Lecture 14 - Testing the Tests
Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism
1974:  Eldon Epp:  “The Twentieth Century Interlude
 in New Testament Textual Criticism.”
Nestle-Aland’s 25th edition and 
the 1881 text of Westcott & Hort:  
only 558 differences.
1980:  Epp:  "A Continuing Interlude 
in New Testament Textual Criticism?"
Epp:  we now have 80+ papyri, 200+ uncials, 
2,600+ minuscules, and perhaps 2,000+ lectionaries 
that were not used by Westcott and Hort.
Epp:  “Where is the substantive advance if the ‘standard’ 
 texts of the Greek New Testament then, and now, 
are so close in character -
- "and if, at the same time, we possess no comprehensive and generally accepted theory
 to support and justify that form of the text?”
if we don’t have valid reasons to perpetuate Hort’s model of transmission, then why are we reaching almost the 
same conclusions that Hort reached?
Epp:  “Can we really be content with Egypt 
as the exclusive locale for this glimpse into the 
earliest textual history?"
Epp:  "Is the accident of circumstance – that papyrus survives almost exclusively in the hot climate and dry sands of Egypt – to dominate and determine how we ultimately write our textual history?”
Is "reasoned eclecticism" really a different approach?
The 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland text remains very similar to the 1881 text of Westcott and Hort.
Estimate:  695 differences.
The Byzantine Text has been largely excluded
 from text-critical consideration.
Aland (1982):  “From the sixth century there have been produced several manuscripts . . . since they contain nothing more than a Byzantine text, they are in consequence quite irrelevant for textual criticism.”
Aland (1982):  minuscule manuscripts which exhibit 
a purely or predominantly Byzantine text 
“are all irrelevant for textual criticism.”
How are textual critics (and compilers) using the canons, or guidelines, of textual criticism?
A text-critical canon should not be treated 
as if it is an inflexible rule.
Several of Griesbach’s guidelines amount to different ways of saying, “Prefer the reading that best accounts 
for the existence of its rivals.”
In some cases, a reasonable case can be developed about how Reading A led to reading B,
 and about how Reading B led to Reading A.
[GAFFE, but you get the idea, right?]
Example:  Mark 1:2:  
did "in Isaiah the prophet" provoke someone 
to make the variant “in the prophets” -
- or did "in the prophets” provoke someone to make 
the variant "in Isaiah the prophet," 
to make the statement more specific?
Examples of variants that make references 
more specific:  Matthew 1:22, Mt. 13:35, etc.
One of the canons that has had great impact upon the text was, “Prefer the shorter reading.”
Eberhard Nestle (1901):  “It is a fundamental principle of textual criticism that the lectio brevior is to be preferred.”
2008:  James Royse, building upon earlier research:
Scribal Habits in Early New Testament Papyri.
Royse's discovery:
Copyists of early papyri made twice as many omissions as they made additions.
Alan Taylor Farnes (2018):  the text in MSS with extant exemplars is never longer than the text in the exemplars.
Farnes:  “Length is not a valuable metric for 
determining which reading is more original.”
Peter Head:  “It seems that the evidence suggests 
that most early scribes are more likely 
to omit than to add material.”
Michael Holmes (SBLGNT editor):  “In the light of Royse’s study the venerable canon of lectio brevior potior – that is, prefer the shorter reading – is now seen as 
relatively useless, at least for the early papyri.”
The UBS compilers appear to have frequently used length as a metric for determining the original reading.
12 Textual Contests:
Which reading explains its rivals?
(1)  Matthew 12:47
[This verse is not in the text of the ESV.]
Comparison:  two individuals recite a poem.  
One sneezes occasionally, due to a cold.
The other one sneezes frequently, due to allergies.
Sometimes they both sneeze at the same time.
(2)  Matthew 13:9
"He who has ears to hear, let him hear."
