Query in favour of Greek

[aux]

Hi Searcher, good inquiry. However, I think there are some mistakes in your analogy and interpretation of the stats you gave. Let's assume your numbers are correct -- now how many *unique* words make up the Gospels? Many of the words in the Gospels are repeats, words like "Jesus" "God" "law" "spoke" "walk/ed" "bless/ing/ed" "eat/ate" etc., and so the 65k figure is inflated thus artificially reducing the percent of polysemic words in the Gospels. I'm reminded of similar use of stats employed by Atheists when pointing out how many differences there are among the various Greek MSS, never mentioning that the vast majority of differences are simple scribal/copyist errors, misspellings, duplicate or skipped lines, and only negligible differences have significant impact theologically and those that do usually can be traced fairly well (ie, Johannine Comma) all because there are so many copies of the Greek MSS which serves as a checks and balance system. I think the Greek witnesses are great btw. When I see Atheists using such tactics it comes off as gimmicky similar to bad advertising and flawed research papers used for talking points (ie, propaganda). I have bibleworks and could probably break down all the real numbers regarding unique words vs the list of known and agreed upon polysemic words (if such a comprehensive list exists) but I've never used the program for stats and so would prob take some time for me to figure out how to do it all properly (not to mention which version you're talking about). I'm not sure I'm curious enough to do so, but maybe someday I will.

The other thing is your analogy doesn't quite fit because we're talking about 2 or more (hypothetical) translations diverging on certain words in certain contexts that can't be reconciled until the terms in the (hypothetical) original language are revealed to include multiple definitions from which the diverging translations sprang. The analogy only gives one English text containing words known to have Latin derivatives which have more than one definition in the original Latin instead of 2 English translation that diverge on certain Latin terms with more than one definition that can't be reconciled with one English term until the underlying Latin text is consulted, hence the diverging English translations.

Polysemy is indeed a significant aspect of the texts and shouldn't be underestimated, in fact the biggest star in NT studies, Bart Ehrman, tried to use an example of it in John 3.3 in the GNT to argue for Greek primacy, however he either was ignorant or misleading readers because the same phenomenon exists in the Aramaic text of the same verses but with slightly different meaning, and in my opinion deeper and more in line with John's Gospel's main thrust set forth in the opening lines and key in Jewish thought: In the beginning was the Memra/Miltha. http://www.peshitta.org/forum/viewtopic....565#p24707

Peace in Christ