Lane,
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This is ambiguous. What do you mean by the search? Do you mean a search to find the literal pieces of paper called the autographs? Or do you mean the search among the extant manuscripts? If the former, I agree, but no one is doing that. If the latter, most CT advocates think that our work is almost completely done already.
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First, i disagree that most CT advocates think they will ever have a text that matches the originals. As a matter of fact, most have abandoned such an end to their efforts.
I mean a search for the original readings, not original documents. This can never be established as there are no originals to compare the results to.
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Again, what manuscripts did the Alexandrian church hold to? The Byzantine manuscript tradition was not universally held to during all ages of the church. As far as I know, there are no Byzantine text-form manuscripts that originated in Alexandria. So was that not a church, because they didn't have the Byzantine text-form? Were they corrupting the texts?
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Are we to look to the Alexandrian church for our manuscripts or to the Byzantine church, which is the same region that the originals were actually sent.
And i don't think that a particular church is only valid if it has the infallible Word of God. There were true churches even before the NT canon was completed. However, in then Alexandrian area there were a great number of corrupt religious teachings.
As far as corrupting the texts...yes, i think we are all in agreement that the texts have been corrupted by those within the Church. Isn't that why some form of textual criticism is needed? But i also think that the Byzantine church would be "able" to correct the text more readily as they were the possessors of the originals.
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As I said, the CT position does not require the notion that we are still searching for it. If no new knowledge ever came up, we would still have the Word of God.
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And yet they don't seem to stop putting out new versions of the critical text.
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This is a copout, and the latter sentence doesn't even begin to approximate what I argue. In fact, I know of no one who holds it. I believe that the autographs are not with us lest we worship a piece of paper (check, papyrus). But God's providence extends to all the manuscripts, not just some of them.
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Please don't use the word "us" when you refer to folks worshiping the autographs as i don't consider myself part of that group. Why would i worship the original autographs? How can one worship something when that very same thing tells us not to worship it?
God's providence extends to more than just all manuscripts, it also extends to everything that ever happens. But that still doesn't mean that we are aware of His purposes in that providence.
So while we can say that God did providentially preserve all of the extant manuscripts, we can't say that He did so in order to embrace a minority of those preserved texts...not can we say that He did it so that we would embrace the majority...we simply can't know His purpose in it.