Shopping for a NT Text-Critical Theory

Imagine if you will, a world where sound collides with color, where the boundaries of time and space are blurred, and where the improbable and impossible thrive, and coexist side by side.    Yet this is no dreamworld... its the everyday world of the New Testament Textual Critic.  Of course you knew that already.

But now let us suppose an even more fantastic occurrence: truth in advertising.  Imagine all the glitz and packaging has been stripped away;  the misdirection, the sleight of hand, the magician's banter, the sexy assistant, the clever lighting, all removed, leaving all offerings naked and vulnerable, their ugly secrets exposed.

In such a world, open to the sunshine, the 'goods' dangle lamely, completely transparent to the buyer.  Let us enter, and find what proposals await the Christian who searches for the normally elusive and difficult to identify 'word of God', in its purest and most direct form.

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 Door # 1:  The Traditional Text.
It is called the "Textus Receptus" (TR), the Byzantine Text-type (Byz.), the Majority Text, the Traditional Text, the Antiochian, the "Syrian", the Lucian Recension, and the 'Late text', almost interchangeably, depending upon who is talking and when. ¹

Even most of its detractors will admit that this NT text has been used by Christians throughout Europe from Spain to Russia, for at least a thousand years, from the 9th century to the 19th, with very little variation.   It has been used by Greek Orthodox, by Roman Catholics in Latin translation, and even accepted by Protestants for some 400 years from 1500 to 1900.   It is admitted to be the text found in most of the 5,000 surviving handwritten Greek copies, and 20,000 Latin copies, spanning this period.    

But it has its problems:

(1)  There is no complete copy of this text older than the 4th century.  Most of its 'readings' can be traced back to the 2nd century, through papyri, 'Versions' (early translations) and early Christian writers (ECWs), but there is no complete copy for this text in its entirety.   Earlier witnesses seem to show instead wild 'mixed texts' with individual readings coexisting alongside rival readings of other text-types.

(2)  A few standard verses lack the support of a majority of witnesses.  For instance, the infamous Johannine Comma (1st Jn 5:7-8) and a verse or two in Acts have little support from any Greek manuscripts.

(3)  The Traditional Text has some secondary features.  The text appears to have evolved slightly, with grammatical and stylistic changes reflecting the Greek language as it was later used.  This places a 'layer' over the text, and distances it from the presumed 'original'.   Spelling and syntax have been standardized over time, removing some of the idiosyncrasies of individual writers and early form, making it somewhat 'artificial'.   Possibly even a few readings have been harmonized with parallel passages.


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 Door # 2:  The Critical Text.
 Also known as the "Alexandrian", Egyptian, Uncial, or 'Neutral' text.  This text has been constructed mainly or almost exclusively from favorite 4th century Uncial manuscripts (the oldest available in the 19th century), notably, Codex B (Vatican 1209) and codex א (Sinaiticus).  The theory was, older was better, and closer to the original.

The main problems with this text are:

(1)  The 'critical' text ignores the text contained in 95% of manuscripts. All the later copies are dismissed as 'secondary' and ignored.  This in effect forms a claim against the NT used by the majority of Christians throughout history.  The presumption is that the original text was interpolated and altered so badly that it was essentially 'lost', preserved only in a few unused documents.   For extreme Protestants, marginalized sects, and even atheists, this is not so hard to swallow.  The NT supposedly suffered the same fate as ordinary books that were hand-copied.  But to buy this, one must abandon any distinct doctrine of Providential Preservation or Divine guidance granted by God to Christians.  The 'originals' are presumed lost, and any text now reconstructed is neither original nor 'inspired'.   The critical text is a conscious rejection of the traditional text (see above).   It necessarily involves limiting 'divine inspiration' to the (now lost) autographs, and downgrading the authority of currently printed Bibles of every type.

(2)  The 'critical' text is riddled with errors.  There is little doubt that critics have succeeded in collecting together many common readings from the 2nd to 4th centuries.  Unfortunately, many of these, while legitimately reflecting earlier texts, are quite obviously scribal blunders.  Critics have not so much reconstructed 'the early text', as they have compiled a catalog of genealogically propagated boners.  The main principle used, "Prefer the Shorter Reading", was supposed to be based on scribal habits, but it is now known that scribes tended to accidentally omit lines 2 to 10 times as often as they 'interpolated'.

(3) The 'critical' text ignores the earliest evidence.  Subsequent discoveries in the last century have provided many early papyri and fragments, averaging 100 or more years earlier than 4th century Uncial copies.  If the same principles were applied today (i.e., use only the oldest MSS, prefer the shorter reading) we would have a quite different 'critical text'.  The new text however would still be basically an Egyptian text, because all the papyri come from Egypt.  The early evidence is simply too narrow geographically.

(4)  There is no reason for Christians to switch to the critical text.  Since the critical text cannot be shown to be 'better' in any significant way than the traditional text, there is no reason to prefer it over the text that Christians have used for nearly a thousand years.  Nevertheless, most 'modern' translations are based on this poorly constructed and now outdated text.

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 Door # 3:  Make Your Own Text.

Since the first two options above are really the only game in town, the only third option for the savvy shopper is to reconstruct his own text.  This is not impossible, but one may wonder what kind of result will follow.

Here are the Problems with Option 3:

(1)  The Individual becomes Judge over the text.  The obvious danger and temptation is for the individual to simply pick and choose readings he or she likes, and reject unpopular readings.  The NT becomes a 'salad bar', and each individual creates his own 'Bible'.   One can see that even if relatively well-done, the text is being filtered through individual bias and ignorance.

(2)  The Authority of the Text is eroded.  Its hard not to see that the very nature of what a 'Bible' is will change, if individuals are allowed to customize their own texts to any great extent.  'Heed the word of the Lord' becomes now 'Choose what you will heed from the Lord.'

