I will say again, I don't give much thought to your articles because they are deceiving.
You begin making the case that the two family--A & B are in “two camps”. To support that you quote “two pre-eminent scholars in favour of each
family”(emphasis mine):
It is often said that the differences between these two families are unimportant. Here are some initial observations about that claim. I will start by quoting two of the most pre-eminent scholars in favour of each family – i.e. Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892) and John William Burgon (1813-1888). Hort was a leading member of the revision committee which produced the ‘Revised Version’ of the Bible in the late 19th Century. Hort said that, if the Christian Church were to replace one of these two manuscript families with the other, it would be so significant as to produce a whole “new period in Church history”.9 Likewise, but from a supporter of the other family, Burgon said the result would be a “seriously mutilated” text.10
This quote from Hort was not about family A but about the TR. The TR was vile and had serious errors and used would produce a whole “new period in Church history.”
Burgon even agreed.
"Once for all, we request it may be clearly understood that we do not, by any means, claim perfection for the Received Text. We entertain no extravagant notions on this subject. Again and again we shall have occasion to point out (eg. at pg. 107) that the Textus Receptus needs correction." [The Revision Revised, p. 21, note 3; italics his].
And you personally agree too:
The fact is that the differences between the TR and the critical Greek are *not* minor, as I demonstrated at some length in Part 2b. In love, I do urge Zach to make sure of his ground if he's gonna post further comments on this thread before reading that article
However, you do not demonstrate that the “differences between the TR and the critical Greek are *not* minor”. What you do is demonstrate that the differences between family A and family B are *not* minor. What you have done in articles part2a and part 2b is deceived people. The differences between family A and B are not that different but you mix in quotes that were meant for the TR only and group it together to lead people to believe that it was meant for the entire family A. Your footnotes show this:
7 For simplicity I have combined the ‘Neutral’ and ‘Minority’ families into one (see earlier footnotes), not least because many experts today do not distinguish between the two. For this short overview of textual criticism, I have employed another simplification – viz. I sometimes relate comments made specifically about manuscript ‘B’ simply to family B, and likewise I sometimes relate comments about the Textus Receptus (a Greek text derived from family A manuscripts) to the whole of family A. However, neither simplification alters the final outcome.
The majority of you 2nd article is from the position that the two pre-eminent scholars on both sides denounce the other family of texts. This is not true as I quoted that Hort himself did not believe there were major differences between the two families. He did believe that the TR has huge errors and there were major differences though.
One word of warning, already referred to, must be emphasised in conclusion. No fundamental doctrine of the Christian faith rests on a disputed reading. Constant references to mistakes and divergences of reading, such as the plan of this book necessitates, might give rise to the doubt whether the substance, as well as the language, of the Bible is not open to question. It cannot be too strongly asserted that in substance the text of the Bible is certain. Especially is this the case with the New Testament.
[Dr. Hort, whose authority on the point is quite incontestable, estimates the proportion of words about which there is some doubt at about one-eighth of the whole; but by far the greater part of these consists merely of differences in order and other unimportant variations, and "the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation ...can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text" (BF Westcott, FJ Hort,Paperback, Introduction to The New Testament in the Original Greek, p. 2).]
The number of manuscripts of the New Testament, of early translations from it, and of quotations from it in the oldest writers of the Church, is so large that it is practically certain that the true reading of every doubtful passage is preserved in some one or other of these ancient authorities.
This can be said of no other ancient book in the world. Scholars are satisfied that they possess substantially the true text of the principal Greek and Roman writers whose works have come down to us, of Sophocles, of Thucydides, of Cicero, of Virgil; yet our knowledge of their writings depends on a mere handful of manuscripts, whereas the manuscripts of the New Testament are counted by hundreds, and even thousands. (Sir F Kenyon, Our Bible & the Ancient Manuscripts, p.34)
You appear to be saying that Hort was "so focused on trying to prove that ... family ['B'] is all correct and family [A] is all wrong ... that [he] failed to see that the two families are not all that different"
Let me make this clear since it seems so important to you to prove me wrong. “I WAS WRONG”.
Now that we’ve settled that….we can both agree that Hort and his colleagues knew how he thought better than I do. So, by proving me wrong it proves you wrong also because this quote now shows that Hord did not in fact believe that there were major differences between family A and family B.
It doesn’t appear that Burgon thought family B was all bad either according to you:
However, please remember that Burgon felt family B's Codex B did have value.
Please, PLEASE could you explain to me once and for all why Hort called the TR "vile" if the differences between it and his text are unimportant?
This is because as I have just attempted to show…you have been deceiving people (whether intentionally or not is not my business) by mixing terms together. In your article I never remember you referring to the TR specifically but the whole family A but in this discussion you have mentioned it specifically several times. Let me make this clear, family A is more than just the TR.
He called the TR vile because it is in a sense. The minor differences he was speaking about as you failed to show in your article were about family A. Family A texts are not that different from family B. The TR is vile and seriously mutilated. The TR is a modern Greek translation made less than 100 years before the KJV. It should not be considered even apart of family A any more than the KJV.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textus_Receptus
PLEASE could you tell me why he claimed that, if the Christian Church were to replace one of these two manuscript families with the other, it would be so significant as to produce a whole "new period in church history"?
This is why we have problems. You are asking why he said this about the TR but in your article you quoted him as saying this about the entire family A. This is misleading. If we replaced our bibles with texts based on the TR than it would produce a whole new period in Church History. If we replace our texts as you mention in our article with the family A or family B it wouldn’t make much difference because they aren’t that much different and only contain minor error that don’t affect doctrine.
the implication being that plenty of scholars rely on their work to a significant extent.
Yes, this is correct. Many scholars rely on their work and many don’t. Many don’t want to admit how much. Most modern scholars say they don’t, although they probably do. Because of articles like your scholars, professors and students alike try to distance themselves from either side because the average layman reads an article like your (that is deceiving in my opinion) and begins to think that any work that is based on Hort is perverted. So translators try to distance themselves so that people won’t instantly cast off their work simply because they read an article like yours.
In the end Hort didn’t think there were major differences between family A & B. I think you logic in the article part 2a & 2b are flawed seriously. I think your article is misleading and deceiving. I’m not going to speculate nor do I care if it was intentional.