John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

Hort has a very long note on this verse, despite that face that NA gives no apparatus for it. The patristic evidence strongly indicates that τὸ πάσχα was not present in many texts of the 2nd/3rd century. It is, however, present in all of our manuscripts.

This verse is also one of the things that gives us John's 3-year ministry for Jesus, versus the apparently shorter period of the Synoptics.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by mwh »

το πασχα is obviously an intrusive gloss, identifying (or misidentifying) the festival in question.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

It's striking to come across things like this. It wasn't in Georg Luck's Conjectural Emendations article -- I only found it by looking through the list of obelisked verses in W&H. I would think that an OCT apparatus would at least mention it, but I suppose the NA apparatus is a bit different from that. If so, is there anything that really replaces W&H?

It's also surprising to me that an insertion, not widely present in the 2nd century, could have made it into all of our surviving texts. I had assumed that there wasn't anything useful in Patristic quotations, since apparatuses never mentioned anything interesting. Maybe that was a bad assumption to make.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

jeidsath wrote:It's striking to come across things like this. It wasn't in Georg Luck's Conjectural Emendations article -- I only found it by looking through the list of obelisked verses in W&H. I would think that an OCT apparatus would at least mention it, but I suppose the NA apparatus is a bit different from that. If so, is there anything that really replaces W&H?

It's also surprising to me that an insertion, not widely present in the 2nd century, could have made it into all of our surviving texts. I had assumed that there wasn't anything useful in Patristic quotations, since apparatuses never mentioned anything interesting. Maybe that was a bad assumption to make.
Do you think there is a single New Testament textual critic that hasn't read what you're reading? If the answer is no, how do your account for the fact that this doesn't show up in the apparatus? I suggest reading some articles on the evaluation of patristic evidence.

Postscript: Ruben Swanson didn't include any patristic evidence in his parallel copper apparatus. There was some criticism about that.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by mwh »

Certainly an OCT editor would mention it, and remove it if he was worth his salt. Textual traditions are full of such incorporated glosses. But NT editors are a peculiarly timid lot, and know what howls of protest would greet even the smallest change.
It’s a general rule that interpolations tend to spread (as manuscripts are compared with one another), while omissions are quickly made good.

I don’t think it should surprIse if quotations in early authorities occasionally offer a more pristine text than our manuscripts. They are earlier, after all.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

W. Willker covers this:

An Online Textual Commentary
on the Greek Gospels

http://www.willker.de/wie/TCG/TC-John.pdf

SEARCH for: "163*, 1634, 2206"

RE: Patristic Evidence
Look for this in the Graduate Theological Union[1] Lib Berkeley:
GTU BS2325 .T48 2013 AVAILABLE

The Use of the Greek Fathers for New Testament Textual Criticism

The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research Authors: Gordon D. Fee and Roderic L. Mullen Source: The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, pp 351-373 Subjects: Biblical Studies Publication Year : 2012

[1] The GTU Library is in Joel's neighborhood.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Timothée »

jeidsath wrote:NA gives no apparatus for [τὸ πάσχα].
Nestle—Aland has
vs 1634 pc
in its apparatus, and that refers to the whole verse, as it is in its totality between the signs □ and \. That means that the whole verse is missing in whatever is in the apparatus. This is plausible enough, as earlier in John we have basically the same twice (in 2,13 and 5,1), as NA notes in the margin (adding an exclamation mark in the margin after both of these loci).

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

NA 28 removes even that, I'm afraid. But some searching on the web confirms that NA 27 gives the same as you quote, originally 472, but 1634 in the update.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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For confirmation:
Image

Yes, I have the 27th edition.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

mwh wrote:το πασχα is obviously an intrusive gloss, identifying (or misidentifying) the festival in question.
It's a standard cliche, but still true enough, that whenever someone uses "obviously" in an assertion the assertion is automatically suspect. A text which has near universal manuscript support bears a great weight of prejudice in favor of it's authenticity. Since it's not obvious to everyone, why don't you support your assertion?
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by mwh »

Because it should be obvious to everyone, and would be if they had more extensive textual experience.

You are free (obviously) to regard everything I say as automatically suspect. It seems you do.