(3)  The Nature of Faith and Belief is Altered.  One's belief about the Bible would be fundamentally changed.  One now must adopt a belief that 'the Bible' is more like a quest, an archaeological dig, or a treasure-hunt.  One no longer believes in a publicly delivered clear and common message from God to all.  It is now something akin to 'cat and mouse', with a personalized individual message, differing from person to person.

Welcome, to ...the Twilight Zone.

"Walk while ye have the light, 

lest darkness come upon you:

..while ye have light, 

believe in the light,

that ye may be the children of light." (John 12:35-36)

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1. To be fair, many will meticulously document distinctions between these terms, both in specific readings, and in real or imagined histories and pedigrees. But when all is said and done, every permutation and edition, every 'version' of this text, is to all intents and purposes virtually identical in content. Even with some 6,000 variants between manuscripts, even with a few stunning differences (e.g., 1st Jn 5:7-8), a person would be hard-pressed to come up with a really critically important difference among the witnesses and editions of this text. Most variants don't significantly affect actual translation, and the few that do amount to a mere handful of minor disputes. 

How the Germans perverted the Bible

I'm reposting this short article on Kittle, because to this day modern translations use his text of the Hebrew O.T. as a basis for the Protestant Bible, including his translational suggestions through his "Hebrew Lexicon":

Monday, April 4, 2011 (Elizabeth K. Best, PhD)

Kittel a 'Minor Nazi'? Think Again: Kittel as the 'author' of 'Alien Status' for the Jews.



In Robert Ericksen's book, Theologians Under Hitler part of his delineation of Gerhard Kittel's role in the war and assessment of culpability in war crimes is his role in establishing the concept in National Socialist policy/law of the status of 'guest-citizenship' or 'alien-status'. While many in holocaust education are aware of the 'guest status' of the Jews in German Society from 1933 on, ,many are not aware of its doctrinal or theological underpinnings, nor that it was Gerhard Kittel, the editor of the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, who founded doctrinal anti-Semitism in the Third Reich, who was primarily responsible for the theological basis of 'alien status' for the Jews.

The reason Kittel's role in the establishment of 'guest-citizenship' is important is

1. It establishes Kittel's primary role as a Nazi Theologian and not just a bystander.

2. It establishes Kittel's culpability in war crimes, in subterfuge and sedition against the German Church,

3. It establishes Kittel's ideological commitment to Nazism and not merely perfunctory party membership.

4. It demonstrates the extent of doctrinal anti-Semitism which was vital to Reich Policy, and

5. It establishes at least part of the war upon the Jews as clearly doctrinal and ideological.

That it is important to establish Kittel as a loyal Nazi and not merely among the thousands who joined the ranks to keep the peace or their employment, can be seen in the role of Kittel during and following the war: though arrested at the end of the war and imprisoned for war crimes, Kittel's Dictionary of the New Testament and his father Rudolf's Biblia Hebraica, have established themselves as the primary ground for translation of all modern English bibles.To believe that translations made with the Old Testament and the accompanying lexicon by ardent anti-Semites would not produce a tainted text, with at least underpinnings of the broad stream of dejudification, would seem far more ludicrous than to take the stand of most modern bible translators, that Kittel either wasn't a Nazi, or that it had no affect on his scholarly work. That aside, though, one need consider the 'exegesis' of the platform of guest-citizenship which Kittel refers in his writing to as 'alien status' to understand that the war against the Jews was indeed a religious and ideological one and not merely a political one as many scholars would prefer to avoid being labeled 'reactionary'.

The Concept of Guest Citizenship (Alien Status).

To understand why there would even be a question of 'guest citizenship' necessitates understanding the concept of the 'Volk', the concept of 'blut und boden' or 'blood and soil' and the construct of national identities and a 'nation within a nation'.

The Volk was the German concept of the 'gestalt' or whole of the people, the german people, consisting of the conglomerate 'soul' of the people, their culture, religion, politics, society, etc as something that was a sum of the parts and yet greater than the parts. 'Volk' may be translated akin to 'folk' or people, and the concept was used throughout Nazi policy and thought. It was not a group of individuals, but the 'Volk' that would rebuild Germany and lead it to a new day and age,; it was the 'volk' that would triumph victoriously over other nations which had left Germany desolate, it was the 'Volk' which would see a restored Germany, with they as her people.

The idea of 'blut und boden' or 'blood and soil' was that a people to be a people belonged in a real and mystical sense to the land from which they hailed and in which their ancestors had lived. The tie between the German people and their land or soil was foundational in much of the thought that pervaded influential belief systems such as those of armarten society tying Germans to lineage and the land, or the 'oceanic' views of such as Gobineau and other racial scientists in which certain evolved peoples lived in certain regions: he posited that nations bordering the oceans had certain characteristics, while even Nietzsche in his formulations of the the 'Hyperboreans' posited that more evolved or racially superior peoples lived 'above Boreas' or rather in the winter climes. (Taha) Kittel would use this theme of a people and a land prominently in several writings.

The third concept is that of a 'national identity' or a nation within a nation. This is somewhat more complex than merely the concept of the 'Volk' because it entails the nature of persons of multiple nationalities living together 'under one roof', so to speak. Today, that is not a great difficulty to many, especially in the US and Great Britain as many nations have become multicultural, with those of many nationalities living side by side. The National Socialists though saw the Jews, as a separate nation, living within their nation, although many Jews, especially more liberal Jews saw themselves as German citizens, and Jews. This conflict was the issue that Kittel would take and make 'theologically acceptable' as he had with other aspects of anti-Semitism.

