How We Got the New Testament (in 22 minutes)

           A new video that I've prepared is at YouTube:  How We Got the New Testament.  It's  a slide-show presentation that covers the basics of the history of the transmission of the books of the New Testament from their initial distribution to the present day.  Viewers are introduced to papyrus copies, parchment copies, majuscule (uncial) script, and minuscule script.  They are also informed of a few developments the New Testament went through in the Middle Ages.   

          Pages of Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, Codex Bezae. and Codex Cyprius are shown, and early versions are also featured, such as the Vulgate and the Peshitta.   Viewers are then informed of a few developments the New Testament text went through in the Middle Ages, such as the recycling of parchment, and illumination.

Tyndale at the stake

         When a person asks, "How did we get the New Testament?" the identity of the "we" affects the answer.  After all, some people-groups still don't have the New Testament in their native language.  After the first nine minutes, the focus is on how the English-speaking church got the New Testament.  Viewers are briefly introduced to Lorenzo Valla, Desiderius Erasmus, William Tyndale, and other individuals from the Renaissance and Reformation era.   Early English versions are described, up to and including the King James Version, before the era of modern textual criticism is covered:  the contributions of Bengel, Griesbach, Scholz, Tregelles, Tischendorf, and Westcott and Hort are briefly described.

          The last five minutes focus on the spread of the New Testament in what is (for better or worse) English as it is spoken today. and developments subsequent to Westcott and Hort (such as the papyrus discoveries at Oxyrhynchus.  

        How We Got the New Testament is suitable for church-viewing and Bible-study groups.  

    

Video Lecture: Text-types

A new lecture, 32 minutes long, about the basic concept of text-types, is online at YouTube!
This is lecture #9 in the series Introduction to NT Textual Criticism.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXq9Vn_CRkc

Lecture 9 includes, among other things,
details about Griesbach's Canons.

Review - Scribal Skips

            Readers who keep track of recently made English New Testaments may recognize the name of the author of Scribal Skips: 1300 Words That Fell Out of the Bible:  Wayne A. Mitchell is already known as the main developer of the New Heart English Bible.

            In a three-page introduction, Mitchell summarizes a current problem in modern-day textual criticism:  the continued use of the guideline lectio brevior potior, that is, the shorter reading is stronger.  This principle – the first guideline in Griesbach’s list of guidelines, or canons, as stated back in 1796 (and, earlier, by Bengel) – was very heavily qualified, but since then it has been applied in an oversimplified manner, to the point that all that some commentators have needed to say, when offering a case against a particular reading, is that it is longer than its rival.

            As David J. Miller pointed out back in 2006 in the journal The Bible Translator in an article titled The Long and Short of Lectio Brevior Potior, research in the past 40 years has shown that measuring the length of rival textual variants is not a valid way to decide which is original.  James Royse, for example, in a detailed examination of some early papyri (P45, P46, P47, P66, P72, and P75, to be precise), determined that the copyists of those papyri made more omissions (creating shorter readings) than they made additions (creating longer readings), at a rate of 312 omissions and 127 additions – that is, at a ratio of approximately 7:3.   

            Additional research by Juan Hernández on the text of Revelation in three uncial manuscripts, and by Peter Head, in a 1990 article Observations on Early Papyri of the Synoptic Gospels, in the journal Biblica (supplemented and re-confirmed in another article in 2004), supported Royse’s findings; Head concluded his article with a statement that “If early scribes were more likely to omit words and phrases (for whatever reasons) it follows that we should not prefer the shorter reading, but rather prefer the longer reading (other factors being equal).”  Even with full consideration given to the cautionary footnote that Head added to this sentence, to the effect that “Each variant must be assessed on its merits,” at the end of the day, the point seems irresistible that a variant’s brevity is not a merit. 

            And therein lies a problem:  in the creation of the compilation of Westcott & Hort, published in 1881, the editors appear to have routinely thought that the copyists expanded the text; Hort described the tendency of copyists to expand their texts as an “almost universal tendency.”  Similarly, Eberhard Nestle, in his 1901 Introduction to the Textual Criticism of the New Testament, on page 323, stated, “It is a fundamental principle of textual criticism that the lectio brevio is to be preferred.”  And if one consults the Preface to the First Edition of the UBS Greek New Testament (on page x of the UBS GNT, 4^th ed.), the editors acknowledge that Westcott & Hort’s edition was the initial basis for the UBS Greek New Testament, and Nestle’s work is listed next.  Metzger, in his handbook The Text of the New Testament, stated (4th ed., p. 303), “In general, the shorter reading is to be preferred, except where parablepsis arising from homoeoteleuton may have occurred or where the scribe may have omitted material that he deemed to be superfluous, harsh, or contrary to pious belief, liturgical usage, or ascetical practice.”
            The first exception that Metzger mentioned – cases of possible parablepsis – does not appear to have been given adequate weight.  Many shorter readings that can be explained as results of parableptic error continue to be favored over their longer rivals. This is one reason why the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece continues to confidently diverge from the 1881 text at fewer than 700 points.

            What would the text of the New Testament look like if shorter readings that can be accounted for as omissions caused by parablepsis – that is, simple scribal errors that happened when a copyist’s line of sight drifted from one letter (or letters) at one point to another point further along in the text where the same or similar letter (or letters) recurred – were rejected in favor of rival longer readings?  That question may be answered by a careful reading of the portion of Scribal Slips that focuses on the New Testament – that is, everything after page 77. 

            In the part of Scribal Slips that pertains to the New Testament text, each page features a straightforward presentation of two or three passages where there are (a) a shorter reading, and (b) a longer reading which can be explained as the original reading on the grounds that it was accidentally lost via scribal error.  External evidence is thoroughly listed for each reading.  A series of cases in Matthew helpfully exemplifies the kinds of readings that are covered:

            ● Omission of a word:  Matthew 19:11 – witnesses are listed for the longer reading (τον λογον τουτον) and for the shorter reading (τον λογον).  Then the verse is presented in English, with the omitted word within brackets:  “But he said to them, “Not all men can receive [this] saying, but those to whom it is given.”  The idea is that an early copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters -ον at the end of λογον to the same letters at the end of τουτον.

            ● Omission of consecutive words:  Matthew 19:29 – witnesses are listed for the longer reading (οικιας η αδελφους η αδελφας η πατερα η μητερα η γυναικα η τεκνα η αγρους) and for the shorter reading found mainly in Codex Vaticanus (οικιας η αδελφους η αδελφας η πατερα η μητερα η τεκνα η αγρους).  Then the verse is presented in English, with the omitted words in brackets:  “Everyone who has left houses, or brothers, or sisters, or father, or mother, [or wife,] or children, or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive one hundred times, and will inherit eternal life.”  The idea is that a copyist’s line of sight drifted from η to η, accidentally skipping η γυναικα.

