Star Course Biblical Manuscripts Discussion Page

• Steven Carr Sun, 26 Apr 1998 17:17

This is partly a test to see if I can post here, and partly a troll of the address of my debate with Dr.Stephen Motyer of the London Bible College.
• Nicholas Beale, Monday 27 Apr 1998I think the fundamental problem in your debate is what I would now call the Red/Green issue.  If you start from Red (There exists a Loving Ulimate Creator) then the likelihoods of certain events is radically different from those under Green (=not Red).  But it is rather vacuous to counter a statment from Dr Motyer that "Under Red, A is likely", by "under Green, it is not".

   So for example under Red, the parallels between God's work in Jesus and God's work in Elijah are exactly what we would expect - God is faithful and true and, although He does not work in exactly the same way in everyone, His work shows consistent patterns.  But under Green, since the accounts must be fictional, setting up a parallel is taken as evidence that it is false.  But this would only be true if you could demonstrate that the likelihood of a parallel under Green was substantially greater than under Red.

• Steven Carr Wed, 6 May 1998 06:36

Where is the cut-off point to determine which manuscripts are reliable and which are not?
{a} The earliest manuscript of John's Gospel is p52 and it has a different wording to later manuscripts.
{b}  Luke 22:43-44 is missing from the earliest manuscripts p66 and p75. These are also missing from Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus (mid 4th century)
{c}  The story of the woman taken in adultery is missing until Codex Bezae (5th century)
{d}  Mark 16:9-20 is missing until Alexandrinus (say 5th century)
{e} The 4th century manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus add to Matthew 27:49 the detail that Jesus was pierced by a sword, and blood and water came out, before he died.
{f}  So is 400 AD a good cutoff point for manuscripts? Can we say that manuscripts after 400 AD are reliable, while manuscripts before AD 400
are not reliable? Or would 600 AD be a better cutoff point? Perhaps it took that length of time to iron the bugs out of the manuscripts to produce reliable manuscripts.
  Are there any manuscripts before AD 400 which are as reliable as a medieval copy of the Gospels?
• Nicholas Beale Wed 6 May 98 09:39

It's obviously not that simple.  {f}The issue is essentially a question of image reconstruction and conceptually an information-theoretic one.  Each scribe uses the sources available to him and writes what they think is the 'best' text.  How do you reconstruct the original text, given a semi-random sample of manuscripts, where the probabilty of survival decreases with age?  In principle, you attach 'weights' to each MS and prefer the text with the highest weight.  But there's no utterly strightforward algorithm for doing this, especailly given the fact that the scribes' views on what the 'best' text is may be affected by their theological presuppositions as well as by happenstance.  No MS is totally reliable, whatever the date.  But given that there are c.10,000 MS sources for the NT, there are very few major difficulties in the text.
  You are also not quite right about the textual variants:
{a} p52 is a papyrus fragment consisting of John 18. The only difference I can find is a trivial word-order in v33.
{b - added later This is one place where the MS evidence is almost evenly balanced, I'd guess it's 60%:40% for these 2 verses.  Do you really care whether an Angel appeared to Jesus at that point?  I don't.  As far as I know it's never been considered important.  It's left out by the Common Bible (1973) but in the NIV (1980) and the NEV (1990)}
{c} The woman in adultery is complex, but there are excellent reasons for believing it to be authentic, and there are several sources.
{d}  Mk16:9-20 is also in W(which is 4thC), D(Bezae) Theta f1 f13 most of the latin MS, syc and Irenaeus (2nd C). No problem there.
{e} Aleph (Sinaiticus) and B (Vaticanus) add to Matt 27:49 that Jesus was peirced by a spear and this is clearly a detail transposed from John.
  (i) ADWTheta f1 f13 and the latin, syriac & coptic leave it out, so the overwhelming weight of MS is against it.
  (ii) Some of the words (eg) nussw are unusual and only used in John.
• Steven Carr Wed, 6 May 1998 06:36

