[xiphos-devel] [xiphos-users] Xiphos 4.5.0

[Karl Kleinpaste]

On 9/28/26 2:33 PM, Fred wrote:
> One problem (and it may well not be new) is that (viewing ESV) in Mark 
> 9, one gets to verse 43 and can't use the verse spinner to go beyond. 
> Prolly all confused because in most texts (of Mark) there is no verse 
> 44 but there is a verse 45 (as well as 47 but no 46).

That behavior is as old as the Sword Project itself.

Xiphos, and other Sword apps, do verse arithmetic to move to the 
next/prev verse. This is to say, they add/subtract 1 to the current 
verse key. When there is nothing there at the new key, Sword (and 
Xiphos) correctly conclude that nothing should happen. This is actually 
normal for some Bibles that include only 1 testament, or just (e.g.) 
Psalms and NT: You can't navigate Genesis at all in an NT Bible, so it 
doesn't try.

In the NT, this is because there are 16 verses that the modern science 
of textual criticism has reliably determined were never part of the 
original writings, including those 2 verses in Mark:

Matthew 17:21; 18:11; 23:14; Mark 7:16; 9:44,46; 11:26; 15:28; Luke 
17:36; 23:17; John 5:4; Acts 8:37; 15:34; 24:7; 28:29; Romans 16:24

Modern translations leave these out but often include notes indicating 
their absence, and why. A few translations leave quite extensive 
footnotes about it. For example, NET Matt 17:20 says this in its "tc' 
(textual criticism) footnote #39:

    39- */_tc_/* Many important MSS (א* B Θ 0281 33 579 892* pc e ff1
    sys,c sa) do not include 17:21 “But this kind does not go out except
    by prayer and fasting.” The verse is included in א2 C D L W Ë1,13 Ï
    lat, but is almost certainly not original. As B. M. Metzger notes,
    “Since there is no satisfactory reason why the passage, if
    originally present in Matthew, should have been omitted in a wide
    variety of witnesses, and since copyists frequently inserted
    material derived from another Gospel, it appears that most
    manuscripts have been assimilated to the parallel in Mk 9:29” (TCGNT
    35).

"B.M.Metzger" was Bruce Metzger, arguably the foremost Greek translator 
of the last century, and his TCGNT (Textual Commentary on the Greek NT) 
is a baseline standard reference.

ESV provides a very brief note about this at Mark 9:43, if you have 
notes enabled (as is default):

    Some manuscripts add verses 44 and 46 (which are identical with
    verse 48)

Of course, the KJV-only crowd likes to whine loudly about "denying the 
very word of God" over these removals, but I regard that as nonsense 
because Erasmus' Textus Receptus, as basis for KJV NT, was constructed 
from only about 7 manuscripts, none of them older than 12th century, 
with some parts of those being highly questionable, yet modern 
translations derive from such complete or near-complete manuscript 
collections as Codex Sinaiticus, reliably dated to 4th century. The very 
name "textus receptus" (the "received text" -- received from whom? one 
random intellectual who was creating what we would now call a unified 
"critical text apparatus," just like NA28 is today?) is an arrogant 
misnomer of huge proportions. As a result, I don't have a lot of respect 
for the KJV-only crowd.
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