Ask Me Help Desk - Geneologies of Jesus

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Originally Posted by dwashbur

And we have manuscripts that reflect pretty much all of them, so it's not hard to sift through and determine what's original and what isn't.

How could you know what's original when the originals are not available? I agree you can sift through and make conclusions that are probably very close, but never 100% for all the words in each Gospel.

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I've spent over 40 years in this, have published on the subject, and wrote a thesis in school about it. I did not go into this blind.

I'm not sure what your point is with this. Are you saying you cannot be questioned on these matters because of your background. That sounds dangerously like the Argument from Authority - a logical fallacy.

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I don't understand your comment about P4. The Mary stories are in the first 3 chapters of Luke, which are preserved in the papyrus.

Only partial sections of the first three chapters of Luke are in P4. None of the P4 sections contain the Mary story being discussed.

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Also, as far as copying and transmission is concerned, P75 is at least two centuries older than the Constantine-era manuscripts, and it has virtually the same text as Vaticanus, one of the most important manuscripts we possess.

I think this is easily explained by considering both P75 and Vaticanus being close in time as late as the 4th century.

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Again, the mss themselves don't show any signs of redaction in any era.

Changes are not only redactions. They can also be omissions or partial mss. Again, without the originals to verify against, proving originals is always subject to new discoveries and new ways of approaching the problem.

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We can also look at stylistic and formal matters of writing, and it's clear that there are no interpolations in the early chapters of Luke. There are lots of ways to determine this that would be more technical gobbledygook so I won't go into it. but form criticism has also told us these narratives haven't been monkeyed with.

This isn't clear what you're saying. My fault. I do understand the comment about there being no interpolations in the early chapters of Luke. Do I take this to mean you have examined the stylistic problem of Mary's Magnificat being literary and concluded that the words are definitely hers?

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I'm sorry, but there is just no evidence for this idea.

Don't be sorry, that's quite all right.

I don't believe you have made your case. You seem to be looking for documentation, when I originally stated it was a question of interpretation relying on applying common sense, documentation being unavailable. After all, the Bible itself often requires the application of common sense to fully understand it.

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Athos
Quote Originally Posted by dwashbur View Post
And we have manuscripts that reflect pretty much all of them, so it's not hard to sift through and determine what's original and what isn't.
How could you know what's original when the originals are not available? I agree you can sift through and make conclusions that are probably very close, but never 100% for all the words in each Gospel.

Nobody claims 100%. But we get mighty close. And the work still continues. Each new edition of the UBS Greek New Testament, for example, has a thorough re-evaluation of the manuscripts by a committee of the best minds in textual criticism. They re-evaluate in light of new discoveries, new analyses, and new research. We don't have the originals as everyone knows. But the reconstruction we have is a fair representation of them.

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I've spent over 40 years in this, have published on the subject, and wrote a thesis in school about it. I did not go into this blind.
I'm not sure what your point is with this. Are you saying you cannot be questioned on these matters because of your background. That sounds dangerously like the Argument from Authority - a logical fallacy.

It's only a logical fallacy when used in isolation, which I am not doing. My point is, I've wrestled with this question and others like it for a very long time. Your objection sounds dangerously close to rejection of any authority or learning that's more involved than yours. Perhaps we'd both do well to be careful.

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Also, as far as copying and transmission is concerned, P75 is at least two centuries older than the Constantine-era manuscripts, and it has virtually the same text as Vaticanus, one of the most important manuscripts we possess.
I think this is easily explained by considering both P75 and Vaticanus being close in time as late as the 4th century.

It doesn't work that way. Provenance matters. Vaticanus originated most likely in Rome. P75 was found in Alexandria Egypt. Sinaiticus was found in a monastery in the Sinai (NOT in a garbage can, let's nip that myth in the bud before someone brings it up). Their texts are so homogenous it baffles textual critics. With the other papyri, we can and do have a text that reaches back to at least the second century. Dispute it all you want, but that's the conclusion the scholars have come to, and at some point we have to trust them to know what they're talking about. I don't claim to be one of them; I bask in reflected glory, having rubbed shoulders with them.

