Stephen C. Carlson, Associate Professor at Australian Catholic University (ACU), recently visited Paris (the one in France, not Texas) and discovered at the National Library of France an unregistered folio containing text from the Gospel of Mark!  Specifically, it has text from Mark 10.  The text is difficult to read and it is even more difficult on the opposite side.  There is enough to deduce that it is Byzantine. And that means, to quote Kurt Aland, whose influence upon the Nestle/Aland compilation was immense, that it must be ignored, along with the vast majority of G ..read more

In honor of this special day, and having had no time to prepare a post in honor of the occasion, here is a post from a few years ago about an exciting new method in dating manuscripts.  I must say I am disappointed that I have not heard of any new developments. https://www.thetextofthegospels.com/2020/03/breakthrough-new-method-for-dating.html ..read more

            It's still January 31, 2024, and the following text-critical resources are now available on Amazon.  Anyone who finds the price at Amazon prohibitively high is welcome to request a free digital text copy in the comments below or via an email to james.snapp@gmail.com . Reviews welcome on Amazon $9.99 US digital e-book $19.50 US paperback New Testament Textual Analysis.  That's what New Testament textual criticism is, minus the "art" that the dearly departed plagiarist Dr. Bruce Manning Metzger tries to smuggle in.   ..read more

I love the dedication that many members of the "Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" have.  Even though their ridiculous bogus "revelation" given by the phenomenally false prophet and teacher of lies Joseph Smith Jr. has been debunked and demonstrated by be nothing but a tall tale dreamed up on the basis of a dime-store novel back in the early 1800s, they still insist that they can't be wrong because of a "burning in the bosom" they have.   That "burning in the bosom" might be indigestion, or heartburn, or a psychosomatic semi-euphoria elicited by a person's desire to b ..read more

 It's almost Christmas 2023 -  the only such Christmas there will ever be -  So why not give your seminary friend a book he/she can read and lend?      I have three volumes available on Amazon, for the Kindle e-reader (or Kindle app) and also available in paperback: (click the link to go to Amazon for more information) Authentic:  The Case for Mark 16:9-20 (Fourth Edition) The Epistle of James - English Translation, Commentary, and Greek Text A Word to John MacArthur Regarding His False Claims About Mark 16:9-20. (Large Print) And don't forget:  I ..read more

          At the Biblical Archaelogy website, an article titled “What’s Missing from Codex Sinaiticus, the Oldest New Testament?” originally published by “Biblical Archaeology Society staff” on August 12, 2015, contained several false statements.            A heading in the article still refers to “Mark 16:1-14.”  That is false.  (In real life, Mark 16 continues to verse 20, as the verse-numbers in BAS’ article further down the page plainly show.)            In general h ..read more

             “Two suppositions alone are compatible with the whole evidence.   First, the words ἄλλος δὲ κ. τ. λ. may belong to the genuine text of the extant form of Mt, and have been early omitted (originally by the Western text) on account of the obvioous difficulty.  Or, secondly, they may be a very early interpolation, absent in the first instance from the Western text only, and thus resembling the Non-Western interpolations in Luke xxii xxiv except in its failure to to obtain admission into the prevalent texts of the third and fourth cent ..read more

            Metzger’s observation that 5:3b contains two “non-Johannine” words is lightweight, considering that John had few other occasions to use either ἐκδέχεσθαι or κίνησις.             (I commend to readers both the article written by Zane Hodges in 1979 in Bibliotheca Sacra 136, pp. 25-39, and the article by Gordon Fee which appeared in Evangelical Quarterly 54 (pp. 207-218.)                     ..read more

            War – what is it good for?  “Absolutely nothing,” many have answered.             And when the question is asked, “What is the Alexandrian text good for?”, quite a few people have responded with the same answer.  Independent Fundamentalist Baptists tend to insistently subscribe to the Textus Receptus, and some KJV-Onlyists even make it a formal condition of church fellowship to use the KJV or versions in languages other than English that conform to the meaning of the KJV New Testament. &n ..read more

 "But when ye see the abomination of desolation standing where he ought not (let him that readeth understand), then let them that are in Judaea flee unto the mountains."  Thus read the words of Jesus in Mark 13:14 in the Revised Version (1881). But in the KJV, NKJV, EOB-NT, MEV, and WEB, the verse is a bit longer:  before the word "then" is the phrase, "spoken of by Daniel the prophet," based on the words τὸ ῥηθὲν ὑπὸ Δανιὴλ τοῦ προφήτου, which appears in the Textus Receptus and in the vast majority of Greek manuscripts (including A K M U Y Γ Δ Θ Π 157), as well as in the P ..read more