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Textual Variation of Peshitta and Peshittovs. Greek texts? - Printable Version

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Textual Variation of Peshitta and Peshittovs. Greek texts? - oozeaddai - 08-05-2004

Hello would you please refresh my memory, on the amount of differences
between the texts.


I was talking about Aramaic primacy on anothe board, and I remember reading here somewhere (Or so I thought). That the theirs a huge difference between the ancient Greek codexes vs. those of the Peshitta and Peshitto.


Anyway I was hoping to quote that figure again. I thought there was only a few word differences, minor words between Peshitta and Peshitto, while you have many, many more ones when comparing Greek texts. I tried doing some key word searches to look this up, but didn't want to spend a few hours sifting through threads and various posts.

THANKS!


- gbausc - 08-05-2004

Akhi,

Here are data I have personally compiled doing computer analyses of the two versions:

Eastern Peshitta Western Peshitto
Matthew ??? 57,798 letters- 57,815 (+17 letters)
Mark - 36,326 letters - 36,333 (+7 letters)
Luke ??? 62,593 letters - 62,649 (+56 Lttrs. = +0.09% or 99.91% agreement
John ??? 47,884 letters - 48,516 (John 7:53-8:11 = 581),or 47,924 (+40) +0.08%)
Acts- 65,814 letters - 65,813 (-1) or -0.0015% ; 99.9985% agreement
270,415 271,126 minus (John 7:53-8:11 = 581) = 270,545
(-Jn 7:53-8:11) +0.048% or 99.952% agreement in letter #.

This is amazing agreement between the two ancient versions of The Aramaic churches, Eastern and Western !


Romans 24738 - Romans 24738 0.00%
1 Cor. 24535 - 1 Cor. 24534 -1 -0.004%
Romans-Hebrews 134451 - Romans-Hebrews 134438 -13 -0.01%
James-1 John 19386 - James-1 John 19387 1 0.01%
424,252 424,932
(- John 7:53-8:11)
424,351
There are only 99 letters more in The Western Version ! - 99.976665% overall text letter number agreement .
Western and Eastern Peshittas in text found in both.
John has the most variation between the two versions ; 99.90% agreement !
Apart from the Pericope de Adultera and the canon differences, these two ancient versions are practically identical !
This kind of agreement is unheard of among Greek mss; the only parallel is among Hebrew editions of the Old Testament Torah.

I have compared code results on The whole NT among four editions of The Peshitta; I also have compared The individual Gospel books and Acts for the same editions. The Western canon combined with The Eastern text of the 22 book Eastern canon seems to mark the closest to the original text we may ever be able to find; it may be the original itself without error in many or most of its books !

Three Western versions (Online Bible 1905 Syriac NT) , a transliterated Syriac NT at Peshitto.com and The Codefinder Edition of Peshitta compare thus:
Romans-Revelation
1905 Syriac NT
190,020 letters

Transliterated Peshitto
190,078 letters

Codefinder
190,003



75/190,020 = 0.0004 or 0.04 % difference; 99.96% agreement !
This amounts to approx. 1 letter difference per page.

Shlama w'burktha,

Dave Bauscher


- oozeaddai - 08-05-2004

Wow thanks for that very detailed response!


Re: Textual Variation of Peshitta and Peshittovs. Greek text - judge - 08-06-2004

oozeaddai Wrote:Hello would you please refresh my memory, on the amount of differences
between the texts.


I was talking about Aramaic primacy on anothe board, and I remember reading here somewhere (Or so I thought). That the theirs a huge difference between the ancient Greek codexes vs. those of the Peshitta and Peshitto.


Anyway I was hoping to quote that figure again. I thought there was only a few word differences, minor words between Peshitta and Peshitto, while you have many, many more ones when comparing Greek texts. I tried doing some key word searches to look this up, but didn't want to spend a few hours sifting through threads and various posts.

THANKS!

Hebrews 2:9 was changed from apart from God to by the grace of God.
Acts 20:28 was changed from .Be shepherds of the church of Christ which he bought with his own blood, to Be shepherds of the church of God which he bought with his own blood.

As far as I am aware most of the time the differences are due to different dialects.
Luke 24(?) may contain extra words or an extra verse (?)


- byrnesey - 08-06-2004

My friend, your statistics look very impressive. However, changed words with the same number of letters will not show up in that test.

In any case, what do we see with the major Greek versions? Perhaps you should apply the same test to major Greek NT's, in order to have a comparator.


- gbausc - 08-06-2004

Hello Richard,

I have some stats on Greek editions. Generally, letter # differences are 10 times greater between Elzevir's 1633 TR edition and Stephens 1550 TR edition.
The Greek NT Textus Receptus exists in various editions, whose mss. are the most consistent and carefully copied of all Greek mss. Elzevir's 1633 edition differs from Robert Stephens 1550 edition by about 87 letters in 1 Corinthians !
That , while only 2 thousandths of the book's 33,260 letters, (0.2%) is still ten times the variation found in the Western Peshitta editions. (compare 2 ten thousandths for Peshitta-Peshitto)-Lukes highest variation of 0.09%)

The Byzantine NT (1991 edition -Pierpoint) has 691,023 letters. Stephens 1550 has 693,395 letters. This is pretty good for Greek texts overall- 99.66 % agreement.This is 0.33 % variation ; Peshitta-Peshitto Lukes vary by 0.09%, 56 letters (the highest variation of Peshitta books) , just 1/3rd of Greek variation.
Overall Peshitta-Peshitto variation, comparing only 22 common books and disregarding John 7:53-8:11 which is found only in Western Peshitto, is 0.023%.
That is an overall variation in The Greek 10 to 14 times as great as The Peshitta-o versions. (1 Cor. is 10 times as great.)
The modern Critical Editions of The Greek NT have much wider divergences.
Westcott & Hort's Greek NT has 679,885 letters. That differs from Byzantine by 11,038 letters, or 1.60%. 98.40% agreement is still not bad at all, but relative to the Byzantine-Textus Receptus comparison, about five times as great.
This is 70 times the Peshitta variation.

1 Cor - W&H 32717; Byzantine 33182; 1550 TR 33256.
WH 98.60% of Byz. ; TR 100.22% of Byz.

WH varies 1.40% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor.
TR varies 0.22% from Byzantine - Majority text in 1 Cor.

WH variation is 6.36 times as great as TR from Majority text.
I don't have USB NT or Nestles' 26th Edition stats yet. They will be better than W&H comparison numbers, however.
I am sure that The Eastern text mss. have even less variation among some mss. than some of the variation we see in Western editions.Consider 8 variants in one ms. in all of Paul's epistles- (one for every ten pages), in an 8th century manuscript from a 2000 year old version.

Grace & Peace,


Dave


- byrnesey - 08-06-2004

NOW it looks impressive!