            ● Omission of a phrase:  Matthew 20:16 – witnesses are listed for the longer reading (ουτως εσονται οι εσχατοι πρωτοι και οι πρωτοι εσχατοι πολλοι γαρ εισιν κλητοι ολιγοι δε εκλεκτοι) and for the shorter reading (ουτως εσονται οι εσχατοι πρωτοι και οι πρωτοι εσχατοι).  The idea is that a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters at the end of εσχατοι to the same letters at the end of εκλεκτοι.

           

            Similarly in Mark, Mitchell pin-points readings which are shorter in the NIV, ESV, and NLT than in the KJV, NKJV, and MEV, and shows how simple scribal inattentiveness – not some devious Gnostic agenda – caused the loss of some text.  Examples:

            ● Mark 2:16 – Parablepsis accounts for the loss of the words “and drinks”

            ● Mark 10:24 – Parablepsis account for the loss of the words “for those who trust in riches”

            ● Mark 11:26 – Parablepsis accounts for the loss of the entire verse

            Even though this may give readers an illuminating view at the possible impact of scribal errors upon the text, the spotlight is not as bright as it could be.  In just two chapters of Matthew (chapters 19 and 20), readers are not shown how parablepsis may be the cause of . . .
            ► the non-inclusion of οτι in 19:8 in Vaticanus and Bezae

            ► the non-inclusion of αγαθέ in 19:16 in ℵ B L D et al

            ► the non-inclusion of ει μη εις ο Θεος in 19:17 in ℵ B L D et al

            ► the non-inclusion of ου μοιχεύσεις ου κλέψεις in 19:18 in ℵ*

            ► the cause of the non-inclusion of εισελθειν in 19:24 in ℵ L f¹ 157 et al

            ► the non-inclusion of παρα ανθρώποις in 19:26 in ℵ*

            ► the non-inclusion of οτι in 20:12 in ℵ B D et al

            ► the non-inclusion of οι in C* and H in 20:12, and

            ► the non-inclusion of 20:31 (the entire verse) in GA 2* and 157. 

But if all such instances of possible parablepsis and haplography had been included, this would be a much longer book.  The samples that Mitchell has recorded should be sufficient to cause some readers to exclaim, “Leapin’ lizards; why on earth are we relying on the Alexandrian Text; it’s full of holes?!” or similar expressions of dismay.

            There is not a lot of argumentation in this book, just straightforward presentations of evidence which may or may not constitute a genuine case of a haplography-induced scribal skip at any given point.  For instance, regarding Luke 4:5, Mitchell accurately reports that À* B L 1241 et al do not have the words ο διαβολος εις ορος υψηλον, which appear in most manuscripts immediately after the words και αναγαγων αυτον.  The idea is that a copyist’s line of sight drifted from the letters -ον at the end of αυτον to the same letters at the end of υψηλον, but one could also argue that the words have been inserted here as a harmonization to the parallel-scene in Matthew 4:8.

            Some readers might initially suspect, as they observe over and over that the shorter reading is found in the flagship manuscripts of the Alexandrian text, and the longer reading is found in the Textus Receptus, that perhaps Mitchell’s presentation is a surreptitious defense of the base-text of the King James Version.  However, the tendency for the Alexandrian Text to have the shorter reading is only a tendency; the Alexandrian text is not always shorter.  Mitchell points out that the Textus Receptus appears to be missing 39 words, in passages such as John 12:19 (where P66 À B also do not include ολος after κοσμος), James 4:12 (where the Textus Receptus, like most manuscripts, does not include και κριτης (“and Judge”) after νομοθέτης (“Lawgiver”), and Jude verse 25 (where the Textus Receptus, like most manuscripts, does not include the phrase, “through Jesus Christ our Lord”).    

            In a six-page conclusion, Mitchell maximizes the implications of the data he has presented.  The texts of the manuscripts that are routinely referred to as “oldest and best” in some Bible-footnotes are by no means safe from scribal skips; Mitchell indicts P44^vid, P45, P66, P75, and À B D L et al as containing echoes of an early parableptic error in John 10:13 in which ο δε μισθωτος φευγει was accidentally skipped after σκορπίζει at the end of verse 12.  Besides proposing that the Hebrew text of the Old Testament (in the Masoretic Text) has lost 1,279 words due to haplography, he also proposes that the Greek text of the New Testament (in the Nestle-Aland compilation, 28^th edition) has lost 327 words (in addition to which 100 words are bracketed), including four entire verses (Mt. 27:35, Mark 11:26, Mark 15:28, and Luke 23:17), due to scribal skips.

            Finally, in an interesting appendix, Mitchell comments about some differences between the form of some Old Testament passages and New Testament quotations of them.  These include considerations of Genesis 11:13 (compared to Luke 3:36), Genesis 47:31 (compared to Hebrews 11:21), Exodus 2:14 (compared to Acts 7:28), Psalm 8:2 (compared to Matthew 21:16), Isaiah 28:16 (compared to First Peter 2:6), Hosea 14:2 (compared to Hebrews 13:15), and more.  Often the quotation in the New Testament is identical or similar to the reading in the Septuagint.    

            Almost certainly, Mitchell’s evidence-presentations will not be persuasive in every case.  (For example, it seems to me that the longer form of Luke 11:2-4 is explained much more easily as a harmonization to the Lord’s model prayer in Matthew 6:9-13, than the shorter form is explained as due to a series of remarkable scribal skips.)  But in many cases, Mitchell has supplied a strong basis to reject “prefer the shorter reading,” and to put in its place, “prefer the reading with the simplest explanation.”   Very often a shorter reading is explained by a scribal slip with more simplicity than a longer ending is explained as the result of conscious scribal effort. 

            It is not as Mitchell provides only vague evidence for the textual losses that he proposes have occurred.  He (or his sources) apparently sifted through the contents of 28 papyri, over 80 uncials, over 110 minuscules, at least 18 Old Latin manuscripts, four editions of the Vulgate, seven Syriac (or Aramaic) texts, eight Coptic sources, five additional versions (Armenian, Georgian, Ethiopic, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic), and the works of 62 patristic writers – all of which/whom are listed near the beginning of the book, giving readers the tools to trace the losses.  That’s far more materials than were cited in the apparatus of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament.

            Mitchell acknowledged near the end of his book that it is not exhaustive.   (A future edition could be re-titled with  “1,500” or  “1,600” in place of  “1,300.”)  First Peter 2:2, for example, could be profitably added to the list of passages where a difference among English translations may have its origin in an ancient scribe’s inattentiveness.   But Scribal Skips is already a resource which investigators of the differences among modern English translations, and their base-texts, will find highly informative and useful.

            Scribal Skips: 1,300 Words That Fell Out of the Bible is available to purchase at Amazon as a Kindle e-book for $7.99, or as a paperback for $14.99.  

