Why is Textual Criticism such a Massive FAIL? (Part 1)

Laymen get it.  Non-textual critics get it.  Historians get it.  Even little old ladies with no education or training, or even religious instruction, get it.

True story:  I was questioned by nice church lady the other day, about why Textual Criticism was important.  So I explained the idea of the textual history of the Bible, the discovery of ancient manuscripts, the careful collating of readings in critical editions, the basis of English translations, etc.   I told her the basis for the many terse footnotes and brackets, found in modern Bibles.

Her response: "Oh, I never bother with the footnotes.  I know they are nonsense.  Just read them yourself, you can see they are garbage."   She went on to explain that Christians don't really pay attention to scholars, because they know they are wolves in cheap clothing, unbelievers, and mere critics.

I won't say I was floored.  But the extent of this 'intuitive knowledge' and instant invalidation of all things text-critical is actually quite sweeping inside live, vibrant churches.  Ordinary Christians just don't give textual critics any credibility whatever.  The Bible simply has more authority than academia. And this is true in spite of most Bishops, Priests, pastors and church officials being accredited (and often faithless) academics.

Textual critics and other academics might dismiss this as mere bigotry, or ignorance, or magical thinking.  But actually its a stunning example of intuitive grasp of the real crisis in Textual Criticism (Biblical) and many other professions, as we stumble into the 21st century.

It seems that the 'lay-church' has always had little use for academics, and apparently even for church authorities.  The grassroots 'church' just carries along, with or without professors, commentators, leaders, simply thriving and nuturing itself ultimately on the text alone. 





The Problem in Simple Terms

On the one hand, we have never had better access to manuscripts, data, history, and the process of textual transmission than we do now.   And we have never had so much science, tools for analysis, and brain-power than we do today.

On the other hand, never has this 'science' of Textual Criticism been more confused about the 'original text' of the Bible.  In fact, its even uncertain of any kind of scientific procedure for how to proceed to discover it.  And doubt has extended in a sweeping manner not only to whether original texts can even be discovered, but whether they ever existed at all.

And never in the history of Biblical Criticism has the entire field of Biblical studies had less prestige and less scientific credibility than now.   The sad part is they've earned this lack of credibility in spades.

  
The Sad History of Textual Criticism

This will be a unique but terse explanation of what went wrong and why.

1400s  -  With the invention of printing, and unprecedented opportunities for literacy, people turned away from the previously necessary task of hand-copying texts, to establishing a uniform, universal printed Bible, at least for each language.   Two tasks were immediately recognized: (a) the establishment of the original text, (b) the translating of it into the main languages.

At the same time, the political climate created by the previous Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Reformation brought out the problems and complexities of the growth of scientific and free thought against dogmatism and abuse of authority. 

1500s -  It also became apparent that establishing the original text would not be as simple as thought.   Errors and inaccuracies had crept into copies and needed to be spotted and removed.   This became a more and more unwieldy task, as more copies (and variants) came to light.  Early work of Erasmus, John Mill, Beza, etc., resulted in the establishment of a consensus text, the Traditional or Received Text for the New Testament, while for the Old Testament the Hebrew was used by Protestants, largely bypassing the Latin Vulgate.


But a method for the selection process for readings had yet to be developed.

This was of great concern because the Bible was used as an authority for the correction of the political abuse of power, and was an effective tool in the Reformation of the Christian Churches. 

1600s - The Bible, and the default Received Text became the cultural property of every nation who received it, that is, most of Western Europe, and the Protestant countries.  It provided a common ground and mind-set for interpreting the world.  It was used as an authority to appeal to, and argue and reason about differences in religious interpretation.


1700 - 1900s - Growing uncertainty in regard to the Bible text, (mainly from collation of textual variants), diminished the overall authority of the Bible for many, just as science began to develop and grow as an apparent alternative to religious dogma.   Unfortunately, a reliable and convincing method for establishing the Bible text was still very slow in developing.   At the same time, the problem of collating the many hand-copies had grown beyond the abilities of one person to manage.   The last two great collators of manuscripts were Tregelles and Tischendorf, but 19th century "methods" of Textual Criticism were largely eclectic and coloured by scepticism about Catholic tradition.

By the late 1800s, scepticism as an early part of 'scientific attitude' and scepticism of historical claims in particular had led to a de facto approach of constructing a minimalist text based on rejecting any variants that might be possible additions or accumulative editing.   From Wetstein's original doubt (1752), to Lachmann's deletion program (1831), to Tischendorf's flip-flopping (1869) and finally Hort's stubborn scepticism (1882), ratified by Nestle (1904) and promoted by Metzger, and only slightly modified by Aland (1960), we arrived at the 'standard critical text' of the UBS series, used for most 20th century 'modern' English translations.

