'Not yet' or 'not'?

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> EDWARDS

> It gets worse than this, because the original Greek reading in 7:8 is not

> taken as "I am _not yet_ going ...", but "I am _not_ going ..."   The

Greek

> word for "not" (ouk) was apparently changed to "not yet" (oupo) to

diminish

> the appearance of Jesus' lying or changing his mind.


Matthew Bell
Either that or the Greek text which has oupo is more accurate than those
'best'
manuscripts which don't ;)

EDWARDS
True enough - that's always a possibility.  Interestingly enough (to some,
maybe), the manuscripts that read "oupo" include some pretty good and old
ones.  I'm away from my Greek NT (maybe someone can help me here; otherwise,
I'll post what the apparatus has tomorrow), but I think some of the oldest
papyri and maybe even Aleph and/or B (original or corrected) read "oupo".
The manuscript evidence, then, isn't too shabby.  Perhaps that's why the
committee gave the preferred reading a rating of "C" (i.e., they had
difficulty coming to a decision).  I suspect that the decisive principles
were 1. Chose the more difficult reading and 2. Chose the reading that best
explains the origin of the others.  The "ouk" reading is clearly consistent
with these principles, since it is the more difficult reading (i.e., more
difficult to reconcile with ideas about Jesus' relationship with the father,
his omniscience, etc., etc.).  It is also easy to see why someone would
change "ouk" to "oupo", whereas there is little (if any) reason for changing
"oupo" to "ouk."   As a sidenote, it might be interesting to some to see
that the translation committee seem to have been guided by scholarly, rather
than religious, principles in trying to establish the text.

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