Video Lecture: Testing the Tests

Testing the Tests

Now at YouTube: Lecture 14 - Testing the Tests In this 32-minute video, I review some shortcomings of earlier canons, or guidelines, of textual criticism (especially "prefer the shorter reading"), and propose some new ones. (This includes a brief look at twelve textual contests.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JgCEc3bjNc0

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.]

The Myth of Tenacity

            On page 78 of The King James Only Controversy, author James White states:   “Once a variant reading appears in a manuscript, it doesn’t simply go away.  It gets copied and ends up in other manuscripts.”  To support this statement, White appealed to Kurt & Barbara Aland’s similar statement:  “Once a variant or a new reading enters the tradition it refuses to disappear, persisting (if only in a few manuscripts) and perpetuating itself through the centuries.  One of the most striking traits of the New Testament textual tradition is its tenacity.” – Aland & Aland, The Text of the New Testament, p. 56.

            Aland & Aland, however, only provided three examples of this “tenacity” – and two of the three are very poorly attested among later Greek manuscripts.  Their first example is the abrupt ending of the Gospel of Mark (i.e., the ending at 16:8); among extant Greek manuscripts, it is supported by exactly one later copy (304).  In addition, 304’s text of Mark is 90% Byzantine; there is a very real possibility that 304’s exemplar contained Mark 16:9-20; like 2386 and 1420 (both of which used to be cited – erroneously – as support for the abrupt ending), 304’s support for the abrupt ending of Mark may turn out to be merely a quirk. 

            What about Aland & Aland’s other two demonstrations of tenacity?  They are found in Matthew 13:57 and Mark 1:16:

            Regarding Matthew 13:57:  Aland and Aland point out that whereas some manuscripts (B D Θ 33 700) simply present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in [his] homeland (πατριδι), and some manuscripts (À f¹³) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his own homeland (ἰδία πατριδι), and some manuscripts (L Byz K N W) present Jesus saying that a prophet is without honor in his homeland (πατριδι αὐτοῦ), the scribe of Codex C conflated two readings, so as to write ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ.  “This is typical,” Aland and Aland say – “a scribe familiar with both readings will combine them, reasoning that by preserving both texts the right text will be preserved.”

            The obvious problem with the Alands’ proposal is that Codex C’s reading in this passage is anything but “typical;” C’s reading is singular – that is, it is the only Greek manuscript that has this reading!  Far from being “tenacious,” this reading burst into existence with the scribe of C, and then went extinct.  We may have here a tenacious page of parchment, but not a tenacious reading.

            The example in Mark 1:16 is better, where it can be argued that the majority reading is a combination, or conflation, of the reading in Codex A (του Σίμωνος) and the reading in Codex D G W Θ and the Textus Receptus (αὐτου), producing the longer reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος.  Although a counter-argument can be made, let’s step back at this point and survey the evidence that has been collected to illustrate the proposal that once a reading (whether part of the original text, or the creation of a scribe) appears in a manuscript, it does not go away:

            ● The presence of the abrupt ending of Mark in minuscule 304.

            ● The reading ἰδία πατριδι αὐτοῦ in Codex C (a singular reading), and

            ● The reading αὐτου του Σίμωνος in the Byzantine Text of Mark 1:16.  

            Now consider the mass of evidence against the concept of tenacity:  the hundreds of singular readings that appears in ancient manuscripts, but of which there is no trace in later manuscripts.  How many such readings are there?  Greg Paulson wrote his 2013 thesis on singular readings in the codices Vaticanus (B), Sinaiticus (À), Bezae (D), Ephraemi Rescriptus (C), and Washingtonianus (W) in the Gospel of Matthew, and he mentioned how many singular readings – i.e., readings that do not recur in any other Greek manuscript – each one of these codices has in its text of Matthew.  Paulson’s data:
            Vaticanus:  97.

            Sinaiticus:  Scribe A:  163. 

            Bezae:  259.

            Ephraemi Rescriptus:  75

            Washingtonianus:  112.