The more interesting question is the status of the sentence itself. το πασχα may be a secondary intrusion.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Paul Derouda »

What mwh means, is that if the text originally had ἦν δὲ έγγύς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, someone would have added τὸ πάσχα in the margin as an explanatory gloss. The person who made the next copy of the text would have then thought that the word in the margin was a correction for a word that had accidentally dropped out, and would have incorporated it in the main text when making his copy. I've seen this kind of thing many, many times in apparatuses and commentaries to other classical texts. What's more, since people who made copies of manuscripts knew that there were mistakes, they compared different manuscripts when making their copies, and when they noticed something that seemed to be missing in one text, they would complement the new text they were writing with what they found in the text that seemed more complete. For this reason, traditions tend to be accretive – texts tend to accumulate material as time goes by; something dropping out of a tradition is much more unlikely and (as far as I understand) only happens if there are few manuscripts (so either in the beginning or a "bottleneck" of a tradition). Interpolations that appeared early on can very well contaminate the whole medieval tradition (I've seen that kind of thing many times with Homer at least). Here we apparently we have evidence that the church fathers had a different text, and, as Timothée and mwh point out, we have manuscripts that don't have the whole verse at all – which might mean that we're dealing with an interpolation within an interpolation.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

C. S. Bartholomew wrote:The GTU Library is in Joel's neighborhood.
I'm over in Wisconsin nowadays. Paul might appreciate knowing that where I'm at, it's 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder than Helsinki today. The lakes all froze over last week. But in California there was an earthquake this morning, centered under my old apartment, which I missed.
mwh wrote:το πασχα may be a secondary intrusion.
The absence of the entire verse would also explain the patristic evidence. It might even explain it better. Here is Origen on 5:1 (mentioned by Hort):
Ἐὰν δὲ αὕτη ἡ ἑορτὴ <ἡ> τοῦ πάσχα ᾖ—οὐ <γὰρ> πρόσκειται τὸ ὄνομα αὐτῆς—, στενοχωρεῖται τὸ ἀκόλουθον τῆς ἱστορίας, καὶ μάλιστα ἐπεὶ μετ’ ὀλίγα ἐπιφέρεται ὅτι «Ἦν ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων, ἡ σκηνοπηγία.»
So Origen passes over 6:4 completely, looking ahead to 7:2.

Just looking at the text, I would say that 6:4 is less motivated by the surrounding text than 5:1 or 7:2. It is very similar to 7:2.

As an interpolation, ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων makes sense. A scribe adding it as a marginal note might be saying: "John 7:2 explains the crowds." Though in my opinion, the festival of booths is not a very good explanation for crowds on a mountain. Still, I can imagine someone thinking that it was.

I don't see how the full ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς τὸ πάσχα, ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων could be an independent interpolation all at once. It makes far less sense as a marginal note. So if 6:4 was originally not present, I think there would have to be a two step process, with ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων coming in first, and then τὸ πάσχα.

On the other hand, I don't see any way to say that ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων couldn't have been John himself. The manuscript evidence against it seems late, and perhaps the verse dropped out as a mechanical mistake? I imagine that someone would have to know more about the characteristics of 472 and 1634 (and whatever others are meant by "pc") to make a determination.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

Paul, thanks for your response, very helpful. This is supposed to be a teaching and discussion forum, and no, not everyone has the extensive experience with manuscripts that you and apparently MWH have had, so it's not obvious to everyone and further explication is very helpful. So, the facts are:

1) There is near universal manuscript support for the reading.

2) There is no internal evidence to indicate that the reading is suspect.

3) The reading is missing from a number of 2-3 century writers who quote the text, which suggests that the early transmission history of the text may have been more complicated than the current manuscript evidence indicates.

Would you consider that a fair summary?
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

472 is Lambeth 1177. Scrivener describes it here: https://archive.org/stream/afullandexac ... 3/mode/1up
The collation of this strange and troublesome manuscript was commenced by Burney, and at the end of the third chapter abandoned in despair: "mendis erratisque ita scatet, ut scriptorum imperitiae et oscitantiae luculentissimum fiat argumentum" is his emphatic sentence of condemnation. I certainly never met with a copy of the Gospels written with such irreverent and scandalous negligence, but this is only one instance out of a thousand of the danger of judging hastily from first appearances. Had Dr Burney patience or leisure to have completed the examination of Codex c, he would have found it abound, far beyond any other in the whole collection, with novel and remarkable readings, which (in spite of its unpromising appearance) would have amply repaid all the diligence he could have bestowed upon it.
EDIT:

Reading further:
Two disputed passages are obelized in the margin, Luke xxiii. 39-41; John vi. 4.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Paul Derouda »

