Mon Mar 25 21:02:09 1996

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Date: Mon, 25 Mar 1996 20:59:17 -0500 (EST)
From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: James 2:18
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On Mon, 25 Mar 1996, James R. Adair wrote:

> > To sum up from my viewpoint: The aorist subjunctives (PARADW, BALH) in Luke 
> > 12,58 are clearly the original readings, and the future indicatives 
> > (PARADWSEI, BALEI) are merely grammatical shifts to the common vernacular 
> > which were likely occasioned by a transposition and scribal confusion 
> > plus required grammatical correction following that confusion.

> I think text critics of all stripes should be wary of too much certainty 
> in cases such as this.  

Agreed. I should have less dogmatically stated that from my perspective 
there was no problem in seeing the subjunctives as the original readings 
as opposed to the futures.  Sometimes one just gets carried away. *;-)

> The different readings could be no more than 
> itacism.  

In the case of BALH/BALLEI this seems likely.  Not so in the case of 
PARADW/PARADWSEI however.

> suggests that the scribes who might have been concerned with "grammatical 
> correctness" in some places (I'll resist any analogy with PC here) were 
> anything but consistent.  

The Byzantine scribes certainly did not "correct" grammar wherever they 
could have done so.  Kilpatrick's article on "Atticism and the Text of 
the Greek NT" (where he primarily defends Byzantine readings) stands as a 
case in point.  However, neither did the Alexandrian scribes seize every 
opportunity.

> I will offer an OT analogy, however.  The 
> tendency toward fuller spelling (plene readings) is evident in Masoretic 
> mss, and especially in certain Qumran mss (e.g., 1QIsa-a, 11QPs-a), but 
> plene readings are by no means ubiquitous: defective (shorter) spelling 
> abounds throughout the Hebrew Bible, and although the concentration is 
> higher in some books than in others, even within books there is very 
> little consistency.  The point here is that scribes "correcting" their 
> texts, whether for orthographic, grammatical, or theological reasons, 
> just weren't very consistent, as a rule.

There is a NT analogy to this in the cases of Hebrew names like David or 
Moses, where we find the variations even within the Byzantine MSS of 
DAUID/DAUEID/DABID and (the easy escape) the nomen sacrum DAD; for Moses 
we have MWSHS and MWUSHS, with various declensions scattered among the 
Byzantine MSS.  Likewise "Jerusalem", whether IEROUSOLHMA or IEROUSALHM. 
There is no consistency even within the same MS of orthography, and this 
is why most editors simply select a single orthography and go with it 
consistently (see, e.g. W-H's lengthy section on Orthography in their 
Introduction volume).


_________________________________________________________________________
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.           Assoc. Prof./Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary     Wake Forest, North Carolina
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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