If your were incorrect I pointed out the correction within my previous post. There is no need for me to restate something I have already done. I do not feel that you have raised a legitimate point to counter the correction.
Possible the reason that you cannot find any reference to the use of the word manuscripts is because you are using secular sources. Wikepedia, as you recognized, is not exactly a manual of church history or the history of Christianity. What textual criticisms have you read? Where are you getting your information from? I point you to an interesting source that Bruce Metzger's New Testament commentary on NT textual Criticism.
One particular view that you are overlooking the mass of copies that we have today. There are are over 5000 copies of the original manuscripts dating back to within 100 years of the original penning. To insert that we cannot put these texts together and come up with an accurate portrayal of the original may be misguided. Within the +5000 copies that we have, there are approximatly 375,000 differences. That is 375,000 portion that could be one verse up to 50 verses. Your Mark example would be one variant. If we take away spelling differences (color, colour), word order (Word order has no relevance in Greek), we are actually left with about 500 variations. None of these have anything to do with church doctrine. That is pretty amazing for a New Testament that began 2000 years ago.
There is nothing wrong with a historical/grammitcal hermenuetic, but it can be dangerous if it goes overboard.
One other option that needs to be considered is what the Bible claims by itself. It makes some very large claims as to its identity. Can it be right and wrong at the same time? Can something that is used as a moral standard lie?
It's not that I'm not coming across the word "manuscript," I'm just not finding it in as a synonym for "original source document." We can use this in-house Christian convention, if that's what it is.
Let me give you a little bit on my background, to give you an idea of the reading I've done (which I do not glorify, but must state to be somewhat beyond Wikipedia.)
At the College of William and Mary in the 1980s, as an English major, I found myself filling electives repeatedly with Religion classes. I was particularly drawn to classes on Judaism and Christianity, but also Buddhism and significant contemporary texts written from various religious perspectives. One day I realized I had most of the requirements for a double major in Religion, so I pursued and earned that BA as well.
Now I want to be clear: I was not a star pupil. My life was a random assortment of events. I sometimes burned with interest, and other times overslept on exam days.
But I do remember a good number of professors for their impact on me. One visiting professor of mine went on to be the first head of the U.S. Holocaust museum; from him, I learned about the Holocaust and the history of Anti-Semitism. Another, oddly enough, was a former SS man, now devoted to the study of early Christianity. Yet another somehow landed in the Religion department, for his interest in contemporary religious-inspired texts, and the influence of church architecture on the liturgy... I remember him best as a humorous and kind person, and the most effective teacher of academic writing I've ever learned from.
Most germane to this discussion was a visiting professor named EP Sanders. The name of the seminar class I took from him was
Jesus and Judaism. I found later that this was also the name of a book he published shortly after his stay at W&M, which was conceived prior to his teaching of the seminar.
I've not gone on to learn the necessary Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and German (so much of the field of historical criticism has been written in German, it's almost as required as the ancient languages.) I have not gone on any biblical archaelogy digs, and I can not say I have kept up with the field. I've likely forgotten more than I remember, and only barely scratched the surface in the first place.
In terms of textual criticism, I can do searches and not recognize a single name. This tells me that, as my memory suggested, we concentrated much more on "higher" (AKA, historical) criticism.
Within that discipline, I remember Shweitzer's
Quest of the Historical Jesus, Renan's Life of Jesus (sort of a comparison text, via which we could see what Shweitzer was doing in his "survey" of historical criticism,) Bruno Bauer (one of the "radicals",) Willilam Wrede on the "Messianic Secret" in Mark, and Rudolph Bultmann, on the Synoptic Gospels.
Metzger's a new name to me, but as I said, I am no scholar. And I do thank you for the suggestion.
As to the 5,000 "copies of the original manuscripts dating back to within 100 years of the original penning," I think it's debateable that we can
necessarily reach the goal of reconstructing the document,
provided these are complete copies. But when we say things like "copies of the original manuscripts," I have many questions:
1) copies of biblical materials of all sorts? Are extrabiblical materials included (such as early church documents?)
