Teaser Tuesday (25 January)

Tuesday Teasin' time again, from Should Be Reading.

"They'll hang the fellow at Tyburn, and there will be an end to it."

"If he is found Guilty."

"Indeed. Your legal acuity never ceases to amaze me."

"I do not intend that he shall be found Guilty."

"A commendable position for the Counsel for the Defense. Bravissimo."

 p. 32-35, A Far Better Rest. Susanne Alleyn.

There are many variants among the more than fifty-three hundred early New Testament manuscripts and manuscript fragments that survived the Greek language alone (not to mention early Latin, Syriac, and Coptic translations). The oldest of them (from the second, third, and fourth centuries) are the most divergent. Granted, many of the variations among different manuscripts are not terribly significant. But a good number are. Some of these differences were no doubt the result of accidents, but some clearly were not. Early manuscripts of the Gospel of Mark, for example, offer four different endings. In the Greco-Roman world of the first and second centuries, long before copyright laws, works of literature quickly lost touch with their authors. They were copied, edited, supplemented, and distributed through decentralized, informal networks in ways that the writers could not anticipate or control.

p. 101, The Rise and Fall of the Bible: the Unexpected History of an Accidental Book, Timothy Beal.