My last post was not addressed to you. But, since you ask an even weirder question what is your... ? Never mind!
Animals go extinct. Plants go extinct. That means, there are no more of them. Manuscripts are extant. That means they have survived from the past to the present. We don’t use manuscripts we don’t have, right? We use manuscripts we have.
Reliable means older, certainly not from the 9th or 10th centuries, a millennium after the NT was written.
What you don’t know about the science of textual criticism, which it would behoove you to learn about, is that literally every single copy, fragment, scroll, book from the NT has been catalogued, dated, and completely copied and studied. So, if a new manuscript from the 10th century is discovered, and it has a specific error that a certain family of Byzantine copies have, then it becomes part of that family. So, imagine a sigma was dropped off a word in Luke 2:14, other extant manuscripts from the 8th century. Then, that error is followed through the remainder of the century, the 9th century, and then how it arrived in the 10th century. So, it is known (and this is hypothetical, of course, I don’t know WHEN the sigma was dropped off), that this is a corrupted copy.
Oh, and this is not about me! I am no manuscript expert, reading the actual manuscripts, involved in cataloguing the errors, and following them through the families, down to the 15th century, where Erasmus and KJ’s translation committees translates it as best they can, with what they have available at the time. 7 corrrupted copies. That was what the KJ translation committee uses So why were they corrupt? Because they had so many errors in them, which are easily traced. Not just one later, or 10, but hundreds of small errors, and some BIG ones like the longer ending of Mark, for example.
Now, there are almost 6000 copies of the NT, completely known as to each single word, letter and accent mark. The later ones always have the greatest issues, as the copying gets farther and farther from the source. That is why UBS, (not me!) can say, with CERTAINTY, the word had a sigma in the earliest texts, and it dropped off and was incorporated in the M manuscripts, or whatever. Got it?
So, please study about lower criticism of the Bible. This has nothing to do with tearing down the Bible or theology at all. It has to do with the range and contents of extant manscripts.
https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/430/what-are-higher-and-lower-criticism
https://bible.org/seriespage/appendix-two-textual-criticism-0
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A. How the variants occurred1. inadvertent or accidental (vast majority of occurrences)
a. slip of the eye in hand copying which reads the second instance of two similar words and thereby omits all of the words in between (homoioteleuton)
(1) slip of the eye in omitting a double letter word or phrase (haplography)
(2) slip of the mind in repeating a phrase or line of a Greek text (dittography)
b. slip of the ear in copying by oral dictation where a misspelling occurs (itacism). Often the misspelling implies or spells a similar-sounding Greek word.
c. the earliest Greek texts had no chapter or verse divisions, little or no punctuation and no division between words. It is possible to divide the letters in different places forming different words.
2. intentional
a. changes were made to improve the grammatical form of the text copied
b. changes were made to bring the text into conformity with other biblical texts (harmonization of parallels)
c. changes were made by combining two or more variant readings into one long combined text (conflation)
d. changes were made to correct a perceived problem in the text (cf. I Cor. 11:27 and I John 5:7-8)
e. some additional information as to the historical setting or proper interpretation of the text was placed in the margin by one scribe but placed into the text by a second scribe (cf. John 5:4)
B. The basic tenets of textual criticism (logical guidelines for determining the original reading of a text when variants exist)
1. the most awkward or grammatically unusual text is probably the original
2. the shortest text is probably the original
3. the older text is given more weight because of its historical proximity to the original, everything else being equal
4. MSS that are geographically diverse usually have the original reading
5. doctrinally weaker texts, especially those relating to major theological discussions of the period of manuscript changes, like the Trinity in I John 5:7-8, are to be preferred.
6. the text that can best explain the origin of the other variants
7. two quotes that help show the balance in these troubling variants
a. J. Harold Greenlee's book, Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, p. 68:
"No Christian doctrine hangs upon a debatable text; and the student of the NT must beware of wanting his text to be more orthodox or doctrinally stronger than is the inspired original."
https://www.biblicaltraining.org/library/history-biblical-criticism
But do be careful! You might just learn something, and realize that no, God didn’t show you the KJV was the only inspired version. But, we will love you anyway!
