1. Tell us about the background to this book. How did the project start and take shape?
Wilson: I developed an interest in New Testament textual criticism in my late teens through studying New Testament Greek, and through a large box of books about NT textual criticism from a variety of viewpoints my dad inherited from an elderly classicist. One book that I read which was a bit beyond my level was the collected studies of E. C. Colwell (Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament, Brill, 1969). He seemed to have an open mind about many questions, pointing out some problems (occasionally humorously) in the current reigning approach.
In the early 2000s I started trying to compile a HTML critical apparatus on my own computer, and as I did so I started noticing patterns in singular readings. Maybe Colwell’s study on singular readings had subconsciously stuck in my head, but what initially interested me were the changing rates of singulars in certain manuscripts. It struck me that the rates of singular readings abruptly changed in Washingtonianus exactly where its textual character changed throughout the gospels. As I collected more singulars from other MSS, I also noticed that singulars tended to be omissions rather than additions.
In 2005 I
moved with my wife and young family to
In 2011 I presented a paper on scribal habits at the Society of Biblical Literature International meeting at Kings College London. The editor of Philologia Neotestamentaria, Jesús Peláez, was present at the session and after my talk he asked me if I would like to publish the paper in the journal. My paper compared all four of the traditional transcriptional canons (Prefer the Shorter, Harsher, Harder and Less Harmonized Readings) against the evidence of scribal errors from 4200 singular readings I had collected. A year or two later it was published as “Scribal Habits in Greek New Testament Manuscripts”, Filologia Neotestamentaria 24 (2011), 95-125.
In 2016, I was emailed by the acquisitions editor for a major academic publisher asking if I would like to publish my work as a monograph. This was a surprise, and initially I did not take up the offer. But the more I looked into the state of the question, the more I felt there was room for an expanded study that also addressed objections to the evidence from singular readings. By the time I decided to pursue the study, the acquisitions editor had moved on, and not knowing the attitude of the new editor to the approach I was taking, I decided to contact Dr. Juan Hernández, the General Editor of the Society of Biblical Literature Text-Critical Series of studies and put a proposal to him. This was accepted by the editorial board and after a few more years of hard work, the study was published.
2. What are the results of the study?
Wilson: The present study looked at over 10,000 singular and sub-singular readings in fifty-two chapters of the NT. Singulars are readings found in only one Greek manuscript, while sub-singulars are found in just two or three manuscripts. These are worth studying because they are far more likely to have been introduced by scribes at some point in the textual transmission of the New Testament rather than written by the original author. Singulars are free from presuppositions about the ‘correct’ text or its history, and are therefore thought to be the most objective guide to the types of errors scribes produced. Because singulars are far more likely to be scribal errors than original readings, and provided they are collected in sufficient numbers, they offer a sound basis for a typology of scribal mistakes.
The Shorter
In the study of 5742 singular add/omit variation units, there were 2129 additions (37%) and 3613 omissions (63%). This suggests that scribes more often omit from the text than add to it. In democratic elections, a 25-percentage point gap is called a ‘landslide win’, because the losing politician is buried by the result. The result in my study showed scribes overwhelmingly tend to omit, suggesting as James Royse said, ‘the preference for the shorter reading is fundamentally mistaken’. Every other study of scribal habits (some using different methodologies) also showed scribes tending to omit rather than add.
● Royse (1981, 2008): 130 adds to 312 omits
● Robinson (1982): 451 adds to 678 omits
● Silva (1985, 1992): 76 adds to 148 omits
● Head (1990, 2004): 10 adds to 20 omits
● Min (2005): 18 adds to 42 omits
● Hernández (2006): 57 adds to 87 omits
● Jongkind (2007): 19 adds to 67 omits
●
● Paulson (2013): 76 adds to 117 omits
● Ebojo (2014): 148 adds to 431 omits
● Gurry (2017): 568 adds to 644 omits
● Farnes (2019): 1 add to 4 omits
● Hixson (2019): 7 adds to 21 omits
We are yet to find a study of scribal habits in NT manuscripts that shows scribes as a whole tending to add to the text, and thus confirming the traditional canon. Prefer the Shorter Reading has been the orthodoxy for the last 250 years, based on the theory that scribes tended to add to the text. But it seems that this received wisdom has no basis in evidence or research data to back it up.