{d}Why am I not right about Mark 16:9-20? A) Codex Washingtonensis is 5th century not 4th. B) It reads 'And they excused themselves saying 'This age of awlessness and unbelief is under Satan, who does not allow the truth and power; of God to prevail over the unclean things of the spirits' etc etc I won't bother with all the rest.   It is amazing that you can quote a manuscript which has such a large addition to Mark 16:9-20 as 'proof' of the reliability of Mark 16:9-20. Did you think I woudn't know about it?
  Where is Mark 16:9-20 in Irenaeus? It is not on the Greek version. There is a reference to a few of the verses in the Latin translation. You are quoting corrupt manuscripts to try to support other corrupt manuscripts!
{e} You are right to say I should have put 'spear' not 'sword' in the addition in Matthew 27:49 to be found in Codex Vaticanus, Sinaiticus, Ephraemi, Codex Regius etc.
{f}  Still the fact remains that you are reduced to saying that the manuscript tradition is reliable, when you are unable to give an early manuscript which does not have deliberate alterations.
• Nicholas Beale Fri 8 May 98 7:00

{d} My 2nd Edition Nestle/Kilpatrick critical edition (1957) gives W as 4thC but it seems that that most of the web references put it as c5th.  There is evidence that current datings are rather too modern, but it really doesn't matter much whether W is 380 or 420!  I'm following Nestle in referring to Ireneaus and it doesn't give the specific references. You admit that it is referred to in Latin, and it is (faux)naive to say "it's not in the Greek, only in the Latin" Ireneaus of Lyons wrotein Latin! {wrong - see below!}
{e}  Reguis is 8thC, and Nestle doesn't give C for that variant.  Again the point is that the overwhelming weight of MS is in favour of the text, and the internal evidence that is a fragment transposed from John are pretty overwhelming as well.
{f} No-one suggests that any single extant ancient MS of the NT is totally reliable - you're tilting at windmills again. Accurate MS copying was difficult. Come to that, how many newspaper reports are totally reliable, or eyewitness accounts?  However,  provided there are many independent accounts you can get at the truth. It's a question of extracting the signal from the noise, a well-understood and robust process in many fields. The fact that the only example of real doubt is {b} the inclusion of 2 insignificant verses in Luke rather proves the point.  It does not matter if there is some extra 'noise' on top of the signal in one channel.
• Steven Carr Fri 8 May 1998 19:13

Nicholas Beale wrote that Irenaeus wrote in Latin. He did not. He wrote in Greek.  The attribution of some verses of Mark 16:9-20 to Mark in Irenaeus is missing from the Greek version. See D.C.Parker's book 'The Living Text of the Gospels'.
• Nicholas Beale Sat 9 May 98 7:00

I'm sorry. Although he was Bishop of Lyons and spoke (and must have written in) both Latin and Greek and the book is known by its Latin title, Steven is right, it was originally written in Greek.  But the Greek text is lost and has only survived in fragments, the only text we have is "a very ancient Latin translation, the scrupulous fidelity of which is beyond doubt".  It would almost certainly have been translated into Latin under his supervision or that of his close disciples.  So I'm afraid it is still (faux)naive to say "it's not in the Greek" when all that means it is "it's not in the few fragments of the Greek text that have survived."
  Irenaeus was a great guy! He taught that "Time is an experimentum, an apprenticeship in communion, for God wishes to deify human beings without destroying their freedom" (see Olivier Clement's great book The Roots of Christian Mysticism).  He also know Polycarp, a disciple of John the Apostle.
• Steven Carr Sat 9 May 98 18:09

