bible.org - Busted Again!

Who is this anonymous 'expert' at bible.org?

Well, he says here something quite remarkable:

"when Aleph and B agree, their combined testimony must go back quite far. Westcott and Hort estimated that their agreement went back ten generations and must be located near the beginning of the second century."

Again in another 'expert answer':

"I would concur with Westcott and Hort that the common ancestor between these two MSS must be at least ten generations back. I hope this point is clear."

Aargh!!!!.. Why is it the people at bible.org are such fabricators?

I have just gone through Hort's longwinded BS about Aleph/B, all the way from para 204/205 (B/Aleph) to para 374.

He makes no such claim that we can find. On the contrary, he does say a few things:

a) B and Aleph are entirely different in regard to their subsequent history,   i.e., 'post-nearest common ancestor'. For B he makes incredible claims of purity and FEWNESS of generations:

"The ancestry of B posterior to the common archetype was probably a chain of very few links indeed;..." (Hort, Introduction, ¶ 328. pg 248-9, ).

Again, speaking primarily of B's unique/subsingular readings, he says,

"the sources of corruption in B are for the most part of a sporadic and indeterminate character (cf. ¶ 204)." (Hort, Intro, ¶ 328, p.250)

This hardly sounds like Hort has detected 10 layers/generations (or any other number beyond 'more than one'). He goes on:

"Finally, the absence of any external criterion for referring the various singular and subsingular readings of either MS to one or other of the two possible origins*, combined with the exceptional antiquity and purity of the fundamental text which they both preserve intact in a very large though unequal proportions,..." (etc., ibid).

This clearly doesn't sound anything like a detailed detection of a half-dozen or more layers is even possible in Hort's view.


For Aleph he says (ibid.),

"On the other hand...the ancestry of Aleph posterior to the common archetype must, at one or more points in its history, have been exposed to contact with at least two early aberrant texts"

Neither of these descriptions sounds anything like "at least ten generations back".

In fact, Hort goes on to say quite clearly that 'generations' per se are not
actually detectable:

"Except from extraneous sources, which here have no existence [i.e., pre 2nd cent.], it is never possible to know how many transcriptions [generations of copy] intervened between the autograph and the latest common ancestor..." (Hort, Intro. ¶ 367, p.281).

Hort does repeatedly insist that the Aleph/B text is "early 2nd century", but not on the basis of the number of generations he has been able to detect anywhere.

Looks like the bible.org anonymous 'expert' claims are another attempt at making up stuff to enhance an entrenched position, - that is,

*busted*.

mr.scrivener