The Neverending Story. I have neither read the book nor seen the film – do not even know what it is about – but the title (apparently an attention-getter) is stuck in the recesses of my mind. When we look at the sad state of modern textual criticism, we find it too is a never-ending story. They can never have a Bible that is settled. It is ever-changing.
“The text is changing. Every time that I make an edition of the Greek New Testament, or anybody does, we change the wording. We are maybe trying to get back to the oldest possible form but, paradoxically, we are creating a new one. Every translation is different, every reading is different, and although there’s been a tradition in parts of Protestant Christianity to say there is a definitive single form of the text, the fact is you can never find it. There is never ever a final form of the text.”
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