{"id":1939,"date":"2010-05-28T21:06:13","date_gmt":"2010-05-28T21:06:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/integrity-of-plato%e2%80%99s-text\/"},"modified":"2026-03-21T18:25:26","modified_gmt":"2026-03-21T18:25:26","slug":"integrity-of-plato%e2%80%99s-text","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/integrity-of-plato%e2%80%99s-text\/","title":{"rendered":"Integrity of Plato\u2019s Text"},"content":{"rendered":"

The<\/strong> I<\/strong>ntegrity<\/strong> of <\/strong>P<\/strong>lato\u2019s <\/strong>T<\/strong>ext <\/strong>is something that must be taken on trust, since we have very few early versions, the oldest of which dates from well over a millennium after Plato and are Greek editions based on Latin translations of even earlier Greek manuscripts. Add to that the fact that until around a thousand years ago documents were written in scriptuo continua, <\/em>which is writing without any spacing between words or sentences, no punctuation and all written in what we now call upper case or capital letters.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0paragraph above,\u00a0is shown\u00a0below as an example\u00a0in scriptuo continua <\/em>from which you can see the difficulties that copyists were confronted with, in order to faithfully transcribe texts over many\u00a0\u00a0centuries:<\/p>\n

THEINTEGRITYOFPLATOSTEXTISSOMETHINGTHATMUSTBETAKENONTRUSTSINCEWEHAVEVERYFE WEARLYVERSIONSTHEOLDESTOFWHICHDATESFROMWELLOVERAMILLENNIUMAFTERPLATOANDA
\nREGREEKEDITIONSBASEDONLATINTRANSLATIONSOFEVENEARLIERGREEKMANUSCRIPTSADDTOTH
\nATTHEFACTTHATUNTILAROUNDATHOUSANDYEARSAGODOCUMENTSWEREWRITTENINSCRIPTUOCO
\nNTINUAWHICHISWRITINGWITHOUTANYSPACINGBETWEENWORDSORSENTENCESNODISTINCTIONBE
\nTWEENUPPERANDLOWERCASEANDNOPUNCTUATION.<\/p>\n

The potential for error was enormous, a fact borne out by the thousands of transcription errors to be found in the various ancient codices of the Bible.\u00a0A paper from Professor Bruce M. Metzger gives a brief outline of the problems facing Bible translators(b)<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

Although most of these mistakes were minor and genuine accidents, a few were deliberately introduced to advance one or other of the many competing theological niceties that were quite common among early \u2018Christians\u2019.<\/p>\n

A popular demonstration of the risks that scriptuo continua <\/em>can generate is shown in the following phrase \u201cgodisnowhere\u201d, which could read \u201cgod is now here\u201d or \u201c god is no where\u201d.<\/p>\n

In the case of Plato\u2019s Atlantis texts, we have a document that is much shorter than the Bible, but on the other hand we have very few early manuscript copies of Plato\u2019s work, while there are literally thousands of manuscripts of the New Testament and the time span between the original and earliest is only decades in the case of the New Testament, but over a millennia in Plato\u2019s case(a)<\/sup>. However unlike the Bible, Plato\u2019s work was not used as a weapon in any ideological war.<\/p>\n

\"NTvPlato<\/a><\/p>\n

Consequently, we can be reasonably sure our texts are free from deliberate distortion, but must accept the inevitability of some accidental corruption. Debate has centred on the meaning of individual words in Plato\u2019s narrative, some important, but nothing absolutely critical.<\/p>\n

(a)<\/sup>\u00a0 https:\/\/www.biblicaltheology.com\/Research\/MartinezR02.html<\/a><\/p>\n

(b)<\/sup> Bibliotheca Sacra 150 <\/em>(July-September 1993 p273-84)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Integrity of Plato\u2019s Text is something that must be taken on trust, since we have very few early versions, the oldest of which dates from well over a millennium after Plato and are Greek editions based on Latin translations of even earlier Greek manuscripts. Add to that the fact that until around a thousand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[47,5226,2330],"class_list":["post-1939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible","tag-bruce-m-metzger","tag-scriptuo-continua"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1939"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66895,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1939\/revisions\/66895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlantipedia.ie\/samples\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}