Kittel and 'Alien Status'

Kittel based his writings on a doctrinal treatise he had proposed even before the war. He saw the Jews as also a people characterized by 'blut und boden' and he built a biblical argument: since the Bible clearly shows God as designating the Jews as 'chosen' and 'Israel' as their promised homeland (there are a multitude of passages), the Jews, ergo, are tied to Israel. They are a people with a land, and they are so 'identity-bound' to Israel that the two are inseparable, and remained inseparable in the various exiles (e.g. the Babylonian/Assyrian exile, or the dispersion in 70ad, with a minor reign of Babylon of 8 years in Judges).
Likewise, Kittel argues, the German people are 'bound' to the 'Deutschland' , the 'Fatherland' and are not entirely the same people without being there, so that even in "Lebensraum" as Germans were sent out to 'colonize' occupied territories, they carried with them their music, culture, food, customs etc like soil in the coffin.

Kittel also argued though, that the 'Volk' and the 'Jews' could never share the same citizenship, so bound up was citizenship in their thinking with 'native land'. Kittel attempted to place the Jews as bound to Israel, and claimed later that it was a tolerant attitude, but the application was clear that it was a clever but sinister exegetical foundation for the Jews having 'alien-status' which would rob them of their German Citizenship, allowing deportation, denial of the court system, education benefits, and even already paid retirement funds and pensions. They were argued as a 'nation' within a nation, and an 'alien' one at that. While the argument bore some biblical foundation, i.e. the Jews with Israel as their homeland, it was cleverly used to create a doctrinal reason tied to other Reich philosophies which allowed the segregation, robbery, deportation and later mass killing of the Jews. It also indicates Kittel's eminent role.

Martin Buber the foremost Jewish theologian of the Shoah years, took his colleague to task over his vile rendering of the policy of 'alien status' for the Jews. The following letter shows Buber's rebuke of Kittel:

An Open Letter to Gerhard Kittel
Martin Buber


You have sent me your essay on the Jewish question, werser Herr Kollege. From the accompanying letter and from the text itself I conclude that you believe yourself to be in agreement with me; not to be sure, on your specific judgments about Judaism and your suggestions on how to treat it but on the essential issue: our basic religious commitment.
Since your statements were made publicly, I must contradict them publicly.
I need say nothing of your judgments an demands; they are the prevailing ones. I learned from your essay that which I neither knew nor suspected: that they are yours as well: that you maintain that “a member of a foreign people” has “no business in German literature.” That “if he wants to be a writer,” he should “work in a literature which is clearly marked as Jewish and which is intended for his coreligionists and Volksgenossen:” that “if his book is of general literary value and transcends that particular Volkstum,” there would be “nothing to prevent its being read by Germans in the same way that Swedish and French literature is translated and read by us.” You and the public will, I hope, understand that I have nothing to say to this or to anything of this sort in your essay: especially since you make your intention of “lending a Christian meaning to the struggle against Judaism” clear in your introduction.


Yet it is incumbent upon me to object, especially since you welcome in this lending the participation of Jews, namely those Jews who, as I, look forward to a religious renewal of Judaism. According to you the problem is whether it will be possible to arouse a living religion in that part of Jewry which says yes to alien status” The “authentic alien status”. But what you understand by “alien status” is clarified by the answer to the question of what should happen to Jewry. There you have stated that one should “resolutely and consciously preserve the historical fact” of “alien status” among nations. You explained your understanding of this in this fashion: the “right of the guest” must be sharply set off from that of the citizen; the Jew must give up “all claims to civil equality.” If he proves a “decent guest, “ “there may then come a time” when he appears only “relatively unequal” and no longer “absolutely inferior.” You take “obedience under alien status,” which according to you belongs to a pious Jewish attitude to mean that discrimination against and defamation of Judaism must be accepted in faith; that it must therefore be viewed as God’s just dispensation and as the just action of men. Hence you presuppose the identity of that which you mean by alien status with that which God, to whom we owe obedience, means by alien status with that which God, to whom we owe obedience, means by alien status, But this is not so.
That which the God of the Bible means by alien status, more correctly guest status (a ger is one who is a guest in a land), can be learned from the Pentateuch. In an extraordinary appeal, the community is admonished (Num. 15:16; Lev 24:22) “Congregation”! There shall be one law for you and for the resident guest; it shall be a law for all times throughout the generations. You and the guest shall be alike before YHVH (the LORD); the same instruction and the same rule shall apply to you and to the guest who resides among you.” Thus no discrimination! But it is not only a question of law; it is a question of love. “When a guest resides with you in your land, you shall not wrong him. The guest who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens. You shall love him as yourself for you were guests in the land of Egypt” (Lev. 19.33f.). In Deuteronomy, with even greater emphasis, love is not only found with the dative [showing love to him] but with the accusative [loving him] in a way at once holy and paradoxical. “For YHVH your God is the God of gods and the Lord of lords, the great, the mighty, the awesome God, who shows no favor and takes no bribe but upholds the cause of the fatherless and the widow, who loves the guest and gives him food and clothing. You too must love the guest for you were guests in the land of Egypt” (Deut. 10:17ff.). Love of the guest is an aspect of biblical imitation Dei: As God loves the unprotected, so must you love him! The acceptance of this stance has consequences which extend to redemption and a mystery that unties all. It is said of the peace-offering which is offered by the community because of an error (Num. 15:26): “The whole Israelite community and the guest residing among them shall be forgiven for it happened to the entire people through error.”
Yet, Herr Kollege, although you quote a passage from Deuteronomy in which we read that one may not subvert the rights of the alien [Deut. 24:17] , you quote none of those passages in which we read that this right of the alien is not separate from that of the natives of the land but that both rights are the “same right.” Only if you start from this Magna Carta of biblical faith, which should be binding not only upon Israel but upon all nations among whom guests reside (or is it your belief that God no longer asks this justice and love from nations), and only if you believe that this was not abrogated by the New Testament (for how could the gospel intend a diminishing of justice and love between nation and nation?). , only then is it possible to talk in an attitude of faith of an “alien status” and of an “obedience under alien status.” However, if one does this in the seriousness of faith as a believer among the nations, then surely one must first of all inquire into the obedience of the nations.
However, an obedience under alien status as you understand it (but as God does not understand it) God does not order us to give. It does not become us to rebel against it but it does not become us either to yield to the will of a Volk as if it were the will of God. Psalm after psalm of our Book, adopted by the Church, utters an appeal to the liberator from oppression. Psalm after psalm would be blasphemy if God not only demanded of us that we should endure, but also that we resign ourselves without appeal to whatever He has ordained. We pray today as well,. The “enemy” against which the psalmist inveighs means, as we utter the psalm in prayer, not men of human powers but the original tempter, who hinders redemption in history.
“Authentic Jewry,” as you say, “remains faithful to the symbol of the restless and homeless alien who wanders the earth.” Judaism does not know of any such symbol. The “wandering Jew” is a figure of Christian legend, not a Jewish figure. Authentic Jewry is ever aware that in the very next moment the promise may be fulfilled and its wandering may end. It does not believe that is its ordered to affirm the dispersion but believes that it must prepare itself in the dispersion for the ingathering. It knows of no “tragedy willed by God” which it must needs recognize but knows only the mercy which calls man to His work.
History is no throne speech of God but His dialogue with humanity. He who does not wish to miss everything must be mindful to discern the voice of the Partner. The “historical fact” of “alien status,” the reinstatement of which you, Herr Kollege, hold to be the “solution of the Jewish question,”* is partly the question itself---God’s question to the nations and to Israel which He poses in history; partly it is the lack of an answer. TO be sure, emancipation as it took place was not the true answer either. But it does not follow from this that one must go back to that lack.