Just to make it clear, I have zero actual experience on manuscripts. Greek is my hobby and textual transmission is one of the subject I've studied, especially as far as it concerns Homer (Was there a Homer?! Who, why, when wrote the Iliad and the Odyssey!? That sort of thing...). Mwh is the real expert here and a large part of what I've learnt comes from him.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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jeidsath wrote:I'm over in Wisconsin nowadays. Paul might appreciate knowing that where I'm at, it's 30 degrees (Fahrenheit) colder than Helsinki today. The lakes all froze over last week. But in California there was an earthquake this morning, centered under my old apartment, which I missed.
For those of you who live in warmer climates than me, I can tell you that I'd really prefer if it were just a bit colder in winter. Every time it snows the snow melts and that means your feet are wet, which is much worse than just being cold. Besides it's very dark here and the snow would make evenings much brighter. I'm told we're one of the regions most affected by climate change, and I can believe that since we've lately had several winters almost without snow, which just didn't happen when I was a kid (I know this is anecdotal, but still).
I don't see how the full ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς τὸ πάσχα, ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων could be an independent interpolation all at once. It makes far less sense as a marginal note. So if 6:4 was originally not present, I think there would have to be a two step process, with ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων coming in first, and then τὸ πάσχα.
Looks quite likely to me. We can never be sure with this kind thing, of course.

pc means pauci, "a few manuscripts".

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Paul Derouda wrote:Just to make it clear, I have zero actual experience on manuscripts. Greek is my hobby and textual transmission is one of the subject I've studied, especially as far as it concerns Homer ...
Textual criticism of the New Testament is a whole different ballgame. For anyone sufficiently interested to do some reading, it might be worth tracking down a library copy Bruce Metzger's Second edition.[1] The fourth edition[2] revised by Bart Ehrman is both late and corrupt. :lol:

Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible[3] perhaps has a little more in common with classical authors. The main point of similarity is the distance between the "original" and the earliest extant manuscripts. Beyond that there isn't much similarity. The text of the so-called Septuagint presents a completely different set of problems.

Attitudes, assumptions, methods, and procedures such as we have seen in this thread, might be (?) common working with classical manuscripts separated by 1,500 years from the author. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was common for New Testament textual critics to be classical philologists. R. H. Charles ICC commentary on the Apocalypse of John is a prime example. Nobody pays any attention nowadays to his fanciful reconstruction of the text. There's nothing wrong with reading Victorian authors like B.F. Westcott. I have his commentary on John's Gospel in my hands. I was unable to find any reference to a hypothetical "gloss" in John 6:4. Westcott discusses important variant readings. The book that Joel is reading was intended for a different audience than Westcott's commentary.

Contemporary New Testament textual criticism is vastly removed from Westcott and Hort.[4]

[1]The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (2nd Edition), Bruce M. Metzger.

[2]The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration (4th Edition) (9780195161229): Bruce M. Metzger, Bart D. Ehrman

[3] Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Emanuel Tov, 2nd ed. 2001.

[4] A Critical Examination of the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method in New Testament Textual Criticism
Peter J. Gurry, Brill, 2017.
http://www.brill.com/products/book/crit ... -criticism
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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Barry Hofstetter wrote:2) There is no internal evidence to indicate that the reading is suspect.
6,4 doesn’t quite fit into the story, and we have almost the same twice earlier in John. (Of course John could have repeated it himself.) 6,4 may easily have been (it seems even likely) a post-Johannine explanation into the text. It cannot, of course, be proven, but that’s not the aim of philological scholarship anyway.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:This is supposed to be a teaching and discussion forum, and no, not everyone has the extensive experience with manuscripts that you and apparently MWH have had, so it's not obvious to everyone and further explication is very helpful.
The delicate balance is to serve people of all the levels of learning, ideally from the basics all the way to the highest levels of academia. Not everything can be explained everywhere, unfortunately—it just wouldn’t work. But the purpose is not to keep readers in the darkness, either. I think mwh may have thought that people partaking in this discussion on NT text-criticism know the basic mechanisms of it.

I should hope that the texts of the New Testament could be discussed like any other ancients texts on these forums, but it’s a vain hope, I fear.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

Timothée wrote:
Barry Hofstetter wrote:2) There is no internal evidence to indicate that the reading is suspect.
6,4 doesn’t quite fit into the story, and we have almost the same twice earlier in John. (Of course John could have repeated it himself.) 6,4 may easily have been (it seems even likely) a post-Johannine explanation into the text. It cannot, of course, be proven, but that’s not the aim of philological scholarship anyway.
It also opens up a chronology difference between John and the synoptics. However, is that something that John would have cared very much about? Perhaps not, given the chronology of his Passion account.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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Timothée wrote:
Barry Hofstetter wrote:2) There is no internal evidence to indicate that the reading is suspect.
6,4 doesn’t quite fit into the story, and we have almost the same twice earlier in John. (Of course John could have repeated it himself.) 6,4 may easily have been (it seems even likely) a post-Johannine explanation into the text. It cannot, of course, be proven, but that’s not the aim of philological scholarship anyway.