(3) Matthew 14:30:  
Greek:  anemon ischuron
(4)  Matthew 15:6
. . . “whoever says to his father or his mother”
(5)  Matthew 20:16:
. . . eschatoi . . . eklectoi.
(6)  Matthew 24:7:
famines and pestilences and earthquakes
limoi kai loimoi kai
(7)  Matthew 27:24:
this righteous one
tou dikaiou toutou
(8)  Mark 10:24
"Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches 
to enter the kingdom of God.”
. . . estin . . . chrēmasin.
(9)  Mark 11:26 
“But if you do not forgive, neither will Your Father 
 in heaven forgive your trespasses.”
. . . your trespasses . . . your trespasses.”  
(Greek:  ta paraptōmata humōn)
(10)  Luke 2:15 
(Greek:  oi aggeloi kai oi anthrōpoi oi poimenes)
(11)  Luke 4:5
the devil took Jesus up into a high mountain.
Greek:
. . . auton . . . hupsēlon.
(12)  Luke 23:17
“For it was necessary for him to 
release one to them at the feast.”
Parablepsis, elicited by homoeoteleuton (same endings)
or homoeoarcton (same beginnings) accounts
for the shorter reading.
Acceptance of Hort’s theory of the Lucianic Recension elicited an oversimplified tendency
 to favor the shorter reading.
The research of Royse, Farnes, and others points toward internal evidence of accidental omissions.
“Prefer the shorter reading” 
should no longer be used as a canon.
Heinlein:  “You have attributed conditions to villainy 
that simply result from stupidity.”
Heinlein's Canon:
“Do not make theories that involve deliberate mischief 
to explain what can be explained by carelessness.”
"Reasoned Eclecticism” tended to be eclectic 
in name only.
Whether the Byzantine Text was seen as the result of a recension, or as the result of a process, the rejection of 
longer Byzantine readings was a first resort.
The Byzantine Text was on the team, but its representatives were considered “irrelevant” 
and only rarely took the field.
A better approach:  Equitable Eclecticism.
The Byzantine Text has a substantial and early core that is not derived from the Alexandrian and Western Texts.
Longer readings are given their day in court.
"Shared agreements imply shared origin" - 
This should be qualified to allow for the independent recurrence of the same error,  especially where there is
 a heightened risk of accidental loss.
Nomina sacra (contracted sacred names):
God, Lord, Jesus, and Christ.
Also:   Father, Son, Spirit, heaven, man, mother,
 cross, Israel, Jerusalem, David, and Savior.
Textual variants involving nomina sacra occur in Mt 1:18, Mk 1:1, Lk 23:42, Jn 1:18, Roms 12:11, Rom 14:10, I Cor 10:9, I Tim 3:16, James 1:12, I Pet 3:15, and Jude v. 5.
Where nomina sacra are in the picture, 
the range of attestation for a variant, in Greek and in early versions, has special importance.
For more about nomina sacra:
Nomina Sacra: Their Origin and Usefulness, 
at thetextofthegospels.com .
An implicit theory of the transmission of the text is built 
as the text itself is reconstructed.
The history of transmission that is implied by a compilation ought to be historically plausible.
Maurice Robinson (co-editor, The New Testament 
in the Original Greek – Byzantine Textform):
NA27 has 105 verses in a form that appears in absolutely no existing manuscript.
Robinson:  NA27 also has 210 additional instances where  two-verse segments are not found 
 in any known manuscript.
Does it seem reasonable to propose that so many original sequences of words were in the original text
but subsequently vanished from the earth until the compiler came along?
The more weight one assigns to a narrowly supported transmission-line . . .  the more risk there is of inventing a form of the text that never existed.
The more weight one assigns to a widely supported transmission-line . . . the lower the risk of creating an unsupported form of the text will tend to be.
For additional considerations, see
Maurice Robinson’s essay "The Case for Byzantine Priority" - an appendix in The New Testament 
in the Original Greek – Byzantine Textform.