July 1933
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Of the other three “attempts at solution” which you mention, extermination, assimilation and Zionism, we wish to touch upon the last only. The arguments which you put forward against Zionism are partly exaggerated. (As one who has constantly fought for a more serious consideration of Arab claims. I have the right to say that there is no ground for speaking of a “frightful violation of the fellahin) Partly they are false. I am hardly able to understand how you can hold “unemployment and need” to be prevalent in Palestine of today or how you can see in residential and agricultural cooperatives----a witnessing to collectivity and sacrifice---communistic tendencies which reflect back into “lands of culture and which wish to penetrate and poison those countries.” Finally, the the growing reality of faith within Zionism is totally unknown to you. [MARTIN BUBER]
1. In a later reply to Kittel, Buber observed that the failure of emancipations was that Jews were emancipated individually but not collectively (F.E.T.)




From: Talmadge, F.E. Disputations and Dialogue: readings in the Jewish-Christian Encounter, (1978) KTAV Publishing House,

The grave rebuke by Buber is both poignant and ironical, in that he rebukes Kittel based upon the tenets of Christ and Christianity: he holds that it is a sinister twisting of the Holy Scriptures, both the Old and New Testament. Buber could see from the outset the path the reasoning of Kittel would follow, and hence targeted Kittel as the 'theologian that made anti-Semitism theologically acceptable'.

Guest Citizenship and the Jews

While this discussion and others seems rather 'theological' or philosophical, the effect of the status 'guest citizen' had very real consequences for the German citizens who were Jews. A narrative of one account is of a retired man and his wife who had juvenile delinquents damage portions of his property during the Reich. The man was a war veteran of WWI in Germany, and had retired from university teaching. After changes were made, he called the local police who would do nothing about the incident and was bewildered. The police informed him that since he was no longer considered 'of aryan descent', he had no citizenship rights, and therefore they did not have to respond to his call at all. When he sought remedy in the courts, he found that the courts had the right to refuse the case, and that after years of work and loyalty to Germany, his mortgage and property ownership were also in question, as only aryans could own property. They were forced to flee the Berlin area. But 'guest-citizen' or 'alien-status' had other dire consequences: soon no Jewish child could attend an aryan school. No Jewish attorneys or physicians could treat any but Jewish clients. Geographical restrictions were levied and soon no Jewish person could sit on park benches or even frequent public parks. Bus riding became prohibited for all but those employed in the armaments industry, and pet ownership, and the hiring of maids and cooks was forbidden. As time wore on, there were even odd restrictions such as not allowing women to attend hairdressing salons partly in an effort to increase the separation between Jew and gentile, and partly to keep the Jews from appearing groomed and therefore appealing to their counterparts. If Jews wished to leave Germany, they had to receive permission from police departments now largely staffed by Gestapo and National Socialist party members. Church congregates who had converted to Catholicism and Protestantism from Judaism were not allowed to receive communion at the same time, and large 'tarriffs' were levied allowing the Jews to carry out of the country only about 10-15% of earnings and savings, the rest going to the Reich. In short, the 'doctrinal' base for the Reich policy turned into civil rights violations for the Jews, and untold suffering and humiliation, even before deporation to work and death camps. This is why Kittel was found guilty of war crimes, in that he had aided in the 'production' and strategy of war as well as undermining of the institution not only of the church but of the courts, universities, theological schools and other mainstays of German life.
The doctrinal argument for the Jews tied to Israel not Germany, the Jews with a different God (Marcionism), the Jewish OT scriptures as foreign and unnecessary for Christian study and practice, gave the Nazis inroads into the church on the back of one of their most notable theology professors. Kittel was clearly guilty of the subterfuge of both the citizenship rights of the Jews and of Church doctrine using it as servant to the expulsion of the Jews and denial of their civil rights. His role as a doctrinal juggernaut in the exegesis of Nazi policy cannot be denied-it lay dormant for many years as many of Kittel's writings remained unavailable and in German while his lexicon and his fathers Hebrew Bible sold worldwide.