An important finding of the study was the confirmation of Alphonse Dain who penned one of the most important statements about scribal errors ever written: Some mistakes are more common than others. There are at least two that all copyists, without exception, frequently commit. The first is the omission of small words . . . A second constant type of copying error, long studied, is the leap from same to same. This is by far the most common error. (Les Manuscrits, 44-45)
Dain went on to write about various types of small words that are commonly omitted, and stated, ‘In the manuscript tradition of Aelian’s text, I have noted the disappearance of approximately eight hundred small words’ (ibid.).
My study found the same thing: scribes tend to heavily omit single words and short stretches of text. The evidence suggested we should rephrase Dain’s Dictum slightly as follows: ‘Scribes tended to omit rather than add, their most common errors being short omissions of one or more words and cases of haplography’. Dain is right about the reality of omission: it is the dominant corruption.
Other results flow from the fact that scribes are far more prone to omit than add. One is that conflations are far less common than ‘double simplifications’ (Hort). In my study, I estimate that for every conflation we have 10 double simplifications. For example, consider Matthew 12:15:
πολλοι : 01, B
οχλοι : N
οχλοι πολλοι: all other MSS
It is clear that the reading of N is not correct. But the reading of Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, who omit οχλοι, is hardly much stronger. NA 28 brackets οχλοι as doubtful, but omissions are so common that the longer combined reading here is almost certainly correct. The same goes for a similar case in Matthew 8:18. Reports of ‘conflations’ are greatly exaggerated in the literature and, as a general scribal trend, the theory of conflations does not have any solid basis in evidence.
Prefer the Harsher
Dain’s Dictum has important consequences for a second canon, because scribes tend to omit single words (of virtually all parts of speech). Metzger lists Prefer the Harsher Reading as his fourth transcriptional canon in his Textual Commentary, writing under sub-heading (c) [scribes would] ‘add pronouns, conjunctions, and expletives to make a smoother text’.
However, because scribes actually do the exact opposite in the real world – omitting single words of all parts of speech – the effect of scribal activity on the text is the reverse of what Metzger states: the omissions of pronouns, conjunctions, articles, nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs make the text more abrupt, terse and stylistically harsh.
In one of my chapters, I quantified the effects of scribal activity on the style of the text and found that scribes produced a terser, more abrupt, harsher style nearly three times as often as they produced a smoother style. Scribes are again doing the very opposite of what the textbooks say.
In other
words, the failure of the Shorter Reading canon also entails the failure of the Harsher
My study is not the only one that has found that scribes tend to omit single words. The same is true of the studies of Royse (among one-word add/omits, there were 118 additions to 227 omits), Silva (who calls them ‘function words’ and whose 1992 study had 12 additions and 33 omissions), Jongkind (whose calls them ‘verba minora’ and counts 13 additions to 22 omissions), and Min, who recommended that in cases of minor variants with equally strong external evidence, in general the longer reading is preferable. Every study with enough data to be statistically significant has shown that scribes tend to omit rather than add in cases of one-word variation units. What this means is that scribes make the text terser and harsher, instead of polishing it up.
Prefer the
Disharmonized
Another corollary of scribes tending to omit rather than add is that omission often results in disharmonization. That is, in passages where the synoptic gospels have the same wording, omissions (particularly of one or two words) have the effect of making passages originally the same different.
For an example from my study, consider Mark 2:5 (‘Jesus, seeing their faith’, from the story of the paralyzed man lowered down through the roof). Here it is in the ECM:
6-8 a ο ιησους [Mt 9,2; Lk 5,20 v.l.] ... P88V . 13V. 1542r. CyrH. Dam
b om. [Lk 5,20] 892
– P88 . 13. 495
I won’t bore readers with all the statistics, but in the synoptic gospels, my study found that among singular readings scribes disharmonized more than twice as often as they harmonized. Most of the harmonizations were additions, while most of the disharmonizations were omissions. This phenomenon of disharmonization was most pronounced in one word variation units and two words variation units.
The fact that scribes more frequently disharmonize the text by their mistakes is again the opposite of the traditional canon, which states that scribes tended to bring similar passages into harmony. On the other hand, my study found that in longer variation units (10 words or longer), scribes tend to harmonize to parallels.
Some modern text-critics argue that harmonization is the dominant textual corruption. Thus, Hugh Houghton in his recent textual commentary writes that change ‘due to the influence of another similar text or construction’ accounts for ‘the majority of variants’ (p. 15*). Dirk Jongkind and Peter Williams write the same in the introduction to The Greek New Testament, Produced at Tyndale House (see page 506). However, even Jongkind’s own study showed scribes omitting far more often than they harmonized (67 singular omissions to 30 singular harmonizations, Scribal Habits of Codex Sinaiticus, 210-13, 229-232). Omission is the dominant scribal corruption, and harmonization comes a distant second.