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Again, the mss themselves don't show any signs of redaction in any era.
Changes are not only redactions. They can also be omissions or partial mss. Again, without the originals to verify against, proving originals is always subject to new discoveries and new ways of approaching the problem.

A change such as inserting the magnificat is a redaction.

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We can also look at stylistic and formal matters of writing, and it's clear that there are no interpolations in the early chapters of Luke. There are lots of ways to determine this that would be more technical gobbledygook so I won't go into it. but form criticism has also told us these narratives haven't been monkeyed with.
This isn't clear what you're saying. My fault. I do understand the comment about there being no interpolations in the early chapters of Luke. Do I take this to mean you have examined the stylistic problem of Mary's Magnificat being literary and concluded that the words are definitely hers?

We don't say such things in textual criticism or form criticism. We say the words are definitely Luke's. We leave it to the theologians to take it from there and do the real damage.

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I don't believe you have made your case. You seem to be looking for documentation, when I originally stated it was a question of interpretation relying on applying common sense, documentation being unavailable. After all, the Bible itself often requires the application of common sense to fully understand it.

It's your prerogative not to buy the evidence I presented, but I ask one favor: please define "common sense".

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but I ask one favor: please define "common sense".

That's really a great request considering that this "common sense" is being presented as an essential ingredient for properly understanding the Bible. I look forward to seeing the answer for that.

Sorry for delay - life intervened. I'll begin at the end.

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It's your prerogative not to buy the evidence I presented, but I ask one favor: please define "common sense".

Sure. The sense of understanding anything based on rational intelligence that is common to most people. I.e., not particularly based on as an expert in a field tho' that may sometimes be the case (but not necessary). In examining the Bible, it leads to seeing what is written as allegorical, not literal. Common sense tells us snakes do not speak in human language. Common sense also tells us that most, if not all, of Genesis is a collection of stories that make a point and any obvious errors are beside the point. For example, having light before the Sun is created. Or having a woman made from the rib of a man. Common sense tells us these are not actual occurrences but are part of a larger tale about a tribe's origins and that tribe's relation to God. The miracles in the Gospels are an entirely different matter.

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Originally Posted by dwashbur

Nobody claims 100%. ...............................But the reconstruction (of the originals) we have is a fair representation of them.

Please define "fair".

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It's only a logical fallacy when used in isolation, which I am not doing.

Agreed. I should have recognized you as an expert as in the legal sense - courtroom testimony from an expert is not considered hearsay, or, in this case, your position carries weight based on long study.

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Your objection sounds dangerously close to rejection of any authority or learning that's more involved than yours. Perhaps we'd both do well to be careful.

No. In fact, I frequently rely on authority greater than mine. But I do not hesitate to question authority greater than mine when it seems to me to be proper to do so.

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Provenance matters. Vaticanus originated most likely in Rome. P75 was found in Alexandria Egypt. Sinaiticus was found in a monastery in the Sinai.

The whole provenance paragraph does not relate to the matter of whether the Magnificat was composed by Mary. (And we're doing P4, not P75).

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Their texts are so homogenous it baffles textual critics.

Wouldn't that support my position (opinion) that they are close in time.

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With the other papyri, we can and do have a text that reaches back to at least the second century. Dispute it all you want, but that's the conclusion the scholars have come to, and at some point we have to trust them to know what they're talking about.

Not all scholars have come to the second century conclusion. Frederick Kenyon dated P4 to the 4th century. Currently, Brent Nogbri has stated that any date from the 2nd to the 4th century is possible for P4. That brings up two points; the argument from authority, and "...at some point we have to trust them to know what they're doing". Doesn't this difference among scholars indicate that any argument from authority is questionable (able to be questioned, not as in "possibly wrong"). As to the second point, simply trusting them is never the final statement. As previously noted from each of us, new ways are always being discovered.

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...in textual criticism or form criticism, we say the words are definitely Luke's.

I don't think you've made your case re the Magnificat. You really haven't made any case at all except to state there is no case. As a student of Greek, I was sure you were the perfect person to comment on the style and how it does or doesn't seem like something Mary would say. Luke? Yes.

