Subject: Re: tape attack

From: Curt Niccum <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 07:30:07 -0500

Without additional information it is difficult to address Riplinger's
remarks about diacritical notations. In the Dead Sea Scrolls occasionally a
word or a short phrase is set off by a small dot on either side of the text
to be deleted. More often there is a dot placed above and/or below each
letter to be expunged, even if several words are to be omitted. The latter
practice is more common among New Testament papyri. Otherwise, Philip Payne
suggested that occurrences of two dots in Codex Vaticanus indicated textual
variation (omission in particular). In general he is correct although the
dot are from the 16th century and not the fourth, probably introduced by
Sepulveda around 1530.

Curt Niccum

At 08:50 PM 1/27/97 -0600, you wrote:
>I received an unsolicited video tape of Gail Riplinger on the KJV.  I 
>only mention it to this group because she mocks Bruce Metzger and 
>fabricates about Westcott and Hort and she does other text-critical 
>gymnastics.  In March 96 I published an 
>unfavorable book review of her NEW AGE VERSIONS.  In the tape, the 
>moderator calls for me to be fired from my teaching position.  The tape 
>is full of grossly misleading claims.  I do want to ask two things of the 
>list.  She claims that some ancient papyri, including P66 as I recall, 
>often have two dots (diacritical marks) to tell the next copier to omit 
>these words in his copy.  I hate to seem ignorant (unlearned) here, but I 
>don't want to criticize her work on this point if it is true, and I was 
>not aware of the practice if it ever existed.  Can someone explain what she 
>means and if there is any truth to it.
>She also claims that the papyri agree with the TR 75% and with W-H only 
>15%.  I know this is wrong, but can someone tell me where she gets this 
>kind of data?  There must be a pseudo-scholar out there somewhere who 
>feeds this false data to her type; it is causing me some headaches.
>
>
>--
>Prof. Ron Minton: [email-masked]   W (417)268-6053  H 833-9581
>Baptist Bible Graduate School 628 E. Kearney St. Springfield, MO 65803
>
>
>
>