 

            [Pages 1-77 of Scribal Skips cover Old Testament passages, and are not covered in this review.  But Mitchell’s h.t.-implying comparisons, which he lets speak for themselves, are often very interesting, and merit consideration from investigators of the Old Testament text, whether regarding large readings (at passages such as First Samuel 10:27-11:1 and First Samuel 14:41) or small ones (at passages such as Malachi 1:7 and 3:2).]

[P.S.  Another man named Mitchell, Jonathan Mitchell, has also made an English New Testament, using a super-amplified technique.  Wayne A, Mitchell is not the same person.]

Abner Kneeland, Forgotten American Translator (and Apostate)

Abner Kneeland

            In Bruce Metzger’s book The Text of the New Testament, which serves as an introduction to the field of New Testament textual criticism, readers will find the names of several pioneering textual critics and translators who conducted research in the period between the publication of the KJV (1611) and the Revised Version (1881):             

           ● There’s John Fell, who issued an edition of the Textus Receptus in 1675, ΤΗΣ ΚΑΙΝΗΣ ΔΙΑΘΗΚΗΣ ΑΠΑΝΤΑ, with a textual apparatus that supplied variants from over 100 manuscripts and other ancient sources.

            ● There’s John Mill, whose edition of the Textus Receptus (published in 1707, shortly before Mill’s death) was accompanied by an extensive introduction.  This was re-issued by Ludolph Küster in 1710, 1723, and 1746.

            ● And there’s John (or Johann) Bengel, who developed a method of grouping manuscripts into what would later be called text-types.  He also developed some basic guidelines for judging textual contests.   He issued a Greek New Testament in 1734, in which he expressed his views of what variant has the better claim to be regarded as original in many textual contests.  He also wrote Gnomon Novi Testamenti, a five-volume commentary (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) on the New Testament which includes many text-critical notes.  Bengel was known for his defense of the essential reliability of the New Testament text, and of the veracity of the gospel.     

            The contributions of several other scholars who made an impact on the field are briefly summarized – Bentley, Wettstein, Bowyer, Griesbach, Scholz, Lachmann – but one notable name does not appear:  Abner Kneeland (1774-1844). 

            Who was Abner Kneeland?  He was the last man convicted of blasphemy in the United States of America.  As a Unitarian preacher (ordained in 1805), Kneeland received some instruction from Hosea Ballou.  Kneeland demonstrated a visionary attitude regarding the rights of woman, and the equality of all ethnic groups.  He led congregations in New Hampshire, Massaachusetts, New York, and Philadelphia, before breaking away from Christianity altogether in 1829.  By 1830 he was openly advocating pantheism.      

            In 1833, Kneeland published an essay in which he stated, among other things, “Universalists believe in Christ, which I do not; but believe that the whole story concerning him is as much a fable and fiction as that of the god Prometheus.”  As a result, he was arrested in 1834 on the charge of blasphemy, and was found guilty; he appealed the decision, but it was affirmed by the Massachusetts Supreme Court in 1838, and, despite calls for clemency from individuals such as William Ellery Channing, Kneeland served 60 days in jail. 

            In 1839, Kneeland moved to Iowa, intending to start a sort of colony with some of his followers, called Salubria.  (One of Kneeland’s earlier associates, Frances Wright, had attempted something similar in Tennessee, the short-lived Nashoba Commune).  After Kneeland’s death there in 1844, the Salubria colony dissolved.
            And that is that.  But before all the controversy about Kneeland’s departure from Unitarianism, he made an English translation in 1823, based on the text compiled by Johann Jakob Griesbach.  Kneeland used as his model the “Improved Version” made by Thomas Belsham in 1808, which was largely dependent on the 1796 work of Anglican Archbishop William Newcome, An Attempt Toward Revising Our English Translation of the Greek Scriptures. 

            In this translation, Kneeland demonstrated how the adoption of specific variants, combined with his own translational preferences, could yield a New Testament with doctrinal content significantly different from the King James Version, so as to fit his denial of the virgin birth, his denial of the existence of demons and hell, and so forth.  In a brief preface, Kneeland relegated the books of Hebrews, James, Second Peter, Second John, Third John, Jude, and Revelation to a secondary status, calling them “Disputed Books” which are “not to be alleged as affording along sufficient proof of any doctrine.” 

            Theological liberalism was thriving in New England in the early 1800s; Kneeland’s translation shows that its progress occurred side-by-side with an embrace of text-critical revision.  Kneeland’s translation demonstrates this over and over; for example, his translation clearly departs from the Textus Receptus at the following passages:

            ● Matthew 5:44, 6:4, 17:21, 18:11, 19:16, 20:7, 21:44, 23:13-14, 24:26, 27:17 (In addition, Matthew 1:17-2:23 are italicized, on the basis of a theory that they are secondary)

            ● Mark 1:2, 3:29, 9:38, 9:44, 9:46, 14:24, 15:28, 16:9-20 (Kneeland included an erroneous note on Mark 16:9-20, stating, “Many copies omit the twelve verses of this last chapter.”)

            ● Luke 6:45, 9:23, 17:3, 17:36, 20:23, 22:43-44, 23:17, 24:51 (In addition, Luke 1:5-2:52 are italicized, on the basis of a theory that they are secondary)

            ● John 1:28, 3:13, 3:15, 5:3-4, 6:11, 7:53-8:11, 19:16

            ● Acts 3:21, 7:37, 8:37, 13:33, 13:42, 15:24, 15:34, 20:28, 21:25, 22:9, 24:6-8, 24:26.

           

            When one looks over the criticisms that some individuals have made against the NIV and other modern versions, one can very frequently interchange “NIV” and “Abner Kneeland’s 1823 translation” and the sentences will make perfect sense.  This ought to make it perfectly clear that the text-critical issues surrounding this cluster of 45 textual contests (and more in the Epistles) did not suddenly arise when Egyptian papyri were unearthed, or when Westcott and Hort produced their 1881 revision, or when Codex Sinaiticus was discovered.  All these changes to the text were already being proposed in Greek compilations, and were already adopted in Abner Kneeland’s translation in 1823.  

            Likewise, some criticisms made against the Watchtower Society’s New World Translation also apply to some of Kneeland’s renderings; most notably in John 1:1, which Kneeland rendered, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was a God,” and in Hebrews 1:8a, which Kneeland rendered, “But to the Son he saith, “God is thy throne.”  When we look at Kneeland’s systematic avoidance of the term “hell” in his translation, we see in the New World Translation (and in the NIV to a large extent) the same avoidance.

            As a simple point of history, deviations from the Textus Receptus and deviations from orthodoxy have gone hand in hand; let anyone who says otherwise take a close look at the Unitarian texts, and Unitarian teachings, of the early 1800s in New England, as exemplified by Abner Kneeland’s translation, and his subsequent total apostasy.         