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Common sense tells us snakes do not speak in human language. Common sense also tells us that most, if not all, of Genesis is a collection of stories that make a point and any obvious errors are beside the point. For example, having light before the Sun is created. Or having a woman made from the rib of a man. Common sense tells us these are not actual occurrences but are part of a larger tale about a tribe's origins and that tribe's relation to God.

Common sense also tells us that men who are dead do not come back to life, or that men born blind or lame do not suddenly, in a mere instant, have the ability to walk or see presented to them. I would agree that common sense would tell us that believing in the resurrection makes a talking serpent look simple in comparison.

OT = allegories / NT = miracles

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OT = allegories / NT = miracles

Where does the Bible endorse that idea?

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

Where does the Bible endorse that idea?

Athos said it well: "Common sense also tells us that most, if not all, of Genesis is a collection of stories that make a point and any obvious errors are beside the point. For example, having light before the Sun is created. Or having a woman made from the rib of a man. Common sense tells us these are not actual occurrences but are part of a larger tale about a tribe's origins and that tribe's relation to God. The miracles in the Gospels are an entirely different matter."

The question was, "Where does the Bible endorse that idea?" You gave no answer for that but instead made an appeal to "common sense". Now if a person wants to treat the OT as a great allegory, then that's his or her prerogative, but there is no compelling reason to do so, and there's certainly no Biblical reason for making that choice. Besides, as I said earlier, "...common sense would tell us that believing in the resurrection makes a talking serpent look simple in comparison."

Why would the miracles in the Gospels be an entirely different matter?

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

Why would the miracles in the Gospels be an entirely different matter?

As Athos said, the OT is "a larger tale about a tribe's origins and that tribe's relation to God." The NT is the revelation of Jesus Christ, our Savior.

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The sense of understanding anything based on rational intelligence that is common to most people. I.e., not particularly based on as an expert in a field tho' that may sometimes be the case (but not necessary). In examining the Bible, it leads to seeing what is written as allegorical, not literal. Common sense tells us snakes do not speak in human language.

But as the New Testament shows us, "common sense" and "rational intelligence" can't account for everything. As C.S. Lewis put it, no study of probabilities within a given framework will ever be able to tell us whether or not the framework can be violated. Since the Bible is a book all about an almighty God deliberately intervening in that framework and doing things that are contrary to what we would call "common sense", that's not going to be the best way to approach it. First and foremost, proper interpretation of any ancient text, or indeed any text in general, requires that we seek out the author's intention. What did s/he mean to communicate by writing XYZ? Proper interpretation has to start where they are, not where we are, or our interpretations run a very real, and very historically repeated, risk of anachronism.

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Provenance matters. Vaticanus originated most likely in Rome. P75 was found in Alexandria Egypt. Sinaiticus was found in a monastery in the Sinai.
The whole provenance paragraph does not relate to the matter of whether the Magnificat was composed by Mary. (And we're doing P4, not P75).

You were the one who pointed out that P4 doesn't include the passage in question, something I had missed. So I moved on.

Provenance does matter because, regardless of time, they were copied on opposite sides of the Mediterranean. That tells us that the common source text they were working from was much older, because it had to have time to spread to all those places. There's a whole field surrounding this that I simply don't have room to go into here, but it's thorough and solid, scientifically speaking.

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Quote Originally Posted by dwashbur View Post
Nobody claims 100%. ...............................But the reconstruction (of the originals) we have is a fair representation of them.
Please define "fair".

A 99 44/100% probability that we have the best possible representation of what the authors wrote. All the convergent lines of study come together to form that conclusion. It's as solid as the sciences of history, linguistics, and textual criticism can make it. Which means it's rock solid.

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It's only a logical fallacy when used in isolation, which I am not doing.
Agreed. I should have recognized you as an expert as in the legal sense - courtroom testimony from an expert is not considered hearsay, or, in this case, your position carries weight based on long study.

Thanks for clarifying.

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Not all scholars have come to the second century conclusion. Frederick Kenyon dated P4 to the 4th century.

