Mike,
I thought that you had said earlier that a copyist of Luke had inserted
Cainan because he was in the LXX. Now you say that a copyist of the LXX
inserted his name because it was in Luke. This is circular. It must have
begun somewhere. The question of most interest is how it got into either
document in the first place.
Obviously the scholars have had a difficult time with Luke 3:33. Not only
do the manuscripts disagree on whether or not Admin is to be included, but
they also disagree on the spelling of other names in that verse. Admin can
be found in manuscripts as far back as the third century, including a
Greek papyrus manuscript and a Coptic translation. Whether or not Admin
was in the ancestral line of Jesus, there is still reason to believe that
the genealogies in Matthew and Luke omit some generations between Abraham
and David. In Matthew we know of three omissions between David and the
deportation to Babylon, and he includes the same number of generations
from Abraham to David as from David to the deportation to Babylon even
though the time period covered is much longer. Either there are omissions
or Abraham was not the only one who became a father at a very advanced
age.
Gordon Brown
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado
Boulder, CO 80309-0395
On Fri, 10 May 2002 MikeSatterlee@cs.com wrote:
> Hi Gordon,
>
> You wrote: You can't disprove the existence of the second Cainan merely by
> questioning the overall quality of the LXX.
>
> I think in my attempt to disprove the existence of a second Cainan I have
> questioned far more than just the overall quality of the LXX. Dick has been
> arguing that Luke referenced the LXX when writing his Gospel and, he has
> said, that is why Luke included a second Cainan in his genealogy of Christ.
> But I have cited much historical evidence, and I can cite more, that copies
> of the LXX which existed at the time of Luke did not anywhere mention a
> second Cainan. That being the case, it is the opinion of most who have
> thoroughly studied this matter that, "his name was introduced into the
> genealogies of the Greek Old Testament in order to bring them into harmony
> with the genealogy of Christ in St. Luke's Gospel." (Smith's Bible
> Dictionary) If these things are so, then the mention of a second Cainan in
> Gen.11 of the LXX is meaningless.
>
> You wrote: You seem to imply that the presence of Cainan in Luke's genealogy
> is due to the Textus Receptus, which I agree is very unreliable. Most modern
> translations are not based on the Textus Receptus but on much better
> researched versions of the Greek
> text, but even they include Cainan in Luke 3:36.
>
> I realized I had worded that poorly as soon as I sent off that post. I wrote,
> "Rather than accept the reading of the oldest and most carefully copied
> manuscript of Luke that exists, you prefer to rely on a copy of Luke which
> was made 1,000 years later and chosen to be a part of the corrupt Textus
> Receptus." I should have added, "and also unwisely included in other
> manuscript collections from which most modern Bibles are translated."
>
> You wrote: Incidentally, there is also another interesting but probably
> lesser known
> textual problem in Luke 3. That is the presence of Admin in 3:33 in a number
> of Greek manuscripts but not in others. Some translations include him, and
> others omit him. Admin occurs in neither the MT nor the LXX of the
> corresponding genealogy in Ruth 4, which may explain why a copyist might have
> omitted him in Luke 3.
>
> You wonder why some copyists "might have omitted him [Admin] in Luke 3."
> However, It seems to me that it makes much more sense to wonder why some late
> copyists included him. For I just checked my copy of the Papyrus Bodmer, "the
> earliest known copy of the Gospel according to Luke," which has been dated as
> early as AD 175 (The Text Of The New Testament, Its Transmission, Corruption,
> and Restoration by Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford University Press, 1992). "Admin"
> is not there. I also checked my copy of the Bezae Codex Cantabrigiensis,
> which was written a little after AD 500. Again, "Admin" cannot be found. How
> "Admin" found his way into some late copies of Luke's gospel is anybody's
> guess. Mine would be that sometime about a thousand years ago a man with the
> name "Admin," and a very big ego, was busy making a lot of copies of Luke.
>
> Mike
>
>
>
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