            This does not mean, however, that departures from the Textus Receptus require departures from orthodoxy.  Hundreds of readings, found in the majority of Greek manuscripts, diverge from the Textus Receptus, especially in Revelation (where Erasmus initially had only one Greek manuscript from which to work); it would be difficult to argue that the adoption of these readings – including the non-inclusion of the Comma Johanneum in First John 5:7-8 – elicits a departure from orthodoxy, inasmuch as they were already the normal readings in the Greek text throughout the Middle Ages. 

            But we should not let ourselves pretend that some textual variants cannot be used against orthodox doctrines.  Nor should we let ourselves be blindered by textbooks that fail to mention the Unitarian background of various text-critical scholars and translators in the late 1700s and 1800s (especially if an author of one of those textbooks, like Bruce Metzger, depended heavily on Principles of Textual Criticism written in 1848 by one of those Unitarian scholars, John Scott Porter). There was, and is, a spiritual battle going on.  As the history of Abner Kneeland’s apostasy shows, we would deceive ourselves if we were to imagine that the stakes in textual criticism are always low.

Readers are invited to double-check the data in this post.

The English Hexapla - You Should Get This!

            Usually when the term “Hexapla” is used, it refers to a project of the third-century theologian Origen in which the text of the Old Testament books was arranged in six columns, presenting (1) the Hebrew text, (2) a Greek transliteration of the Hebrew text, (3) the Greek version prepared by Aquila, (4) the Greek version prepared by Symmachus, (5) the Septuagint version, and (6) the Greek version prepared by Theodotion. 

            The English Hexapha (1841) is different:  instead containing six Old Testament texts, it presents six English translations of the New Testament:  (1) Wycliffe’s version (based mainly on a manuscript from 1388), (2) Tyndale’s version of 1534, (3) Cranmer’s version, also known as The Great Bible, of 1539 (4) the Geneva version of 1557 (5) the Rheims version of 1582, and (6) the King James Version of 1611.  

            Thus, in a single volume, readers are equipped with the means to consult most of the major English versions of the Reformation period.  Some differences in different versions are thus detectable even without knowledge of the base-texts used by the translators.

            The English Hexapla also includes a valuable and informative review of the history of the Bible in English up to the publication of the King James Version in 1611.  This review is divided into three parts. 

            Part 1 concisely reviews Caedmon, Bede, Aelfric, Alfred the Great, and Richard Rolle and their contributions to the spread of the written Bible in English, in a single chapter.   The next five chapters pertain in one way or another to the Wycliffe (or Wycliffite) Bible; chapter 3 features some interesting data about the Comma Johanneum. 

            Part 2 describes the work of Tyndale, and the ecclesiastical and political milieu in which his translation made its debut.  There are some interesting and moving accounts about people who were martyred in England for the crime of possessing and reading the New Testament, as well as an account of Tyndale’s own martyrdom. 

            Part 3 describes the sequel of Tyndale’s work, especially the determined efforts of Myles Coverdale, whose efforts to spread the English text of the Bible involved not only studiousness and erudition but also exploits of the most dangerous sort.  Coverdale studied the translations that had preceded his work, and stated “Sure I am, that there commeth more knowledge and understandinge of the scripture by theyr sondrie translacyons, than by all the gloses of our sophisticall doctors.”  The English Hexapla also reports the reasons – some clear historical facts, some likely deductions – for Henry VIII’s change of heart on the subject of whether the Bible should be circulated in English.   The rise of translators’ freedom in England during the reign of Henry VIII, the influence of Oliver Cromwell, the dangerous reign of Mary Queen of Scots, amd the more peaceful reign of Elizabeth, is documented, and the backgrounds of the English versions presented in The English Hexapla are all described.

            Besides details about the background of the work of Tyndale, Cranmer, and Coverdale, there is an interesting section on the significance of the mysterious initials that accompanied portions of the Bishops’ Bible published in 1568:  the authors believes them all to be initials of the scholars who prepared the text, and in addition to their names he provides brief biographies.             

            The Rheims version of 1582 is then described, although perhaps roasted would be a better term.  The author mentions a composition which appeared the same year, in which Gregory Martin objected to various features of the earlier Protestant English versions; Dr. Willian Fulke promptly composed a response; this exchange may account for some of the differences between the KJV and the English Protestant versions which preceded it.     

            The King James Version is the focus of the last chapter of the review of the history of the English Bible before the Hexapla itself begins.  If you are unfamiliar with what the Millenary Petition was, or if you would like to know a few specific readings that Dr. John Reynolds found objectionable in previous English versions, or if you want to learn which marginal notes in the Geneva Bible were especially opposed by King James, and similar details that led to the launch of the great translation-project in 1604, this chapter must surely be a priority.  And if you want to read the fourteen rules that the translators were instructed to follow, this, to, can be learned in this chapter.  The names of the members of each company of translators are also provided, with some brief biographical details.

           

            Two brief and helpful supplements appear before the sixfold comparison itself commences:  a description of the format in which the six versions are presented, and a collation of the Greek compilation prepared by J. M. A. Scholz (published in 1830-1836)– which accompanies the English translations’ text on every page – and the collation made by Griesbach in 1805.  Although Scholz’s compilation was denigrated by Metzger (cf. The Text of the New Testament, p. 124), and Scholz himself later assigned greater value to some Alexandrian readings, it is not drastically different from Griesbach’s compilation:  all of the differences between Scholz’s compilation (proof-read and revised especially for The English Hexapla) and Griesbach’s compilation are listed (even trivial differences in the spelling of the word “Moses”) in just four two-column pages.  (Although modern editions tend to agree with Griesbach more often than with Scholz, this is only a tendency.)  If you want an example of the results of textual criticism before Westcott and Hort introduced a transmission-model that drastically favored the Alexandrian Text (and before the discovery of the papyrus copies used in Egypt), you have come to the right place. 

            Those who possess a copy of The English Hexapla not only have a detailed account of the development of the English Bible, but also accurate transcriptions of the New Testament books as they appear in six of the most important English Bibles of the Reformation period, and a generally excellent Greek New Testament.   

            Those who must obtain a hefty three-inch thick paper copy of The English Hexapla can obtain a facsimile from the GreatSite website, where they are advertised with the purchase-price of $95.00.  If you prefer to obtain The English Hexapla for free, in digital form – as a 101,097 KB file – then you can download it from Google Books (use the little gear-like icon in the upper right corner of the page and in the sub-menu select “Download PDF”), or use this Google Books copy.  Readers may also want to obtain a review of The English Hexapla which also appeared in 1841, in the journal The Eclectic Review, and which challenges and supplements some of the claims made in its account of early English versions.  The English Hexapla can also be downloaded from the Internet Archive site, which presents a copy held at the University of Toronto, and which can be obtained not only as a PDF but in other formats (such as EPUB) as well.

If In Doubt, Sort It Out

 

Curious incidents
in the Byzantine Text.

          “If in doubt, don’t throw it out.”  That is the way in which Dan Wallace has asserted that Byzantine copyists handled the text of the New Testament when they had two exemplars that said two different things.  That is essentially a restatement of the claim made by J. J. Griesbach over 200 years ago:  “Scribes were much more prone to add than to omit.  They hardly ever leave out anything on purpose, but they added much.” 

