[B-Greek] Textual variants

William Warren wfwarren at aol.com
Wed Jun 21 11:16:54 EDT 2006


Marion, a large number of the textual differences in manuscripts  
actually fall into this category, with the spoken result most often  
not causing any problem at all for those listening to the text.   
Almost always the differences involve vowel substitutions rather than  
consonants (very, very few differences occur with consonants), with  
some of the most frequent involving such substitutions as AI/E,  E/ 
EI, E/H, EI/E, EI/I, EI/IEI, H/E, H/EI, H/I, I/EI, I/H, EI/H, O/W,   
OU/W, U/H and H/U ( almost always involving UMEIS/YMEIS in various  
conjugated forms), and W/O (note that the direction of the shift is  
given twice when it is noted in both directions).  Of course, many of  
these result in valid grammatical forms, such as UMWN versus YMWN,  
but the root problem seems to have been vowel confusion that yielded  
no major pronunciation difference.  These examples are based on  
preliminary studies that we've done, with a future thesis by one of  
my students  in the works on this documenting the shifts in various  
time periods based on a large selection of NT mss. as well as some of  
the general trends in Greek literature.

paz,

Bill Warren
Director of the Center for New Testament Textual Studies
Landrum P. Leavell, II, Professor of New Testament and Greek
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary


On Jun 21, 2006, at 9:41 AM, Marion Fox wrote:

> Marion Fox here,
>
> I have a question about the textual variants in some of the  
> manuscripts: "Is
> it possible that some of the variant spellings were caused by  
> variants in
> spelling in the Greek that was written?" For example, in English  
> the word
> "vapor" is spelled "vapour" in England and "vapor" in the United  
> States.
> However when it is spoken we cannot discern any difference (except  
> in the
> accent of the speaker).
>
> I have wondered about this for several years.
>
> Yours in His service,
>
> -- 
> Marion Fox
>
> http://www.fivefpublishing.com
> ---
> B-Greek home page: http://metalab.unc.edu/bgreek
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