An Introduction to
New Testament Textual Criticism
|
Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle
Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe, Under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle, But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe; So ofte adaye I mot thy werk renewe, It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape, And al is thorough thy negligence and rape. -- Chaucer | Good reader, do not blame the bard
For phrases too obscure or hard, Or if the grammar seem to halt; Believe me, that's the scrivener's fault. He knew your eagerness to read And sacrificed too much to speed. If me you blame instead of him, Your intellect must need be dim. -- Martial, epigrammi libri, book 2.8, as translated by J. A. Pott and F. A Wright, Martial, the Twelve Books of Epigrams, pp. 47-48 |
Contents: Introduction * Types of Manuscripts * Printed Versions of the New Testament * The Practice of Textual Criticism * List of New Testament Manuscripts * Final Examples * Final Notes: Critical Editions, Science, and Faith * Appendix: The Text of Chaucer's Address to his Scribe *
Introduction
Chances are that you've played the game "Telephone" some time in your life. "Telephone" is the game in which a group of people gather around in a circle. One person thinks up a message, and whispers it to the next person, who whispers it to the next person, and so on around the circle, until you reach the end and the final person repeats the message aloud. The first person then states the original message.
The two sentences often cannot be recognized as related.
Even if you haven't played "Telephone," you must have read a book or a magazine which was filled with typographical errors. (Come to that, you can probably find not a few in this Encyclopedia.) And that's in a case where the typesetter has the author's original manuscript before him, and professional proofreaders were engaged to correct errors.
Now imagine what happens when a document is copied, by hand, tens of thousands of times, long after the original manuscript has been destroyed. Imagine it being copied by barely literate scribes standing (not sitting, standing) at cold desks in bad light for hours on end, trying to read some other scribe's barely legible handwriting.
Imagine trying to do that when the words are written in all upper-case letters, with no spaces between words, and you're writing on poor-quality paper with a scratchy reed pen using ink you made yourself.
Because that's what happened with all ancient books, and with the New Testament in particular. Not all scribes were as bad as the secretary Chaucer poked such fun at in the quote above, but none were perfect -- and few had the New Testament authors looking over their shoulders to make corrections.
After a few centuries of that, it's easy to imagine that the text of the New Testament would no longer bear any relationship to the original. Human beings just aren't equipped to be exact copyists. And the more human beings involved in the process, the worse the situation becomes.
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Fortunately, the situation is not as grim as the above picture would suggest. Despite all those incompetent scribes making all those incompetent copies, the text of the New Testament is in relatively good shape. The fact that copies were being made constantly, by intent scribes under the supervision of careful proofreaders, meant that the text stayed fairly fixed. It is estimated that seven-eighths of the New Testament text is certain -- all the major manuscripts agree, and scholars are satisfied that their agreement is correct. Most of the rest is tolerably certain -- we probably know the original reading, and even if we aren't sure, the variation does not significantly affect the sense of the passage. For a work so old, and existing in so many copies, this fact is at once amazing and comforting. Still, there are variations in the manuscripts of the New Testament, and some of them are important. It is rare for such variants to affect a fundamental Christian doctrine, but they certainly can affect the course of our theological arguments. And in any case, we would like the most accurate text of the New Testament possible. That is the purpose of textual criticism: Working with the materials available, to reconstruct the original text of an ancient document with as much accuracy as possible. It's not always an easy job, and scholars do sometimes disagree. But we will try to outline some of the methods of New Testament textual criticism in this article, so that you too can understand the differences between Bibles, and all those odd little footnotes that read something like "Other ancient authorities read...." | (Footnote: The description at left is my definition of textual criticism: Determining, as best we can, the original text of the document. In recent years, with this post-modern tendency to think that methods matter more than results, there has been a certain tendency to argue that the phases in the history of the document are the point of textual criticism. I'll say flat-out that, as far as I'm concerned, this is pure bunk. Such historical criticism is useful and interesting -- but it's not textual criticism, which should always have its eyes fixed firmly and solely on the original text. Only that and nothing more.) |
Types of Manuscripts
If the task of reconstructing the text of the New Testament may be compared to a detective story, then our "witnesses" are the ancient manuscripts. Manuscripts fall into three basic categories: Greek manuscripts, ancient translations (generally called "versions"), and quotations in ancient authors.
The analogy to witnesses in court is apt. Some of our witnesses are fragmentary; they preserve only small parts of the story (though often important parts). Others are fairly complete, but are not very reliable. Each witness has its own peculiarities, which must be taken into account as we decide between readings. As one scholar put it, to be a successful textual critic, you must "know the personality of your witnesses."
Of the three classes of witnesses mentioned -- Greek manuscripts, versions, and quotations -- the most important are the manuscripts, since they preserve the wording in the original language and in the original order. (Exception: the lectionary manuscripts, of course, do not preserve the order.) The oldest Greek manuscripts date from the second century; from that time on, the number of manuscripts grows ever greater until the thirteenth century, then comes to a fairly abrupt halt at the end of the fifteenth century (when first the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and then the printing of the first Greek Testament in 1516 reduced the need for manuscript copies). Unlike modern books, which are relatively standardized, manuscripts take various forms, and the form of the manuscript (arrangement of columns and lines, style of script used, etc.) can sometimes influence the sorts of readings we find in it.
The books of the New Testament were almost certainly originally written on scrolls. We see evidence of this in the texts of Matthew and Luke, both of which drastically compressed the material in Mark in order to make their books fit on the largest possible scroll. These scrolls were probably of papyrus, which was the cheapest and most important writing material in the ancient world.