{a} It is rather astonishing to claim that the Latin translation of 'Against Heresy' was produced under the personal supervision of Irenaeus. Is  there any evidence for this?
{b}  Eusebius does claim that Irenaeus claimed that Polycarp claimed to have spoken to John, who claimed to be a disciple of Jesus. This is an isnad {=in Islam, the chain or linkage of human reporters that authenticate the material as deriving from the time of Muhammad and his companions.}which is far less well attributed than Muslim isnads, supposedly going back to Muhammad.
  Polycarp himself never quotes John, or John's Gospel. Matthew, yes but John no. A 'Life of Polycarp' which tries to magnify Polycarp's life as much as possible never mentions any connection with John.
   Irenaeus also claimed that Papias {some info here} was a disciple of John - a claim that even Eusebius regarded as ridiculous.
{c} If Irenaeus (c. 180 AD) was wrong about one 'follower' of John, why should we accept any other claims without a shred of evidence to support them, while rejecting similar Islamic isnads, and rejecting Valentinus's claim (c. 130 AD) to have been taught by Theudas, who was taught by Paul?
 {d} John's Gospel is only called John's Gospel because the name of John does not appear in it.
• Nicholas Beale Sun 10 May 98 19:00

{a}He's Bishop of Lyons working mainly in a Latin-speaking milieu.  He writes the greatest work of theology of his age and area, confuting serious heresies.  He is a Bishop with a team of literate followers. If he doesn't translate it his followers will rush to.
{b}  You're at it again with "never quotes". There is only one extant work. which is 4pp long.  The apocriphal "Life of Polycarp" is by pseudo-Pionius, compiled probably in the middle of 4thC. It is "altogether valueless as a contribution to our knowledge of Polycarp. It does not, so far as we know, rest on any tradition, early or late, and may probably be regarded as a fiction of the author's own brain"  So it's quite irrelevant.
{c}  The point about Christian "isnads" is that they don't matter much. The validity of  teaching depends on it being discerned by the Church as valid guided by the Holy Spirit and the Bible, not on whether it was done by a pupil of Paul.  If RedC is false then the teaching is invalid anyway but if RedC is true then these are the criteria.  Even if Valentinus had studied under Paul himself it would not make his heresies any more valid.  However becasue he was a deciever, it is much less probable that his assertions are true than the assertions of St Irenaeus.  This is not "circular" it is merely consistent.
{d} That couldn't be true! "James" and "Matthew" don't appear in John either (nor does "Kylie" come to that!). John's Gospel so called because it was universally believed to have been written by John and his disciples: if there had been any doubt about this it would have been reflected in variant attributions in the many MS and fragments.  Idiots in the 19th/20th C tried to call this into question and ridiculous claims about late/gnostic authorship and supposed "internal evidence" for non-Johannine authorship were made.  These have been quite discredited and never had any real validity.  It seems clear that the Johannine school put it into its final form, based firmly on the closely-recalled teachings of their Apostle.
• Steven Carr Sat 23 May 98 23:52

The Dead Sea Scrolls were about 700 years earlier than any previously known copies and showed that the Old Testament books had barely changed.
 Would anybody care to claim that this is true for Samuel, Jeremiah, Psalms, Deuteronomy,Joshua,Judges,Kings,Exodus, etc...
  There are 18 Qumran manuscripts of Isaiah. The most famous is the complete scroll 1QIsaa, which has very different spellings and 'is secondary to the MT in most instances in which the two diverge', to quote Kevin O'Connell S.J.
  Before people say that spelling changes do not matter, we are regularly told that the scribes were so amazingly good that they did not make spelling changes, and the complete scroll of Isaiah has Micah 1:4 in the middle of it.
  Of the 38 books found in the DSS, only Isaiah is ever claimed to be an accurate copy and only the complete scroll is ever cited. Of course, a hit rate of one book out of 38 is more than adequate for fundamentalists to claim an inerrant text, even if they have to choose one manuscript out of 18 Isaiah manuscripts even to get the 1 from 38 success rate, and even the one Isaiah they choose is 'overrated', to quote O'Connell S.J.
  It should be pointed out that the NT quotes different versions of Isaiah 6:9-10, showing that different versions existed.
• Steven Carr Sun, 24 May 1998 13:02

