someone had and it exists in a readily accessible format. This stated, I will not defend his claim for all but 11 verses in the Ante-Nicene writings, but will argue for the vast majority of the New Testament.

To access this information, you can start with your copy of the Nestle-Aland. Then you can include other New Testament "critical editions" (Merk, Tischendorf, etc.). They will most likely include an apparatus explaining how they came to their conclusion of the given reading. In this, they will cite various manuscripts and other works -- including those of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Or, if you're looking for instant gratification -- though not specifically on quotations -- you can refer to the e-Catena project.

And since Metzger has already been brought up, I will quote him from his work The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.

Besides textual evidence derived from New Testament Greek manuscripts and from early versions, the textual critic has available the numerous scriptural quotations included in the commentaries, sermons, and other treaties written by early Church Fathers. Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Testament.

[theleftone]

[T]he only reasons I can come up with to question their actual historicity is the supernatural elements, dating (i.e., a decade or two by the most conservative estimates, with the exception of John), and personal bias. All three of these reasons, I consider to be weak counters.

Would you please eleborate as to why you consider these to be weak counters?

Supernatural elements. These should not disqualify a text from being consider historical, at least in some respect, because there is likely an actual underlying event that may well have been interpreted with supernatural elements. For example, say an individual name Joe goes to church and has an experience which he calls supernatural. While one can doubt Joe had a supernatural experience, one need not doubt Joe had an experience in a spiritual setting. In much the same way, I believe such it is with much of the New Testament. Simply because Christ was reported to have performed miracles, we should not discount that Christ existed and did great things on this basis alone. And this last point is key. More often than not when this objection to the supernatural is brought up, it is the sole grounds for rejecting the historicity of the text.

Dating. The writers were focused on other things. They believed Christ's return was imminent in that it could have occurred any second. Thus, they felt little need to make plans for the long term (i.e., recording the events). It was only when they realize it might be longer than originally expected that they felt the need to record. Additionally, we have many historical works being written about events which occurred hundreds of years ago. We do not claim they're invalid because of this.

Personal bias. I feel this should be obvious, so no explanation needed.

[theleftone]

Isn't it funny how Iasion prefers the later date for P52, while Bart007 prefers the earlier?

[Tim the Skeptic]

tsalem wrote:

For example, say an individual name Joe goes to church and has an experience which he calls supernatural. While one can doubt Joe had a supernatural experience, one need not doubt Joe had an experience in a spiritual setting.

That could be used for anyone. Certainly Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon meet that standard. Does that make the Book of Mormon true?

[Bart007]

Isn't it funny how Iasion prefers the later date for P52, while Bart007 prefers the earlier?

I have no preference, both dates are excellent for being a witness to the original text. I merely recorded what I had learned from experts in this field, and I quoted the sources. It seems to be important to Iasion as he contest the 100 AD date and me adamantly even though Iasion himself references at least one source that indicated the 100 AD date is possible.

[Iasion]

Greetings,

The 'truth of the contents' is a different subject. Attestation has nothing to do with the truth of the original text,

Great.
I am glad you agree.

it merely is a process whereby current copies of a missing original MSS are faithful and accurate copy of the original Author's text.

Process?
Perform?
Attestation is not a verb.
Attestation refers to the number and quality of copies.

Attestation does not mean "copies of a missing original MSS are faithful and accurate copy of the original Author's text"

I have pointed out numerous places where the MSS show major differences -
you have ignored them all every time :
* words of God changed
* resurrection MISSING
* Lord's prayer different

Your faithful claims do not stand up to scrutiny.

Why do you ignore the obvious MSS differences?

How do you explain the MISSING RESURRECTION from original G.Mark ?


P52 -

You claimed this is dated 100 CE
I pointed out it could be as late as 199 or so.

You IGNORED this,
and just repeated your faithful claims.

P52 may be as early as 100
it may be as late as 199 or even later.

Funny how you post the EARLIEST date
and IGNORE the later dates.


You have dropped your false claims about 7Q5,
no apology for promoting a crackpot, I see.


The resurrection accounts CANNOT be reconciled.
If YOU think they can,
then YOU produce a combined chronology of all 4 Gospels
that omits nothibng.

It is not possible.


I see you are descending into insults.
Clear sign of someone who is losing.


Iasion

[Iasion]

Greetings,

He stated it was possible, not that someone had and it exists in a readily accessible format. This stated, I will not defend his claim for all but 11 verses in the Ante-Nicene writings, but will argue for the vast majority of the New Testament.

He CLAIMED it was possible.
I asked for evidence of that claim.

No-one produced any.
The claim is FALSE.

If NONE of you can produce any evidence to support this claim - why do you keep making it?

Claims must be supported by evidence to be believed,
this claim is NOT supported by evidence.

To access this information, you can start with your copy of the Nestle-Aland. Then you can include other New Testament "critical editions" (Merk, Tischendorf, etc.). They will most likely include an apparatus explaining how they came to their conclusion of the given reading. In this, they will cite various manuscripts and other works -- including those of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. Or, if you're looking for instant gratification -- though not specifically on quotations -- you can refer to the e-Catena project.

What are you on about?
I know HOW to do it - I didn't ask you HOW.
I asked for the evidence that it had been done.

Yes,
I KNOW about Peter Kirby's e-catena, Bart007 didn't.
Guess what?
The e-catena does NOT support the claim.


Thus,
this false, unsupported claim, should be withdrawn.

Iasion

[Iasion]

Greetings,

Isn't it funny how Iasion prefers the later date for P52, while Bart007 prefers the earlier?

How dishonest.

Bart007 dated P52 as 100

I pointed out it is variously dated :
* 2nd C.
* early 2nd C.
* late 2nd C.

I gave no preference.
I simply pointed out ALL the facts.

Bart007 deliberately choose to HIDE most of the facts and give ONLY the EARLIEST date possible.

You both bear false witness.


Iasion