But the urge to collect the writings that eventually made up the New Testament must have been very strong. It is generally believed that collections of Paul's writings were in existence by 100 C.E. if not earlier. This posed a problem: A collection containing the writings of Paul, or the four gospels, was far too long for a single scroll. A complete New Testament would have been even more impossible.
The solution was the form of book known as the codex. This is, in fact, what moderns think of as a "book." Instead of sheets being placed side to side to produce a immensely long single "page," they were folded over each other, permitting books of any length -- and, not insignificantly, saving expensive writing material (since codices could be written on both sides). The Christian church seems to have adopted codices with great enthusiasm; over 99% of known New Testament manuscripts are in codex form, and the few minor exceptions were already-written scrolls that Christians salvaged and reused.
The earliest manuscripts rarely if ever contained complete New Testaments (for one thing, the canon of the New Testament was not finally settled until about the fourth century). Most manuscripts contained only one section -- Gospels, Paul, Acts and Catholic Epistles, Revelation. In addition, early manuscripts are often incomplete -- pages have been lost, or parts of pages have become decayed or torn or simply illegible.
Part of the problem is the writing material. Our earliest surviving manuscripts are written on papyrus, which grows brittle with age and can be ruined by damp. Only in Egypt has the dry climate allowed a few papyrus manuscripts to endure, and even these are often damaged. (A few papyri buried, e.g., in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius are only a minor exception; these were not Christian writings. These papyri were in fact numerous, but badly damaged, very difficult to read -- very many were destroyed in the attempt to open them -- and not very valuable) With the exception of the papyrus known as msng72 (which contains the books of 1 and 2 Peter and Jude in their entirety, along with non-scriptural writings), not one papyrus contains the complete text of any book. Papyrus was not the only writing material used in the ancient world, however. Parchment -- the carefully prepared skins of animals -- was also available. It was, in fact, a better material, at once stronger, smoother (which made attractive writing easier), and more durable. But it was also generally much more expensive. Papyrus is a plant, which grows quickly in Egypt. (There are some reports of papyrus being grown in Italy, but these are uncertain. It is likely that some papyrus sheets were finished in Rome, but this was probably based on imported materials. David Diringer, in The Book Before Printing, notes that the Latin papyri at Herculaneum were more brittle than those written in Greek, and speculates that this is due to the use of remanufactured papyri. Another possibility is that Italian papyrus, if it actually existed, was inferior.) |  A papyrus manuscript: a portion of one section of 𝔓13, containing part of Hebrews. Note the uncial (all-uppercase) letters and the lack of spaces between words, as well as the damage to the 1700-year-old material. |
The early church was poor, and needed many books. Parchment was probably generally beyond its means. It was not until the church became legal in the reign of Constantine that parchment came to be widely used for church writings. Parchment and papyrus continued to be used side by side for many centuries. The heyday of papyrus manuscripts was the third and fourth centuries, but we have papyri from as late as the eighth century (by which time the Islamic conquest had largely suppressed Greek-speaking Christianity in Egypt). Parchment manuscripts first appear in the third century, and become common in the fourth; they remained dominant until the early part of the second millennium, when paper began to be used.
Both the papyri and the early parchments were written in a style of writing known as "uncial" (also sometimes called "majuscule"). This is, more or less, what we would call "upper-case letters." The letters were large, and the various letterforms were not connected. For the most part, the letters fall between two lines. In the earliest manuscripts, there were no accents, no breathings, no punctuation, and no spaces between words. (This doubtless led to certain errors, as scribes misread undivided words and sentences. So, for example, in uncial script it would be easy to confuse ΑΛΛΑ and ΑΜΑ.)
As the centuries passed, uncials grew more elaborate, with the letters sprouting serifs and other slow-to-write forms (the reader is invited to examine the chart of uncial letterforms). Manuscripts grew easier to read as scribes gradually started to add breathings, punctuation, etc., but these were slow to write and took up a great deal of writing material. What was needed was a cursive hand -- but it was not until the ninth century that an appropriate script was developed (there were earlier Greek cursive hands, but they were not used for Biblical manuscripts, probably because they were not considered elegant enough). With the development of this script began the "age of the minuscule" -- "minuscule" being the name given to both this cursive style and the manuscripts written in the style. The first minuscules were written in the ninth century, and by the end of the tenth century they had essentially driven the uncials out of use (uncials continued to be used in lectionaries for a few more years, but from the thirteenth century on we have no examples of the type except in a few marginal notes).
One of the best-known minuscule manuscripts: 1739, of the tenth
century, with the run of the text in minuscule script and a colophon
at the bottom in an uncial hand.
(It is interesting to note that other languages followed a similar history. Early Latin manuscripts are written in Latin uncials, but as time passed, minuscules came into use. Unlike Greek minuscules, however, where the unity of the Byzantine Empire meant that the same general style was adopted throughout, different centers seem to have developed different minuscule styles; we see great variety in eighth and ninth century Latin manuscripts, until the Carolingian Minuscule became dominant. Though the later history of the types does diverge; modern Greek print and handwriting bear almost no similarity to late Greek minuscules. I've seen it claimed that modern print -- which gave rise to modern Roman-letter handwriting -- is a form of Carolingian minuscule. This isn't exactly true -- most moderns would have real trouble reading Carolingian minuscule -- but they are related and fairly similar.)
All told, there are somewhat more than 3000 continuous-text Greek manuscripts of the New Testament. Between 85% and 90% of these are in minuscule script; the remaining 10-15% (uncials and papyri) are in uncial script.
It will be evident that some system is needed to keep track of all these assorted manuscripts. The present system, although somewhat imperfect, was adopted after centuries of trial and error and, frankly, confusion. In it, continuous-text manuscripts are divided into three classes: Papyri, Uncials, and Minuscules.