This is precisely the example of applying different methods and different assumptions. Fanciful emendation of ancient texts by a "philologist" is not a current practice among New Testament textual critics. Dogmatic assumptions have nothing to do with this. The committee of five who produced the text behind NA26 and third edition of UBSGNT we're not theological conservatives motivated by dogmatic considerations. The text that they produced has been altered very little in NA28.

Decades ago Gordon Fee attempted to omit two verses in chapter 14:34-35 First Corinthians, his proposal didn't get any traction. Why do you suppose Westcott didn't mentioned John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα in his commentary?

Suggesting the omission τὸ πάσχα John 6:4 is ignoring the obvious: the manuscripts. In New Testament textual criticism decisions are made based on evidence. Fanciful emendation is anathema.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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Timothée wrote: 6,4 doesn’t quite fit into the story, and we have almost the same twice earlier in John. (Of course John could have repeated it himself.) 6,4 may easily have been (it seems even likely) a post-Johannine explanation into the text. It cannot, of course, be proven, but that’s not the aim of philological scholarship anyway.
TC on classical texts often deals with a very poor manuscript base, and so conjectural emendation becomes much more important. The more manuscripts you have, the less need for conjectural emendation. What we are discussing here concerning John 6:4 is in the realm of sheer speculation. It "doesn't quite fit into the story?" Why would that be? Or could it possibly be that John is organizing his narrative in a way different than a modern reader might expect? This could be more of a genre/literary issue than a text critical one. Hint: the fact that we have "almost the same twice earlier in John" might be a clue that this is not incidental or an addition, but that it's intentional on John's part. So I would suggest that "doesn't quite fit" is a judgment that may not be concordant with the full context and John's careful use of devices to move that narrative forward.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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Stirling, One of your unargued assumptions is that current NT text-criticism is better than it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That is questionable, to say the least.

In your final remark, you appear to take the surviving manuscripts as constituting the entirety of evidence. That is wrong. No suggestion about the history of the text ignores the manuscripts as you claim.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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mwh wrote:Stirling, One of your unargued assumptions is that current NT text-criticism is better than it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That is questionable, to say the least.

In your final remark, you appear to take the surviving manuscripts as constituting the entirety of evidence. That is wrong. No suggestion about the history of the text ignores the manuscripts as you claim.
That there are no advancements or improvements in TC since the Victorian era seems me to be the assumption which needs to be argued. And the question is the relative weight placed on hard, tangible evidence vs. the subjective use of the text in secondary authors.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

Barry Hofstetter wrote:The more manuscripts you have, the less need for conjectural emendation.
If you amend that to "the more independent witnesses of early texttypes that you have," I would probably agree. But you will want to note that the incidence of certain types of errors may probably increase with more early manuscripts and more collation events. Including the type of accretion event that has been suggested for this verse.

Also, it's 250 years between the originals and the great unicals, and sometimes thousands of miles between the where the NT books were written and where the unicals were copied, and perhaps some evidence of important text recension events affecting what we have now.

Obviously, that's better than a 1000 more years of copying, but it's not infinitely better. I would guess that the reduced error rate per line is only linearly better, not exponentially better.
Barry Hofstetter wrote:That there are no advancements or improvements in TC since the Victorian era seems me to be the assumption which needs to be argued.
Well, I'll take this as an opportunity to restate a question on that point from earlier in the thread that I'd like answered:
jeidsath wrote:It's striking to come across things like this. It wasn't in Georg Luck's Conjectural Emendations article -- I only found it by looking through the list of obelisked verses in W&H. I would think that an OCT apparatus would at least mention it, but I suppose the NA apparatus is a bit different from that. If so, is there anything that really replaces W&H?
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by C. S. Bartholomew »

Joel was the author the original post. After some reflection on this thread and similar recent threads he has initiated, applying traditional authorial-intent hermeneutics [E. D. Hirsch], it appears that some of the critique has been somewhat misdirected. Joel is doing what any student might enjoy doing and benefit from, going back and reading old books and analyzing the old arguments and testing them. Nothing wrong with that. It's an intellectual game. While your at it, read Walter Bauer, Adolf von Harnack, James D. G. Dunn. [1] Get your fill of it.

