A little task for LittleNipper

[Mike Cl]

If he has the courage, that is.  The following snippet is from The Encyclopedia of NT Textual Criticism-----the Intro:

The Practice of Textual Criticism

But why was the Textus Receptus inadequate? Although it was based on late manuscripts, and Lachmann's text on early manuscripts, both are based on actual readings. They simply adopted different readings at points of variations. So why is Lachmann right and Erasmus wrong? How do we decide which reading is original?

Scholars have given many names to their answers, and they apply them in different ways. But fundamentally they use two tools: "Internal Evidence" and "External Evidence."

Internal evidence (sometimes called "Transcriptional Probability" or the like) is based on logic: "Which reading best explains the others?" It asks questions like, "Is there an easy way for this reading to have been converted into that one?"

External evidence is based on the manuscripts. It looks for the reading based on the "best," earliest, or most manuscripts.

Let's show what we mean by looking not at the Bible but at a famous passage from Shakespeare -- Hamlet, I.ii.129 (approximately; in my Yale Shakespeare, it's I.ii.133). This is one of the key soliloquies. You've probably heard the first line as

O that this too too solid flesh would melt

It so happens that there are three early witnesses to this passage, and none of them read it in the above form. The first quarto, the earliest published form of the passage, gives it as

Oh that this too much grieu'd and sallied flesh
Would melt to nothing....

The second quarto, the next form to appear, reads

O that this too too sallied flesh would melt

The First Folio of 1623, the only source to contain all of Shakespeare's plays, reads

O that this too too sollid flesh would melt

It is believed that the "sallied" of the second quarto is to be understood as "sullied." The folio reading is a divergent spelling of the common reading "solid."

So which is it? Solid flesh? Sullied flesh? Grieved and sallied flesh (which might in this case mean something like "battered")?

The first quarto reading can be ignored; it comes from a "bad quarto," imperfectly remembered by one of the actors of the play. But the second quarto and the first folio are both fairly good texts. And both readings make good sense. If it is "solid flesh," it is natural to ask that it would melt. But "sullied flesh" has its own aptness, as Hamlet would have inherited it from his mother, who in her weakness has turned to Claudius. In choosing between them, a critic must decide which one best explains the other.

There is no definitive answer to this one. The Yale Shakespeare, as noted, reads "solid." The Riverside Shakespeare dodges the issue and prints "sallied." I personally think "sullied" the slightly better reading; it's in the second quarto, now considered the best witness, and the first quarto reading seems to presuppose it; even the folio reading uses a similar spelling. But we can't be certain; there is no guaranteed way to choose between the texts. This is the general problem of textual criticism, of which New Testament TC is a (somewhat exceptional, and certainly very important) example.

Rather than dwell on non-Biblical examples, let's take a handful of Biblical examples. By seeing how an actual apparatus criticus (table of information about variations) is constructed, we can probably make things a lot clearer.

For our first example, take part of 1 John 2:23. The King James version renders its Greek text "Whosoever denieth the Son, the same hath not the Father." After this, however, they add, in italics (meaning that it is not a correct part of their text) "[but] he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also." Almost all modern version accept this longer reading as original -- that is, as part of the correct and original text.

In the Greek, this variation involves only eight words. The table below shows the various words used here, along with the manuscripts supporting them (it is customary in such apparati to leave out accents and breathings. We list witnesses in the order papyri, uncials, minuscules, versions, church fathers). The name "Aleph" in the third item refers to an important uncial manuscript known by that symbol. If a manuscript's symbol appears in parenthesis, it means that it generally supports a particular reading but with some minor variation. If a manuscript's symbol is followed by an asterisk (e.g. 1739*), it means that this was the reading written by the original scribe of the manuscript, which some later owner altered. The "corrected" reading (we put "corrected" in quotes because such corrections often replace a good early reading with a bad late one) is noted with a superscript c (e.g. 1739c) or sometimes, in older manuals, with two asterisks (e.g. 1739**). If a manuscript is marked vid, it means that the manuscript is incomplete or damaged, but the surviving portion seems to support the reading in question. Obviously we cite only a handful of the three-thousand-plus known manuscripts (many of which have not even been collated yet, so we couldn't cite them even if we wanted to). A very brief description of most of the manuscripts cited here, including age, contents, and how various scholars have classified them, is found in the Description of Manuscripts of the Catholic Epistles.