Surely Tacitus writing about 110 AD, simply repeated what Christians were telling him was the origin of the word 'Christian'. (BTW, he never mentions the name Jesus)
 How could Tacitus have researched the death of Jesus, even assuming Pilate kept records? All Jerusalem records were lost in the Jewish war and the Capitol library had been burned to the ground in the year of the 4 Emperors? Incidentally, Tacitus calls Pilate a procurator rather than a prefect, and seems to be under the impression that Drusilla (Acts 24:24) was the granddaughter of Antony and Cleopatra.
  It is as certain as certain can be that Annals 15:44 simply repeats what Christians of the second century were saying about the death of Christ. It is not independent confirmation.
• Nicholas Beale Sun 24 May 98 18:20

{a}Wow! " as certain as certain can be".  This is proof to you, we will have you a Christian in no time, if you don't become a Theosophist first!
  Tacitus clearly regards the Christians as scum.  It is really likely that he would listen only to their side of the story.  We know from Pliny and Tacitus that they were being heavily persecuted, don't you think it is at least possible that there was an official line from the authorities on what the sect's origins were?  In which case, who would Tacitus have followed, the official line or the Christian line?
{b} 1st Century societies did not depend exclusively on written records, and even if the main records were lost subsidiary documents would not be. And OK, he refers to Christus and not Jesus, so what?  Come on Steven, this is not one of your best efforts!
• Steven Carr Sun, 24 May 1998 19:45

{a}Actually, Pliny did not know what the official line on Christianity was. That is why he wrote his letter - to find out. It is bizarre to claim that Pliny did not get his information from Christians when he tortured Christians to get information from them. Perhaps you could tell us where Pliny mentions anything about the life of Jesus at all. Perhaps you could tell us why he wrote to the Emperor telling him what Christians believed when he already knew the official line from the authorities.
  Trajan said Christians were not to be hunted down. Being a Christian was not, in itself, a crime. Ex-Christians were not punished in the way that ex-burglars or ex-murderers would have been. The crime was in not acknowledging the existence of Gods. Usually though, honouring the Emperor was just once a year and Christians could either send their pagan slaves to do it or arrange to be out of town on that day, or sometimes only the authorities of the town had to do it. This all changed in the dreadful persecution of 250 AD and the worse one of 303-312 AD
   Perhaps you could tell us where Tacitus that Christians were being heavily persecuted. He says that Nero (a nutcase) persecuted Christians in Rome, but even Christian Bishops (Melito if you must know) said that only Nero and Domitian persecuted Christians.
{b} Pliny and Tacitus were second century. {b1} You still haven't explained how Tacitus could know all about Jesus when he made such a blunder about Antony and Cleopatra's granddaugher (sic) Drusilla, assuming Acts 24:24 is right that Drusilla was Jewish, (which it is)
  It is quite true that subsidiary documents were kept and were restored to the Capitol library after the war in 69 AD, but only the most important Senate decrees were restored. There were no records from Jerusalem to restore.
• Nicholas Beale Mon 25 May 98 21:45

{a}All I claimed was that Tacitus (not Pliny) did not get his information exclusively from Christians. Clearly there must have been some official line because they were being reported and put to death, according to Pliny.
{b} OK 1st & 2nd Century society ...! The issue is records from 30AD to 99AD - the last 11 years aren't such a problem!
{b1}I don't assert that Tacitus "knew all about" Jesus, but that he had his meagre information from non-Christian sources, as well as possibly from Christian ones, and that he would have tended to prefer the non-Christian sources.  (BTW since Jewishness comes from having a Jewish mother there is no reason why A&C's granddaughter could not be Jewish).
• Stephen Carr Mon, 25 May 1998 22:16