Papyri are written on (guess what) papyrus, in uncial script. As noted, the earliest papyri date from the second century, and the last date from the eighth. Papyri are designated by the letter P (often in a blackletter script) and a superscript letter. Thus 𝔓13, 𝔓45, 𝔓46, 𝔓47, 𝔓66, 𝔓72, 𝔓74, and 𝔓75 are among the most important papyri. As new papyri continue to be discovered, new numbers are added to the series (thus the lower the number, the earlier a papyrus was probably found). As of this writing, the number of known papyri is about one hundred. (Note that some papyri have more than one number, as different portions came to light at different times. So the actual number of manuscripts in a class will generally be slightly less than the nominal number.)
The second class of Greek manuscripts are the uncials. In a way, it is unfortunate that uncials are distinguished from papyri, since they are written in the same script and there is no great difference in age -- the oldest uncials date from the third century; they continued to be written until the tenth/eleventh century. The difference lies only in the writing material: Uncials are written on parchment, papyri on papyrus. (It is true that most papyri are older than most uncials -- the bulk of surviving papyri are from the third and fourth centuries, while uncials do not become common until the fourth century and the bulk of the surviving copies date from the sixth through ninth centuries. But it is important to remember that some of the best uncials are as old as or older than many of the papyri.)
Uncials were originally designated by letters, i.e. A, B, C, D. As the number of known uncials increased (the nominal number now stands at slightly over three hundred, but -- as with the papyri -- the same manuscript sometimes has multiple designations, meaning that the actual number is on the order of 270), it became necessary to use Greek letters, then Hebrew letters. Eventually scholars gave up and took to using a numbering scheme, with each uncial's number preceded by a zero. Thus the manuscript A is now also called 02, B is 03, etc. However, most of the best-known manuscripts are still known by the letter designation they once had.
Beyond these are the minuscules, recognized by the script in which they are written (since they can be on either parchment or paper). The earliest minuscules date from the ninth century (overlapping the last uncials), and continued to be written up to, and even after, the appearance of the first printed New Testament in 1516. For the most part, minuscules are marked not only by their script but by the presence of accents, breathings, word spacing, paragraphs, punctuation -- all the things whose absence made the early uncials so hard to read. Minuscules are given simple numbers, from 1 on up to the current total of about 2850.
There is a fourth class of Greek manuscripts, the lectionaries, which of course contain the lessons read in the Greek church in the order they are read. Lectionaries are quite numerous (about 2300 are now known), but most of them are late and fairly standardized. They may be written on parchment or paper, in uncial or minuscule script. Lectionaries are designated by a script letter 𝓁 followed by a number (e.g. 𝓁547 is the relatively well-known "Ferrar Lectionary," so-called because its text resembles that found in the group of manuscripts called Family 13 or the "Ferrar Group"). To this point, the lectionaries have not been very carefully studied, and they are rarely used in textual criticism. Since this article is intended to be short, we will say no more about them.
A list of some of the more important New Testament manuscripts is found elsewhere in this document.
In addition to the Greek manuscripts, we have the testimony of the "versions" -- the ancient translations of the Greek New Testament. These are highly valuable in some ways -- they are usually early (the oldest Latin, Syriac, and Coptic versions date from the second to fourth centuries, and the Armenian probably to the fifth), and we know what part of the world they come from. But they also have drawbacks: No translation, even if precise and literal (and not all these translations are) can exactly render the wording of the Greek original. Also, the versions have a textual history of their own, which means we have to reconstruct their readings. Finally, it is worth remembering that, although a version may exist in thousands of copies, it is usually translated from no more than a handful of Greek originals. Thus the versions are very important for determining the history of a variant reading, but sometimes less useful for determining the original text.
The final class of witnesses normally mentioned is the testimony of quotations in the Church Fathers. This is an amazingly rich resource -- many, many authors quoted the New Testament over the centuries. And we usually know with fair precision both the date of the quotation and the place where the author wrote. Unfortunately, the authors often cited loosely, adding, paraphrasing, or omitting as they saw fit; they did not cite in order, they rarely cited long passages; and in any case, their works, just like the manuscripts themselves, have been subject to copying and corruption over the years. Hence the Fathers, like the versions, are best used to establish the history of the text.
A fourth class of witnesses, not normally mentioned in New Testament
criticism because they have so small a role, are
imitations.
The first complete New Testament to be published was the edition of
Desiderius Erasmus,
now known as the Textus Receptus ("The
text received [by all]" -- a phrase derived from an advertising blurb
in a later edition!). This was published, with great haste and on the basis
of only a handful of late manuscripts, in 1516 (the printer wanted to beat
a rival edition onto the market, and so hurried Erasmus and then pushed
the edition through the press without proper oversight). Yet it formed the basis
for all Greek editions for over three centuries; Luther's German translation
and the English King James Version (as well as most of the English editions
preceding the KJV) were translated from editions of the Textus Receptus.
The Textus Receptus had a text that was fairly typical of the manuscripts
of its time, and for the first century or so of its existence no one worried
much about its text. But in the early seventeenth century the Codex Alexandrinus
arrived in England from the Middle East. This produced a sensation, since it
was a very old (fifth century) manuscript which often disagreed violently
with the Textus Receptus. Suddenly scholars began to realize that there
were different forms of the New Testament text.
It was not until 1831, however, that
Karl Lachmann (1793-1851)
published the first Greek testament not based on the Textus Receptus.
Lachmann's edition differed from the Textus Receptus at thousands
of points, some of them significant. His text came under immediate
and intense attack. Yet almost every Greek edition since Lachmann's
time has been closer to his text than the Textus Receptus. The
reason was that textual criticism was beginning to come into its
own, and the Textus Receptus no longer appeared adequate.
