Comments on: Is NT Greek Magic? http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/ A Mormon Blog Mon, 13 Feb 2012 20:12:32 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ By: smb http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19754 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:59:08 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19754 Costanza, I worried that the albino flagellating monk would assassinate me if I were to leak that information. You may need to change your name.

]]> By: Costanza http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19753 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 22:45:29 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19753 SMB, your right. But you didn’t mention that the only way to find the tomb is by using the hidden message in the original Greek manuscript of the Smithsonian’s denial that the Book of Mormon is used as an archaeological guide book. Opps, I wasn’t supposed to talk about that.

]]> By: smb http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19752 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:37:57 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19752 Kevin, The Dead Sea Scrolls prove that the Jesus family tomb actually belonged to Augustine’s hidden, illegitimate family (with conspiratorial backdating of the stratum in which the sarcophagi were locate).

Incidentally, they also prophecied the GWB Presidency (oh, wait, that was Revelation 13).

]]> By: John Mansfield http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19751 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 20:16:21 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19751 The magical power of Greek can come up in other settings. At a mechanical engineering department seminar, a student was presenting some work that involved poking living cells and measuring minute forces. Referring to the fluid encapsulated by the cell membrane, he drew a blank on the correct term and called it “the, the, … the cell stuff.” Everyone had a little laugh at that. You can’t go calling cytoplasm “cell stuff” even though the rest of your talk is in English.

]]> By: Proud Daughter of Eve http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19750 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:57:51 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19750 I think I favor the qualitative reading as well. It makes more sense to me on a number of levels. A couple points: (1) John wasn’t a native speaker/reader of Greek, was he? So it’s possible he simply made a mistake. “Theos” and “theios” certainly look easy enough to mistake to me. (2) Maybe the mistake wasn’t John’s; maybe it’s one of the many scribal errors that have crept in. Point #2 would be something for someone with a familiarity with many texts to address.

]]> By: J. Stapley http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19749 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:51:16 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19749 (affectionately known as the “purple dragon”)

LOL.

There was a time when I liked having concrete answers. For some reason, having a few questions that don’t have a particular answer is comforting to me now.

]]> By: Kevin Barney http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19748 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:40:12 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19748 Matt W., for a more general response to your “how do we know which text to follow?” question, see the chapter on the basics of NT textual criticism from Footnotes to the NT for LDS, here.

]]> By: Kevin Barney http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19744 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:34:23 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19744 Sam, yes, people will often cite “the original Greek” almost as if it were a talisman, even though they clearly don’t know any Greek and haven’t actually studied the issue in question. I’ve seen this from both LDS and non-LDS. It reminds me of on my mission, when people would ascribe anything they were trying to bolster to the Dead Sea Scrolls. Since most people had no idea what was in the scrolls (or what is in the Greek NT, for that matter), these assertions have a kind of conversation-stopping authority. When I was a missionary, I started keeping a list of crazy things people attributed to the DSS. Off the top of my head, I can recall a few (but I had two pages worth of these kinds of assertions):

- the DSS prove that Paul was married
- the DSS prove that we have a mother in heaven
- the DSS prove that the KJV is the most accurate translation of the Bible

Matt W., I am unaware of any Greek text that preserves a variant reading with the article in clause c.

]]> By: By Common Consent » The Smallest Plates http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19745 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:30:53 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19745 [...] I see real magic (almost Greek magic) in that child. I remember the cartoons, comics and TV shows that inspired those marginalia, and I [...]

]]> By: Matt W. http://bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/08/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19746 Thu, 08 Mar 2007 18:20:43 +0000 http://www.bycommonconsent.com/2007/03/is-nt-greek-magic/#comment-19746 So every available manuscript in Greek of John is missing this article? If some are not missing the article, how do we determine if they came before or after the ones missing the article and if they are from a different line of copyists, how do we know they have not preserved better the original?

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