What non-Christian sources could he have used?  Tacitus has to explain the very basics of the term 'Christians'. Evidently, they were not well known.
  Pliny, BTW, also confirms that many Christians had given up their faith.
Drusilla was the daughter of Herod Agrippa and it is most unlikely that Antony and Cleopatra had a Jewish daughter.
  As can be seen, Tacitus was not so interested in Judean procurators that he would have scoured crucifixion records of 80 years earlier - records which would have been destroyed by fire long before he wrote, and records which would not have used Tacitus's term 'Christ'. He was more concerned in Annals 15:44 with badmouthing Nero.
  You're better off with Josephus. Tacitus and Suetonius are not very good evidence.
• Stephen Carr 26 May 1998 21:40

'According to the Lord's own word, we tell you that we who are still alive, who are left till the coming of the Lord, will certainly not precede those who have fallen asleep'. (1 Thess. 4:15)
 I'm reminded of a Jehovah's Witness book 'Millions Now Living Will Never Die' (1921 if I remember correctly). Just like Paul, everybody who wrote that book is now as dead as a doornail.
• Nicholas Beale Weds 27 May 98 8:40

If you look at the context, all he is saying is that people who happen to be alive when Jesus comes again don't get preferential treatment.  Of course, he was expecting this very soon, and he was mistaken. It is imminent but unpredicatable, and hasn't happened yet (in time).
•  Steven Carr Wed, 27 May 1998 16:32

We know Paul was mistaken, but who was he quoting?
• Nicholas Beale Weds 27 May 98 18:20

All Paul is saying is that those of us (Christians) who are alive then will have no advantage over those of us who have died: no mistake about that.
  Paul (eg 1 Thess 5:1) and Jesus (eg Matt 24:36) are both very clear that they do not know when the second coming will take place.
  BTW There is some debate about what the greek ( en logw Kuriou) means: my most modern translation (REB 1990) has "this I tell you as a word from the Lord".
• Steven Carr Wed, 27 May 1998 18:42

Both put it within one generation or the lifetime of the people being addressed.
  Of course, it comes as no suprise that the early scribes often left 'nor the Son' out of Matthew 24:36, and sometimes from  Mark 13:32. Presumably they found the idea that Jesus did not know something rather shocking.
  For example, the original hand of Sinaiticus included it, a corrector erased it, and a second corrector restored it. It is missing from the Latin Vulgate. Origen attests the omission.
 It would still be interesting to know at what date the manuscripts became reliable.

---

• Diarmad Weir 11 Nov 98 At least you have (almost) got off that pointless textual analysis gig.
• Steven Carr Thurs 12 Nov 98

I don't think it is pointless that the New Testament was altered in the second century AD. It is Nicholas who thinks it quite immaterial that eg 25% of the last 167 verses of Luke's Gospel were edited or amended in the second century AD. For evidence of this, see the Reverend David Parker's book 'The Living Text of the Gospels'.
 The New Testament manuscripts were a doctrinal battle ground for centuries. See 'The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture' by Bart Ehrman.
 Is it pointless that Nicholas thinks the manuscript tradition is reliable but is unable to name a reliable manuscript?
 If he does name a manuscript, I will tell him which verses in that manuscript are missing or changed from what he reads in his Bible today.
• Nicholas Beale Thurs 12 Nov 98  For once I rather agree with Diarmind.

{a} Fascinating though Bart Ehrman's speculations may be (see eg here)  we simply don't have enough evidence of what the 'orginal' texts were independent of the C2 MSS for these ideas to be other than speculations.
{b} Using the normal criteria of information processing, as debated exhaustively here, scholars have recovered what seem to be the best guesses at the original texts and these are used in all the standard translations.
{c} It takes more than one academic in North Carolina to change this.
 {d} And I certainly don't have time to read his book and debate this with you.  Sorry.
• Nicholas Beale Thurs 12 Nov 98 {e}Well having now looked at Ehrman's lecture it seems pretty clear that his book is pretty much contentious rubbish.

