* Wilbur Hubbard wrote, On 3/17/2007 1:28 PM:

"Jeff" wrote in message
...
I was reading the book "Misquoting Jesus" by Bart Ehrman (about how
there were so many errors in the coping of the New Testament that we
can't ever know what the original text was) and came across something
that might be of interest.

He was describing how many manuscripts used abbreviations, and then a
scribe would misinterpret the meaning of the abbreviation. Here's an
example:

'Similarly, in 1 Cor. 12:13, Paul points out that everyone in Christ
has been "baptized into one body" and they have all "drunk of one
Spirit." The word "Spirit" (PNEUMA) would have been abbreviated in
some manuscripts as PMA [with a bar on top to signify abbreviation],
which understandably could be - and was - misread by some scribes as
the Greek word for "drink" (POMA), and so in these witnesses Paul is
said to indicate that all have "drunk of one drink." '

Wine = spirit = drink. So what's the big deal? And don't believe that
crap about translators or transcribers of that time period being too
stupid to know an abbreviation when they saw one. Give them a little
more credit, please.

A man by the name of John Mill published a Greek version from
manuscript in 1707. He also had access to about 100 additional
versions of the Greek bible in manuscript and included all of the the
variances that he found in 30 years of research. It came to 30,000
differences.

This created quite a brouhaha at the time. However, now we have about
5000 ancient manuscripts, some complete Bibles, others small
fragments, and when all of the variations were complied (actually just
estimated), it came up to 200,000 to 400,000. This is more than the
number of words in the New Testament!