The New Testament

 According to Hurtado, as scholars attempt to construct what they believe to have been the original texts, "the main aim . . . is to establish a Greek text which is as close as possible to the wording of the New Testament as they first came from the hands of the authors" (91-92). Since only copies of copies of copies of the original manuscripts survive, which may themselves be the transcriptions of word-of-mouth history, some variations have likely occurred over time which include "accidental spelling differences or omissions. But some variations are clearly deliberate. Most of these appear to be attempts to 'improve' the style, to remove ambiguity or sometimes harmonize parallel accounts in different books" (Hurtado, 92).

The Gospels of Mark and John frequently stand in contrast to one anoth

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ilarity, both verbally and in their order of appearance, of several passages in Mark and John. Morris lists eleven parallels between the two Gospels cited by Barrett as "very significant," but goes on to state that "with all respect to a great scholar this is not a very impressive list" (50-51), and proceeds to defend his perception that Barrett's list (including the work of John the Baptist, feeding the multitude, walking on the water, Peter's confession, the Last Supper, and the Passion and Resurrection) could not theologically or chronologically have happened in a different sequence (51). Similarly, Morris discounts Barrett's list of twelve passages with verbal coincidences. "When we reflect that Mark contains 12,000 words this is not very convincing" (52). Yet he is impressed with linguistic oddities such as "valuable pistic nard" (describing the ointment used at the Anointing), which appears in both Mark and John, although he senses that this is highly indicative of a strong oral tradition (53). Stein also challenges Barrett's disregard for the probability of a strong oral tradition. Concerning the remains accounted at the conclusion of the feeding of the five thousand, among which was "200 denarii" (a parallel in Ma
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Approximate Word count = 1823
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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