Steven Avery
Administrator
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Pure Bible - June 4, 2014.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/permalink/622891484469411/
This thread has a lot of interesting material.
We will start with the first post, and I will do some editing and updating.
Auxiliary thread:
Facebook - NT Textual Criticism
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTT...id=665515296868807&offset=0&total_comments=17
Pure Bible - June 4, 2014.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/purebible/permalink/622891484469411/
This thread has a lot of interesting material.
We will start with the first post, and I will do some editing and updating.
Auxiliary thread:
Facebook - NT Textual Criticism
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTT...id=665515296868807&offset=0&total_comments=17
1 Timothy 3:16 (AV)
And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh,
justified in the Spirit,
seen of angels,
preached unto the Gentiles,
believed on in the world,
received up into glory.
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Today we are going to quote mostly contras, on the grammar of this verse. (Most of you know the issues, we can review them later if helpful.)
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Metzger:
...since the neuter relative pronoun ὅ must have arisen as a scribal correction of ὅς (to bring the relative into concord with μυστήριον) ....
Notice that this is first of all an acknowledgment of the Greek solecism. The lack of any sensible concord for the hanging masculine relative pronoun. And a de facto acknowledgment of a feeble text (ie. not inspired by God) taken in by the hortians.
And the blunder ὅς in the Metzger economy was immediately being corrected by scribes in the 1st and 2nd centuries ... in time for all the versional translations. (Then the ὃ was some how reverting back to ὅς being more common, yet both are ultra-minority in the Greek mss.)
Metzger
the witnesses that read ὅ (D* itd, g, 61, 86 vg Ambrosiaster Marius Victorinus Hilary Pelagius Augustine) also indirectly presuppose ὅς as the earlier reading.
Boinggg.. that is circular to the hortian assumption that ὅς was 1st-century autographic. If ὅ was Paul's writing (Grotius, Newton, Wetstein and others) then it is invalid, since it is easy to see that being modified either accidentally or purposefully. (e.g. a scribe thinking .. why have "mystery" as what was manifested, that is strange, must be wrong, I'll fix it).
And if θεός or ΘΣ was Paul's writing, then the corruption to ὅ could easily occur directly without passing through ὅς, or collecting $200. Even more so if mss were written with ΘΣ (nomina sacra).
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Lest anyone thing that Metzger was original in this thinking, rather than acting as a hortian speech-writer updater (redacting turgid prose to monotonous and repetitive error) .. let's go to:
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The New Testament in the Original Greek (1881)
Westcott & Hort
http://books.google.com/books?id=gZ4HAAAAQAAJ&pg=RA1-PA133
"The Western ὅ is a manifest correction of ὅς , intended to remedy the apparent breach of concord between the relative and τὸ μυστήριον ... the change from ὅς to θεός would be facilitated, if it was not caused, by the removal of an apparent solecism ...."
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So W&H actually theorize two distinct changes caused by the solecism. Since they recognized that it is a glaring anomaly.
Thus, the "apparent" breach of concord and the "apparent" solecism must have been quite *apparent * to those who modified the corruption text (in the hort-metzger cabal of textual theory.)
Murray J. Harris and James Keith Elliott (The Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus) reference from W & H the "apparent" solecism, and Harris gives it a fair amount of emphasis.
Jesus as God: The New Testament Use of Theos in Reference to Jesus (2008)
Murray J. Harris
http://books.google.com/books?id=U9VLAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA267
"Coming after the neuter noun μυστήριον, the masculine relative pronoun 61; is the harder reading and was therefore more prone to scribal correction ('The removal of an apparent solecism," WH 2: appendix 133)... two grammatical difficulties— the lack of concord with μυστήριον and the absence of an explicit antecedent. ... a scribe .. wished to replace a "weak" relative pronoun ὅς that lacked an antecedent with a "strong" substantive (θεός) as the subject of the series of six finite verbs that follow."
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The modern geek-o-crats are very happy, under textcrit and seminarian indoctrination, and various perks, to look for excuses for a corrupted and inferior text placed in their hands by the hortians.
Anyway, careful reading shows that Harris is almost painfully aware of the difficulty in the Critical Text solecism. Repeatedly referring to the lack of an antecedent and the difficulty and the harder reading. Harris has a more extensive grammatical background so all this was rather glaring.
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Harris at least mentions two interesting resources (i.e he is way beyond the typical Metzger parroting):
Examination of the Various Readings of 1 Tim iii. 16
William Hayes Ward (1835-1916)
Bibliotheca Sacra, Volume 22 (1865) p. 1-50
http://books.google.com/books?id=rd8WAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA1
British and Foreign Evangelical Review (1865) p. 386-424
http://books.google.com/books?id=iA4EAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA386
And the excellent five pages by Frederick Field (1801-1885), a reviser who jumped ship on "God was manifest in the flesh" (although he still was in the hortian fog on the heavenly witnesses.)
Notes on the translation of the New Testament: being the Otium Norvicense (pars tertia) (1899)
Frederick Field
http://books.google.com/books?id=h0A1AQAAIAAJ&pg=PA204
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