Kittel would go on later to defend other social/political platforms of the Nazis with a doctrinal base. His integration of racial science with biblical and theological concepts would eventually come forefront. His dismissal with others of a requirement in theological education for Hebrew, placing it instead with other ancient languages, undergirds his lack of regard for anything Jewish. While Kittel argued that his was a 'non-vulgar' anti-Semitism (he held himself distinct from the type of Rosenberg and Spreicher) (Eriksen), he nonetheless provided an intellectual platform for the 'Judenrein' of Germany. The arguments that Kittel was not an ideological Nazi should fall on deaf ears, as any lay person, much less any scholar upon reading Kittel, will eventually find him to be anything but objective where the Jews are concerned.

Majority Text: (XVII) - Marvin Vincent's confusion (Pt 1)

By the late 1890s, many important and outspoken opponents of the Lachmann/Hort approach had articulated and published their criticisms.  This did not derail the tampering of the NT text, but split textual critics and interested Christians of all denominations into two groups:

(1) Those who went with the new 'scientific' theories, preferring the critical texts, and
(2) those who were unconvinced, and held to the Traditional Text.

At this juncture, apologists like Marvin Vincent attempted to review the history of textual criticism itself, and distill out advances in knowledge and scientific progress.  In his book, A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (Macmillan, 1903), Vincent advances what he considers to be the development of TC and current state of affairs.  He sums up the First Period of recent Textual Criticism as follows (p. 93-95):

'The First Period Reviewed

A review of the First Period (1516-1770) exhibits, in the beginning, a scarcity of documentary sources, an arbitrary determination of the text on a false and narrow basis, and a general ignorance of the comparative value of  documents. The small number of manuscripts accessible (1) or used was only one of the obstacles which opposed the purification of the text.  (2)  Scholars were  unable to make the best choice from among those actually at hand, or were not accurate in comparing them, or estimated the value of readings according to their number. (3)  

"In consequence of the astonishing number of copies which appeared at the very beginning, (4)  in a long series of manual editions, mostly from one and the same recension, the idea grew up spontaneously very early that in the manuscripts also the text was tolerably uniform, and that any thorough revision of it was unnecessary and impertinent. The Oriental Versions were closed to most; the importance of the Church Fathers was scarcely suspected; but the greatest lack of all for the purification of the text (2)  was the indispensable knowledge of the process of its corruption" (5)  (Reuss).  

The Purist Controversy

Moreover, the beginning of the seventeenth century was marked by the rise of the Purist controversy. The Purists maintained that to deny that God gave the NT in anything but pure classical Greek was to imperil the doctrine of inspiration. The Wittemberg Faculty, in 1638, decreed that to speak of barbarisms or solecisms in the NT was blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. Hence, a correct conception of the peculiar idiom of the Apostles was impossible, and the estimate of different readings was seriously affected by this cause.  (6)

Readings of existing editions were arbitrarily mingled, the manuscripts employed and the sources of variants adopted were not properly specified, and a full survey of the apparatus was impossible. (7)   

The number of uncial sources [MSS], (1)  however, gradually increased; the existence of various readings was recognized, but they were merely registered, and not applied to the construction of a purer text. (2)  There began to be signs of revolt against the authority of the Textus Receptus, and [also] attempts to restore the text (2) on the evidence of manuscript readings. (8)

Signs of Improvement

There arose a growing distrust of the numerical basis of evidence.  Manuscripts began to be weighed instead of counted. (9)  There was a dawning recognition of the value of ancient documents and a corresponding effort to formulate principles of classification. A large mass of material relating to MSS, Fathers and Versions was collected, which awaited thorough sifting  and arrangement, and the doctrine of families of texts was broached. Through all this the Received Text substantially maintained its supremacy, (10) though its pretensions were boldly challenged by individual critics; its chain (2)  was rudely shaken and more than once broken, and its authority began to be visibly weakened. (11)
...
The superstitious hesitancy (2) about departing from the Received Text still prevailed, and the critical valuation of the older uncials was suffering seriously from Wetstein's sweeping charge of latinisation (1751).' (12)  (Vincent, p.93-95)

 Those already inclined in the Lachmann-to-Hort direction might find Vincent's banter satisfactory, as he attempts to build a platform to support the W/H critical text.  But others who differ from this view will note some serious flaws and distortions in the presentation, exposing Vincent's bias.

(1)  Vincent claims the period begins with only a 'small number of MSS', but this is patently untrue.  Even Erasmus (1516), who made use of only a handful for his first edition, had already collated dozens of MSS in England and Europe for his fresh Latin translation.    Early editors quickly gained access to dozens more independent copies, and Vincent seems oblivious to the contradiction here brought in by his own quotation of Reuss [!]:  "the astonishing number of copies which appeared at the very beginning," ...

(2)  Vincent begins liberally using suggestive language ("purification of the text" etc.) that begs the question regarding the relative purity and value of the TR in comparison to subsequently reconstructed 'critical texts' cobbled together from Uncial readings.  It has yet to be established that the TR is "impure" in any significant way, even if one or two readings are legitimately open to challenge, such as 1st John 5:7 etc.  The suggestion of course is that the Traditional Text (TR) is in desperate need of 'restoration', but convincing case has yet been made.

