[osis-core] paragraph break defended once again.

[Chris Little]

Troy,

Troy A. Griffitts wrote:

>     Chris has recanted in a subtle way his position in his last email by 
> stating that Matthew 9:1 probably does go with with preceding paragraph 
> at the end of chapter 8 (I still argue that he's wrong about the first 
> part of the NASB translation of Rev 13:1 being its own paragraph, but I 
> don't need 2 cases of point).  This validates my concern that I CANNOT 
> encode their paragraph boundaries as containers without making SCRIBAL 
> decisions on their text.

Completely false.  You asked, "You are saying that you feel that Lockman 
intends Matthew 9:1 to be it's own paragraph?"  I responded, "True, in 
the case of Matt.9.1," and made no other statement on the issue of that 
verse.  I said Rev.13.1 is quirky because of the way logical divisions & 
chapter divisions don't line up, but there is absolutely NO AMBIGUITY 
with Lockman's markup & presentation that every chapter starts a new 
paragraph.  Some other Bibles continue the paragraph through the first 
half of Rev.13.1, but NASB considers verse & chapter divisions important 
enough to respect them as if they were logical divisions, even when they 
aren't.

>     a) I don't have the time to read through their Bible and decide 
> where I think paragraphs span chapters, and where they intend for a new 
> paragraph to start at a chapter break.

My offer stands to check all 1189 chapters, but at this point I wouldn't 
be able to do it until I get back to Dallas early next week.  And FWIW, 
if a Bible doesn't span a paragraph across the Rev.12/Rev.13 chapter 
boundary, I can guarantee it does it nowhere else.

>     b) MOST IMPORTANTLY: I don't want to continue a tradition in 2000 
> years of scribal error because I usurp the role of modifying the text!  
> It is not my place to lay my interpretations on the text.  There have 
> been commitees made of men so far beyond my ability to make such 
> decisions as to warrant interplanetary distances.  I am not qualified, 
> and resent the scribes in the past who felt they were, to 'correct', 
> 'make more plain', or just plain change the text which they were assigned.

Comparing this to scribal error, though dramatic, isn't an accurate 
comparison.  You're making reasoned decisions, not sccidental jots or 
omissions.  If the issue is of such concern to you, write to Lockman and 
inquire as to whether each chapter begins a new paragraph.  I'm sure 
that they will appreciate being informed of the issue because, if there 
are any cases where paragraphs span chapters, they've been mis-printing 
their own Bibles for decades now.  (Oh... except that their Quark files 
aren't based on the NASB SGML document... so we could just trust that 
they actually knew what they were doing when they printed it that way 
rather than making interpretive leaps to the conclusion that they're 
unqualified to typeset their own Bibles.)

--Chris