Meanwhile, lets not confuse this with a discussion of N.T. textual criticism as it is currently practiced by people like Dirk Jonkind, Peter Head, Tommy Wasserman, Peter J. Williams and others.

[1] Not textual critics, rather authors who promoted a history of early Christianity from which Bart Ehrman collected his central ideas. This is connected tangentially to the textual criticism.
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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Barry, Get real. The NT corpus is a small one and has been endlessly worked over. Advance comes through new ideas and new evidence. Without new hard evidence in the form of ancient manuscripts (such as we now have in a papyrus of Acts, for example) little significant progress can be expected. (Linguistic analysis is more advanced and sophisticated, but the main result is simply reformulation of earlier work. Computerization improves the accessibility and usability of data, but evaluation must still be human.) Scholars back then knew Greek far better than NT scholars do now. And they knew how to use their heads.

All textual criticism is subjective. It’s matter of iudicium, intelligently applied to pertinent information. That doesn’t change.

Meanwhile, Stirling continues to ride the wave of the latest fashion (I recall an illuminating exchange in http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... 23&t=65724), flaunting names and bibliography and taking potshots at his favorite betes noires (Ehrman, philology, ...). I look in vain for any sign of actual thought.

I’ve had enough.

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

mwh wrote:Barry, Get real. The NT corpus is a small one and has been endlessly worked over. Advance comes through new ideas and new evidence. Without new hard evidence in the form of ancient manuscripts (such as we now have in a papyrus of Acts, for example) little significant progress can be expected. (Linguistic analysis is more advanced and sophisticated, but the main result is simply reformulation of earlier work. Computerization improves the accessibility and usability of data, but evaluation must still be human.) Scholars back then knew Greek far better than NT scholars do now. And they knew how to use their heads.

All textual criticism is subjective. It’s matter of iudicium, intelligently applied to pertinent information. That doesn’t change.

Meanwhile, Stirling continues to ride the wave of the latest fashion (I recall an illuminating exchange in http://www.textkit.com/greek-latin-foru ... 23&t=65724), flaunting names and bibliography and taking potshots at his favorite betes noires (Ehrman, philology, ...). I look in vain for any sign of actual thought.

I’ve had enough.
I've actually been real since July 14th, 1958. Another way of phrasing your comments is that TC is as much an art as it is a science. Speaking of art, I like the way you simply insert your ad hominems directly in your response as though they represent some sort of definitive argument. Nicely done. Evaluating, reevaluating, and working over the evidence is simply a part of scholarship. As for Stirling, I just don't know. Somehow, I've always thought that keeping up with current scholarship is a good thing. The assumption that it's all been done and there's nothing really left to do reminds me of the attitude of many scientists at the end of the 19th century, who felt that all had been discovered and discussed, and everything to follow would be footnotes. Maybe, but maybe not, even in biblical studies.

I'm glad you're done. Your comments have added little of insight to this discussion, and your valuable time is perhaps best spent elsewhere.
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

I have 64 more obelized verses from W&H, and I can and will post threads on every one of them unless people get along.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by Barry Hofstetter »

jeidsath wrote:I have 64 more obelized verses from W&H, and I can and will post threads on every one of them unless people get along.
That has got to be the best "moderator threat" I've ever seen. Point taken!
N.E. Barry Hofstetter

Cuncta mortalia incerta...

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

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I just wrote some comments and I clicked save the draft but not the submit. Did you still get it?
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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by jeidsath »

Thecliff wrote: Mon Jan 31, 2022 1:59 am I just wrote some comments and I clicked save the draft but not the submit. Did you still get it?
Thecliff
Go to "User Control Panel" in the top right, and then "Manage Drafts" to get to the screen where you can submit it.
“One might get one’s Greek from the very lips of Homer and Plato." "In which case they would certainly plough you for the Little-go. The German scholars have improved Greek so much.”

Joel Eidsath -- jeidsath@gmail.com

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by S Walch »