(3)  Of course scholars indeed rightly 'estimated the value of readings according to their number', since this is a legitimate indicator of the spread and antiquity of a reading.   It was never the only criterion, as review of the period literature (Mill, Bengel, Wetstein, Michaelis) shows.  Vincent implies that this was an incorrect methodology, or that it was naively applied and led to bad results, but this has never been shown.  Indeed, the very same criterion is applied enthusiastically without qualification to passages like 1st John 5:7 etc. by the same critics who avoid the criterion in other cases.  This inconsistency is far more glaring in the W/H position (with its rejection of countless majority readings) than in the TR position, which with few exceptions values this criterion.  In no case can estimating readings by MS count be found as the sole or main methodology anywhere in the literature of the period, or subsequently up until the 1880s.  Even Burgon and Miller did not articulate or elevate such a criterion to preference over all other considerations.

(4)  Here 'the astonishing number of copies' (Reuss) refers in the main to later cursive (minuscule) copies, ranging from the 8th century to the 15th.  It appears that Vincent's contradiction can be traced to the fact that he only considers Uncial MSS to be of any value for textual reconstruction.

(5)  It is true that 'knowledge of the process of corruption' is indispensable.  The majority of variants are in fact accidental errors, or minor linguistic updates.  However, understanding this process better in the 20th century has resulted in the reversal of TC canons taken for granted in the 17th to 19th centuries, such as "Prefer the Shorter Reading" (Griesbach, 1805).  But such knowledge remained virtually unknown in Vincent's day, or else was wilfully ignored (e.g., Westcott/Hort).

(6) The Purists did not influence 17th century textual criticism, at least as significantly as claimed here.  Very few important variants turn on questions of classical vs. Koine grammar, or new knowledge from a study of the papyri.  This controversy had more relevance to translational issues and  interpretation.   Few textual critics can be shown to have made errors in judgment because of a lack of knowledge of 1st century Greek.  The concern is unsubstantiated.

(7)  Access to the basic apparatus was hardly 'impossible'.  Between John Mill, Bengel, and Wetstein, one had a very clear picture of what had been collated by the end of the 17th century, and also access to quite thorough discussions of most important variants.   Michaelis considered Mill and Wetstein indispensable, but certainly adequate for purposes of research.  Even after many more MSS were collated, as accomplished later by Griesbach and Scholz, most experts acknowledged that the textual situation had not greatly been altered.  It was more of the same.

(8)  Here Vincent implies that all the texts so far published (Erasmus, Mill, Wetstein, Griesbach) were somehow not constructed on the basis of MSS evidence.  But this is ridiculous.   Every textual critic was concerned with the same question, and used the same approach: MSS readings.

(9)  No distrust of the weight of numerical evidence for this period can really be shown.  What instead appears is rather a lack of a solid grasp of the value of any criterion or aspect which could be used to evaluate readings.  Textual critics of the period were making guesstimates, and trying to construct a methodology.  They confronted a complex situation, but had no solid grounds or technique for weighing conflicting evidences. 

(10)  As Vincent here confesses, most critics understood well the preliminary stage they were in, and exercised due caution as to any alterations in the traditional text at hand.   He calls this reasonable caution a 'superstitious hesitancy', but this is an anachronistic back-projection, due to his impatience with earlier scholarship. 

(11)  The essential text, the 'Received Text' continued to 'prevail', well into the 1870s, almost a hundred years beyond Vincent's suggestion as to when it was 'visibly weakened'.  The subsequent critical texts of Griesbach and Scholz continued well into the 19th century, and are essentially the same as the TR.  What is visibly weakened, is Vincent's credibility as a historian, due to his bias in favor of the W/H type text.

(12)  Wetstein did make some strong statements against using the early Uncials, which he had observed were alarmingly at variance with both the Traditional Text, and each other.  He also was highly suspicious of key Uncial readings which conformed to the Latin Vulgate.  But the prevalent opinion (cf. Michaelis and others), was that here Wetstein was acting in an overly paranoid fashion toward both the Latin text(s) and Uncials sourced from Roman Catholics.  It seems clear that Wetstein's views here actually had in fact very little influence upon other textual critics of the period.  Like the opinions of the "Purists" 100 years earlier, Wetstein was hardly able to affect the progress of TC.   Such claims appear to be  ad hoc  but inadequate explanations for why most textual critics up until 1830 (Lachmann) strongly disagree with the results of modern TC.


Nazaroo

Chronology of Printed GNTs: 1500 - 1600

This is the first part of a series that deals with the history of printed texts of the New Testament. Consider if you will the following diagram:

Click to Enlarge

1500 - 1600 (16th century)

The 16th century was the beginning of printed critical Greek New Testaments, because even the very first, that of Erasmus, was made by the careful collation of as many manuscripts as could be readily available, and both critical judgement and comparison with the standard Latin text was used. The first three editors/printers of the Greek NT laid the foundation for the Great Protestant translations which quickly followed.

Erasmus (1516-22): The first printed Greek NT, with a fresh translation into Latin from it in parallel columns. Although he only had a half-dozen MSS available later, he must have also accessed various MSS while in England preparing his new translation (1505-6). It is estimated that he consulted about a dozen MSS, mostly later Byzantine copies, as well as the Latin Vulgate. Even at this early time, Erasmus was aware of the issues surrounding the four most serious variants,

(1) Mark's Ending: Mk 16:9-20,
(2) Pericope de Adultera: Jn 7:53-8:11,
(3) The Johannine Comma: 1st Jn 5:7, and
(4) The Great Mystery: 1st Tim 3:16.

In fact, Erasmus had left out the Johannine Comma in the first 2 printings. He also discussed variants like The Lord's Prayer (Matth 6:13), The Rich Young Man (Matt. 19:17-22), The Angelic Song (Lk 2:14), and The Bloody Sweat (Lk 22:43-44). It is said that copies of Revelation available to him at Basel lacked the final verses, and so he back-translated those from the Latin Vulgate, but Hoskier doubts this, and thinks he followed Codex 141.