But why was the Textus Receptus inadequate? Although it was
based on late manuscripts, and Lachmann's text on early manuscripts,
both are based on actual readings. They simply adopted different
readings at points of variations. So why is Lachmann right
and Erasmus wrong? How do we decide which reading is original?
Scholars have given many names to their answers, and they apply
them in different ways. But fundamentally they use two tools:
"Internal Evidence"
and "External Evidence."
Internal evidence (sometimes called "Transcriptional
Probability" or the like) is based on logic: "Which
reading best explains the others?" It asks questions like,
"Is there an easy way for this reading to have been converted
into that one?"
External evidence is based on the manuscripts. It looks for the
reading based on the "best," earliest, or most manuscripts.
Let's show what we mean by looking not at the Bible but at a
famous passage from Shakespeare -- Hamlet, I.ii.129 (approximately;
in my Yale Shakespeare, it's I.ii.133). This is one of
the key soliloquies. You've probably heard the first line as
O that this too too solid flesh would melt
It so happens that there are three early witnesses to this passage,
and none of them read it in the above form. The first quarto, the
earliest published form of the passage, gives it as
Oh that this too much grieu'd and sallied flesh
The second quarto, the next form to appear, reads
O that this too too sallied flesh would melt
The First Folio of 1623, the only source to contain (almost) all of Shakespeare's
plays, reads
O that this too too sollid flesh would melt
It is believed that the "sallied" of the second quarto is
to be understood as "sullied." The folio reading is a divergent
spelling of the common reading "solid."
So which is it? Solid flesh? Sullied flesh? Grieved and sallied
flesh (which might in this case mean something like "battered")?
The first quarto reading can be ignored; it comes from a "bad quarto," imperfectly remembered by one of the actors of the play. But the second quarto and the first folio are both fairly good texts. And both readings make good sense. If it is "solid flesh," it is natural to ask that it would melt. But "sullied flesh" has its own aptness, as Hamlet would have inherited it from his mother, who in her weakness has turned to Claudius. For that matter, the other reading "sallied" makes some sense -- it would mean "assailed," in the sense that Hamlet was overwhelmed by his troubles. And this would explain the reading of the first quarto. In choosing between them, a critic must decide which one best explains the other.
There is no definitive answer to this one. The Yale Shakespeare, which strikes me as rather casually edited, reads "solid." The revised Pelican has "sullied." The Riverside Shakespeare, in both the first and second editions, dodges the issue and prints "sallied." I personally think "sullied" the slightly better reading; it's in the second quarto, now considered the best witness, and the first quarto reading seems to presuppose it; even the folio reading uses a similar spelling. But we can't be certain; there is no guaranteed way to choose between the texts. This is the general problem of textual criticism, of which New Testament TC is a (somewhat exceptional, and certainly very important) example.
Rather than dwell on non-Biblical examples, let's take a handful of Biblical examples. By seeing how an actual apparatus criticus (table of information about variations) is constructed, we can probably make things a lot clearer.
For our first example, take part of 1 John 2:23. The King
James version renders its Greek text "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." After this, however, they add, in italics (meaning
that it is not a correct part of their text) "[but] he that acknowledgeth
the Son hath the Father also." Almost all modern version accept this longer
reading as original -- that is, as part of the correct and original text.
In the Greek, this variation involves only eight words. The table
below shows the various words used here, along with the manuscripts
supporting them (it is customary in such apparati to leave out accents
and breathings. We list witnesses in the order papyri, uncials,
minuscules, versions, church fathers). The name
"ℵ" in the
third item refers to an important uncial manuscript known by that symbol.
If a manuscript's symbol appears in parenthesis, it means that it generally
supports a particular reading but with some minor variation. If a manuscript's
symbol is followed by an asterisk (e.g. 1739*), it means that this was the reading
written by the original scribe of the manuscript, which some later owner
altered. The "corrected" reading (we put "corrected" in
quotes because such corrections often replace a good early reading with a bad late one)
is noted with a superscript c (e.g. 1739c) or sometimes,
in older manuals, with two asterisks (e.g. 1739**). If a manuscript is marked
vid, it means that the manuscript is incomplete or damaged, but
the surviving portion seems to support the reading in question. Obviously we cite only
a handful of the three-thousand-plus known manuscripts (many of which have not even been
collated yet, so we couldn't cite them even if we wanted to).
A very brief description of most of the manuscripts cited here, including age, contents,
and how various scholars have classified them, is found in the
Description of Manuscripts of the Catholic Epistles.
These are by no means all the manuscripts supporting either reading, but they
give the general impression. Much the larger share of manuscripts support the
short reading, though they are mostly minuscules, while the early uncials
without exception have the longer reading (K, L, and 049 are uncials, but
of late date -- ninth century or so).
The crucial matter, though, is the form of the reading. Note that both long
and short readings end with the same set of letters: τον πατερα εχει. It would be very easy for a scribe's eyes to skip from the first occurrence to the second. This is the error known as homoioteleuton ("same ending"), and it is incredibly common. Almost all manuscripts display at least a few instances of it. We don't as often see it affecting whole classes of manuscripts, but that is clearly the case here. The longer reading, despite being absent from the majority of manuscripts, is surely original.
A different sort of problem is illustrated by Matthew 19:20. Jesus is
talking to the rich young man, and has just told him to keep the commandments.
Does the young man say "I have kept all these" or "I have kept
all these from my youth"? The evidence is as follows (f1
and f13 are small groups of closely related manuscripts; you can
look up the manuscripts in the Description of Manuscripts
of the Gospels):
It is clear that the bulk of the manuscripts include the longer reading "from my
youth." On the
other hand, the text without "from my youth" is supported by the two
oldest manuscripts (ℵ* and B),
and by several other manuscripts with what we
shall learn are good or interesting texts. Most scholars would be inclined to believe, simply on the basis of the manuscripts, that the shorter reading is better.