Ah man, a topic on a GNT TC question and I’m late to the party? As someone who tags the images online at the CSNTM as well as the INTF (plus a huge interest in Biblical TC), hopefully I can offer some relevant remarks.
jeidsath wrote:It's also surprising to me that an insertion, not widely present in the 2nd century, could have made it into all of our surviving texts.
This would lead one to conclude it was more prevalent in 2nd century copies of John than the patristic remarks may indicate. Another such example is John 1:13, where Tertullian says most copies read “who was born not of blood” as opposed to the corruption of the Valentinians’ “who were born not of blood” (ὃς ... ἐγεννήθη / οἰ ... ἐγεννήθησαν). Problem is all of our Greek copies of John read the plural, along with all the rest of the versions, bar one solitary Old latin witness (b, aka Codex Veronensis). See Bart Ehrman’s comments in The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, pp. 69-70. Usually, a patristic assertion with no other manuscript support is not usually given much credence if few other manuscripts agree. For John 1:13, our earliest papyri (𝔓66 and 𝔓75) both read the plural, and both roughly date to the time Tertullian was writing (both dated 3rd century CE by most papyrologists, though Philip Comfort would date 𝔓66 early to the mid second century CE, so before both Irenaeus and Tertullian). For a supposed “Gnostic” corruption to have spread so far and so quickly to have been present in our earliest copies, would lead one to conclude here the patristic citation and assertion to the contrary are in fact in error.
jeidsath wrote:I had assumed that there wasn't anything useful in Patristic quotations, since apparatuses never mentioned anything interesting. Maybe that was a bad assumption to make.
Depends on the context of “useful”. For determining the original text (or more common in modern TC, the “earliest attainable text”)? Probably not. Can’t remember who it was exactly, but a scholar in the 18th/19th century sought to make a critical GNT based on patristic citations, but somewhat fell flat. The general unreliableness of the manuscripts containing patristic works (due to copyists either making their own mistakes, or altering the citations to fit the more common one prevalent at the time of the copyist and their location), and their later date than actual copies of the NT was too big a hurdle to overcome at the time. It may be possible now. See for instance The Text of the Fourth Gospel in the Writings of Origen (Gordon Fee & Bart Ehrman), and The Text of the Apostolos in Athanasius of Alexandria (Gerald J. Donker). Whether these are reflective of the original/earliest attainable text, or just of the manuscripts available to the patristic author in question, will likely be debated for years to come.
jeidsath wrote:NA 28 removes even that, I'm afraid. But some searching on the web confirms that NA 27 gives the same as you quote, originally 472, but 1634 in the update.
One of my major grievances with the NA28 is the decision to remove pc (pauci/a few) and al (alii/others). The removal I feel gives the impression the witnesses cited are the only witnesses to the variant; however, this is apparently why the NA28 removes both, which to me makes little sense. I’m thinking 472 was no longer cited as omitting the verse, as it doesn’t actually omit it, but places an obelisk at the start of the verse. See page 184 of the manuscript online at the Lambeth Palace Library, right hand page about half-way down. The obelisk is easily seen.
Paul Derouda wrote:Here we apparently we have evidence that the church fathers had a different text, and, as Timothée and mwh point out, we have manuscripts that don't have the whole verse at all – which might mean that we're dealing with an interpolation within an interpolation.
As it stands only 1 manuscript appears to have omitted it completely (min. 1634), with only one pointing out its possible inauthenticity (min. 472). See 1634 at the INTF, with the omission seen on page 204 verso. As this omission appears to have come at a time where the copyist has indicated the start of a new section, one wonders whether this was merely done by accident, rather than due to a reflection of an earlier exemplar. As I know of no study on min. 1634, whether it has other such omissions we don’t yet know. It could be this happens a few times throughout all four Gospels; just this one was noticed due to its peculiarity, and possibly due to supporting the idea that Origen didn’t know of the passage (as per Hort, Notes p. 77). Evidently, I don’t think the evidence of either the manuscripts or patristic authors indicates that the entire verse was missing, but possibly only τὸ Πάσχα. See further on this below.
jeidsath wrote:On the other hand, I don't see any way to say that ἦν δὲ ἐγγὺς ἡ ἑορτὴ τῶν Ἰουδαίων couldn't have been John himself. The manuscript evidence against it seems late, and perhaps the verse dropped out as a mechanical mistake? I imagine that someone would have to know more about the characteristics of 472 and 1634 (and whatever others are meant by "pc") to make a determination.
Astute observation. I was unable to find any other manuscript which omitted the verse entirely (von Soden also makes no other mention than 472 or 1634 – vol 4. p. 412), so pc in the NA Apparatus will be a reference to 472 in this case. As noted above, 472 doesn’t omit it, but obelisks it.
jeidsath wrote:It also opens up a chronology difference between John and the synoptics. However, is that something that John would have cared very much about? Perhaps not, given the chronology of his Passion account.
No, likely not (also assuming he knew of the other Gospels at any point is up to debate. Though Eusebius (IIRC) makes mention of John knowing the synoptics, this isn’t exactly reliable proof he did). Also the synoptics themselves aren’t entirely worried about chronology either.
C. S. Bartholomew wrote:Suggesting the omission τὸ πάσχα John 6:4 is ignoring the obvious: the manuscripts. In New Testament textual criticism decisions are made based on evidence. Fanciful emendation is anathema.
I would agree mostly with the above. Some conjectural emendations are given some traction, such as J. R. Harris’ suggestion that John 11:25 should omit καὶ ἡ ζωή; however even here Harris’ suggestion was based due to its omission in the Syriac Sinaiticus, so it wasn’t entirely without manuscript evidence. This was given even more credence in the 1930’s when 𝔓45 turned up, which supported both the Syriac Sinaiticus and Harris by not having καὶ ἡ ζωή in John 11:25.