2) My assumption is that a great number of these are fragments, as opposed to complete copies of, for example, existing "books" of the bible. Is this the case?
3) "Dating from 100 years after the originals were penned" - let's take the Mark example. Do you have a complete fragment in mind that completes the gospel of Mark, as we have it in the canon as it exists today? If not, it is evident that these materials have been penned over a long enough period, that some impressively dated "from 100 years after the original" documents, may not even predate the fourth century.
However, the point is taken: We have a great number of copies and copies of copies, and having these materials in such abundance, we should therefore be able to guess which variance is correct, because of the sheer number of fragments and variances. Although from a systems standpoint this is logically flawed (i.e., we could be more certain with a single text, and the possibilities multiply as the texts do,) I'll accept your point that we really are only dealing with trivialities in textual criticism, for the sake of argument.
But one brief background check, and I apologize if it seems rude or "challenging" -
How long did you study Greek? I want to determine the usefulness of the statement "word order has no relevance in Greek." I can believe that the relevance of word order is less crucial, or that the significance of word order are different than in English (on that, of course, one would be almost certain.) But to argue that there is no significance whatsoever in word order in Greek, is to argue that Greek is a language without syntax. This strikes me as contrary to what I know of linguistics. Do you read the Greek these documents are written in fluently?
At any rate, I will stipulate at the moment that textual criticism is a successful endeavor; i.e., that its use is resulting in more and more faithful renditions, but that the great number of copies have been faithfully translated in the best "fair copy" we will be able to get. (stipulate but not accept, to move on to historical criticism.)
Here are my interests: I'm less interested in the notion that a textual variance signifies a resulting contaminated copy of the canon as set some hundreds of years after the life of Jesus, and more interested in how preexisting sources were cobbled together into the "books" textual criticism attempts to reconstruct. There were original materials and accounts - what were they? Can we re-find them? Can we know what Jesus said and did?
Jesus did live and teach; but what, exactly, was it that he taught? What were the settings for his sayings? Are all the recorded sayings authentic, or do some serve the interests of the Church (in pacifying Roman authorities in the time of the second revolt,) or even the interests of establishing authenticity (as in the case of things Jesus did and said "that the prophecy would be fulfilled," in the words of the narrative voice?)
Feeding into, stemming from, and illuminating these questions:
How do the synoptics differ, and why? What do we make of the "other" gospel, John? Was Luke the physician you believe him to be, or was Luke someone else -- perhaps, as has been suggested, a woman (to get into the realm of guaranteed controversy.)
Why are the apostles held in fairly high regard in Acts, and are portrayed as such a gang of numbnuts in many of the gospels? Was there a time in which Jesus was regarded as achieving messiahship upon death, but being human in life, hence the "messianic secret" in Mark? If not, what is the explanation of the secrecy of Jesus in that gospel? What of John's quasi-gnostic character? Which of Paul's letters are Pauls, and which are from a Pauline "school" -- or are all of the letters authentic?
Have we found Q, in the Gospel of Thomas? (The sayings gospel, not the infancy gospel)? If so, what to do with the discarded sayings? How do we regard their authenticity, or the authenticity of the sayings they contradict in the likely later canonical gospels?
This is the fun stuff -- what people actually remembered Jesus having said, and who "invented", when sayings between canonical and non-canonical dispute one another. And even better... what did Jesus think himself to be?
The early Church feeds into all this, of course, but in an ex post facto way.
Thanks,
PFnV
If you read the part you would see that one single person was not converted. In fact it was Cornelius and all those who heard Peter. That would have at least been the Romans family, some servants, and possibly friends who came to see Peter. This is not the emphasis of Acts 10 the way I read it. In fact verses 34-48 Peter actually opens up a gateway for his mesage to be be brought to the Gentile nation. These are Peter's words. Again, I am not a scholar, but I just read what that it said. In chapter 11 some Jews have a cow about Peter proclaiming the message to the Gentile nation. If your theory were true, then why did the Jews have a fit? One person would not have been an issue because the Jews has many proselytes.