But we have more evidence. This reading, of course, has parallels in Mark (10:20) and Luke (18:21). Both of the other gospels have the words "from my youth." Now suppose you're a scribe. You've heard the phrase "I have kept all these from my youth" a few zillion times in your life. Unless this is your first copy of the gospels, you've written it a few times in your life. If you encounter a copy without the words, wouldn't you be tempted to add them? Certainly, if they were present already, you would have no tendency to delete them.
This process is known as "assimilation of parallels." Scribes have a tendency to make texts read alike. If a text sounds familiar, the scribe tended to conform it exactly to the familiar form. (You may have done it yourself. Try reading this phrase: "To be, or not be, that is the question...." Did you notice the omission of the word "to" after "not"?)
So in all likelihood the original reading here is the one which omits "from my youth."
You may have noticed that in both cases here we went against the reading supported by the majority of manuscripts. Does this mean that we are undemocratic?
In a word, yes. One of the great rules of textual criticism is that "manuscripts are to be weighed and not counted." Some manuscripts are good, some are less good. (Though all are at least occasionally questionable; as Michael Holmes puts it, "none are perfect, not even one; all have flaws, and fall short of the glory of the autograph" -- Michael Holmes in "A Case for Reasoned Eclecticism," not yet published at the time this was written.) So how do we decide?
This is a matter that scholars have been working on for centuries. When they began,
the number of manuscripts known was much smaller than today, and old manuscripts were
especially rare. Still, at about the turn of the nineteenth century a scholar named
Griesbach (following the lead of
Semler) discovered that the manuscripts known to him
seemed to fall into three
distinct groups. The largest of these groups, by far, he called the "Byzantine,"
because most of the manuscripts it included were written in the late Byzantine period.
The two smaller groups he labelled "Alexandrian" (because it agreed with
the readings of such Alexandrian fathers as Origen and Cyril) and "Western"
(because it was associated with the Latin versions used in the western Roman Empire).
Thus arose the concept of "Text-types" --
groups of manuscripts related at a stage more recent than the original.
This concept was refined in the second half of the nineteenth century by
Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892),
who did most of his work in collaboration with
Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901).
Westcott and Hort adopted Griesbach's
Western and Byzantine types as given (although they called the Byzantine
text "Syrian"); the Alexandrian text they split into two groups
which they called "Neutral" and "Alexandrian." (This
latter distinction has been rejected by most scholars, who believe that
the Neutral and Alexandrian text-types are just earlier and later forms of the
same sort of text; they generally call it by the name "Alexandrian.")
But Hort didn't just affirm the identity of these types. The discovery that
made Hort famous was that the Byzantine text was (in his view) late. Hort
based this argument on a number of points (I have amplified some of these):
All of these points have problems. The first two remain true, but they
are an argument from silence. The fourth point is weakened by the fact that
conflations are not as common as Hort would imply, and occur in all types of manuscripts.
The third point is the strongest by far, but has never been so fully tested as to
satisfy everyone.
(See the article on Byzantine priority.)
Still, the overall thrust of Hort's logic
has convinced the majority of scholars. The Byzantine
text-type -- even though it contains nearly
90% of the witnesses, and has influenced most of the others -- is
regarded as a secondary product, derived from earlier text-types.
This left the field open to the earlier text-types, the Western
and Alexandrian.
The Western text in the Gospels consisted of only one Greek witness (Codex
Bezae, D/05, a well-known fifth or sixth century uncial), but it is supported
by most of the Old Latin versions, and
by quotations from many early writers such as Irenæus and Tertullian.
The Old Syriac versions also seem to belong
here, although they are not as pure and may have elements of other types.
In the Acts, Bezae and the Old Latins are still the key elements of the
type, although 614, the
margin of the Harklean Syriac, and
the other manuscripts of Family 2138 are believed by many to belong here.
In Paul, the Old Latin still supports the type, as do the uncials
D (here D is 06, Codex Claromontanus, of the sixth century, not Codex
Bezae) and the closely-related ninth century pair F G. There are no
known witnesses to the type in the Catholic Epistles or the Apocalypse.
The Alexandrian text, which includes the majority of the non-Byzantine
witnesses, is more amorphous. It consists of both uncials and minuscules, as well
as versions. In Hort's time, the most important and basic witness to the type
was the famous Codex Vaticanus, B/03,
which contains the Gospels, Acts, and
Catholic Epistles complete as well as most of the Pauline Epistles. It was also
the earliest representative of the type, dating from the fourth century. Also
from the fourth century, and nearly as important, is Codex Sinaiticus,
ℵ /01,
the only uncial to contain the entire New Testament. They are supported by the
Coptic versions. In addition, they are supported in
part by manuscripts such as the uncials
C
and L in the gospels and the uncials
A and
C
in the Acts and Epistles, as well as by minuscules such as
33
579
892
1241 in
the gospels and
33
81
1175 in the Acts and Epistles.
Most of these latter manuscripts, however, display a phenomenon known as
"mixture." This means that they contain readings from more than
one text-type. Typically they will have some Alexandrian and some Byzantine
readings, although there may be a few "Western" readings thrown in as well.
The reason for this is not hard to imagine. Unlike today, when books are
cheap enough to simply be purchased and referred to only intermittently, old books
were used. So the users were always writing notes, commentaries, and
corrections in the margin. It was not unusual for a later copyist to assume
these marginal remarks belonged in the text (or at least might belong
in the text), and insert them into the manuscript he was writing.
