Textual Criticism, Ms Power Point 2003

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Gordon D. Fee

By Francisco Lopes

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The two most Used Greek-NT UBS – United Bible Society NA – Nestle Aland Recent revival of Advocacy of TR – Textus Recetus

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Zane Hodges Professor of Greek and NT at Dallas Theological Seminary.

– 1) Unsatisfactory answers to the rise, comparative uniformity and dominance of the Byz text. – 2) Majority text as a “result” of a normal transmission – 3) Subjectivity in choosing the best readings from the earliest MSS.

The Majority Text • About 80 % of the extant MSS • About 90% of the extant MSS have suffered some influences from this text type. Almost any time the earliest MSS were corrected, they tended to conform with this text-type. • No evidence of this text-type before AD 350.

• The earliest evidence are seen in the works of some church fathers and latter on, on Codices W (AC 400) and A.

Zane Hodges His questioned “truism”

• • That the nearest MSS to the autograph would produce the largest number of descendants. • He is challenged with the analogy of the descendants of Abraham, Jacob, Esau. • It is not enough to say that Abraham has more descendants when these might have suffered influence from mixture with other lineages and differ

• No historical support only “ merely theoretical probability”.

Context of Early MSS Copies

• No trained scribes in scriptoria • Copies made for pragmatic reasons. • The earliest copies taken very early from their place of origin. • Proliferation with differences would continue until factors converged to stop it.

• Although having a variety of text forms during AD 150-225, there is not a single illustration of the later majority text.

How does One Account the Dominance and Uniformity of the Majority Text? th • Factors converged between 4 and 7th Century AD. • Trained Christian scribes working in scriptoria. • (The idea and concept of canon was not familiar to the scribes of 2nd century AD). • Copies being made to remain locally for biblical studies and not to be taken away.

• This can be seen in the fact that majority extant Greek MSS were found in large quantity in monasteries and university libraries. • The astonishing influence of Chrysostom – the most influential Greek father • The most important factor – By the end of the 7th century, the Greek NT was being transmitted in a very narrow sector of the church – The

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Greek almost known in the west. The rise of the Latin The decline of Alexandria and the rise of Islam still narrowed Greek speaking Christendom.

Pickering • His assertions: • Textual criticism reaps us of the certainty as to the original NT Greek text. • Criticism against modern eclecticism with direct intention of discrediting Westcott-Hort, believing that doing so, he discredits modern eclecticism.

• Not satisfied because WestcottHort treated the NT as they would tread any other book, ignoring that: • “Corruption in other books were merely accidental while with the new testament it was theological motivated.”

Gordon Fee’s Answers • He wrongly grouped all modern eclecticism with that of G. D. Kilpatrick and J. K Elliot. – internal evidence only. • This is not the method of contemporary textual criticism. • The causes of Corruption: • The problem of “deliberate falsification” and “Dogmatic

• Pickering – “Malicious changes”, done by “persons lacking in integrity” • The Different types of corruption – A) add/omit – B) Substitutions – C) Word order – D) Any combination of the above – E) Transpositions – F) Major rewriting of a sentence or paragraph

• F is always deliberate. • “If one were to take any five to ten verses from anywhere in the NT and collate the available textual evidence, the vast majority of variants among the MSS belong to categories A, B, and C.

• Fee uses the example of the first five verses of John 13: • 27 variation units – 14 add/omit, 10 substitutions, 2 word order, 1 add/omit and substitution • “One can go anywhere in the NT, and the profile will be the same. The vast majority of textual corruptions, though deliberate, are not malicious, nor are they theological motivated.”

• Pickering brings quotations from church fathers to prove that they took the NT as authoritative and sacred, so they would not tamper with its text in copying it. • He seeks their support for the reading of the majority text. • The Church Father quoted the NT loosely, having various variants in just one piece of work.

Conclusion of this Section • Pickering’s proposal simply eliminates textual criticism altogether. • He is criticized of not being capable of doing textual criticism. His entire book contains only one example how his method works in actual practice – “God” or “He who” . I Tim 3:16

• Fee throws down his only one example. • 300 MSS reading “God” against 8 MSS reading “He who” • 98% versus 2% his argument is that the statistics wins • We have more than 1000 MSS of Vulgate not 1 single one • None of the ancient versions: Syriac, Coptic, Armenian,

• None of them reads “God” • Thus the 97% deals only with a very narrow section of the Christianity – the Greek Othodox Church. • The earliest MS to read “God” is from the 8th century. • “He Who” refers to Christ.

• Most of this revival is considered to be “simply the rhetoric of misinformed fundamentalism…” • The most informed attempts: • Dean Burgeon Society – Zane Hodges – W. N. Pickering

By Abel Sitali

ECLECTIC METHOD The Eclectic approach is a method by which scholars attempt to recover the most likely original text of the NT. With regard to the criteria for determining the originality of textual readings,

Two approaches have been categorized: A. Use of the critical canons in antiquity; and B. Use of critical canons in Modern times.

Epp and Fee do acknowledge that the term “Eclectic,” as applied in NT textual criticism, not only is comparatively recent in its use but also varied in its meaning and emphasis. Its earliest occurrence is said to have been in L. Vaganay’s text-critical manual of 1934 – where it was particularly employed to describe the

Different definitions to ‘Eclectic’ or ‘Eclecticism.’ Kilpatrick used it to refer to a method that emphasized stylistic rather than documentary considerations. Others have considered it to be a method that addresses external evidences; and yet still others have considered it as addressing internal evidences.

J. J. Griesbach 1. The more unusual (rare words) is preferred to that without anything unusual. •

Expressions less emphatic (rhetorically) are closer to the genuine, than those polished

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Readings that at first glance convey a false meaning is preferable, which upon thorough examination, is found true.