            That idea – one of the fundamental principles used by textual critics throughout the 1800’s and 1900’s – was effectively erased by the data and analysis which was published by James Royse in 2010 in Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri.  Royse observed that the rate at which the copyists of some early papyri made omissions is higher than the rate at which those copyists made additions; the ratio works out to about 3:2.  This means that scribes were more prone to omit than to add.  Griesbach had it backwards, and everyone who has relied on the validity of the axiom, “Prefer the shorter reading” has had it backwards – including Bruce Metzger.

            It shouldn’t have taken until 2010 for researchers to acknowledge that Griesbach’s claim was standing on thin ice.  (And some already did; in each generation at least a few scholars maintained that the New Testament text’s transmission-history resembled the clothes in a traveling salesman’s suitcase, losing a sock at every hotel.)  To researchers equipped with (mostly) accurate transcripts of Codices Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Bezae, and Sinaiticus, it should have been clear that if the Byzantine Text originated as an amalgamation of Alexandrian and Western readings, its creators must have frequently rejected the readings in their exemplars.  That is, one can believe Hort’s theory of the Lucianic recension, or one can believe that scribes using more than one exemplar typically expanded the text, but not both. 

            The following readings, all taken from the first five chapters of the Gospel of John, demonstrate this with particular force.  In each case, the Byzantine reading is shorter than a reading found in leading Alexandrian and/or Western witnesses. 

            ● 1:6 – Byz does not read ἦν

            ● 1:19 – Byz does not read πρὸς αὐτον after ἀπέστειλαν

            ● 1:21 – Byz does not read πάλιν after αὐτὸν (cf. Codex Wsupp)

            ● 1:28 – Byz does not read ὁ before Ἰωἀννης

            ● 1:38 – Byz does not prefix μεθ- to ἐρμηνευόμενον

            ● 1:39 – Byz does not read οὖν after ἦλθον

            ● 1:46 – Byz does not read ὁ before Φίλιππος

            ● 1:50 – Byz does not read ὄτι

            ● 2:4 – Byz does not read Καὶ before λέγει

            ● 2:17 – Byz does not read ὄτι after ἐστίν

            ● 3:5 – Byz does not read ὁ before Ἰησοῦς

            ● 3:28 – Byz does not read ὄτι after εἶπον
            ● 4:3 – Byz does not read γῆν before καὶ

            ● 4:3 – Byz does not read πάλιν before εἰς (B^c, À, P66, P75, D, and L all read πάλιν)

            ● 4:5 – Byz does not read τῷ after Ἰακὼβ

            ● 4:14 – Byz does not read ἐγὼ before δώσω (cf. Codex Wsupp) 

            ● 4:15 – Byz does not prefix δι- to έρχομαι

            ● 4:27 – Byz does not read αὐτῷ after εἶπεν

            ● 5:5 – Byz does not read αὐτοῦ after ἀσθενείᾳ

            ● 5:9 – Byz does not read ἐγερθεὶς

            ● 5:10 – Byz does not read καὶ after ἐστιν

            ● 5:10 – Byz does not read σου after κράβαττόν

            ● 5:15 – Byz does not read οὖν after ἀπῆλθεν

            ● 5:19 – Byz does not read τοῦ ἀνθρώπου after υἱὸς

            ● 5:26 – Byz does not read ὁ ζῶν before ἒχει

            ● 5:40 – Byz does not read αἰώνιον after ζωὴν

           

            That’s 26 non-expansions in five chapters, an average of five non-expansions per chapter.  Extrapolating, we might find over 100 such non-expansions in the entire text of John, and over 400 such non-expansions in all four Gospels.  

            (In addition, one might profit from considering all the Byzantine readings that are not significantly longer than their Alexandrian and Western rivals, but are simply different – variants such as the reading ὡσεὶ (instead of ὡς) in John 4:7, and the transposition at the end of John 4:20, and the reading Βηθεσδὰ in John 5:2 (where Vaticanus reads Βηθσαιδὰ, Sinaiticus reads Βηθζαθὰ, and D reads Βελζεθὰ).  

            How can one say that the Alexandrian and Western readings in the listed passages have not been thrown out?  And how can the Byzantine Text, at these points, be considered derivative of text-forms whose readings are rejected?

            Hort’s eight conflations have been used as proof that Byzantine scribes applied the principle, “If in doubt, don’t throw it out.”  Meanwhile, a tour through just the first five chapters of John reveals three times as many instances where, if Byzantine copyists accessed Alexandrian and Western exemplars (as advocates of the Lucianic recension believe that they did) – they must have thrown out Alexandrian or Western readings. 

            This does not mean that as more and more non-Byzantine manuscripts (with non-Byzantine readings) were encountered in the areas now known as Syria, Turkey, Cyprus, and Greece in the 300’s, they had no effect whatsoever on the local text.  This data does not refute the idea that in some passages of the Byzantine Text (I am thinking specifically of some of Hort’s alleged conflations), an early local reading, which once agreed exclusively with either the Alexandrian or Western reading, has been completely supplanted by an expansion that was elicited by the arrival, from another locale, of an attractive rival reading.  (Something similar happened occasionally in the Alexandrian transmission-stream, as Wilbur Pickering has demonstrated; see, for examples, Mark 1:28, John 7:39, Ephesians 2:5, and Colossians 1:12.)  But it does imply that to describe Byzantine scribes as if they never met an expansion they didn’t like is to spread an essentially false characterization.

            The evidence supports instead the position that the typical attitude of Byzantine scribes, when and where they encountered unfamiliar readings from non-local exemplars, was one of caution:  “If in doubt, sort it out.”  Otherwise these 26 short Byzantine readings in John chapters 1-5 would be longer.          

             

The Tors-Costa Debate, Part 2

THE DEBATERS RESPOND

            At the outset of the second part of the Tors-Costa debate about how the original text of the New Testament should be reconstructed, technical difficulties caused Tony Costa’s voice to be briefly inaudible.  When the sound resumed, he was addressing Tors’ claim that the Alexandrian Text has an error in Mark 1:2, where the main part of the quotation is from Malachi.  (Tors has argued in an online essay that although evangelical apologists argue that it was not unusual to blend separate quotations and attribute them to a single source, the evidence for the existence of such a custom is extremely elusive.)  Let’s resume there.  Once again, I will summarize the debaters’ statements and offer comment in italics. 

            

            Consider – Costa reasoned – Matthew 27:9, where words that are found in Zechariah 11:12 are attributed by Matthew to Jeremiah.  Some copyists saw the difficulty and therefore altered the text.  Similarly in Acts 20:28, where the Textus Receptus has a difficult reading that seems to imply that God has blood, scribes altered the text.   (It may have been ill-advised spin to say that “a  Majority Text manuscript” changed the difficult reading to an easier one in Matthew 27:9, for this only makes the point stand out more clearly that the vast majority of manuscripts do not avoid the more difficult reading in that case; most scribes thus acted contrary to the premise that Costa is defending.) 

