10-25-2013, 02:36 AM
Thirdwoe Wrote:Steve. Thanks for all your thoughts there, I know you are not wanting to speak just to me, so you went further than I had asked...but that's fine, I understand.
It seems you assume I think certain ways, which I don't think like at all...and you have listened to the same things I have looks like, and have believed them it seems. But, I'm past all that speculation and educated guesses now, Steve...thank God.
Please don't think that I was trying to talk past you or speak broadly. I simply wanted my own position to be properly understood, in context. Nothing further.
I'm also prone to ramble and well... anyone can see where that lands me. :-)
Quote:...
If you don't agree, then I challenge you to show me/us any text that you might feel better represents the original form of the text, all things considered, as it existed in the 1st century, I would like to know what it is, if you know.
To this end, I am going to have to partly defer to Akhan Paul's subsequent post as he's seeing where I think our collective disconnect is:
Paul Younan Wrote:I believe that Akhan Steve's main focus is not on the original language of the New Testament, or which single version best represents the accurate transmission of the text from the 1st century to today. I believe his main focus is on reconstructing what he believes must have been the language that Jesus and all His Disciples spoke, and use that as the "filter" (if I may) that he uses to better understand *whatever* text or manuscript he is looking for insight into. Whether that is the Greek(s), or the CPA, or the Peshitta is of little significance to his approach.
Akhan Steve, not too much unlike our Greek Primacist friends, believes the "original" is lost and no one bothered to save it. Maybe one day it will be found in a cave somewhere, and look just like how Steve envisioned it. But in lieu of that miracle, and in the meantime, it is our mission now to reconstruct, each man to himself (or, each camp to itself) what that original must've looked like, in our own wisdom, after much prayer (for the non-Atheists in this field) and study.
I do believe Akhan Steve will tell you that the "what it is" in your question above, does not exist. Your question, rather, should be rephrased as "what they are, possibly, in your opinion?"
What you said, Akhi Paul, is on the whole essentially correct with some minor qualifications.
I do not quite feel that "no one bothered to save" the original in the same sort of way that I feel that the caretakers of the Library of Alexandria "didn't bother" to try and save their stacks (as a trained Librarian, myself, I can all too readily imagine the sheer terror of such a situation). But life happens, most readily when you're making other plans. Before the time of Josiah, even the Torah was apparently lost, and I can only imagine the difficulties of early Christians living in persecution. In the case of the New Testament as a single volume, all we have are fragments and partial copies (all in Greek) until the 4th century, and many of the more complete New Testaments from *that* time period contain a number of "non-cannonical" books. Even as that stands, several hundred years for *any* complete text in any language is a large gap and one that has yet, in my opinion, to be bridged in any definitive manner.
Also, I do not quite believe that it's a matter of "each man/camp to himself." There is a very large body of research that has come before us and there is ongoing research to be done that must be rooted in what has already been explored. Otherwise, it becomes like that one joke about two Baptists (or other insert-denomination-here's) who met on a bridge, if you know the one I'm talking about. :-)
So, yes do not believe that there is a singular New Testament text as a unit that is definitively the best "choice" or "best example" overall; I could not point you towards one. I could only give my opinion on what is known about individual pericopes, vis-a-vis what was likely said and in what contexts.
I'm trying to compile what I've found all in once place over at AramaicNT.org for reference, but it's a continual work in progress and draws from a very large number of sources. I'm quite sure that it will not be finished to my satisfaction within my own lifetime.