Subject: Impartial?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tuesday, 27 May 1997 3:30pm PT

So, would you say then that those who adopt the Egyptian txt (generally) have
aliberal agenda to defend? Does
a liberal's theological presuppositions play a part in him favoring the NA26
rather than the Majtxt?

I for one come from a conservative tradition. But I favor NA26/NA27. What does
that say? I don't know if it says anything. External evidence support
should not be affected by a priori theological considerations. But if a text
cannot be decided on the basis of external support alone, then internal
concerns come into play, including theological issues.

Take for instance Rom. 5:1. The text reads EXOMEN -- the apparatus reads the
subjunctive EXWMEN. (At this point I'm operating from memory.) EXOMEN/EXWMEN
clearly is a transcriptional error from the fact that O/W sound alike.
Manuscript support is weighted pretty equally between the two; however, in my
estimation the subjunctive has the stronger manuscript support. Metzger in his
companion Textual Commentary to the GNT says that the committee held both
readings as equally supported, and that they favored the indicative for
theological considerations.

I, however, believe that the committee is wrong here. Aleph and the original
hand of A support the subjunctive, and the harder reading is the subjunctive
-- we should follow the NEB/REB in returning EXWMEN to the text. I guess that
makes me the liberal and the UBS4/NA27 committee the conservatives at this
point!

Rev. Michael Kennedy
Phoenix, AZ
800/426-7999 ext. 6118
--------------------------( Forwarded letter 1 follows )---------------------
Date: Tuesday, 27 May 1997  2:14pm
Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 13:43:04 -0700
From: Mike and Jeanne Arcieri <[email-masked]>
X-Mailer: Mozilla 2.02E-KIT  (Win95; U)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: [email-masked]
Subject: Impartial?
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Sender: [email-masked]
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: [email-masked]

Jim West wrote:

> >The impartial nature of the Scrivener TC
>
> What hooey!
> [snip]

>
> >
> >Many TCers may have *said* they were impartial, but Scrivener clearly
> >*is* impartial in his method of TC.
>
> Not at all.  NO ONE is impartial in anything.  The best thing that could
> happen to scientific study of the the Bible is for folks to admit this one
> common denominator.
>
> (and I am sure that this was overlooked by many because my horrid little
> name was attached!  Oh no- the Dennis Rodman of theological studies has
> reared his ugly head again!!!)
>
> Vale, pie lector!
> +++++++++++++++++++++++
> Jim West, ThD

Jim {aka Dennis ;-))

I find your admission of non-impartiality quite interesting. For years
(actually since Burgon more or less)
those is the TR camp and more recently those in the Majtxt camp are criticised
as having a theological axe to
grind when it comes to NTTC. Hence, some prefer the TR/KJV and/or some prefer
the Majtxt because they are
[primarily] 'theologically conservative'. Even Maurice Robinson has been so
criticised (quite some time ago)
on this LIST because he has a "theological agenda" and _this_ agenda (with all
its theological
presuppositions), rather than MSS evidence, is what drives him to defend the
Byz txt. Ditto for Hodges,
Pickering, van Bruggen etc..

So, would you say then that those who adopt the Egyptian txt (generally) have a
liberal agenda to defend? Does
a liberal's theological presuppositions play a part in him favoring the NA26
rather than the Majtxt?

Just askin'... :-)

Mike Arcieri