Friday, April 10, 2009

News from CSNTM

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The CSNTM brings us good news (via Archaic Christianity):

Images of the GNT MSS at Scriptorium in Orlando are now posted online here.

Dan Wallace posts descriptions of the eight uncatalogued NT Manuscripts at the Benaki Museum in Athens here. It still has to be determined whether they are new discoveries, or already known MSS that have been relocated without the knowledge of the INTF. An update will follow.

In December 2008, Jeff Hargis of the CSNTM posted a description of codex VK 908 here. It consists of two separate MSS bound together in a single codex. The two MSS have now been registered as Greg.-Aland 2892 and 2893. Read more here.

The list of minuscules on the on-line update of the Kurzgefasste Liste (2008-02-27) reaches up to 2882. This means that at least eleven new minuscules have already been registered since the last update about a year ago. It will be interesting to see what the other nine are, possibly some from Albania (read more about the CSNTM expedition to Albania here, and sample images and descriptions of MSS in Albania here). And many more are apparently in the pipeline! In fact, I have sent in a couple for registration myself.

8 comments

  1. I am sorry to be off topic in making this comment, but I have been searching and searching for an answer to this question and I though perhaps someone here could answer it for me.

    I have been comparing the Greek text to the English text, and it makes no difference whether it is the TR or the wH that you compare to either the KJV or the NASB, this thing I am questioning happens.

    You will have a word in the TR that is numbered and its counterpart in the English Translation that is numbered, but when you look at the word in Strong's or NASCE the word they are translating is different than the word in the Greek text.

    To give an example I will show verse, TR word with Strong's number, what KJV is translating and the English result:

    Acts 2:2 φερομενηςG5342, φέρω, rushing

    Ro 5:12 διηλθενG1330, διέρχομαι, passed

    These instances are not just a few, it happens frequently and the why of it is driving me crazy:) Can you give me a simple explanation for this?

    Again, please forgive my intrusion.

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  2. Hanna,

    The problem you are encountering is due to the fact that Greek is an *inflecting language.* English used to be more of an inflecting language than it is, and there are still some parts of english that do inflect, but for the most part english is not an inflecting language.

    Inflecting simply means that the "form", or what you might call the spelling, of the word changes depending how you are using it.

    For example, take the English sentence, "Ryan killed the puppy." In that sentence "Ryan" is the subject and "the puppy" is the object, right? Now, what if we changed that around to be "The puppy killed Ryan." Now in that version "the puppy" is the subject while "Ryan" is the object, right? Right. But notice: even though "the puppy" changed from being the object in the first sentence to being the subject in the same sentence, it was spelled the exact same ways both times. That is because English is largely not an inflecting language. If those examples had been in Greek, however, then the spelling of puppy would have changed depending how it functioned in the sentence. "puppy" might have been spelled "puppos" when it functioned as the subject, but "puppon" when it functioned as the object. The number (whether it is singular or plural) would change it even more, so that it might be "puppos" if it was a single subject puppy, but "puppoi" if there were more than one puppies all killing Ryan. All this means that any given Greek word can have many different possible spellings, and which one is used depends on how the word is being used in a given sentence. To make it easy to refer to a word, however, we have what is called the "lexical form." This is simply one particular spelling of that word that is chosen to be the base or root form of it, so to speak. Lexicons, or references like Strongs, do not include all the different spellings of the words, but rather are organized simply according to the lexical form. That is the problem you are encountering. You are finding one of the different inflected forms of the word in your text, but when you use the number to look it up in strongs, you are then led to the lexical form.

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  3. Hanna,

    two additional comments,

    first, in my above post when I said "But notice: even though "the puppy" changed from being the object in the first sentence to being the subject in the same sentence," there is a confusing typo there: "same sentence" should read "second sentence." (and for regular ETC bloggers, note that crazy scribal error, eh?)

    Second, I really want to applaud and encourage your attempts to delve into the original biblical languages. It looks to me, though, that your efforts would be much more rewarding if guided by some professional instruction. Obviously the ideal would be if you could enroll in a class on biblical greek at a local school or college. If that is not realistic for you (and for most people it would not be) then you might consider enrolling in a correspondence course, which many large schools offer. If that too is unrealistic for you, then at very least there are some good text books that might guide you in some DIY study. I can't think of any off hand, but I'm sure another blogger will be able to make some recommendations. Good luck, and have fun!

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  4. Thank you so much for your answer. I knew it had to have something to do with grammar, word tense or something like that, or as you say the spelling or meaning of words in different context.

    I am intently studying the scriptures, but to study Greek...I don't think so:) I'm 62 years old and well passed learning something so intent. I do wish I could. There are other things I see in the Greek as opposed to the English translation that I wonder about, but they are not important enough to forsake the other things I am doing and am involved with in order to take on the challenge of learning a language. For me that would be a huge undertaking, and the only application it would have is a help in Bible study. Important, yes, critical, no:) Were I younger, I would give it a go, but not at this stage in my life.

    Thanks again for your help. To be honest I wondered if the translators were pulling a fast one. I have become very skeptical of everything lately;/

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  5. I'm having a hard time deciphering the K-liste's description of the contents of 0312:

    1 L 5.23-24.30-31; 7.9.17-18.

    As nearly as I can figure out this is:

    Luke 5:23-24 on folio 1r
    Luke 5:30-31 on folio 1v
    Luke 7:9 on folio 2r
    Luke 7:17-18 on folio 2v

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  6. Daniel, that sounds correct to me. You may also want to check Peter's description here: http://rosetta.reltech.org/TC/vol08/Head2003.html

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  7. Have a look here: http://jts.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/reprint/flm177?ijkey=qVbq8codWpmSNdh&keytype=ref

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  8. PMH: Have a look here. . .

    I certainly did. Thanks! One question.

    You reconstruct Romans 8:1 in 0311 as:
    [mh sa]r[ka pe]r[ipat]ousin

    but the majority read:
    mh kata sarka peripatousin

    so you seem to be conjecturing a new reading here.

    Why not fill in the blanks as:
    [tasa]r[kape]r[ipat]ousin?

    ReplyDelete