Prefer the Harder
In my study, over 3500 singulars of all types (adds, omits, substitutions and transpositions) were examined in twelve chapters of the NT text. The results show scribes creating far more difficult readings than easier readings. In fact, they created over 30 times more difficult readings for every easier reading.
Summary
The results show that all four of the transcriptional canons are connected. By frequently omitting words and phrases, scribes also tend to make the text more terse, abrupt and harsh, less harmonised, and generally more difficult. In short, scribes tend to make mistakes and mess things up. Who’d have thought?
3. Which canon do you think will be the most doggedly adhered to despite the evidence you presented? “Prefer the harder reading”, right?
Wilson: My opinion is that the traditional Harder Reading canon is essentially correct, but only if we pay attention to how certain scholars – notably Hort and Metzger, but even Greenlee – carefully defined and qualified it. The majority of people commenting on New Testament textual criticism at all levels today seem to have adopted a simplistic definition of the Harder Reading canon that is almost the exact opposite of its true meaning. They think that the canon says, Prefer the Harder Reading, period. This means that any blunder a scribe introduced into the text, short of nonsense, is to be preferred.
But that is not what Hort or Metzger say. Metzger says it like this: ‘In general, the more difficult reading is to be preferred, particularly when the sense appears on the surface to be erroneous, but on more mature consideration proves itself to be correct.’ (Textual Commentary, 12*-13*). Harold Greenlee says it even more simply: ‘The more difficult reading is likely to be the original. This statement needs to be qualified a bit, however. What we mean is that if one reading seems at first sight to be unexpected or difficult to understand, but on further study is seen to make good sense, then this reading is probably original.’ (Scribes, Scrolls, and Scriptures, 59). Hort says, ‘with the exception of pure blunders, readings originating with scribes must always at the time have combined the appearance of improvement with the absence of its reality. . . . In itself therefore Transcriptional Probability not only stands in no antagonism to Intrinsic Probability, but is its sustaining complement.’ (Introduction, 27).
When Hort says that Prefer the Harder reading does not stand in antagonism to intrinsic probability but is its sustaining complement, he means they are both saying the same thing in different ways. Thus, we should not prefer a reading merely because it is more difficult. Difficult readings are precisely what authors strive to avoid; most authors write to be understood. Instead, because intrinsic probability is the sustaining complement of transcriptional probability, the true meaning of the canon is this: we should prefer the reading that makes more sense, particularly when at first sight it appears to be difficult in some way.
The worrying thing is that so many top-level biblical commentators nowadays not only argue for readings which make less sense, but they do not even try to make the case that such harder readings are intrinsically superior. The best example of this is the singular reading of Codex Bezae at Mark 1:41. Numerous critical commentaries prefer the ‘angry’ Jesus here, but the important thing to notice is that they do not make much of an attempt to show how this reading makes more sense in context, i.e. is intrinsically superior. The notable exception is Bart Ehrman who is perhaps largely responsible for the modern popularization of this reading. But at least Ehrman tries to argue that an ‘angry’ Jesus fits with some themes in Mark’s Gospel and attempts a bit of textual ventriloquism (putting reasons into Jesus’ mouth about why he got angry at a leper).
Ehrman thus proves the point being made here: it is not enough to merely identify a reading as more difficult – you must also prove that it is also intrinsically superior. I happen to think that Ehrman’s arguments in Mark 1:41 don’t come close to satisfying the requirements of the Harder Reading canon’s qualifying clause, or that Jesus venting his anger at an unsuspecting, socially ostracized sick man is intrinsically superior (see pages 304ff in my study). But the reason Ehrman’s argument has been so successful (culturally – in convincing others to follow him), is because so many other people seem to have either forgotten the qualification clause or never truly grasped that the canon must not be read in an unqualified way. Metzger did not have a simplistic understanding of the canon, and so the ‘angry’ Jesus reading was never allowed into the NA text. The same cannot be said with certainty about many other commentators, right up the editors of the NIV who, astonishingly, adopt the ‘angry’ reading.
One of my friends long ago put the whole matter this way: ‘prefer the dumber reading is a dumb rule’. Strange to relate, there are many Bible scholars dabbling in textual criticism who think that we should prefer the more ridiculous reading. Maybe my study will help them get a clearer picture of what scribes did and what the canon really means.
More questions to follow in Part Two!
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