But when all was said and done, no credible scientific Text-critical method had actually been developed.  Only a stoic scepticism inspired by 19th century materialist science and anti-Catholicism had saturated the field with a minimalist approach, entrenched by simply upholding the status quo for nearly 100 more years.

As the smoke cleared in the late 20th century, from the battles between traditionalists and moderns, we ended up with essentially two NT texts;
(1)  The Received Text, essentially the one used by Christians for the most recent 1,000 years, and
(2)  The Critical Text, essentially the smallest text that could be constructed, by rejecting any longer variants and accepting as original every significant omission found in the more ancient copies.


Part 2 will examine how it happened that no significant progress in textual-critical methodology was achieved, and why the text bifurcated and remains in two branches today, with loyal apologists for both sides.

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. 

2. Clark (1914) contra Griesbach

Here is A. C. Clark's original (1914) preface to The Primitive Text of the Gospels and Acts (1914):

'The chief result of my investigation has been to show the falsity of the principle brevior lectio potior ['prefer the shorter reading']. This was laid down by Griesbach as a canon of criticism in the words :

'Brevior lectio, nisi testium vetustorum et gravium auctoritate penitus destituatur, praeferenda est verbosiori. Librarii enim multo proniores ad addendum fuerunt quam ad omittendum.'  ["A shorter reading, unless the authority of the witnesses completely lacks weight and antiquity, is preferable to a verbose one.  For a copyist is much more prone to further additions than to make omissions."]

Unless my method is based upon a delusion, this statement has no foundation in facts. I may also observe that it is not so easy to invent as it is to omit.
It will be understood that my work has been almost exclusively confined to the text of Cicero. It was only recently, after I had gained confidence in the use of my method, that, in a spirit of curiosity, I happened to apply it to the text of the Gospels. The results were so surprising that I gave up, for the present, my work upon Cicero, which can only interest a small circle, and devoted myself to this more important inquiry.
I must here state that when I began my investigation, I had not made any study of New Testament criticism. I had been brought up to look on the Revised Text [1881] as final, to smile at persons who maintained the authenticity of St. Mark 16:9-20, or St. John 7:53-8:11, and to suppose that the 'vagaries' of the 'Western' text were due to wholesale interpolation. The object which I had in view was merely to study the mutual relations of the oldest Greek Uncials, notably, the Vaticanus (B), the Sinaiticus (א), and the Alexandrinus (A). I was, however, soon dislodged from this arrogant attitude, and irresistibly driven to very different conclusions.  These I can only briefly indicate here, and must refer the reader to my subsequent discussion for the evidence. 

Nowhere is the falsity of the maxim brevior lectio potior more evident than in the New Testament. The process has been one of contraction, not of expansion. The primitive text is the longest, not the shortest. It is to be found not in B/א, or in the majority of Greek MSS., but in the 'Western' family, i. e. in the ancient versions and the Codex Bezae (D). If my analysis is sound, we are brought back to an archetype of the four Gospels in book-form, which cannot be later than the middle of the 2nd century. This archetype appears to have contained the passages which have been most seriously suspected by recent critics, e.g. the End of St. Mark and St. John 7:53-8:11.  

This statement concerning St. Mark 16:9-20 will appear so startling that I must insert a caveat. I do not pretend to go one step further than I am led by the method which I have followed. The ultimate problems of New Testament autographs do not concern me. I only deal with one set of phenomena, and my starting-point is the text current in the second century. I have made no attempt to acquaint myself with the Synoptic problem, and do not venture to encroach upon the domain of the Higher Criticism. Also, I do not regard my method as a panacea. I am sensible that much must be due to accident and to mere coincidence. It is for the reader to determine, whether the cumulative evidence which I adduce is so great as, in certain cases, to transcend the limits of coincidence.
The results at which I have arrived in the case of the Acts are even more striking. It is here that the problem of the 'Western' recension has been felt most strongly. Thus a recent writer says   : 

'It is the correct method to study the Western readings in Acts first of all, and to form some kind of judgement on them, and after this to turn to the Gospels and apply to them the conclusions derived from the study of the Acts.'  (Lake, The Text of the New Testament, p. 91.)

This was not the process which I followed, but the conclusions arrived at in the case of the Acts greatly confirm the results furnished by the study of the Gospels.
It is briefly this, that all our MSS., including D, are descended from an ancestor written not in lines of equal length, as in the case of the Gospels, but in cola and commata, i. e. sense-lines of varying length, such as those found in D. The ordinary text has been developed from this by the frequent omission of lines, followed by modifications in the text. For proof of this statement I must refer the reader to the chapter upon the Acts.
I have not extended my inquiry to other parts of the New Testament, since I found that the Gospels and Acts provided more material than I could deal with in the time at my disposal. It appeared to me from some preliminary observations that the Pauline Epistles must be studied together. It is unnecessary to point out that the Apocalypse is a unique document which must be considered separately.'