The whole theory that Kenyon used, originated by Westcott and Hort, has been File 13'ed. A much better approach arose around the 50's and 60's known as the eclectic method, and it produces much more reliable results. Kenyon and others of his time was parroting WH and their theory of a "neutral" text, but textual critics rejected that idea within about 60 years of their presenting it. Today their text and the accompanying volume are a historical curiosity, nothing more, and Kenyon's work is nothing but a restatement of theirs.
The Greek papyri aren't all we have, either. The Peta Syriac translation has been dated to the second century, though some push it out to the 4th. There are other very early translations including Ulfilas' Gothic translation around the 4th century. The geographical spread, i.e. provenance, of all these things works to help cement the fact that we have a very early, very authentic text.

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Doesn't this difference among scholars indicate that any argument from authority is questionable (able to be questioned, not as in "possibly wrong"). As to the second point, simply trusting them is never the final statement. As previously noted from each of us, new ways are always being discovered.

Not in this kind of instance. The older scholars like Kenyon did the best they could with what they had. The Oxyrhynchus papyri hadn't been found when WH wrote and Kenyon and others failed to take them into account. In 1881 when WH published their book, NT Greek was still considered a special form of the language, especially created for the sacred books. The papyri showed that wasn't correct. The language of the NT is the "gutter Greek" of the common masses of the time, as opposed to the rich and highly educated who spoke a more Atticized form. The "neutral text" that WH came up with and Kenyon propagated, read more like Attic Greek and hence they thought it was better. Turns out the opposite was true. Thus, the work continues and that theory has been put to rest.
Your material shows that we keep learning and when a theory doesn't cut it, we put it to bed.

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...in textual criticism or form criticism, we say the words are definitely Luke's.
I don't think you've made your case re the Magnificat. You really haven't made any case at all except to state there is no case. As a student of Greek, I was sure you were the perfect person to comment on the style and how it does or doesn't seem like something Mary would say. Luke? Yes.

I repeat: we don't talk about whether they were Mary's words or not. We leave that for someone else. We can, however, conclude with great confidence that the words came from the same hand as the rest of the book, i.e. Luke's.

Beyond that I don't know what to tell you. I'm not sure what kinds of criteria you have set up for yourself that I'm not meeting with all this evidence, so that's as much as I can do. Little things like inclusion/exclusion of prepositions, articles, pronouns, various turns of phrase, all of that in the Magtnificat is pretty well identical to Luke's style in the rest of the book. I won't try to go into detail because there's so much of it we'd be here all month.
Then there's the culture. Exploding into song was a common thing that people did. It was a way to memorize. And by the way, they were way better at verbatim memorization than we are. They had to be. Writing material was expensive, and from birth young Jewish kids were taught to remember pretty much everything they heard and be able to reproduce it on command. If we judge their ability by ours, we do them a huge injustice.
It all comes together to say, we have the authentic text of Luke and all the rest. I can't do an entire course on textual criticism on a bulletin board, but I've given you the basics plus. What you do with it from there is out of my hands.

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As Athos said, the OT is "a larger tale about a tribe's origins and that tribe's relation to God."

But the Bible does not endorse that idea. You are giving me a "thus sayeth Athos", but I'm looking for "thus sayeth the Bible". I find no evidence from the writers of the NT to suggest that we are to regard the entire OT as strictly allegorical. In fact we find just the opposite. The NT writers, and Jesus himself, frequently made reference to OT events in an historical and literal sense. You can see this in Paul's lengthy references, for instance, to Abraham in Romans and Galatians, the many references in Hebrews to the OT structure of worship, or in the reference by Jesus to David ( “Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone?"). So given a choice between Jesus and the apostles versus Athos, I will go with the former. And I say that with all due regard to Athos.

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A 99 44/100% probability that we have the best possible representation of what the authors wrote. All the convergent lines of study come together to form that conclusion. It's as solid as the sciences of history, linguistics, and textual criticism can make it. Which means it's rock solid.

Well said. I have frequently heard the 99% reliability figure, and the 1% in question usually has no great bearing on doctrine.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

I find no evidence from the writers of the NT to suggest that we are to regard the entire OT as strictly allegorical.

I didn't say we should. And please read the ENTIRE quote from Athos and ALL of my explanation in that post. No cherry picking!