Then, too, manuscripts were copied in a scriptorium, and corrected. A corrector (διορθωτῄς) would carefully read over the new copy, comparing it to some official,
reputable copy. Often this reputable copy would not be of the same type
as the manuscript used to make the original copy, meaning that the corrector
would add readings of a second text-type to the once-pure text of the
manuscript. We can actually see this happening in some manuscripts;
424 has a Byzantine text that
has been corrected toward the readings of
1739, while many famous manuscripts
(including ℵ
and both Ds) have been corrected toward the Byzantine
text. When new copies are made from these manuscripts, of course, the
corrections go straight into the text of the copy, producing mixed
manuscripts.
Mixture makes the task of textual criticism much harder. Since most
manuscripts have more than one "parent," it means that we
cannot trace a simple genealogy. Although 𝔓75, B, and L are
all related, L is not a child of B, which is
not a child of 𝔓75. This means that we cannot simply go
back up the generations to find the original reading of a text-type,
let alone of the original text.
Still, by careful use of both internal
and external evidence, it is usually
possible to determine the readings of text-types. Hort, for instance,
found that B preserved the readings of the Alexandrian/Neutral text in the
large majority of cases.
But at this point Hort faced a problem. Both the Alexandrian and "Western"
types were early, and went directly back to the original. How, then, did
one decide between the two in cases where they disagreed?
Here Hort turned to internal evidence. The "Western" text, he found, was marked by paraphrase, expansion, and stylistic "improvements" of all sorts. The Alexandrian text, by contrast, was concise -- even abrupt -- and had more than its share of infelicitous readings.
On this basis, Hort concluded, the Neutral (Alexandrian) text was best and most
reliable. Unlike the Western text, it was not rewritten; unlike the Byzantine
text, it was not a mixture of older elements. The text printed by
Westcott & Hort was largely that
of the Alexandrian text, and of B in particular. And it was widely felt
that the Westcott & Hort text was the best New Testament edition of
the nineteenth century. Even today, our printed texts are strongly
"Hortian."
But the twentieth century has seen changes. New manuscripts -- including all the papyri and many early uncial fragments -- have been discovered. Our knowledge of the versions is much greater.
This has had many consequences. A new text-type -- the
"Cæsarean" -- has been
proposed (though its existence is not so widely accepted today as in the
early part of the twentieth century). The various substantial papyri --
particularly 𝔓46
and 𝔓75 -- have altered our
understanding of the early history of the text. Discoveries of new
and better manuscripts of the Fathers have helped us understand all
stages of that history. And new tools, some computer-aided, have
allowed us to assess many manuscripts (especially minuscules) that had
never previously been studied. We know of many manuscript groupings
we had not previously been aware of. We have also learned that even
the Byzantine text is not one great monolith; although it is the
most coherent of the text-types, even it has phases and has undergone
a certain amount of evolution.
In the light of the complexity we now see in the relationships
between manuscripts, we cannot do as Hort did and generally
just follow the text of B. We need to be aware of all the non-Byzantine
manuscripts, and keep their peculiarities in mind. We also must know
and understand the Byzantine text. If we believe, with Sturz and
others, that it is early, we must take its readings into account. Even
if we accept the opinion of Hort in its entirety, and consider the
Byzantine text late, we still must know its readings so that
we can see how they have influenced other manuscripts.
The following list briefly describes some of the more important (generally non-Byzantine) New
Testament manuscripts and their characteristics.
The above list shows that we know quite a bit about certain
manuscripts. Even so, the matter of manuscript classification remains highly
uncertain. The reader interested in a discussion of contemporary
issues is referred to the article on
Text-Types and Textual Kinship.
Perhaps as a result of this uncertainty, textual criticism in the
twentieth century has placed increased emphasis on internal evidence.
All textual critics balance internal and external evidence to some
degree, but the twentieth century has seen a new class of critics.
Often called "Radical" or "Thoroughgoing Eclectics,"
they decide readings almost entirely on the basis of internal evidence;
manuscripts are simply the sources of the readings to be examined.
Foremost among these scholars are G. D. Kilpatrick and J. Keith Elliot.
The "documentary" methods of Hort, meanwhile, have been
almost completely abandoned. The most common method today is
"Reasoned Eclecticism," which attempts to give both
internal and external evidence full voice. The interested reader is
therefore advised to study the list of Canons
of Criticism, examining both the rules for internal and external
evidence.
Let us conclude this far-too-brief survey with a handful of addition
examples that demonstrate both internal and external rules. A handful of
additional Examples are available in the
Encyclopedia, but many of these stress the use of text-types and
external evidence, and so are perhaps not ideal for beginning students.
In the examples below, where the "lemma" (the Greek text to
be examined) contains the notation [add], it means that some manuscripts
add words, to be specified in the list of variants which follows the main
text.
ο γεωργος... λαβη
[add]
προιμον και
οψιμον: the farmer... receives... early and late [add]
This reading can be resolved using either internal or external evidence.
Internally, it is clear that the original reading is the short one. If the
text originally said "the farmer waits to receive early and late,"
this could easily have confused scribes, who would feel that the verb needs
an object. A forerunner of the Byzantine text added "rain," while
a few scribes added "fruit" instead. Thus the reading without either noun
easily explains the others. Whereas if either "rain" or "fruit"
were original, there would be no reason to omit it, and even less reason to change
the one to the other.
The manuscript evidence is also clear. "Fruit" is simply
inadequately supported. The support for "rain" is somewhat
better, consisting of the Byzantine text, Family 2138, and an assortment
of late Alexandrian manuscripts. The omission, however, has the support
of Family 1739, of the earliest Alexandrian witness (B, supported by
𝔓74 and the Sahidic), and a wide variety of versions. While this
is not as decisive as the internal evidence, it is strong. Combined, the
internal and external evidence make it all but certain that the short
reading is original.
