Reli 104 1st Edition Lecture 6 Outline of Last Lecture I A brief overview of scholarship II The Gospels as Biography III History and tradition in the Gospels Outline of Current Lecture II The Manuscripts of the New Testament III Textual History of Mark s Gospel IV The Ending of the Gospel V Theories behind the Motifs Current Lecture I The Manuscripts hand written of the New Testament These notes represent a detailed interpretation of the professor s lecture GradeBuddy is best used as a supplement to your own notes not as a substitute The originals o We do not have the original copy of mark We don t have the book as mark wrote it He wrote it out by hand and we don t have that We don t know who Mark was don t know if his name was mark don t know when exactly he was writing likely around year 70 Very hard to date these books o Don t know where Mark was writing maybe Rome o Don t have the original for any of the books of the new testament Don t have the originals from any book from the ancient work The surviving copies with examples o We have copies of the copies of the copies of the copies of the originals Don t have originals or the early copies is problematic when people copy long texts by hand they make mistakes So if what you have are copies made of copies of copies people are making mistakes along the way All of them have mistakes in them how do you know if what you are reading is a mistake or the original o Age the earliest copy of any of the books of the NT is like all of our old copies made of papyrus ancient writing material 52 p52 Dates probably to around 125 25 years Little piece of the gospel John This copy is the size of a credit card the oldest copy we have of mark is from the year 200 225 About 100 years after Mark was originally written From John chapter 18 Wasn t written on a scroll but on a book codex where you write on the front and the back 2nd to 16th century o Numbers far more manuscripts of the NT than any other ancient book Have something like 5 600 copies of the NT in Greek Counting everything from little fragments to massive manuscripts o Kinds P52 don t know where it was found Written on a codex P66 pretty complete page Year 350 start getting manuscripts not on papyrus but on animal skin parchment Ex Codex Vaticanus gospel of Matthew Ms 7 cursive handwriting rather than doing it in block letters o Quality how good are these various manuscripts Some copyists better than other copyists They have different abilities Some scribes were pretty good and got almost everything correct Some scribes were really lazy and terrible First full copy of mark from 350 years after it was originally written Problem b c when people copied things they made mistakes because they were inattentive or unskilled If you are copying something that already has mistakes you are going to copy the mistakes and you are going to make mistakes Chain reaction Only time mistake gets fixed is if someone tries to correct a mistake but may correct it incorrectly How do you know what is Hope the scribe was being attentive problem with the NT Results Reconstructing the Originals o Scholars have devised ways to this particular study to figure out what the originals were what they were saying Difficult because there are so many differences in the manuscripts and written in so many languages More differences in our manuscripts than there are words in the new testament We don t know how many differences there are Good news most differences are completely insignificant immaterial and don t matter for anything except that scribes can spell no better than college students Some of the differences matter a lot In some of those places we are not sure what the original said in hundreds of places o Scholars try to reconstruct the originals o Examples in mark where there are differences The Textual History of Marks Gospel The Origin of the text Its circulation Our surviving witnesses Some curious variations o Mark 1 41 Sympathy or Anger you have great story of Jesus and the lepper Lepper comes up to Jesus and the Jesus says im willing to be clean and he is clean In other manuscripts it says Jesus is getting angry not compassionate and reaches out his hand and make it clean Likely to change it from angry to compassionate likely to change it to make better sense II o Mark 15 34 Forsaken left behind or Mocked Passage is filled with pathos Jesus has been condemned to death and he is in shock b c he is silent the entire time Says something at the end my god my god why have you forsaken me Just reading Mark Jesus feels forsaken at the end and why god has forsaken him Stands in contrast with the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is not silent and is in complete control of the situation Most people smash the gospels together the Jesus says 7 things in the last crucifixion you have therefore written your own gospel In some manuscripts he cries out my god my god why have you mocked me Jesus feels that god is insulting making fun of him Which is the original meaning Mock reading makes sense in the context roman soldiers are mocking him people walking by are mocking him and at the end he says God why have you mocked me what he argues in the book is that Jesus feeling forsaken on the cross makes sense in marks gospel because he cries out and he dies and the curtain in the temple is written in half Curtain is screen that separates holy of holy s and the rest of the people Reader understands why he must die so people can have access to god Jesus doesn t understand why Scribe changed it to mock because everyone else is mocking him Point if you want to know what mark means have to know what he says If you don t have the original words how do you know what he says o That s why you have scholars to figure this thing out o Last gospel of mark How did Marks Gospel End Buried by Joseph in a tomb and roll a stone in front of it On third day women go to the tomb the stone is rolled away and young man is inside One many says to Mary Magdaline and her companion you are looking for Jesus he is not here he has been risen from the dead Mark 16 8 The women fled from the tomb and they didn t say anything to anyone for they were afraid that s where it ends That s the end of the book How could it end there Scribes that were copying the copy got to that ending and …