His key argument is: " Mark makes two poignant references to the salvific significance of Jesus' death and Luke changed them both. The first and most obvious comes in the famous words of Jesus in Mark 10:45: "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." If Luke found this theology acceptable, it is hard to explain what he did with the verse. He omitted it altogether."
But the incident described in Mark 10:45 and the parallel passage in Luke22:25-27 are completely different: Mark's one is before they come to Jerusalem and Luke's is during the Last Supper.  Now I know that there are some 'scholars' who assume that Jesus only said or did anything once, and that when there are two similar sayings in the NT they must be referring to the same event, with one (or both) having got the details wrong.  But this assumption is completely ludicrous - all teachers repeat their teaching with slight variations and Luke is referring to a different incident where (evidently) Jesus did not add "and to give his life..."  Since he had only just made this point (and we know from several sources including Paul that Jesus explcitly linked the Last Supper with his coming death) it would have been odd to say that again, and in any event the point of the saying in this context is rather different.  Since Ehrmann's argument is manifestly spurious at this point, I see no reason to trudge through x00 pp of drivel.
• Steven Carr Thurs 12 Nov 98

{a} I don't think the existence of manuscripts missing Luke 24:12, Luke 23:43-44, Luke 22:19b-20, 'Son of God' in Mark 1:1, Jesus being pierced with a spear before he dies in Matthew 27:49 etc etc, can be dismissed as 'speculations'. These manuscripts exist.
 Even the only manuscript which is 100% guaranteed to be second-century (p52) has a different wording to later manuscripts of John.
 Nor is the idea that the text varied even more in the second century than later on 'speculation'. We have the patristic writers giving quotes which are different from what we read today. For example, Origen flatly denies that Jesus is called a carpenter (tekton) in any of the Gospels.
{b} Really? Are you saying that the RSV has the same text as the NIV? Quite a few of the verses in the NIV are just footnotes in the RSV. Still if you say they are used in all the standard translations, who am I to point out that they are not, or that eg, Nestle-Aland changes its opinions on eg Luke 22:19b-20 from one edition to the next.
There were over 500 changes in Nestle-Aland from edition 25 to edition 26.
 The 'best guesses' (ie the text most scholars agree on) , from Tischendorf's 1872 edition to Nestle-Aland 25 (1963) differ in 37% of the verses. The 'best text' has changed in 37% of the verses.
{c} I don't think the existence of some 300,000 or more variants was the imagining of one academic in North Carolina.
{d}'My mind is made up. Don't bother me with facts'.
• Steven Carr Fri 13 Nov 98

{e1} You are still unable to come up with any place where Luke says Jesus died 'for sin' or 'for us'. Did Luke find the theology that Jesus died
for us 'acceptable'?
 It is a basic finding of work on the Synoptic Gospels that Luke uses 360 of Mark's 661 verses.
 He does not use Mark 10:45. This is not 'contentious rubbish'. Luke used Mark as a source , and he did not use Mark 10:45. This is a fact.
{e2} Is Luke 22:19-20 , which is the passage in question in Ehrman's essay, referring to the same event as Mark 14:22-24? Who are these 'scholars' who think the Last Supper only happened once?
{e3} If you are saying that Luke sneaked Mark 10:45 into Luke 22:19b-20, then you have to explain why there are early manuscripts which drop these verses.
 The RSV relegated Luke 22:19b-20 as a footnote. They were in Nestle-Aland 25 in double brackets. Wescot and Hort regarded them as a scribal harmonization to 1 Cor. 11. The wording is far more similar to 1 Cor.11 than to Mark 14, yet Luke used Mark and not Paul.
 The question in the essay is 'Is Luke 22:19b-20 genuine or a harmonization by a scribe to 1 Cor. 11?'. Is your claim that Luke 22:19-20 is genuine because it fits in with Luke's theology of atonement and we know Luke had a theology of atonement because of Luke 22:19-20?
{e4}'Drivel' 'Ludicrous' 'Contentious rubbish' - good academic terms :-)  The Reverend David Parker, in his book, 'The Living Text of the Gospels' says Ehrman's book is 'brilliant' 'overwhelming evidence' 'a tour de force'. Sorry, but Ehrman has a very good reputation.
• Steven Carr Fri 13 Nov 98 I had written :- The RSV relegated Luke 22:19b-20 as a footnote. This is not true.

