Subject: tc-list Comfort vs. Ruben Swanson

From: "clayton stirling bartholomew" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:36:45 -0700

I suspect that one kind of transcription problem will crop up regularly 
in the:

> Complete Text of the Earliest New Testament Manuscripts.
> By Philip W. Comfort. Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998.

Comfort seems to accept partial letters that amount to no more than a
few molecules of ink clinging to the edge of the broke fragment. Two
examples can be found in P39 where in the first two lines of the verso
(John 8:14 ff) Comfort reads partial letters (alpha) which Ruben Swanson
does not accept as partial letters. What Comfort accepts as a partial
alpha in the first line (see photo) does not seem to exist at all. The
second line is probably more debatable.

My question is really about Ruben Swanson. Are his works on the Gospels
and Acts reliable or are they in the same ball park with
Comfort/Barrett?

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062

---

From: M A Robinson <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 23 May 1999 21:50:36 EDT

On Sat, 22 May 1999 11:36:45 -0700 "clayton stirling bartholomew" 

>My question is really about Ruben Swanson. Are his works on the 
>Gospels and Acts reliable or are they in the same ball park with
>Comfort/Barrett?

>From my experience in using Swanson, i find his level of accuracy is
significantly high, and certainly much higher thanComfort/Barrett. He
does call p45 "p46" title in the introduction to his Matthew volume, and
he does try to make a case for 1346 as a "new" fam13 member when he
apparently was collating the actual fam13 MS 346 (perhaps from a
mislabeled microfilm box, or from mislabeling his original collation
sheets). Other than those items, I have no list of known errors in
Swanson to report (unlike C/B, albeit I'm sure there are some. But they
are few indeed).

==============================================================
Maurice A. Robinson, Ph. D.
Professor of Greek and New Testament
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
Wake Forest, North Carolina, USA