From: Stephen C. Carlson (scarlson@mindspring.com)
Date: Tue Jul 03 2001 - 08:46:36 EDT
At 10:35 AM 7/3/01 +0200, Iver Larsen wrote:
>Stephen Carlson wrote:
>> I think that reliance on the concept of an "easier" reading is
>> misplaced here.
>
>If no Greek manuscript used word spacing and if our modern Greek text of the NT
>did not use word spacing, I would agree that no scribal change is at issue and
>therefore this would not be a textual problem at all.
Good.
>I am not an expert on text transmission, but it is my understanding that the
>early, uncial manuscripts did not use word spacing, but many later manuscripts
>did. I don't know if all the minuscules used word spacing, but Nestle-Aland 27th
>edition cites manuscript 33 among others as having OIDA MEN, whereas the
>majority of minuscules apparently read OIDAMEN. NA27 consider 33 as among the
>"first order" of witnesses where "first order" is a group of witnesses that
>"include a small number of minuscules which preserve an early form of the text."
>(NA27, p. 51,58).
I'm not quite sure what the suggestion here is. Just because the
minuscule 33 preserves an early form of the text, it does not mean
that every bit of it is early. In fact, we can be quite confident
that its spacing is late.
>At some point in time the scribal copyists introduced word spacing and then it
>would be a matter of interpretation whether to put a space or not. It is at this
>point that I expect the "easier" reading to come into play, and I assume this is
>what Moo was referring to.
Then Moo's comments are, properly speaking, not about Paul's
original text, but about medieval understanding of it around
the 9th century. Although I am very inclined to give a good
scholar the benefit of the doubt, sometimes it is best to
recognize that the scholar made a mistake and move on. This
is one such case.
Stephen Carlson
--
Stephen C. Carlson mailto:scarlson@mindspring.com
Synoptic Problem Home Page http://www.mindspring.com/~scarlson/synopt/
"Poetry speaks of aspirations, and songs chant the words." Shujing 2.35
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