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Readings having the odor of a gloss or interpretation may be rejected

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Readings introduced from the Latin version into the Greek books are disapproved.

Karl Lachmann 1. Nothing is better attested than that on which all authorities agree •

If some of the authorities are silent or defective, the weight of evidence is somewhat lessened.

3.

When the witnesses are of different regions, their agreement is of more importance than when those of some particular locality differ from the rest, either from negligence or from set purpose.

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When witnesses of different widely separated regions disagree, the testimony must be considered to be doubtfully balanced.

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When readings are in one form in one region and in another form in another region, with great uniformity, they are quite uncertain.

C. V. Tischendorf He categorized canons into internal and external: •

that

Readings wholly peculiar to one or another {ancient} witness are suspect, as are readings in a class of documents, appear to have originated from critical, scholarly correction.

•Excluded are readings no matter what their attestation, that clearly have originated from a copyist. •Witnesses with passages parallel to the OT, NT and especially the synoptic gospels, when they attest disagreements, are preferable to witnesses that show agreement, for the ancients paid attention to the parallels.

Westcott and Hort 1. Older MSS or groups are to be preferred. (The shorter the interval between the time of the autograph and the end of the period of transmission in question, the stronger the presumption that earlier date implies greater purity of text •

Readings are approved or rejected by reason of the quality, and not the number, of their supporting witnesses.

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The reading is to be preferred that best conforms to the usual style of the author and to the author’s material in other passages.

4. The reading is to be preferred that most fitly explains the existence of the others.

Summary of this Section E. J. Epp entitled this section of the book with this question and perhaps it is important to revisit it in conclusion. Epp observes that every eclectic method is at best a temporary ‘solution’ to our basic problems in NT textual criticism, and if such a method really is a solution at all, it is of the most tentative kind.

Summary of this Section Since the term ‘eclectic’ refers to the choice of appropriate criteria from among many, that in itself discloses the fact that the method (eclecticism) does not have an all conclusive solution. This therefore means that the eclectic method is not a solution but a symptom – which provides us with detailed indications of the difficulties in NT textual criticism,

Summary of this Section thereby assisting us both in clarifying the difficulties and in exploring appropriate solutions. Just as symptoms are helpful in enabling physicians to establish the right diagnosis and cure for disease, so does the eclectic method enable the textual critic to arrive at appropriate solutions of

The Claremont Profile Method For Grouping NT Minuscule Manuscripts By Azael D. Pittí

The Claremont Profile Method The Claremont Profile Method (CPM) stands as the first attempt in the history of New Testament Textual Criticism at a complete, comprehensive, and repeatable classification of manuscripts. The CPM was created in the 1960s for the

The Claremont Profile Method The IGNTP was preparing a critical apparatus of Luke, and needed a method to determine which manuscripts should be included. The result was the CPM, which eventually was used to classify some

The reasons for the creation of the CPM are given by Eldon Jay Epp

The textual critics have for generations en confronted by the burdensome mass o Minuscule Manuscripts and yet with one table exception, they have failed or been unable to prosecute a broad-scale methodological effort direct toward the ting and classification of this massive an intractable complex” p. 211

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Manuscript Uncial

Minuscule Manuscript

Hermann von Soden was the first Scholar in classify the Minuscule Manuscripts between 1902 and 1910. He classified more than 1260 minuscules of the Gospels out of nearly 1350 known to him, 45% of All minuscules identified today.

In order to improve the old method of Von Soden, in the late 1960’s two young graduate students at Claremont: Paul McReynolds and Frederick Wisse developed the Claremont

The Procedure 3.A section of text (typically one chapter of a Biblical book) is selected as a sample base. 4. A group of manuscripts (preferably a large group) is collated over this sample, and their variant readings recorded. 5.The Textus Receptus is used as a collation base. 6.Readings are recorded as agreeing or disagreeing with the Textus Receptus. (It will be noted that this

From this collation set a series of "profiles" emerge. Each manuscript casts a profile -- an image of its agreements and disagreements with the Textus Receptus. The result is something like a binary stream of data, for example agree-agreedisagree-agree-disagree etc. This can be represented physically in several ways (this is one of the senses in which the word "profile" applies). One is to represent agreements by spaces and disagreements by crosses;

We could put agreements in the left column and disagreements in the right: A A D A D In any case, we have a "shape" of a manuscript. Where enough manuscripts have similar shapes, we label this a "group profile." Manuscripts which have this

CPM Model

Having defined our profiles, we can simply compare any new manuscripts with the extant group profiles and quickly analyze the manuscript. This was the procedure followed by Wisse and his colleague Paul R. McReynolds for Luke. Starting with several hundred manuscripts already on file, they created group profiles and then set in to classify the manuscripts of Luke.

anks to the study of McReynolds and Wis ew method had born (1966) which appea mising indeed, for if it could be validate uld mean that any given Manuscript coul examined in a relatively small number of o determined and systematically selected ces and its resulting textual profile could almost instantly identified with that of a ablished group.

broader terms, finally, it would appear t the Claremont Profile Method for uping NT Minuscule MSS may well mark turning point in the study of this class Greek witnesses and the NT texts, for its ers, as has nothing previously, a consiste thod for classifying minuscules,

addition, recognizes the all-important thodological principle that both agreeme agreem d disagreements between MSS, as well a tween groups must be fully taken into count and measured.

In 1977, Dr. W. Larry Richards wrote the article “A Critique of a New Testament Text-CriticalMethodology, the Claremont Profile Method” At that time, the Claremont Profile Method had not been tested.

His conclusion was: 3.The CPM is a superior method for classifying Byzantine MSS into groups 2. From the result of studies in 1 John, it would be much safer to proceed with the Formation of groups and their profiles by First forming tentative groups through quantitative analysis, rather