Erasmus on several occasions preferred the Latin Vulgate reading, where the Byzantine texts seemed deficient, the most important being:

(1) Matt. 10:8 'raise the dead', as in א B C D 1, Latin Vulg.
(2) Matt 27:35 'that it might be fulfilled..' - MS 1, Caes. MSS, Syr-Hark., OL/Vulg. Euseb.
(3) John 3:25 '...the Jews about purification' - MS 1, P66, א , Caes. MSS, OL/Vulg.
(4) Acts 8:37, - MS F, Iren. Cypr. OL/Vulg.
(5) Acts 9:5,6 - MS E, 431, OL/Vulg.
(6) Acts 20:28 'Church of God' - Vulgate, א B etc.
(7) Rom 16:25 - placed at end of chapt 16 as in א B C D etc.
(8) Rev 22:19 - 'book' MS F, Vulgate, Boh. Ambrose, Prim. Haym.

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Robert Stephanus, 'Estienne', (1550): The third and most important of R. Stephanus’ editions, known as the Editio Regia, substantially based on the final lifetime recension of Erasmus. A collation against the first edition of Stephanus, 1546, reveals that in 38 passages the editor here rejected the Complutensian reading in favor of that if Erasmus, whereas the converse occurs only twice. This edition is the important 1550 printing in Paris by Estienne (Robert Stephanus) of the Greek NT, based on the final lifetime edition of Erasmus of Rotterdam. This was this printing that Stephanus used to divide the text into numbered verses which he first put into print in the 1551 edition. These two Stephanus printings (1550, 1551) were utilized by the translators of the New Testament for the 1611 King James Bible and became cited as the fundament of the 1633 “Textus Receptus” Greek New Testament printed by the Elzeviers in Amsterdam (DM 4679) – “Est haec ipsa editio ex qua derivatur quem nostri textum receptum vulgo vocant, nomine rei minus bene aptato”.

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Theodore Beza (1565, 1582): - was a French Protestant Christian theologian and scholar who played an important role in the early Reformation. A member of the monarchomaque movement who opposed absolute monarchy, he was a disciple of John Calvin and lived most of his life in Switzerland.

In 1565 he issued an edition of the Greek New Testament, accompanied in parallel columns by the text of the Vulgate and a translation of his own (already published as early as 1556). Annotations were added, also previously published, but now he greatly enriched and enlarged them.

In the preparation of this edition of the Greek text, but much more in the preparation of the second edition which he brought out in 1582, Beza may have availed himself of the help of two very valuable manuscripts. One is known as the Codex Bezae or Cantabrigensis, and was later presented by Beza to the University of Cambridge; the second is the Codex Claromontanus, which Beza had found in Clermont (now in the National Library at Paris).

It was not, however, to these sources that Beza was chiefly indebted, but rather to the previous edition of the eminent Robert Estienne (1550), itself based in great measure upon one of the later editions of Erasmus. Beza's labors in this direction were exceedingly helpful to those who came after.

"Beza’s name will ever be most honorably associated with biblical learning. Indeed, to many students his services in this department will constitute his only claim to notice. Every one who knows anything of the uncial manuscripts of the Greek New Testament has heard of the Codex Bezae, or of the history of the printed text of the New Testament has heard of Beza’s editions and of his Latin translation with notes. The Codex Bezae, known as D in the list of the uncials, also as Codex Cantabrigiensis, is a manuscript of the Gospels and Acts, originally also of the Catholic Epistles, dating from the sixth century.1310 Its transcriber would seem to have been a Gaul, ignorant of Greek. Beza procured it from the monastery of St. Irenaeus, at Lyons, when the city was sacked by Des Adrets, in 1562, but did not use it in his edition of the Greek Testament, because it departed so widely from the other manuscripts, which departures are often supported by the ancient Latin and Syriac versions. He presented it to the University of Cambridge in 1581, and it is now shown in the library among the great treasures.

Beza was also the possessor of an uncial manuscript of the Pauline Epistles, also dating from the sixth century. How he got hold of it is unknown. He merely says (Preface to his 3d ed. of the N. T., 1582) that it had been found at Clermont, near Beauvais, France. It may have been another fortune of war. After his death it was sold, and ultimately came into the Royal (now the National) Library in Paris, and there it is preserved.1311 Beza made some use of it. Both these manuscripts were accompanied by a Latin version of extreme antiquity.

Among the eminent editors of the Greek New Testament, Beza deserves prominent mention. He put forth four folio editions of Stephen’s Greek text; viz. 1565, 1582, 1589, with a Latin version, the Latin Vulgate, and Annotations. He issued also several octavo editions with his Latin version, and brief marginal notes (1565, 1567, 1580, 1590, 1604).1312

What especially interests the English Bible student is the close connection he had with the Authorized Version. Not only were his editions in the hands of King James’ revisers, but his Latin version with its notes was constantly used by them. He had already influenced the authors of the Genevan version (1557 and 1560), as was of course inevitable, and this version influenced the Authorized. As Beza was undoubtedly the best Continental exegete of the closing part of the sixteenth century, this influence of his Latin version and notes was on the whole beneficial. But then it must be confessed that he was also responsible for many errors of reading and rendering in the Authorized Version." *

* Ezra Abbot, the biblical textual critic, at Dr. Schaff’s request, made a very careful collation of the different editions of Beza with the Authorized Version, and found that "the Authorized Version agrees with Beza’s text of 1589 against Stephen’s of 1550 in about 90 places; with Stephen’s against Beza in about 40; and in from thirty to forty places, in most of which the variations are of a trivial character, it differs from both." - Schaff: The Revision of the English Version of the New Testament, New York, 1873 (Introd. p. xxviii). Cf. Farrar, History of Interpretation, p. 342, note 3.