            I emphasize that these numbers – showing that five important early manuscripts combine to produce a total of 706 singular readings – only take the text of Matthew into consideration.  If one were to extrapolate, so as to maintain a proportion of 25 singular readings per chapter of the Gospels, then we could reasonably expect that a study of all the singular readings in these five manuscripts throughout the four Gospels would total about 2,225.  Well, there we would have 1,500 non-tenacious readings – never seen before or after the one time they appear – versus the three submitted by Aland & Aland.  Suppose that two-thirds of these were nonsense-readings which scribes could reasonably be expected to regard as mistakes.  That would leave 500 non-tenacious, non-nonsense readings, just in the Gospels, just in these five manuscripts.

            And what if we consider some earlier manuscripts?   A single quotation from James Royse (from p. 246 of Scribal Tendencies in the Transmission of the Text of the New Testament, chapter 15 of The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research, © 1995 Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., Ehrman and Holmes, editors) may serve to tell us:  Royse provides a chart which conveys that Papyrus 45 has 222 significant singular readings; Papyrus 46 has 471 significant singular readings; Papyrus 47 has 51 significant singular readings; Papyrus 66 has 107 significant singular readings; Papyrus 72 has 98 significant singular readings; Papyrus 75 has 119 significant singular readings.  (In a footnote, Royse helpfully defines “significant singular readings” as “those singular readings that remain after exclusion of nonsense-readings and orthographic variants.”)  

            Hundreds of readings refute the Alands’ claim about tenacity.  (Over a thousand in just six papyri.)  There is no evidence that these readings were ever perpetuated after they entered the transmission-stream precisely once.  Here the case might rest, Q.E.D. 

  

            But let’s also consider a few peripheral pieces of evidence.             

            ● Origen and Luke 1:46.  Bruce Metzger pointed out (in his essay References in Origen to Variant Readings) that Origen, in his commentary on Matthew, mentioned that in some copies, the Magnificat is said to be sung by Mary, while according to other copies, Elizabeth is the singer.  Presently, no Greek manuscripts say that Elizabeth was the singer. 

            ● Tertullian and John 1:13.  All Greek manuscripts of John 1 support the use of a plural in this verse, so as to understand it as a generalization about all genuine believers.  Tertullian, however, seems to have been convinced that the original reading here was singular, and that Valentinian heretics were responsible for changing it to a plural form.  (Denis S. Kulandaisamy has written a 300-page book on this little subject.)   

            ● Epiphanius and Matthew 2:11.  The apologist Epiphanius of Salamis, in the late 300s, mentioned that the wise men opened their “wallets” (πήρας), and noted that some manuscripts – like all Greek manuscripts extant today – referred instead to their “treasures” (θησαυροὺς).  No known manuscript today has the reading πήρας.  

            ● Jerome, Isidore, Theodore of Mopsuestia, and Ephesians 5:14.  Several significant patristic writers drew attention to a textual variant in Ephesians 5:14, where instead of “And Christ will shine on you,” some manuscripts in their day read “And Christ will touch you.”  John Chrysostom seems to have alluded to this variant, too, although he did not go into detail about it.  If it is extant in any Greek manuscripts, there is no mention of them in the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. 

            ● Origen and Matthew 4:17.  Origen says plainly that some manuscripts do not have the word “Repent” in this verse.  All of our Greek manuscripts, however, presently support the inclusion of “Repent” in this verse; only in the Old Syriac copies and in the Old Latin Codex Bobbiensis is it missing.     

            ● Jerome and Matthew 13:35.  Jerome firmly asserts that all of the ancient copies state that these things were done to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Asaph.  No manuscripts of Matthew today have this reading, and Jerome mentions that by his own time, the text had been altered; one alteration had yielded the erroneous reading “Isaiah the prophet.” 

            If you take in hand Amy Donaldson’s two-part dissertation Explicit References to New Testament Variant Readings Among Greek and Latin Church Fathers, you will find details about these readings, and others, which were cited by early patristic writers but which now are never or only rarely found.

            Finally, the myth of tenacity is not only refuted by empirical evidence; it is rendered superfluous by logic.  For if a reading were to enter the transmission-stream, and then fall into oblivion, and the manuscript containing it did not survive, and no one referred to it in patristic writings, how would we know?  Even if we did not have the empirical evidence that thoroughly refutes the theory of tenacity, the theory could only ever be an assumption, not a verifiable thing.

                         

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

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.