ωτα [add]
ακουετω:
with ears [add] let that one hear
This reading will usually be decided based on internal evidence, since the external
evidence is somewhat spilt. The earliest Alexandrians omit "to hear," as do
several of the best Old Latins. On the other hand, the majority of both Alexandrian
and "Western" witnesses, along with the entire "Cæsarean" and
Byzantine families, add the infinitive. On the basis of the external evidence, most
scholars would probably prefer the short reading, but would be open to counter-suggestion.
The internal evidence is quite decisive, however. In Mark we find the phrase
"ears to hear" three times (4:9, 23, 7:16), supported in two instances
by Luke. In Matthew, however, all three instances of the phrase are marked by
variation. In each case, the Byzantine text reads "ears to hear," and
at least some early witnesses omit "to hear." Now we know that Matthew
abbreviated Mark wherever possible, and we know that scribes were always harmonizing
one gospel to another (that is, making both gospels sound alike -- usually by grafting
the longer reading of one gospel onto the shorter reading of another). Therefore there
is every likelihood that the reading without "to hear" is original (here and
in 11:15, 13:43), and the longer readings are assimilations to Mark.
First, critical editions use many different formats to present data.
The system above is by no means typical. A good critical edition will explain
how it is to be read, but you can also find information in the article on
Critical Editions -- which also briefly describes
the nature and history of several of the major editions.
Second, it should be stressed that textual criticism, unlike any other Biblical
discipline, should not be faith-based. The goal must always be the highest
possible degree of scientific objectivity. This is simply a logical necessity.
The Bible is one of the basic pillars of Christian theology (most Protestant
sects would say the basic pillar). Therefore it follows that we want to
reconstruct it as accurately as possible. But as soon as one allows personal
preference (whether it be called that or "the voice of the Holy Spirit"
or the like) to determine the text, where does one stop? I will offer myself as
an example. I personally find the doctrine of predestination to be simply abhorrent.
It's boring for God and utterly unfair for humans. If I were to allow my
own opinions (which feel just as much like the voice of the Holy Spirit as
the next person's opinion) to control me, I would always be tempted to delete or soften
pro-predestination references. We will all have such prejudices. The only possible
solution is to follow objective rules. Your rules may differ from mine, and
so may produce different results -- but at least the result will not suffer
from theological bias. Treat textual criticism as a science (using logic
in the application of internal evidence and text-types and mathematical
data in the evaluation of the external), and you should do well.
Some textual manuals, such as Ellis R. Brotzman's Old Testament Textual Criticism:
A Practical Introduction (p. 129) suggest that every time one makes a
textual decision, the textual critic should explain its importance for exegesis.
I would strongly urge textual critics not to do this, as it muddies the
thinking. Readings must be chosen solely on the basis of the evidence, not the
critic's faith. If a textual critic can't perform his or her task objectively, he
or she shouldn't be doing textual criticism; if an exegete can't figure out what the
variant readings mean, the exegete should go out and get a real job. It is one thing
to mark which readings are most uncertain, as several editions do; it is another for
the textual critic to do the exegete's job.
Third, I've had people come to me saying, in effect, "Help! This
textual criticism stuff is undermining my faith." I would stress that
this is no concern of the textual critic, who has a job to perform. (Yet another
advantage of textual critics with no religious axe to grind.) But I suppose we
should speak to this point.
For starters, it should be noted that every ancient writing extant in
multiple copies shows variations -- often much more significant variations
than we find in the New Testament text. If 6,000 New Testament manuscripts
showed no variation at all, it would be clear and direct evidence of
supernatural influence (note that such influence need not have been God's;
it could theoretically be the work of a being opposed to God). But God
presents no other such explicit evidence; why offer it only in a strange
and obscure form that no one could appreciate until recently when we have
at last been able to study enough manuscripts to prove the point? Even
if you have some sort of inerrantist belief, it makes no sense. And there
is a faith issue the other way, too: What sort of God would keep the Bible
inviolate but allow wars and rape and murder and child abuse? A God who
simply takes a "hands off" attitude is one thing, a capricious
God is another.
As to how the textual critic can answer the doubts of laypeople confronted
with the alleged issue of textual criticism, I would suggest simply having
the doubter consult one of the modern English translations. The New Revised
Standard Version, for instance, records textual variations with the words
"other ancient authorities read...." Have the person read some of
these footnotes. Do any of them really affect the person's beliefs? Does it
really matter if the Greek transliteration of the name of the Hebrew King Amon
was "Amon" or "Amos"? Does it matter if people in Alexandria
spelled their verbs in a way modern writers consider uncouth?
Variation in the text is real and
is widespread. Few if any scholars believe that we have recovered the original
text with absolute certainty -- but I know of none who regard the difference
as so substantial as to be actually capable of producing heresy. Scholars such
as Burgon and Pickering have been intemperate (and, in the latter case at
least, demonstrably inaccurate) in their attacks on other scholars' methods. But even
they have not shown any instance of modern (as opposed to ancient) editors
producing any readings which affect Christian doctrine; doctrine is a unity
and does not rest on a particular passage.
Though I would strongly argue, personally, that if such a reading does
exist, it is still the textual critic's duty to adopt that reading if the
evidence supports it.
"και
γνωσεσθε την
αληθειαν και η
αληθεια
ελευθερωσει
υμας" (John 8:32, a verse with no
significant variants).
