Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 22/10/2006 07:50, Schmuel wrote:
> ...
> Schmuel
> Nope.. however here is a quote from Dean John Burgon that gives some numbers and 
> a few verses.  I have never seen these numbers of blunders contested.  Please note
> that he is not talking about textual variants or doctrinal tamperings or 
> questions -
> but simply scribal blunderama.
>
> http://www.ccel.org/ccel/burgon/mark.iv.vi.html
> Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark 
> Vindicated Against Recent Critical Objectors and Established
>
> More recently, ...

When? In the 19th century?

>  a claim to co-ordinate primacy has been set up on behalf of the Codex 
> Sinaiticus ...

Since neither I nor anyone else in recent years has made such a claim, 
your refutation of this claim is irrelevant.

...
> Concerning the manuscripts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, Burgon said; 
>
> "I am utterly disinclined to believe," continues Dean Burgon, "so grossly improbable does it seem - that at the end of 1800 years 995 copies out of every thousand, suppose, will prove untrustworthy; and that the one, two, three, four or five which remain, whose contents were till yesterday as good as unknown, will be found to have retained the secret of what the Holy Spirit originally inspired." 
>   

Unfortunately we do not have a thousand manuscripts 1800 years old. But 
we have several hundred, many partial, which date back to the 2nd to 5th 
centuries, most of which tend to support the scholarly text, whereas the 
so-called Majority Text is largely based on manuscripts less than 1000 
years old, mass-produced copies of one another.
...
> I will point out that such manuscripts would never be of interest for scholarship regarding the Hebrew Bible.  In that realm careful scribal activity is the norm and a grossly deficient manuscript would have been long defunctified.  Perhaps pointing that out will help keep us from getting to far off topic :-) 
>
>   
In fact the great Isaiah scroll of the DSS is rather similar to the 
Masoretic text. But if it had differed significantly from the MT, would 
scholars have concluded (on no other evidence, except I suppose that 
because the scroll had not been used for 1900 years that must be because 
it was known to have been corrupt) that it was a corrupt text? Or would 
they have taken this rather as a good indication that the MT was in fact 
corrupt? An interesting, but fortunately hypothetical question. But the 
issue with the Greek texts is rather similar - except that the evidence 
now to hand proves that the ancient texts are by no means unique.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/