A further example to be drawn from John 11:25: there are 6 patristic authors who don’t cite it as having Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ἀνάστασις καὶ ἡ ζωή, but rather Ἐγώ εἰμι ἡ ζωή καὶ ἡ ἀνάστασις, thus swapping around both ἡ ἀνάστασις and ἡ ζωή. These are Amphilochius of Iconium, John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria, Didymus the Blind, Ephrem of Syria, and Severian of Gabala. Amphilochius of Iconium, John Chrysostom and Didymus the Blind quote it this way twice, giving 9 citations of John 11:25 with this word order. Who exactly though has suggested to amend the text of John to this word order? None, as far as I’m aware. There is no manuscript evidence other than patristic for this sequence, hence why it has largely been ignored. See a list of citations of John 11:25 in patristic authors at the ITSEE website provided by the University of Birmingham, England, UK.
jeidsath wrote:Also, it's 250 years between the originals and the great unicals, and sometimes thousands of miles between the where the NT books were written and where the unicals were copied, and perhaps some evidence of important text recension events affecting what we have now.
See my comments above concerning 𝔓66 and 𝔓75. Both of these manuscripts (dated the same way the uncials are) are assigned dates in the 3rd century, and early for P66 in the mid 2nd century, and both contain John 6:4 as the traditional wording. As the prevailing date usually given for when the GoJ was written is 95 CE, we either have this verse appearing within 65 years, or just over 100 years since the autograph. As noted, there is only one manuscript which omits the verse in its entirety, and that comes from the 14th century CE. The earliest manuscript attests the authenticity of the verse, with no variant. No manuscript omits τὸ Πάσχα. Interestingly though, min. 543 omits ἡ ἑορτὴ, but not the previous τὸ Πάσχα (see the page online at the CSNTM, 2nd column, lines 5-7). There’s a likelihood this is an assimilation to John 2:13, but again I know of no study of min. 543 which could give us any insight as to how often the copyist assimilated the passages. There’s therefore more manuscript evidence for the omission of ἡ ἑορτὴ than there is for the omission of τὸ Πάσχα.

This therefore leads to answer this final thing:
Barry Hofstetter wrote:The reading is missing from a number of 2-3 century writers who quote the text, which suggests that the early transmission history of the text may have been more complicated than the current manuscript evidence indicates.
I’m not sure if jeidsath’s comments have been misunderstood, or Hort’s have, but no early patristic author ever quotes John 6:4 as omitting τὸ Πάσχα, or even omitting the verse entirely. That some patristic authors didn’t have τὸ Πάσχα or didn’t know of John 6:4 is a subjective assumption based on what they mention in other places. This isn’t really evidence for the omission of τὸ Πάσχα or of the entire verse, and what would’ve been a “more obvious argument” (as per Hort on Origen) is just as subjective, and trying to guess at what patristic authors “would have” written if they knew of something isn’t something we can judge. One can see the list of patristic citations of John 6:4 from the UoB’s ITSEE, and one will be quick to notice even the adaptations note the presence of τὸ Πάσχα, and even a manuscript lemma which agrees with the reading of min. 543 in omitting ἡ ἑορτὴ. Therefore, there is neither manuscript nor patristic evidence for either the entire omission of John 6:4, or of τὸ Πάσχα from within the text.

