Thursday, November 05, 2020

How Many Manuscripts: Election Edition

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How many manuscripts of the Greek New Testament exist today?

Jacob Peterson’s chapter, “Math Myths: How Many Manuscripts We Have and Why More Isn’t Always Better” in Myths and Mistakes in New Testament Textual Criticism attempts to shed some light on this question. It’s a complicated question because of double- (and triple-, etc.) counts, lost manuscripts, etc. Here is a summary from the Key Takeaways in his chapter:

Most manuscripts of the New Testament are only manuscripts of part of the New Testament, and providing an exact count of them is a fool’s errand. It is best to say that there are about fifty-three hundred Greek New Testament manuscripts in existence, although fifty-one hundred might be the safer estimate.

Or to provide a comparison that might make it easier to remember (because, as my pastor taught me when I started learning Greek, the weirder the analogy, the more likely it is that you will remember it), there are about half as many Greek New Testament manuscripts as there are people in Tennessee who voted for Kanye West:



24 comments

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    1. Agreed. The best blog post of the year (to say the least)!

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  2. "there are about half as many Greek New Testament manuscripts as there are people in Tennessee who voted for Kanye West:"

    Or to put it another way; there are about half as many Greek NT MSS as there were bribes taken by Biden and Harris during their political career's.

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    1. There are about as many Greek New Testament manuscripts as the number of lies former president T. told each year during his one term.

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    2. Nice, write a blog you expect me to read believing you used academic rigor and then post something that makes me believe you are instead infantile.

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    3. I am so awfully sorry for reading fake news media such as The Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jul/13/donald-trump-20000-false-or-misleading-claims).

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    4. "Lies acc. to mainstream media"

      Wonder how much weight that would muster in a critical apparatus?

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    5. Like all men, I'm positive that the President has made mistakes and lied. Nevertheless, his apprehensions and concerns regarding mail-in voting is not one of them; although I heard the media state (ad nauseum) that they are "false" concerns as well. Funny how they refused to ever mention these rather recent cases.

      https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2020/10/08/carrollton-mayoral-candidate-arrested-faces-109-felony-charges-related-to-voter-fraud-police-say/

      https://dfw.cbslocal.com/2020/09/24/4-county-commissioners-texas-arrested-vote-harvesting-scheme-2018/

      Mail-in voting is a sham, and it always has been.

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    6. Jan,
      I don’t care where you got your information or what side you advocate for, the ridiculousness of you joining the fray after writing a blog post.
      Tim

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    7. I do not ask anyone to judge my character or lack thereof. Evidence and arguments should suffice.

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  3. Unsubstantiated claims and misuse of apostrophes appear to be more common than strictly necessary.

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    1. Sorry, I'''m more interested in reality–than triggering the prudish.

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    2. Good luck in seeking reality, "Lone Ranger."

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    3. Thanks, I won't waste my time seeking it at Duke.

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  4. Anon and Lone Ranger: Please use your real names instead of cowering behind anonymity when you take your shots. It's hard to believe someone is making truthful claims (or has made an honest effort to determine if his or her claims are true) when he or she doesn't even have enough honesty to make those claims with his or her own name.

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    1. Elijah Hixson,

      Apologies, I wasn't aware that I took any shots! And by all means don't believe me, believe the evidence (hence the links).



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    2. Anon,

      Hard to believe the apologies you offer are sincere and honest when you're still anon.

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    3. It's also hard to believe that a careful scholar like yourself would consider anything I wrote as a "shot"(?). Please enlighten me.

      As far as being Anon goes: you do realize that the powers that be (including the corporate oligarchy, mainstream media, big tech and academia) relish in castigating those who take a differing perspective and worldview?...And that some of us normal people have to pay the bills too!

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    4. Anon,

      This post was only ever intended to be a light-hearted post that might make the number of manuscripts slightly more memorable by comparing it to the number of Kanye voters in Tennessee. Nobody forced you to comment on it.

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    5. Nor did anyone force you to mislabel my comments as taking "shots".



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    6. Back to the “How many” question.
      Anonymous, I doubt these comments are being read by many oligarchs.
      Compared to total votes, fraudulent vote attempts, on present evidence, are few.
      When a Senator credits vote winners in his party in down-ballot races, how then can the same vote counts, the same voters, be called fraudulent in the presidential number tally?

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    7. The problem with voter fraud is that it is relatively easy to commit and very difficult to detect. So when some instances are detected is it reasonable to assume that what has been detected is the sum total (so irrelevant to the final outcome), or is it reasonable to assume that what has been detected is just the tip of the iceberg? If there is an iceberg and it is in the order of just 0.08% of total votes cast (an in the right states) then the result is flipped. It will be fun to watch the conspiracy theories as to whether the election was "stolen"

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    8. Hi Matthew. Yes, probably some illegal votes were not detected--for different candidates. But is it "relatively easy"? I doubt that. Homeland Security declared it the most secure election in the US history ever--and by saying that, risking being fired. State vote directors appear to agree. (I'm a registered independent, btw.)
      How many voters had entirely clean hands and pure hearts?--known only to God.

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  5. Normally, ETC comments are very good. Normally.

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