The OT is full of history, poetry, wisdom literature, parables, law, and so much more -- and yes, allegories. Do you know what an allegory is?

This was your post. "OT = allegories / NT = miracles" Now you realize, I suppose, that the OT actually should not be regarded simply as allegorical. That's good to know.

Yes, I know what an allegory is. I also know that I have asked you repeatedly, "Where does the Bible endorse that idea." Since you cannot answer, I take that to mean that you realize it does not.

Anytime you refer to "cherry-picking", I know that you have run out of answers and are attempting to deflect attention.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

This was your post. "OT = allegories / NT = miracles" Now you realize, I suppose, that the OT actually should not be regarded simply as allegorical. That's good to know.

I should have put in clear English when riffing off what Athos had said. OT contains allegories / NT contains miracles.

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Yes, I know what an allegory is.

What is it? (Please don't google a definition.)

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I also know that I have asked you repeatedly, "Where does the Bible endorse that idea." Since you cannot answer, I take that to mean that you realize it does not.

I HAVE answered: "The OT is full of history, poetry, wisdom literature, parables, law, and so much more -- and yes, allegories."

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Anytime you refer to "cherry-picking", I know that you have run out of answers and are attempting to deflect attention.

And yet again, you're out in the orchard, picking cherries.

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OT contains allegories / NT contains miracles.

And you can also say that the NT contains allegories while the OT contains miracles. We would agree on that, I think. I'm not sure how that was intended to be an earth-shattering revelation.

You first. "Where does the Bible endorse that idea." Giving me your own view is not telling us where the OT endorses the idea, which you have now discarded anyway, that the OT is strictly allegorical. "Thus sayeth WG" is not the same as "Thus sayeth the Bible". You REALLY need to learn that lesson.

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And yet again, you're out in the orchard, picking cherries.

And yet again, it's what you always say when you get stuck by your own quotations. It's like the old "deflector shields" in the Starwars movies. It would be much better to be honest, or to be clear and precise in the first place.

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Originally Posted by jlisenbe

You first. "Where does the Bible endorse that idea." Giving me your own view is not telling us where the OT endorses the idea, which you have now discarded anyway, that the OT is strictly allegorical. "Thus sayeth WG" is not the same as "Thus sayeth the Bible". You REALLY need to learn that lesson.

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I never said the OT is strictly allegorical. (Ah, no idea of what allegorical means?)

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A 99 44/100% probability that we have the best possible representation of what the authors wrote. All the convergent lines of study come together to form that conclusion. It's as solid as the sciences of history, linguistics, and textual criticism can make it. Which means it's rock solid.
Well said. I have frequently heard the 99% reliability figure, and the 1% in question usually has no great bearing on doctrine.

Yep. There are less than a handful that really affect anything. In fact, the overwhelming majority of variants, as we call them, are basic misspellings. There are the big ones like 1 John 5:7, but only the most die-hard KJV-only people try to defend that one. It got into the standard Greek text that most of the Renaissance translators used because Erasmus kept a promise. He knew it was a bad one, but he kept his word. He should have cried "foul" instead.
But I digress. Erasmus is one of my personal heroes, but he blew that one.

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I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. I never said the OT is strictly allegorical.

You certainly intimated it by posting, "OT= allegories", which you then amended to say, "OT contains allegories". So I'm glad you have clarified your position on that.

An allegory is a story in which a symbol or character, and generally the entire story, is meant to teach a moral lesson. Parables are types of short allegories such as the parable of the Prodigal Son in which the son represents a lost sinner, the father represents God, the second son represents stodgy religion, and the basic message is the willingness, and even eagerness, of God to restore and forgive, and it is that lesson which is the basic value of the story. The Apostle Paul represented the story of Sarah and Hagar as being allegorical of the nature of grace versus the nature of legalistic observation. In doing so, he used what he clearly regarded as being an actual historical event in a figurative manner.

Many people, I am convinced, delight in reducing the OT to mere allegory because, at least in part, it allows them to interject their own thoughts and meanings into the text. So the story of David and Bathsheba, for instance, comes to have the meaning of the need to banish the bad, bad patriarchy as opposed to the plain meaning of the exceeding dangers of sexual lust and misuse of authority.