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mr.scrivener

Early Critical Greek New Testaments

A look backward at the last 200 years or so of NT Textual Criticism is instructive.

Stephanus (Estienne) :  First with Numbered verses...

'The Infancy' (1450-1600)

1518 - First (?) Printed Bible - Aldus Manutius (Venice)

In what Edward Miller called 'The Infancy', he listed the first printed Greek New Testaments, which helped to spark and feed the original Reformation (A Guide to TC of NT, p.7 fwd):

The Fall of Constantinople (1453) seems to have caused many Greek scribes and manuscripts to have poured into Western Europe.

The first printed texts became the basis of many Reformation Bible translations:
The Complutensian Polyglott (Cardinal Ximenes, 1520),

1518 Polyglott: (multiple language edition)

Erasmus' Greek/Latin (1515-1535),

A Younger Erasmus

was quickly followed by those of
Robert Stephen (1546-1551) adding our modern verse-numbers,

Stephen (Esteinne)

Stephen:  Special printing font with ligatures

 

Theodore Beza (1565-1598) with some noted readings from D.

A Young Theodore Beza

Beza's text with extensive notes

'The Childhood' (1600-1800)

the Elzevirs (1624-1633) then followed,

Softcore porn inserts...

 
Brian Walton (1657) published a Polyglott, with collations from Bishop Ussher;
John Fell (1675) added collations from the ancient Memphitic and Gothic versions.

The text of Stephen was adopted by
John Mill (1707), and this was generally taken in England as the standard or "Textus Receptus" (TR) for many years. To the TR, Mill began the first thorough effort at collation by adding a remarkable 30,000 readings to his apparatus and introduction.
Toinard (1707), Roman Catholic, first proposed using only the 2 oldest (Vatican) MSS + Latin.

Richard Bentley:  Too gay to actually complete project

Richard Bentley (1716) planned a comparison of the most ancient Greek and Latin texts (i.e., Codex A, B and D), assisted by John Walker (Trinity College), but never finished is idea:  later a version was published by Woide.
Mace (1729) published an edited NT. This was re-edited by Knapp (1797)
Bengel (1734) began the first attempt at a systematic textual criticism, with the grouping of MSS into families, and grading readings with a Greek letter (α, β, γ, δ, ε).

Bengel: Grumpy Old Men 2

Wetstein (1751-1752) labeled the Uncials (A-O) and Cursives (1-112). He did extensive collations of MSS, versions and Early Christian writers (ECW). Bowyer (1763) republished Wetstein.
Harwood (1776), a Presbyterian Unitarian, made the first early critical 'W/H' style text.
Matthaei (1786) in Moscow also collated and published new MSS from Mt. Athos, while Alter worked in Vienna and Birch laboured in Italy, Germany, Spain, with Adler's help.
Geddes (1792) an ex-Catholic Priest & Unitarian activist also attempted a critical translation.
Griesbach (1775-1805) following Semler, divided MSS into 3 text-types, Western Alexandrian, Byzantine, proposing each was a recension (product of a formal revision), and giving each a 'vote'. He also provided citations of Origen independently of Wetstein in his Symbolae Criticae. Griesbach was republished by Whittaker (1823, 2nd ed) and Schulz (1827, 3rd ed).

J.J. Griesbach:  Hamburger Diet

Scholz (1830-36) continued Griesbach's work, collating another 616 cursives, but reduced the text-types to two, grouping Western and Alexandrian, with later assent from Scrivener.

This early period seems to have been summed up well by Samuel Davidson (c. 1848):

"We are thankful to the collators of MSS for their great labour. But it may be doubted whether they be often competent to make the best critical text out of existing materials. ... We should rather see the collator and the editor of the text dissociated. We should like to have one person for each department." (quoted by Tregelles, Printed Text p. 172).

It is remarkable, if not notorious, that the first person to propose using only the oldest Uncial manuscripts for 'correcting' the Reformation Bible text was a Roman Catholic priest, Toinard.
This was about 150 years after the RC Council of Trent had already established both the canon and text of the NT.
The next two texts to seriously depart from the Traditional text were those of Harwood and Gedes, both Unitarian radicals seeking to alter the mainstream doctrines of Christianity.

This idea of rejecting the standard common text for that of two obscure 4th century Uncials (Alexandrinus and Vaticanus) was not based on any scientific analysis or credible methodology. The majority of manuscripts (MSS) had not yet been discovered, let alone collated. No theory of 'text-types', genealogy or early 'recensions' had been invented.

The only reason for preferring two old manuscripts from the Vatican was the vague notion that older manuscripts might be more pure copies, or closer to the original copies. But since even the oldest MSS were 300 years away from the originals, and were artificially edited church texts compiled from multiple sources after generations of copying, there could be no credible claim that they were relatively 'pure' without claiming that the majority of manuscripts had been corrupted after that period.

How else could 4th and 5th century manuscripts be better, unless the bulk of later manuscripts had been corrupted since that time? But this would require either:

1. That the later manuscripts had descended from a later revision, for which there was no historical evidence. Hort later proposed a 'Lucian Recension' as the common ancestor to all the later copies, but this would have had to have taken place prior to Jerome (c. 390 A.D.). Lucian lived c. 240-312 A.D. - or else,

2. That the later manuscripts were corrupted from a long process of gradual accumulation of error or editing, but this contradicted the fact that the standard common text of these manuscripts clearly existed in the 4th century! The same basic text is found in the Old Latin, the early versions and quotations of the early Christian writers, and Jerome's Vulgate (c. 390 A.D.).

Since both of these notions are shown false by the existence of earlier copies of the traditional (common) text, such as Codex Alexandrinus and the Latin manuscripts etc., the only sensible conclusion is that there were competing text-types in the 4th century. If so, the preference for the two 4th century Uncials is dubious.