            Byzantine manuscripts, Costa asserted, changed the text in Matthew 27:9.  He provides their identities:  Codex 22, which has Zechariah’s name in the text, and “Family 33, which is also Majority Text, omits the prophet’s name altogether.”  

            (There are just two problems with that.  First, minuscule 22’s text frequently diverges from the Byzantine norm; it is not a typical Byzantine manuscript.  Second, Costa misinterpreted a printed reference to “F 33” as if the F is an abbreviation for  “family” but that is not what it means (there is no “family 33”); it represents Codex Boreelianus, and 33 refers to minuscule 33, which is, according to Metzger, “an excellent representative of the Alexandrian type of text.” Thus Costa has misdirected his accusation of scribal unreliability in two ways.  First, he is illustrating the dangers of relying on small minorities of manuscripts; that is where the non-original reading is found in this case.  The approach that he is arguing against is precisely the approach that avoids the adoption of such errors.  Second, he has unintentionally exposed the unreliability of a chief member of the group of manuscripts that he is trying to convince his listeners is the most reliable.)  

Tony Costa, demonstrating
a rationalistic approach.

            Next, Costa addressed Tors’ statement about Byzantine readings in the papyri, responding (as expected) that none of the papyri exhibit strong and sustained patterns of agreement with the Byzantine Text.  (This was not a very effective response, since Tors had only claimed that the papyri contained mixed texts; the question being how Byzantine readings got into the mix if the Byzantine Text didn’t yet exist.  It’s like finding a small mound containing salt, pepper, and paprika in a kitchen where there is not supposed to be any paprika.  Simply saying that a container full of paprika was not found does not change the implication.)

            Costa then said, “John said that there are mistakes in the Majority Text,” and as an example of a type of mistake, he mentioned harmonizations – specifically, harmonizations in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke (i.e., Luke 11:2-4), where, in the Majority Text, “The Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 has expanded to match the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Matthew.”  Costa put things more forcefully:  “In the later manuscripts, you’ll notice that the Lord’s Prayer in the Gospel of Luke is exactly the same as the Gospel of Matthew, with the doxology added to the end, ‘For Thine is the kingdom, the glory, and the power, and so forth.’”

            (Which is forceful – but wrong.  In the Byzantine Text, where Matthew 6:11 has δὸς, Luke 11:3 has δίδου.  Where Matthew’s text has σήμερον, Luke’s text has τὸ καθ’ ἡμέραν.  Where Matthew’s text has τὰ ὀφειλήματα, Luke’s text has τὰς ἁμαρτίας.  Where Matthew’s text has ὡς και, Luke’s text has και γὰρ.  And – passing by some other differences – the Lord’s Prayer in Luke in the Byzantine Text does NOT have the doxology that appears in Matthew 6:13 in the Byzantine Text.  

            (Not only is Costa’s claim false, but it can be reversed, and the absence of “but deliver us from evil” in the Alexandrian Text of Luke 11:4 can be used as an example of Alexandrian omission, and the absence of the doxology in the Alexandrian Text of Matthew can be used as an example of Alexandrian harmonization – in this case, a conformation of Matthew’s text to the parallel in Luke.  Fortunately for Costa, his friendly opponent did not pursue these points.)

            (A better example of a rationalistic approach in action – in which someone paints a reasonable-sounding picture of how scribes made harmonizations, while failing to carefully examine the evidence – could scarcely be hoped for.)

            (Also, the order in the doxology is kingdom, then power, then glory.)

            Then, in response to Tors’ observation about the plethora of scribal errors in Papyrus 66, Costa said that scribes made so many mistakes because they were working under stressful conditions, specifically, Roman persecution.  The Alexandrian scribes, Costa proposed, were “on the run.” (I suspect/hope that this idea came to Costa on the spot, without a test of its plausibility.)  

            The last section of Costa’s response to Tors’ opening statement was a disjointed collection of miscellaneous and tangential points: (One of these points ended up being revisited later in the debate.)     

            ● God had used the Vulgate and a variety of versions based on different texts (Tors’ focus had been altogether elsewhere; perhaps this observation was made as if to suggest that God does not share the “very adversarial approach” that Costa attributed to Tors.  An adversarial approach in a debate; what a concept.) 

            ● A “majority rules” approach does not work with the Old Testament text.  (Costa thus opposed a view that Tors never advocated or even mentioned in his opening statement.)   

            ● The Majority text does not have “daily” in Luke 9:23; isn’t that a scribal harmonization?  (Tors never answered this question, but if he had, the answer would probably be that the minority reading with “daily” (καθ’ ἡμέραν), familiar due to its inclusion in the Textus Receptus, is an Alexandrian harmonization from First Corinthians 15:31.)

            ● A note (in Vaticanus at Hebrews 1:3) rebuking a copyist who tried to correct the text shows that Alexandrian copyists faithfully transmitted the text.  (Costa seemed unaware that the old reading which the note-writer is zealous to preserve (φανερον) is a mistake; the reading there in Nestle-Aland and in the Byzantine Text is φέρων.)

            ● Textual criticism is very complicated and people should read Metzger & Ehrman’s The Text of the New Testament.  (Because there’s nothing like recommending a book by an ecumenical Bible-condenser and an atheist to convince people at church that your position is faith-friendly.)

            ● Modern translations such as the ESV (which Costa called the Evangelical Standard Version; this was a joke, I think) do not really deny any important doctrines. 

Then Tors responded. (It was very advantageous to go second in this part of the debate, because Tors could thus respond not only to Costa’s opening statement but also to Costa’s response.)  He used the words that Costa had just delivered as part of the framework for his response.    Tors made eight corrective points before addressing Costa’s earlier remarks:

            ● Nobody is saying that all the Byzantine manuscripts agree perfectly; of course the Byzantine manuscripts are not 100% uniform.  That does not say anything about the validity of the Majority Reading approach. 

            ● About the note in Vaticanus:  this supports exactly what Tors has been saying:  although some scribes, on rare occasions, tried to alter the text, their efforts were opposed.

            ● Regarding Matthew 27:9:  we see some scribes alter the text, but how many?  A very small number, nowhere remotely close to a majority.  This once again supports the view that the vast majority of scribes did not consciously alter their texts, and most people did not accept such rare alterations.

            ● About the rival readings in Mark 1:2:  is the Byzantine reading correct?  Yes; even if one posits a thematic connection to a passage in Exodus (I think that must have been mentioned in the part of Costa’s statement where there is no audio), Moses was a prophet, so it’s not a problem.  But is the Alexandrian reading correct?  No.  The apologists try to say, “There was this scribal practice of ascribing several quotes from several sources to one source” but (Tors says) when he checked it out, he found no substantial basis for that assertion.  (This is not an approach that I would take; rather, granting that a writer could validly cite more than one thematically related passages from the Old Testament but only name one of them specifically – I would point to the strong scribal tendency to identify unnamed prophets and other unnamed individuals in the Gospels as evidence that in cases such as Mark 1:2, the idea that the less specific reading is to be preferred should be brought to bear.)

