The Trinity and Light

[Paidion]

Hi Homer,
A goodly number of scholars believe that ALL of the extant writings ascribed to Ignatius, are forgeries of a much later age.

I have noticed that these writings (I think nearly every one of them) recommend that the people of the churches to whom he supposedly wrote, should submit to their bishop as they would to Jesus Christ. Clearly the writer(s) lived in an age when the presbyter/overseer distinction was made, and overseers had already taken on the role of "bishop" and there was only one for each church or diocese.

[Paidion]

Hi Jose,

Perhaps I've put too much trust in some of what I've read in this regard. I'm not sure where to begin to look to verify the information, but I was going by what is written below.

No. You are right. I was going by some editions of Greek testaments. I was looking at footnotes, and none mentioned the variations you gave—only the variations of "κυριος" (kurios), with and without the article.

I have a pdf of vaticanus, and looked at the page in question. The word "IC" with a stroke over it is used. The stroke indicates an abbreviation. The two letters are iota, sigma, the first and last letters of "ιησους" (current koine Greek alphabet). That is the word "Jesus" or "Joshua." In the same verse, Jude wrote "το δευτερον" (to deuteron) which means either "the second time" or "the second place." But strangely, a lot of translators render it as "afterward." Some believe that Jude had written that Joshua saved the people out of Egypt for the second time—Moses brought them out the first time, but they wandered in the desert 40 years, and Joshua brought them out the second time and into the promised land.

I have a book which is a transcript of the earliest New Testament manuscripts, all dated prior to 300 B.C. None of the earliest manuscripts contain Jude, (such as papyrus 46 and 66 dated about 150 A.D.) However, papyrus 72 contains the passage. This papyrus is dated the late 3rd century or the early 4th. It is the earliest extant manuscript of Jude. It uses the following two abbreviations (I will write them using the current koine Greek alphabet): θς χρς (run together with an overstroke)."θς" stands for "θεος" (God), and "χρς" stands for "χριστος" (Christ or messiah).

Yes, papyrus 72 is the earliest extant manuscipt of the verse. Of course, this doesn't necessily mean that Jude wrote those two abbreviations. I suspect he wrote either "ο κυριος" (the Lord), the usual representation of Yahweh, or "ιησους" meaning "Joshua." The word "ιησους" is used for Joshua in Acts 7:45 and Hebrews 4:8, and as far as I know all translations so render it, except the King James and the Douay in which it is translated as "Jesus" in both verses.

[dizerner]

θς χρς! That is really cool. Might I ask what book that is Paidion, that contains those early manuscripts, I'm not challenging, I'm genuinely interested.

I don't think Joshua fits the context in this particular passage, because Joshua never destroyed any Israelites. It seems the point is "God delivered the Israelites from Egypt, but still later killed those same Israelites for unbelief."

[Paidion]

The Text of the Earliest New Testament Greek Manuscripts

Edited by Philip W. Comfort and David P. Barrett

Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.
Wheaten, Illinois

When I was first examining this volume, I came close to not purchasing it. Through the years I have found it SO useful! I have never ceased rejoicing that I somehow made the decision to purchase it!

The amazing part is that these transcripts (in modern Greek characters and with spaces between words) are placed on each page to EXACTLY correspond to the photocopies of the manuscripts themselves! For example, I downloaded photocopies of the actual papyrus 66 of the gospel of John. The first word in each line of papyrus 66 in the Greek of the day (all capitals; no spaces between words; no punctuation other than overstrokes to indicate abbreviations and dots to indicate quotations) is the same first word in the same line of the transcripts in this book! Unlike papyrus 66, the editors of the book, however, do place spaces beween words.

[Paidion]

The book contains transcripts of the following papyri: :1,4,5,9,12,13,15,16,17,18,20,22,23,24,27,28,29,30,32,35,37,38,39,40,45,46,47,48,49,50,52,53,64,65,66,67,69,70,72,75,77,78,80,86,87,90,
91,92,95,98,100,101,102,103,104,106,107,108,109,110,111,113,114,115

It also contains transcripts of the following early uncials:
0612,0171,0189,0220

You understand, of course, that all of these transcripts are in Greek. I call them transcripts because they use the modern Greek characters instead of the characters of the day in which the papyri and the uncials were copied.

[dizerner]

Thanks for the reference and review, I'd definitely like to find a copy when I can.

[Paidion]

In case anyone is interested, here is a photocopy of a page from papyrus 66, copied around 150 A.D. This page is John 1:14-21. Of course there were no chapters or verse numbers in those days. Notice that there are no spaces between words and everything is in capitals. Sometimes long words were broken at the end of a line, and the second part of that word was placed on the following line.

The page is not in good condition, but what can one expect after 1800 years or so? It's amazing that the pages of papyrus 66 are still in good enough condition to be studied.

If you examine line 14, characters 8 and 9, you will see something that looks like this with an overstroke: ΘC
The first letter is a theta and the second is a sigma. This is an abbreviaton of "theos" the word for "God."
John 1:18 in this ancient manuscript speaks of "the only-begotten God" rather than "the only-begotten Son" as some of the later manuscripts have it.

[Jose]

Paidion,
I appreciate your research and follow up on that verse. Thank you.

[Homer]

Hi Paidion,

John 1:18 in this ancient manuscript speaks of "the only-begotten God" rather than "the only-begotten Son" as some of the later manuscripts have it.

Sounds a bit Trinitarian!

You have done away with most of the Old Testament, parts of the new, and now I see we need to discard Ignatius. We need to end this thread quick or we'll having nothing left.

[dizerner]

I think there's a lot of good arguments for monogenes theos being the original reading.