The RSV has this in the main text, and has a footnote explaining that there are early manuscripts who lack this text.
It is the Revised English Bible which has Luke 22:19b-20 as a footnote. I only take the NIV here to Bradford during the week and forgot exactly which English translation has which text. However, it is still one example of how the main English translations do not all use the same underlying Greek text.
• Steven Carr Fri 13 Nov 98

Well, I agree. The Christian faith is not based on having reliable copies of the manuscripts.
• Fr Gregory Hallam 14 Nov 98 Dear Steven

I asked you this question some time ago and I didn't consider your answer to be persuasive then ... more evasive.
{a}Why do you apparently consider the later emendation of biblical texts to be reprehensible?
{b} Why do you consider the earlier versions to be more reliable?
{c}Why do you think that faith stands or falls by such things?
{d} As you may have gathered, these things do not trouble me.  No doubt you think that they should.  But, I still don't understand why.  You seem to
have very strange grounds for defending or attacking faith ... grounds that I do not accept at all.  This is why I cannot debate with you until these
matters are cleared up.
• Steven Carr 15 Nov 98

{a}I don't. Reprehensible is the wrong term for how I feel about them. Interesting is a better term.
{b}Fewer scribes had copied them so they were closer to the originals.
{c}It doesn't. Faith is not based on what the New Testament says. Most Christians have almost no idea what the New Testament says , let alone how it may or may not have been changed.
{d} As you may have realised, my interest is in the Bible rather than in Christianity as such. I find textual analysis fascinating - it is a very interesting detective puzzle, trying to piece together the evidence, weighing up what changes were or were not likely and pulling together sources of various kinds before expressing an opinion. Basically, I just like using my brain.
• Fr Gregory Hallam 15 Nov 98 Dear Steven

Good!  We share more of a common perspective than either of us hitherto might have thought.  I also interested (but not as fascinated as you) in text and on the same grounds.  I have only one quibble with you from your response and that's the "Chinese whispers" theory of textual  transcription and emendation.
 The Bible is not the sort of literature where the original was laid down in great(er) purity and then subsequently degraded according to the usual and observable processes, (although I would not claim that this has never happened).  The earliest traditions themselves reveal a battle ground for truth amongst competing perspectives, opinions, convictions, whatever. Textual development and canonical processes have been much more influenced by this battle for truth.  After all, the experience comes first, then the oral tradition, then the written text.  When the written text appears, neither the oral tradition, nor the experience ceases.  The text merely acts as a conservative break on subsequent otherwise tangential developments. The text continues as well in other ways; eg. the Creeds which again mark LIMITS beyond which lies heresy.  No written text of any kind can ESTABLISH orthodoxy.  Unless one belongs to the sociological school of "history belongs to the victors," textual analysis, historical / canonical criticism must deal with WHY certain beliefs were received and others not.  I don't think that this can be answered on textual grounds alone.  The text describes, it does not give a rationale for the forces behind its development.
  I like using my mind also.  That's why I feared a post-literalist angle on your part.  I now think that this is probably not true.  It's your position
now that fascinates, not your handling of text.

Main Topics in Debate

• Anthropic Principle
• Notes from Nature
• Comprehensible Universe
• Objective Morailty
• Jesus
• Suffering
• Other God & Science
• Other Star Course
• Other
• Biblical Manuscripts
• How can uncertainty be compatible with faith
• AJ Ayer's Verification Principle Refuted