            ● What about Matthew 27:9?  It’s not a problem because the text refers to what was spoken by Jeremiah.  Nothing precludes the idea that Jeremiah spoke a prophecy that was also written by Zechariah.  (It might have been helpful to point out the parallels between parts of Jeremiah 49, and parts of the text of Obadiah.)  Similarly in Matthew 1:23, Matthew refers to a prophecy that was spoken but which is not found in written form anywhere in the books of the prophets. There simply was not a custom of saying that what had been written by one man was written by someone else.  (In my view, a case can be made that Matthew – writing to a readership well-acquainted with the Old Testament writings – felt that it would not be problematic to draw a thematic link between a passage in Jeremiah, and a passage in Zechariah without naming both sources.  That does not mean that Mark was in a similar situation; for further analysis regarding Mark 1:2 see my online essay about that variant-unit.) 

            ● It is not an ad hominem argument to call Griesbach a “rationalist.”  That is an accurate assessment of his philosophy and of the basis for his text-critical assumptions:  he valued what seemed reasonable, rather than what was tested and experienced. 

            ● Regarding Papyrus 66:  Roman persecution came in waves; the scribes simply were not under the kind of constant stress that Costa has described.  (Costa’s description is speculation through and through.  Tors surely pulled his punches here.)

            ● Is the majority always right?  Not always; after all, Tors is advocating a view held by a minority of scholars.  But showing that some majorities are wrong does nothing to show that the Majority Text approach is wrong.

            Tors then presented a map of the Byzantine Empire as it existed in the year 600.  Revisiting Costa’s claims about why the Alexandrian Text disappeared, Tors points out that the Byzantine Empire included a huge swath of territory; it was not a localized corner of text-production.  Against Costa’s claim that the Byzantine Text did not become the majority until the ninth century, when we look at the use of the Byzantine Text in this huge territory, we have to ask, if the Alexandrian Text was in the majority, why did the people in this area stop using it?  Roman persecution ended in the 300’s; Christianity was the official religion of the Roman Empire by the 400’s – and we see the Byzantine Text used in the 400’s and 500’s.  Why not the Alexandrian Text, if that was the majority? 

             Also, we keep being told by advocates of the Alexandrian Text that the early church fathers in the first 300 years quoted the Alexandrian Text.  But when we examine their quotations, that’s arguable.  (Tors built the case gradually:  arguable, then questionable, then . . . )  It is mistaken.  The early patristic quotations of the New Testament are a textual mishmash; they do not support one form or another – but they side with the Byzantine Text more than with anything else.  (It would have been helpful to provide a few concrete examples, such as Clement’s text of Matthew.)  In addition, the pro-Alexandrian case benefits from an absence of evidence where early patristic evidence is concerned:  there are no early patristic writings from Antioch and the surrounding area that are substantial enough to analyze.  (Tors seemed to have more to say about this, but he apparently had some technical difficulty with his digital slides, and moved on.)

John Tors, commenting about
intentional textual changes.

            Tors then addressed Griesbach’s fundamental premise:  did scribes intentionally change the text? (Costa had mentioned a couple of passages that he considered alterations.  Tors could have easily gotten distracted and attempted to focus on those specific passages in detail – but instead he kept his focus.)  Without granting that any reading in the Majority Text is not original, Tors simply noted that he had never said that deliberate alterations never happened; he only insisted that they were rare.  And Costa only gave a few examples – because they are rare.  (Tors could have really hammered this point by pointing out that even the most prominent examples of harmonization that Costa gave – the exact harmonization of the Lord’s Prayer, and the inclusion of the doxology in the Lord’s Prayer in Luke 11 – are non-existent.)    

            As Tors wrapped up this part of the debate, he once again stated that although the reasoned eclectic approach yields a text that contains errors, the Majority Reading approach yields a text that is inerrant.  And it is the original inerrant text the textual critics should aim to reconstruct, even though God has shown that He is able to use imperfect compilations and even flawed translations such as the Vulgate.

            In this part of the debate, Costa presented practically no point for which Tors (even without taking advantage of Costa’s gaffes) did not have an effective answer.  Tors did not, however, spend much time addressing Costa’s claim that it would be “dangerous” to apply the Majority Reading approach to the Old Testament text, probably because Tors never suggested doing so, and because the announced subject of the debate was not the Old Testament text.  Somehow this soon drifted into the main current of the debate. 

            Coming soon:  Part 3: The Debaters Cross-Examine Each Other.    

The Tors-Costa Debate, Part 1

The Tors-Costa Debate
can be viewed at YouTube.

            Last week in Toronto, John Tors, an advocate for the Majority Text, won a debate against Tony Costa, who attempted to defend the Nestle-Aland compilation.  The stated purpose of the debate was to examine the Greek texts behind popular translations of the New Testament.  Today (and in the next two posts, God willing) I will summarize their debate, and offer comments in italics at various points.

            The moderator, Johnny Yao-Chung Chao, welcomed guests to the Toronto Free Presbyterian Church, introduced the debaters, and offered an opening prayer.  The debate was designed to consist of opening statements, followed by responses and a cross-examination period, followed by a time of spontaneous questions from the listeners. 

            Dr. Costa began with a standard summary of the purpose and materials of New Testament textual criticism, noting that the manuscripts contain many variants – mostly trivial, but not all – and he asked, in light of those variants, “How can we be sure and confident that we still have the New Testament today?” – “How do we get back to the original?”  Arguing for the Alexandrian Text, Costa stated that “During the first millennium, the Alexandrian manuscripts were actually in the majority.  The Byzantine manuscripts did not become the majority until the ninth century A.D.”

            At this point, Costa used a graphic that resembles the graph that one can consult on page 153 of James White’s book The King James Only Controversy (first edition).  (Costa’s claim, similarly, is found on the opposite page; White wrote that the Byzantine text “does not become the “majority” until the ninth century.”  That is not a realistic appraisal of the implications of the evidence; perhaps I will write more about this another day.  White’s/Costa’s chart shows how many manuscripts have survived from each century.  That’s all.  One would think that those who object to the idea of “normal” transmission would also object to the idea of “normal” survival, but apparently not when attempting to bolster their case.)

            Costa proposed that use of Alexandrian Greek manuscripts declines because of three factors:  (1)  the destruction of manuscripts by Roman persecutors, (2) the shift from Greek to Latin, and (3) the expansion of Islam.  Costa proposed that in countries governed by shariah-law, it was not safe to have scriptoriums.  (However, many monasteries in Egypt and other countries continued to produce New Testament manuscripts long after the territory in which they were situated was under Islamic rule.)  

