Ken, you beat me to it, but I’m glad you posted the entire piece by Cloud.
Lane, responding to your post #45:
I appreciate Matthew’s is not a “modern” genealogy, and that ancient writers would often abbreviate lineage, especially when the line was well known. There are many ideas as to why the number 14 was so prominent in Matthew’s. Some say that “the numerical value of 'David' in Hebrew is fourteen” (Cf., D.A. Carson,
EBC, p. 69), others that there was mystical meaning in the number to Matthew’s contemporaries (Leon Morris, [Eerdmans 1992], p. 25); David Cloud (quoting George DeHoff’s book on alleged contradictions) says, “The Jewish genealogies are marvels of accuracy even in this modern age. Every genealogy does what it purports to do—even an infidel could not ask more. There are genealogies which leave out some names. The object in such cases was not to include every name but to keep a regular line of descent; hence sometimes a genealogy may be found which skips from grandfather to grandson.”
Your point here is well taken: “The idea of generation does not always have to be genealogical.” But when you add, “It could be that Matthew simply wanted to include these names in the genealogy for their prophecies and Psalms”, you descend into speculation bordering on the absurd. For Matthew is clearly writing of lineage, not moving elsewhere in the “semantic range” of the word “generations”! You do your defense in behalf of the CT or ET a disservice when you grasp at such will-o’-the-wisp exegeses!
Because you can find an aberrant form of the aberrant LXX which contains the error of Amos for Amon (post #27) doesn’t make your case. When I say “aberrant” for the LXX itself I refer to the fact that it has been back-corrected in places to conform to the NT readings (see thread
Psalm 14:3 in LXX for example), so this is not a good source for precision in wording, in my view. There are many other criticisms which may be leveled at the LXX, but this is not the place to do it.
The alternate spellings for the king of Babylon in the Masoretic Text are found, not in Daniel, but in Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and evidently these were acceptable, but to have Matthew write names which were not accepted (I do not include a lone variant or two in LXX mss “accepted” as alternate spellings), but rather distinct spellings for other men’s names, is error, plain and simple, no matter how you try to defend it.
You said,
“There is no reason that any scribe would intentionally change Asa to Asaph, is there? But there is definite reason why a scribe might change Asaph to Asa, since this more closely matches the Kings/Chronicles genealogies (but doesn't necessarily match Matthew's theology). What you have to reckon with here is that the final explanation for a variant's reading must be able to explain why all the other variants arose, or it is not the best reading. I can explain easily the origin of the reading Asa. You cannot explain the origin of the reading Asaph.”
A scribe could easily write Asaph in error (and on the face of it it is an error), without it being deliberate. The origin of the reading Asa is that it is from Matthew’s pen, and reflects the authentic lineage, and was inspired by the Holy Spirit.
The fact remains the CT has Matthew err, despite your protestations.
But I really want to get at a more basic issue – and one that drives your presuppositions.
These are some questions/statements you have made. I compile them so as to answer them:
post #18 “In your mind, what elevates the Reformation editors, and the texts used in the Reformation, over the early third and fourth century manuscripts that are Alexandrian? Were the Alexandrians not part of the church? Why is the Alexandrian text-form illegitimate?”
post #49 “On what basis do you say that the Alexandrian texts were rejected by the Reformed church? The manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, for instance, were not discovered or known until the 19th century. Furthermore, you seem to be disenfranchising the Alexandrian church. Were they not part of the church? Did they not receive those texts when they were written? Is the Reformation the only part of church history that matters with regard to textual criticism? I was thinking about why it is that the Alexandrian text-form has so few manuscripts. Then it hit me: Alexandria was over-run by Islam in the Middle Ages. That's probably why these texts have not come out into the open before now. It is still a theory right now. However, that Alexandria was over-run by Islam is not theory. And I can easily believe that Islamic groups would not be very favorable to retaining NT manuscripts. If the Reformation had much of any Alexandrian texts to reject, they were so few that the balance of weight would still favor the Byzantine text-form at the time. But the Reformers never had an opportunity to reject the more full-orbed Alexandrian tradition that we have now. To say otherwise seems anachronistic to me.”
To answer these thoughts. First,
Vaticanus (B) has been in the Vatican Library at least since 1481, when it was catalogued. Erasmus knew of it, as one of his friends in Rome, Professor Paulus Bombasius, often sent him readings from it –
many readings – and he rejected them as departures from the common text accepted by the people of God, and from the Greek texts he came into contact with during his travels and searching out of manuscripts. Nor will it do to say he did not know the people of God, belonging to Rome as he did, because he fellowshipped with Protestants (and died among them), and was intimately acquainted with some of their teachers. The Reformers
did know of the Vaticanus readings.
In John Owen’s day, Brian Walton published his
Biblia Polyglotta, which was intended to attack the Reformation’s text – the
Textus Receptus – and it exhibited the variants, including Vaticanus’, in this (ultimately Romish) attempt to subvert the Reformation.
