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Originally Posted by shelly  I only got half way through this thread, but here's something I noticed. One of the arguements is that the text copied from was supposedly destroyed once a new one was made. and that the reason the Alexandrian texts exist is because they were ignored and not copied.
So why do we have any of these manuscripts? Shouldn't they all have been destroyed?
Someone made the arguement that that was a Jewish practice to destroy the original once a copy was made. I don't see that a Jewish practice would/could be imposed on Gentile Christians(it was stopped before reguarding circumcision).
Maybe I'm way off base. I know I'm in over my head  on this discussion. Just a thought, not claiming its a good one.
shelly |
Hi shelly:
I think that you are partly on track here. Since I made the argument I guess it is my responsibility to clarify it a bit.
The first few centuries of the Church saw a huge number of Jews become converts to Christianity. Peter, in Acts chapter 2, was preaching in the Temple where only Jews were allowed, and 3,000 of them were converted. The Apostles "went to the Jews first" like Paul did when he would first preach in a synagogue as he entered a city. The persecution that many Jews would stir up in the 2rd and 4th Centuries was because the Christians were successful in converting the Jews to Christendom.
This was such a problem that Jewish ceremonial practices that were fulfilled by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ started to be taught as law. You pointed out one of these in the practice of circumcision which was changed to baptism, c.f. Col. 2:11-12.
However, not all Jewish practices were considered wrong - the singing of Psalms, for example, was the exclusive practice of the Church for the next few centuries - even Gentiles. The Jewish art of transcribing the Scriptures was also not a part of the ceremonial law. There was nothing ungodly or unbiblical about it. In fact, we see examples of how accurate they were when we compare the Dead Sea Scrolls (circa 2nd Century BC) with our modern copies of the Old Testament.
The oldest copy we have of the entire Old Testament is about 1000 AD. Since the OT talks about matters that happened circa 4000 BC such a manuscript would be considered extremely late (according to the Critical Text theory). Even the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contain only parts of the OT, would be considered late by this philosophy.
Yet, we have all the confidence in the world that the OT text that we read in our Bibles is the same text (translated) used by David, Isaiah, Daniel, and Jesus. Such is a testimony of the Providence of God in the transmitting of the Scriptures. There is little doubt that God continued to use the Jewish practice of transmitting the Scriptures through the first three centuries of the Church.
What evidence do we have of this?
What James White points out as "phantom manuscripts" actually proves that the Jewish practice was in place. We find no
Greek manuscripts which uphold specifically Byzantine readings of the New Testament during the first few centuries. White argues that such readings never existed during this period in the first place. The problem with his argument is that we do have specifically Byzantine readings in various (non-Greek) translations of the Bible that date back to the early 2nd Century AD: the Old Italic (2nd century), The Old Syraic (3rd century), and Jerome's Vulgate (early 4th century), for example.
How do we reconcile this? Simple. The
Greek copies of the New Testament were considered copies of the original Gospels and Letters of the Apostles. Consequently, they were subject to the Jewish rules of transmission: The "older" copies were destroyed while the younger ones were retained. This is why we do not have any "older" Greek texts that affirm the Byzantine manuscripts. The translations into Syraic and Latin were not considered "official" copies. Thus, they were not subject to the same rules of transmission that were used on the original Greek texts.
That we do find "older" Greek manuscripts that uphold the Critical Text indicates that these Greek manuscripts were never copied. In fact, we do not have any "younger" texts that uphold the Critical Text, and that is a very strong indicator that these "older" texts were considered by the Church to be corrupted - apart from the abundance of internal evidence that shows that they have been tampered/translated by Gnostics. These texts are referred to as the "Alexandrian Variants" and include such older texts as the "Sinaiticus" (reffered to as "Aleph") and the "Vaticanus" (also referred to as "B"). It is these texts that are the basis of the modern translations: RSV, ESV, and NIV.
After the 4th Century or so the Bible started to be copied more abundantly. The vast majority, if not all, of these copies followed the Byzantine manuscripts. The Church having received the Byzantine copies through history understood these copies to be the closest to the originals - and that is why they copied them.
So, to make this simple: The Byzantine manuscripts (which are the basis for the King James Version) have always been upheld by the Church as the true copies of the original writings of the Apostles. The Alexandrian Variants (which are the basis for the RSV, ESV, and NIV) have always been rejected by the Church throughout all of history.
Hope this clears things up a bit!
Blessings on your research on this matter,
-CH