            Costa then asserted, “For the first 300 years of the history of the church, all of the church fathers quoted from the Alexandrian text-type manuscripts, not from the Byzantine text-type manuscripts.  At least not till about 350, with John Chrysostom.”  Costa argued that the majority can change, and that the majority is not always right – just look at the majority of Germans who supported the Nazis, for example.  

            As he concluded his opening remarks, Costa made a theological point and a criticism of the Byzantine Priority view:  “God usually works with the small remnants sometimes.”  (Gaffe:  which is it:  usually, or sometimes?)  And, “The Majority Text does not approach a uniform text.  Maurice Robinson openly admits this.  The Majority Text suffers textual corruption as well.” 

            Tors, in his opening statement, restated the basic question on which the debate was intended to center:  Which  method of textual reconstruction should be used:  “reasoned eclecticism” or the Majority Reading Approach?  He began by addressing the much-repeated claim that it does not matter which method is used:  claims that the differences are trivial, and that no doctrine is affected by textual variants.  And then the gauntlet was hurled down:  “But that is not true.” 

            The textual variant in First Timothy 3:16, Tors insisted, has an impact on doctrine.  And the variant in John 7:8, where P66 and P75 and Codex Vaticanus disagree with the Nestle-Aland compilation, also has an impact.  There are many, many more examples.  (One could wish that he had specified a few more, such as Matthew 27:49 and Mark 6:22.) The survival of at least one doctrine of the faith – inerrancy – depends on which approach is used.

            Tors then reviewed some text-critical guidelines, or canons, utilized by supporters of the Alexandrian Text.  He emphasized the premises behind them, such as: 

            (1)  Scribes were more prone to add than to omit. 

            (2)  Scribes were prone to correct errors. 

            (3) Scribes were prone to harmonize. 

            Tors also pointed out that the critical text depends very heavily on Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, even though they disagree, on average, four times in every five verses.  (Gaffe:  Vaticanus was not discovered in the 1800’s; its New Testament text was reliably edited and made available to researchers at that time; its existence had been known for centuries.)

            In addition, Tors protested that at the root of the critical text is the genealogical method proposed by Hort back in 1881 – a theoretical transmission-history that Hort never bothered to prove. (As Colwell put it:  “That Westcott and Hort did not apply this method to the manuscripts of the New Testament is obvious.  Where are the charts which start with the majority of late manuscripts and climb back through diminishing generations of ancestors to the Neutral and Western Texts?  The answer is that they are nowhere.”) 

            Tors also mentioned that the advocates of the pro-Alexandrian school also cite the discovery of Egyptian papyri as a basis for their position – but before investigating that further, he turned to the just-listed canons, and asked the audience to see if they could detect the basic idea that they express.  That idea, he said, is the fundamental foundation of the reasoned eclectic case:  the idea that scribes altered the text on purpose.  Griesbach – the scholar in the late 1700’s and early 1800’s who developed these canons – believed this, not because he had conducted thorough analytical research about scribal tendencies, but because he embraced a rationalistic philosophy, and these ideas simply seemed to make sense.  His assumptions were accepted by textual critics for 200 years.  However, Tors continued, those assumptions do not align with most of the evidence.  Patristic writers consistently denounce those who altered the text of Scripture.  And one research-study after another – such as James Royse’s – show that the most common scribal error was omission.      

            Tors then turned his attention to the early papyri.  He pointed out that contrary to what James White has claimed, the papyri do not all support the Alexandrian Text.  There is considerable mixture in the text of some of the early papyri.  Tors then showed a graphic, summarizing data from Pickering, who in turn had extracted data from research by Klijn:

            P66:  agreed with Aleph 14 times, agreed with B 29 times, and agreed with TR 33 times.

            P75:  agreed with Aleph 9 times, agreed with B 33 times, and agreed with TR 29 times.

(In the debate, it did not seem very clear at all what Tors’ comparison was comparing, so I will explain:  those numbers are not derived from a consideration of the entire text of P66 and P75; they are part of an analysis (conducted by Klijn, and used by Pickering) of just the parts of John in which P45, P66, and P75 are all extant.  These statistics shouldn’t be relied upon as anything but a demonstration that P66’s text is significantly different from P75 – which is still a significant point, since if P66 and P75, with this much variation, are both Alexandrian, the term doesn’t mean much.  But this evidence-bundle looks carefully picked.  Nevertheless I don’t think anyone will contest Tors’ basic point that some of the papyri have texts that fail to display the patterns of readings displayed in the flagship-manuscripts of any text-type.  Aland acknowledged this, as Tors mentioned.)     

            After mentioning that the early papyri (better:  some of the early papyri) are not strongly aligned with the Alexandrian Text, Tors pointed out that 150 distinctly Byzantine readings have been found in the papyri.  (This finding by Harry Sturz is often belittled by defenders of the Alexandrian Text; a typical response is that early Byzantine readings do not show the existence of an early Byzantine Text.  And that was Costa’s response, almost verbatim.  But such a reaction overlooks the chief implication of Sturz’s research, which is that wherever these readings came from, it was not from a simple amalgamation of readings drawn from Western and Alexandrian exemplars, at least not as we know them.  If there was any such amalgamation-work, it must have involved a third source of readings – in which case, Hort’s main reason to categorically reject distinct Byzantine readings falls to pieces.) 

            Approaching his conclusion, Tors stated that in view of all this – the research that has undermined the “prefer the shorter reading” canon, the analyses that have shown that most scribes simply aspired to accurately reproduce their exemplars’ contents, and the discoveries of early distinctly Byzantine readings that weigh in against Hort’s theory of the origin of the Byzantine Text – “Nestle-Aland is dead.  They don’t admit it, but it is.”

            Tors’ final argument for the Majority Reading Approach in his opening statement consisted of an appeal to statistical analysis.  Using a mathematical model, Tors showed that if a manuscript were copied five times, then, all things equal, any error would have to be copied three times to be the majority reading.  And the number of times an error would have to be reproduced in each subsequent copying-generation would necessarily increase.  Thus the probability of any error being the majority reading is staggeringly low.  Tors said, “This is based on real-life numbers.”  

            (However, what are the numbers based on?  They are a hypothetical mathematical construct, not a reflection of historically verified circumstances – a grid, not a map.  Of course one can imagine a tree that grows 10 branches, with 10 twigs on each branch, and 10 fruits on each twig, but one can also walk outside and observe trees with branches hacked away, twigs broken off, widely different numbers of twigs on different branches, fruit plucked by birds and squirrels, and so forth.  If a reading’s status as part of a majority infallibly implied what Tors says it implies, the Eusebian Sections and chapter-divisions would also be part of the original text.  Still, aside from this, Tors presented some sound reasons why the Majority Reading Approach is more trustworthy than the pro-Alexandrian approach.)

Thus ended the opening statements.  Next:  Part 2:  The Debaters Respond.