Damon Lee Gang
Is there more information on lectionary tendencies from 100 AD to 200 AD because as I'm reading I find myself wondering how strong your case is here?
James E Snapp Jr
Damon Lee Gang,
Besides the statements I mentioned from
Chrysostom, Augustine, and the author of Apologia David, one could consider what Justin says about the customary reading of the memoirs of the apostles. And, one could simply consider, too, that Pentecost was /already/ on the calendar of Jewish Christians who celebrated it as part of their Jewish heritage. And we have a statement or two in Origen and in the (or, a) "Apocalypse of Paul" about lectors.And, some of the papyri are lectionaries, as described previously in this group. But
we have hardly any *direct* evidence of lection-cycles in the mid-100's. (Similarly we have hardly any *extant* copies of most books of the NT from the same time-period.) To an extent, the elegance with which the theory fits the evidence lends its premises credibility.
Damon Lee Gang
Do we know anything about L1604?
James E Snapp Jr
Damon Lee Gang,
I recall reading a bit about it -- just incidental mentions here and there. A fragmentary Greek-Sahidic text from the 300's that does not fit any known lection-cycle.
(But, bear in mind that in the file, I do not insist that a detailed lection-cycle be in existence in order for the loss-mechanism to be present -- just a very rudimentary lection-cycle involving the major feast-days. Even in the USA, most churches, I suspect, have such a lection-cycle in a practical sense -- always reading from Mt. 28/Mk 9/ Lk 24/ Jn 20-21 at Eastertime, and always reading from Mt 1 & 2 and Luke 1-2 and John 1 at Christmastime.)
Ach; forgot one: one could make a case, I suspect, that the Diatessaron was designed to be read as a collection of lections. (Thus, the genealogies were omitted, not because of some docetistic agenda, but merely because they make rather boring lections.)
Damon Lee Gang
A harmony makes sense for personal reading ... I find myself reading to a certain place in each gospel (I was doing that today in fact) and trying to match my readings in the Gospels ... I think a harmony of the gospels is natural. Your point about genealogies, though, is a good one ... as well as us noting how it merges some things for continuous reading (avoiding repetition). Also, the lack of youtube (
) in those days would make me think that rather than lection that the Diatessaron would be good entertainment if read out loud (without 'boring' repetition)!? Maybe a kind of "The Message" of that day for the popular masses?
Jeremy Wright
Would you hold to its placement as is in johns gospel?
James E Snapp Jr
Jeremy Wright,
Yes ("as is" being between 7:52 and 8:12).
Casey PerkinsJames, this is one of the best defenses of the Pericope Adulterae that I've seen, and I hope it will be widely disseminated. Have you considered revising your ebook on Amazon to include the additional material?
Buck DanielIt cannot be emphasized enough that a prerequisite to textual criticism of the New Testament is a thorough understanding of the textual criticism of the Old Testament. The very process of lection reading was inherited from the Jews (Luke 4:16), and all medieval Hebrew OT mss are marked with ancient guides for the lector (qere). That this process would carry over into the NT should have been the first assumption brought to bear on the evidence, rather than that hundreds of scribes would be likely to insert, alongside the text, their judgement against the canonicity of the very scriptures they were transmitting. There is really no excuse for Pereira's ignorance (James 3:1).
James E Snapp Jr
David Palmer,
(Addressing a few questions/posts together here)
DP: "What is the "jump" indicator? Is it what looks kind of like a Pi over a V?"
Yes, basically an abbreviation for hUPERBALE.
DP: "The note in MSS 1 and 1582 . . . you have a typo there: you have "86th chapter" instead of "8th."
It's not a typo. That's what the note says. (Section-divisions are the reference-point, not the modern chapter-divisions.) (There's additional material about this in Gwynn's descriptions of some of the Syrian evidence but it takes a bit of technical detail to unravel it all.)DP: "On the relative absence of OUN and the increased presence of DE, I noticed that independently, from simply reading the Gospel of John in Greek. This really is significant, you minimize it too much."I pointed out that elsewhere in John (as others have noted previously), there are stretches without OUN and there are stretches with DE. So the anti-authenticity case at this point depends on a combination of two features, /neither/ of which are Johannine, to create one non-Johannine feature. I suspect that something similar could be done for several other 12-verse passages of John.
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Casey Perkins,
Well, /now/ I have. But I would imagine that it would make better sense if people read Pereira's essay first.
Perhaps I should revise it so as to refer to Pereira's objections (most of which are echoes of earlier authors' objections anyway) in a more generic way, and then add it as a Part 2 of "The Pericope Adulterae (John 7:53-8:11) - A Tour of the External Evidence." But for now, it is what it is.
Casey Perkins
James E Snapp Jr
I just remember that the ebook focused on showing that the evidence was not lopsided in favor of exclusion; I don't recall it making a strong affirmative case for inclusion. That was the difference I had in mind, not any specifics in reference to Pereira.
James E Snapp Jr
Casey Perkins,
Yes; that's what it was supposed to do -- to allow readers a look at the evidence, instead of having to be fed exclusively Metzger's "overwhelming" commentary.