I’ll quote from C. K. Barrett’s The Gospel According to St. John concerning this verse, and the comments of Hort:
C. K. Barrett wrote:The authenticity of [τὸ Πάσχα] was suspected by Hort, though the are contained in all MSS. And VSS. And the only evidence against them is patristic… [However t]he objection cannot be sustained. The omission of the words by some of the Fathers and by Hort, rests upon a view of the structure and intention of the gospel which cannot be maintained; the Passover is mentioned here not for chronological but for theological reasons. It is true that this is the second Passover in John, and that only one is mentioned in the synoptics; it is true also that it is impossible to spread out the events of chapters 3-5 over the space of a year. The interesting observations of Abrahams do not justify the Johannine dating; ‘everything points …. To a date soon after the Passover’; but John says that the Passover ‘was near’, that is, had not yet come. He mentions the Passover primarily because, as will appear, some of the acts and words of this chapter have a eucharistic significance, and the eucharist, like the last supper, must be understood in the context of the Jewish Passover.
To return to jeidsath’s original question: why it isn’t in Georg Luck’s Conjectural Emendations article? Good question, and I have absolutely no idea. Jan Krans has a chapter on Conjectural Emendation and the Text of the New Testament which may make mention of it.
jeidsath wrote:I have 64 more obelized verses from W&H, and I can and will post threads on every one of them
I’m all up for that! Do a topic for each and every verse in the NT where we can discuss the numerous textual variants contained within each one – I’ll be fine with that :D

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Re: John 6:4 τὸ πάσχα

Post by ariekralt »

I have some sources who confirm the omitting of τὸ πάσχα

Biblical manuscripts:
Minuscule 163— Vatican, Barb.gr.520, folio 135v (1193 CE)
Miniscule 178—Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, Ms. gr. 123, page 446 (12th century)
Miniscule 187—Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, Pluteo VI. 23, folio 179r
Miniscule 472—London, Lambeth Palace, Ms. 1177, image 184 [n183] (11th–12th century)
Miniscule 748—Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Suppl. Gr. 903, folio 176r (12th century)
Miniscule 850—Von Soden Kι20—Vatican, Barb.gr.504, folio 150v (12th century)
Miniscule 979—Mount Athos, Docheiariou Monastery, Ms. 0142 (Lambros 2816) (16th century), Muenster page 5200
Miniscule 1634 - Mount Athos, Greece, Great Lavra Monastery, W' 125 (John 6.4)
Miniscule 2525-Athens, National Library of Greece, Ms. 2739, folio 147r (13th century)
Minuscule 2206—Greek Patriarchate of Alexandria, Ms. 37 (15th century) (Olim 89), 6.1–3 [7610
I have the scans of this mss on my computer.

Commentary:
Westcott and Hort already mentioned

(1)Browne, Henry Ordo Sæclorum: A Treatise on the Chronology of the Holy Scriptures: and the Indications Therein Contained of a Divine Plan of Times and Seasons: Together with an Appendix. London. J. W. Parker, 1844 p. 635:
''But then directly at variance with this conclusion was a text of S. John , in which there is mention of a Passover intermediate between the Passover after the Baptism and the Passover of the Crucifixion . It appeared however that there are strong grounds for doubting the genuineness of that mention . It is almost certain that the word “ Passover ” was not found in the copies of the fourth gospel which existed in the three first centuries , in some copies even later , § 89—92 . To which I will now add a further piece of evi dence , the value of which , however , must be left for the consideration of those who are more versed in the history of the Ecclesiastical Calendars.''

(2)Pearce, Zachary. A Commentary, with Notes, on the Four Evangelists, and the Acts of the Apostles: Together with a New Translation of St. Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians, with a Paraphrase and Notes . London. E. Cox. 1777, p. 499
V.4 . The passover , a feast , & c . ] There does not feem to be any reaſon for the evangelist's inserting this verse , nothing in this chapter having any relation to the feaſt of the paſs - over , or to any other of the Jewish feasts . G. J. Voffius , and Mr. Mann ( in De Anno emortuali Chrifti , P. 173. ) are of opinion , that the word nάoxa is an interpolation ; and I think , that the whole verſe is ſo ; because in ch . v . 1. mention is made of a feaſt ( probably , the feast of pentecost ) , and in ch . vii . 2. of the feast of tabernacles , between which two no feaft appointed by the law of Moses intervened . It does not appear from the evangelist's account , that Jeſus was preſent at a feaſt of the paſs - over here mentioned ; and yet it ſeems probable , that he , who fulfilled all righteousness , would not have been abfent from a feast of the pass - over which ( as is here said ) was then nigh at hand .

Gerhard Vossius. De annis Christi dissertatio secunda. ex typographia P. & J. Blaev, prostant apud Janssonio-Waesbergios, Boom, & Goethals, Amsterdam 1701 - p. 66 … there is no need for us to say that John 6:4 was first written… "But the holy day of the Jews was approaching," and that the text had to do with the holy day of Tabernacles… but the copyist, since he was not paying attention to it, wrote Pascha [Passover]… the ancients… seem not to have read the word Pascha at John 6, since they say that Christ predicted one year, or even a few months besides.

There has been a lot of debating about this verse, because of the duration of the minisrty of Jesus

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