Replies to post #172794 on Zeev's Turnips Talk Politics (ZTTP)

[SeriousMoney]

Is that the version in the Codex Sinaiticus?

Codex Sinaiticus... is a 4th century uncial manuscript of the Greek Bible, written between 330–350. Originally containing the whole of both Testaments, only portions of the Greek Old Testament or Septuagint survive along with a complete New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas and portions of The Shepherd of Hermas. Along with Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus is one of the most valuable manuscripts for Textual criticism of the Greek New Testament, as well as the Septuagint.



Codex Sinaiticus was found by Constantin von Tischendorf on his third visit to the Monastery of Saint Catherine, on Mount Sinai in Egypt, in 1859. The first two trips had yielded parts of the Old Testament, some from a rubbish bin. (see Codex Frederico-Augustanus) The emperor Alexander II of Russia sent him to search for manuscripts, which he was convinced were still to be found in the Sinai monastery. In May 1975 during restoration work, the monks of St. Catherine's monastery at Sinai discovered a room under the St. George chapel which contained many parchment fragments. Among these fragments, thirteen missing pages from the Sinaiticus Old Testament were found.

In June 2005, a joint project to produce a new digital edition of the manuscript (involving all four holding libraries) and a series of other studies was announced. This will include the use of hyperspectral imaging to photograph the manuscripts to look for hidden information such as erased or faded text [1]. This is to be done in cooperation with the British Library

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Sinaiticus

[SeriousMoney]

or the Codex Vaticanus?

The Codex Vaticanus (The Vatican, Bibl. Vat., Vat. gr. 1209; Gregory-Aland no. B or 03) is one of the oldest extant manuscripts of the Bible. It is slightly older than Codex Sinaiticus, both of which were probably transcribed in the 4th century. It is written in Greek, on vellum, with uncial letters.



The manuscript has been housed in the Vatican Library (founded by Pope Nicholas V in 1448) for as long as it has been known, appearing in its earliest catalog of 1475 and in the 1481 catalogue. Its place of origin and the history of the manuscript is uncertain, with Rome, southern Italy and Caesarea all having been suggested. There has been speculation that it had previously been in the possession of Cardinal Bessarion because the minuscule supplement has a text similar to one of Bessarion's manuscripts. T.C. Skeat, a paleographer at the British Museum, has argued that Codex Vaticanus was among the 50 Bibles that the Emperor Constantine I ordered Eusebius of Caesarea to produce. The similarity of the text with the papyri and Coptic version (including some letter formation), parallels with Athanasius' canon of 367 suggest an Egyptian or Alexandrian origin.

Codex Vaticanus is one of the most important manuscripts for Textual criticism and is a leading member of the Alexandrian text-type. It was heavily used by Westcott and Hort in their edition of the Greek New Testament (1881).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codex_Vaticanus

[SeriousMoney]

or the Textus Receptus?

The history of the King James Version's dependence on the Textus Receptus

When using the King James Version [KJV] the Bible, it is apparent that in some verses there are major differences between the KJV translation and all modern translations*.

The New King James Version [NKJV] should not really be considered a modern version. The NKJV's New Testament wording always corresponds exactly with the KJV, because both the NKJV and the KJV are based the same Greek texts.

The KJV's New Testament was based upon Erasmus' Greek text as modified by Stephanus and Beza. The NKJV's New Testament was based primarily upon Erasmus' Greek text as modified by Stephanus and Beza, but its translators also consulted the so-called Majority Text.

However unlike the original KJV, the NKJV does not include the Apocrypha. Though the NKJV provides a modern English rewording of the KJV wording, the NKJV still has all of the same errors that the KJV derived from Erasmus' Greek New Testament, which is plagued with corrupt readings... Below are three examples of corrupt texts in the KJV and NKJV. In all three verses, Erasmus' Greek New Testament text was based upon copies of the Latin Vulgate, not on any ancient Greek texts. In other words, the corruption of these verses had no support in any Greek texts prior to 1516...

Truly major differences between the KJV and modern translations of the New Testament are primarily due to the inaccuracy of the so-called Textus Receptus [TR], the Greek text upon which the KJV's New Testament was based. According to Bruce Metzger, the TR primarily resulted from the work of a Dutch Roman Catholic priest and Greek scholar by the name of Desiderius Erasmus, who published his first Greek New Testament text in 1516. The first edition of Erasmus' text was hastily and haphazardly prepared over the extremely short period of only five months. That edition was based mostly upon two inferior twelfth century Greek manuscripts, which were the only manuscripts available to Erasmus "on the spur of the moment".

The Greek New Testament project was seen by its publisher, Johann Froben, as a considerable commercial opportunity. Accordingly Froben expeditiously negotiated with Erasmus, who had already nobly intended to produce a Greek-Latin parallel text New Testament for the primary purpose of allowing Latin readers to become better acquainted with the original New Testament text, which he wanted to approximate as best as possible.

Froben rushed Erasmus' first edition text to market, in his attempt to get it into circulation ahead of the much more methodically prepared Complutensian Polyglot Bible, which was due to be published soon. In contrast to the five months that Erasmus used to hurriedly put his text together and get it printed and circulated, the Complutensian text required eighteen years of careful preparation before its first edition appeared. Erasmus himself said in a letter in Latin in 1516 that this first edition had been "praecipitatum verius quam editum," -- more precipitated than edited.

http://www.bibletexts.com/kjv-tr.htm

[SeriousMoney]

And what is the latest forecast for that end of days, ml? I've heard 2240 being batted around.

Christians in the 1st century AD believed the end of the world would come during their lifetime. Jesus in Mark 13:8 compared the end of the world with a mother's birth pain, and the image implied the world was already pregnant with its own destruction, but no one but God knows when it will happen. When the converts of Paul in Thessalonica were persecuted by the Roman Empire, they believed the end was upon them. However, doubt rose when as early as the 90s Christians said, "We have heard these things [of the end of the world] even in the days of our fathers, and look, we have grown old and none of them has happened to us". In the 130s Justin Martyr declared God was delaying the end of the world because he wished for Christianity to become a world religion. In the 250s Cyprian wrote that Christian sins of that time were a prelude and proof that the end was near.

However, by the 3rd century most Christians believed the End was beyond their own lifetime; Jesus, it was believed, had denounced attempts to divine the future, to know the "times and seasons", and such attempts to predict the future were discouraged; yet the End was given a date with the help of Jewish traditions in the Six Ages of the World. Using this system, the End was fixed at 202, but when the date passed, the date was changed to AD 500. After AD 500 the importance of the End as a part of Christianity was marginalized, though it continues to be stressed during the season of Advent.

Some current Christians place the end of the world within their lifetime or shortly thereafter. As evidence to support these ideas, many point to the prolific news coverage of tragedies around the world, sometimes "Biblical" in proportion, and offer interpretations of various passages from the Bible. Also, some Catholics believed that the third part of the Fatima message, which was to be disclosed by the Vatican in 1960 but finally was published under the pontificate of John Paul II, was a prophetic message from the Blessed Mother about the end times, but it turned to be a symbolic message closely related to the assassination attempt of the late Pope.

The issue of whether the true believers will see the tribulation or be removed from it by the Rapture causes division in evangelical circles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eschatology