Ted Letis has done remarkable research (well documented) in this area, in his book,
The Majority Text, and I highlight the essay, “John Owen
Versus Brian Walton.” Also David Cloud, in his,
Myths About the Modern Versions, the chapter on Erasmus and the one following, “Myth Number Two: Reformation Editors Lacked Sufficient Manuscript Evidence,” gives abundant documentation that the variant readings of B were well known at that time. Aleph, or
Sinaiticus, is another story. It was as you say, discovered in the 1800s; but this leads to another topic. Seeing as Aleph (
a) is, after B, the main exemplar of the Alexandrian textform, and is one of the “oldest and most reliable manuscripts” (per the margin notes of the modern versions), it is an odd circumstance that it differs from its co-exemplar in
many places.
It will be edifying to see how these two manuscripts were resurrected from obscurity into places of prominence in the 19th century, and to take a brief peek at what the characters of each are.
Herman C. Hoskier was a textual scholar of the Greek New Testament who minutely examined and then opposed Westcott and Hort’s principal texts,
Vaticanus and
Sinaiticus in a two-volume study. The first is titled,
Codex B And Its Allies: A Study and an Indictment; the second volume, which we will quote from here, is titled,
Codex B And Its Allies, Part II: Chiefly concerning a, but covering three thousand differences between and a and B in the Four Gospels, with the evidence supporting each side, including the new manuscript evidence collected by VON SODEN, and the collateral readings of other important authorities.(1) Hoskier states,
In the light of the following huge lists let us never be told in the future that either a or B represents any form of “Neutral” text…
Our little study [after the examination of B in Volume I] would be quite incomplete without a further account of the idiosyncrasies of a. This is best shown by exhibiting the principal places where a and B differ, which, in number, far exceed what anyone might suppose who does not go deeply into the comparative study of the two documents. As a matter of fact the “shorter” text of the two is found in a …
I have tabulated the major part of these differences between a and B in the Gospels and given the supporting authorities on each side. They amount to—
Matt……..656+
Mark…….567+
Luke…….791+
John……1022+
Total....3036+ (2)
Hoskier’s study continues on for 381 pages of documentation (412 including a Scriptural index), if anyone is interested in pursuing a comparative examination of
a and B, the foundation of
all critical texts.
----------
(1)
Codex B And Its Allies, by Herman C. Hoskier (London: Bernard Quaritch, 1914).
(2) Ibid., Vol. II, page 1.
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In a courtroom when two witnesses testifying to the same matter disagree sharply with one another, they cannot be called “reliable” witnesses, but rather they impugn one another’s testimony. And when such
unreliable witnesses are scrutinized in the light of a virtual multitude of other witnesses who disagree with the two while agreeing with one another, the evidence becomes preponderant in favor of the majority. Mere “age” of a manuscript may easily be offset by other more weighty factors. It is a given regarding the condition of a manuscript that those exhibiting the least wear have been used the least; often it is because they have been set aside as of inferior quality. In my own library the books that are in the worst shape, and which sometimes have to be replaced, are those I use the most. Those in the best shape I use the least.
a was discovered by Tischendorf at St. Catharine’s Greek Orthodox Monastery on Mt. Sinai in 1844.
Vaticanus has been in the Vatican Library at least since 1481, when it was catalogued, as noted above. Those with some historical knowledge will remember that these were the years of the Inquisition in Spain during the reign of Pope Sixtus IV (1471-1484). In 1481 some 2,000 believers dissenting with Rome were burned alive, with multitudes of others tortured (M’Crie,
History of the Reformation in Spain, p. 104). When Pope Innocent VIII (1484-1492) sat in the royal “Throne of Peter,” he followed in the vein of his namesake Innocent III and commenced anew a persecution against the peaceful Waldensian Christians in the northern Italian Alps, commanding their destruction “like venomous snakes” if they would not repent and turn to Rome. (Wylie,
History of the Waldenses, pp. 27-29) Bloodbaths followed against these harmless mountain peoples, who had their own Scriptures from ancient times, and worshipped in Biblical simplicity and order.
It perplexes many people that the Lord of these
many hundreds of thousands of Bible-believing saints who were tortured with unimaginable barbarity and slaughtered like dogs by the Roman Catholic “church” for centuries (it is no exaggeration to say for over a millennium) should have kept His choicest preserved manuscript in the safekeeping of the Library of the apostate murderers, designating it by their own ignominious name: Vaticanus.
I am indebted to David Cloud’s research for some the historical information above.
I will answer more of your questions/remarks, Lane (particularly concerning the Alexandrian church, and the transmission of their manuscripts), but for the moment I have to focus my mind on my sermons for tomorrow. I appreciate your willing to engage in this discussion, especially in an amicable spirit.