Good textual critics will not go too far. As P. Kyle McCarter once commented
as regards the canon of criticism regarding the harder reading, "The more
difficult reading is not to be preferred when it is garbage."
There is an interesting analogy in Karen H. Jobes and Moisés Silva's
Introduction to the Septuagint (page 124): Consider purifying our water
supplies (or anything else involving sanitation, e.g. washing hands or
pasteurizing milk): No matter how hard you try, none of these activities will
eliminate all contamination. Does that mean that it's not worth purifying water --
that we should drink dirty water and assume it's clean? Only if you like typhoid
fever. We can't reconstruct the original text perfectly, because we are human
and it is a text copied by humans. But we can produce better and purer text.
We can -- but only if we're willing to concede the need. Textual criticism does
not threaten the Bible. Refusing to engage in TC is the threat.
Good luck!
The poem which opens this article is Chaucer's own comment on the
accuracy of his secretary's work. A non-poetic paraphrase into modern
English will show that inaccurate copying was just as much a problem for
Chaucer as for Biblical copyists:
Adam the scrivener, if ever it befalls you
There are only two extant pre-critical texts of this poem:
Cambridge MS. Trinity College R.3.20 and the text of Stowe's 1561
edition, seemingly from a lost manuscript. There are no variants
in the text listed by Benson in the third edition of The
Riverside Chaucer (text on p. 250, textual notes on p. 1188;
the second edition of this work, by Robinson, notes some variant
spellings and several conjectures by other editors),
but the titles are different: The Cambridge
ms. calls the poem "Chaucer's Wordes Unto Adam, His Owne
Scriveyn," while Stowe's edition uses the title "Chaucers
Woordes vnto his own Scriuener." Nonetheless there are differences
between modern authorities. The text at the top of this article,
reprinted below with line numbers added, is from Benson.
There follows a collation showing
the variants (mostly trivial, real variants shown in bold)
in James J. Wilhelm's Medieval Song.
1 -- Adam scriveyn, if ever it thee bifalle
1: scriveyn ] scrivain
Printed Versions of the New Testament
The Practice of Textual Criticism
Would melt to nothing....
List of New Testament Manuscripts
ℵ/01
is textually very good (although only one of the three scribes was
an accurate speller, and this one wrote only a handful of leaves in the
New Testament). In the Gospels it is generally Alexandrian (although the
text is something else -- perhaps "Western" -- in the first third
of John). It is considered second only to 𝔓75 and B as a
representative of the Alexandrian type. The same is true in Acts and the
Catholic Epistles. In Paul, where
the textual character of B changes somewhat,
ℵ is actually the best
Alexandrian witness. In the Apocalypse it is somewhat different; it belongs
with 𝔓47, with a text considered inferior to A C.
In the gospels in particular, B is considered almost to define the
Alexandrian text, and -- since the Alexandrian is considered the best
text-type -- by implication the original text. Both the Westcott & Hort
and United Bible Societies editions are strongly dependent on it.
B retains its high quality in the Acts and Catholic Epistles.
Its nature in Paul is more uncertain. Hort viewed it as mostly
Alexandrian with some Western mixture. However, it appears that it
actually belongs in its own group with 𝔓46. (Interestingly,
B is the closest uncial to all the substantial early papyri -- to
𝔓66 and especially 𝔓75 in the Gospels, to
𝔓46 in Paul, and to 𝔓72 in the Catholics.)
The text-type of C varies. In the Gospels it is a mixture of
Alexandrian and Byzantine elements, though some parts are more
Byzantine than others. In Acts it is somewhat more Alexandrian. In Paul
it is almost purely Alexandrian, being very nearly as good as A
although perhaps not quite as pure as
ℵ or 33. In the Catholics
it seems to show a mixture of Alexandrian and Family 1739 readings,
with more of the latter than the former. In the Apocalypse it stands
close to A, and is one of the best manuscripts of the book.
On the above scholars agree. On all other things there is debate.
For instance, the Greek and Latin sides of D (denoted D and d respectively) are very
similar, and have obviously been edited so as to agree. But was
D conformed to d, or d to D, or both? There is no consensus. Nor is
there agreement about the peculiar nature of D's text. It clearly
falls closest to the so-called "Western" witnesses such
as the Old Latin versions and fathers such as Irenæus. But it
also has important differences -- e.g. D is the only manuscript
to transfer Matthew's genealogy of Jesus into Luke 3:23f. This
transfer is obviously the result of rewriting. Is the rest of D's text
rewritten, or is this an aberration? Again, scholars do not agree.
This is a particularly serious problem in that D is the only
substantial Greek witness to the "Western" text of the
gospels. Assessing its readings is a perennial problem of textual
criticism. All we can say here is that its readings should be used
with caution, especially when they do not have support from a large
number of Latin witnesses.
Final Examples
James 5:7
Matthew 13:9
Several Final notes....
Appendix: The Text of Chaucer's Address to his Scribe
To write Boethius or Troilus anew,
Under your long hair you must have scales
Unless you copy what I write more truly!
So often I must redo your work:
To correct it, and rub and scrape,
And all because of your negligence and rape.
2 -- Boece or Troylus for to wryten newe,
3 -- Under thy long lokkes thou most have the scalle,
4 -- But after my makyng thow wryte more trewe;
5 -- So ofte adaye I mot thy werk renewe,
6 -- It to correcte and eke to rubbe and scrape,
7 -- And al is thorough thy negligence and haste.
2: Troylus ] Troilus; for to ] to; wryten ] writen
3: lokkes ] lockes; most ] moste
4: makyng ] making; thow ] thou; wryte ] write; trewe ] true
5: adaye ] a-day; mot ] moot
6: eke ] eek; rubbe ] rub
7: al ] all; thorugh ] thourgh