Subject: RAPTURE |
Bible Note: Hi Kalos, I am not aware of the exact manuscript evidence for "strength". My sources tell me that the Byzantine, Majority, and Received Texts all show "be counted worthy". Only the Alexandrian shows "have strength", so this would indicate to me that probibly 2 percent or less of extant manuscripts would say "have strength". Your quote of the Good News certainly takes some liberties with the text, either way! Did you know that while we do not have any early Greek manuscripts of the commonly used types (Byzantine, Majority), at least not as old as the few Alexandrian which we do have, we have literally thousands of Versions (texts in other languages), quotes, and lectionaries that are as old, and older, even two hundred years earlier? And did you know that these versions can be divided into these same textual families as the Greek manuscripts? The upshot of this is that we can know that all these variations occured from the very beginning. It was not so much a matter of errors creeping in and being carried on down thru the centuries, oh, there was some of that, to be sure, but there was a lot of error introduced to some manuscripts right away. Doesn't sound very kosher! Being older isn't equal to being better. There is a much larger body of evidence for the Byzantine and Majority (which are nearly identical) manuscript families than there is for the Alexandrian, even with its few older Greek manuscripts. Were you aware that the two main "older, better manuscripts", the Siniaticus and the Vaticanus, only agree with each other about 75 percent of the time? I still pray that I am counted worthy (with His righteousness) to escape all these things. Were it based on my strength, well, I'm not so sure about that. But I don't think it is. Love in Christ, Mark |