Concerning the ending of Mark's Gospel

[Christina]

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If one were bi-lingual in Greek and Aramaic, one could see if the Codex Vaticanus squares up nicely with the Peshitta text. And one could then see how close the readings are with Siniaticus vs Vaticanus.

And then one, if one knows the English language as well, could tell us English speakers what they found.

Mr. Bauscher tells that the Peshitta text lines up with the Byzantine text type 70% of the time; while it does so with the Alexandrian text type 30%...The Vaticanus & Siniaticus are of the Alexandrian text type family.

And...of the thousands of Greek manuscript copies that have been discovered. 95% represent the Byzantine text type readings, while the Alexandiran text type accounts for 5% of the readings.

This means that those Egyptian copies weren???t copied so much. This seems to me to suggest that they were not considered to be of much value all through the ages, while the others were.

This is a Greek Orthodox explanation of why they still prefer the Byzantine/Majority Text over the Alexandrian/Minority Text:

Although there are good scholarly arguments both for and against using the Byzantine Majority Text over the Critical Text, many Orthodox hierarchs and theologians take the following into consideration:

* When a scribe had a choice of manuscripts to copy, he would normally copy the one that he trusted the most, thus causing the most trusted text to be copied more often;
* The Holy Spirit takes an active interest in preserving what He has inspired and in what the Church has used for her liturgical life. At the very least, the Byzantine textual tradition reflects ???the life of the Spirit in the Church??? and can be considered ???the ecclesiastical text??? and an assured witness. (The Eastern / Greek Orthodox Bible, Volume III: The New Testament, Introduction).

It is also of note, since we are on the subject, that the Roman Catholic institution had Jerome use the Alexandrian text type for its Latin Vulgate translation.

The Byzantine text type, also known as the Syrian or Antiochian text type, was what the Greek Eastern Orthodox and the Protestant groups went with.

True, though the LXX version the Orthodox use is Alexandrian not Byzantine, this is a link to the official Greek Othodox LXX, published by the church of Greece: <!-- m --><a class="postlink" href="http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/bible/bible.asp?contents=old_testament/contents.asp&main=OldTes">http://www.apostoliki-diakonia.gr/bible ... ain=OldTes</a><!-- m -->.

The believers in Antioch were the first to be called "Christians". And around the same time and after, in Egypt, there were those who were first called "Gnostics"

Could there be any connection?

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Hmm... could be.