o omologwn ton uion kai ton patera ecei -- "the one who confesses the son has the father also"  Aleph A B C P Y 5 33 206 223 323 614 623 630 1243 1505 1611 1739 1799 2138 2412 2495 vg pesh hark sa bomss arm
omit phrase -- K L 049 6 38 42 69 88 97 177 181 201 216 226 319 330 356 398 424 436 440 462 479 483 489 547 582 635 642 704 876 917 920 927 999 1175 1240 1241 1248 1311 1315 1319 1424 1518? 1522 1597 1610 1738 1827 1829 1835 1845 1854 1872 1873 1874 1876 1888 1889 1891 1898 2143 2423 z boms Hilary(?)
These are by no means all the manuscripts supporting either reading, but they give the general impression. Much the larger share of manuscripts support the short reading, though they are mostly minuscules, while the early uncials without exception have the longer reading (K, L, and 049 are uncials, but of late date -- ninth century or so).

The crucial matter, though, is the form of the reading. Note that both long and short readings end with the same set of letters: ton patera ecei. It would be very easy for a scribe's eyes to skip from the first occurence to the second. This is the error known as homoioteleuton ("same ending"), and it is incredibly common. Almost all manuscripts display at least a few instances of it. We don't as often see it affecting whole classes of manuscripts, but that is clearly the case here. The longer reading, despite being absent from the majority of manuscripts, is surely original.

A different sort of problem is illustrated by Matthew 19:20. Jesus is talking to the rich young man, and has just told him to keep the commandments. Does the young man say "I have kept all these" or "I have kept all these from my youth"? The evidence is as follows (f1 and f13 are small groups of closely related manuscripts; you can look up the manuscripts in the Description of Manuscripts of the Gospels):

ek neothtos mou -- "from my youth" (Alephc) C (D omits "my") E F G H O W G D S f13 28 33 157 565 892 1006 1010 1071 1241 1243 1342 1424 1505 1506 a b c (d) e f ff2 h n q sy sa bo arm eth geo slav
omit Aleph* B L Q f1 22 579 700* aur ff1 g1 l Cyprian
It is clear that the bulk of the manuscripts include the longer reading "from my youth." On the other hand, the text without "from my youth" is supported by the two oldest manuscripts (Aleph* and B), and by several other manuscripts with what we shall learn are good or interesting texts. Most scholars would conclude, simply on the basis of the manuscripts, that the shorter reading is better.

But we have more evidence. This reading, of course, has parallels in Mark (10:20) and Luke (18:21). Both of the other gospels have the words "from my youth." Now suppose you're a scribe. You've heard the phrase "I have kept all these from my youth" a few zillion times in your life. Unless this is your first copy of the gospels, you've written it a few times in your life. If you encounter a copy without the words, wouldn't you be tempted to add them? Certainly, if they were present already, you would have no tendency to delete them.

This process is known as "assimilation of parallels." Scribes have a tendency to make texts read alike. If a text sounds familiar, the scribe tended to conform it exactly to the familiar form. (You may have done it yourself. Try reading this phrase: "To be, or not be, that is the question...." Did you notice the omission of the word "to" after "not"?)

So in all likelihood the original reading here is the one which omits "from my youth."

You may have noticed that in both cases here we went against the reading supported by the majority of manuscripts. Does this mean that we are undemocratic?

In a word, yes. One of the great rules of textual criticism is that "manuscripts are to be weighed and not counted." Some manuscripts are good, some are less good. (Though all are at least occasionally questionable; as Michael Holmes puts it, "none are perfect, not even one; all have flaws, and fall short of the glory of the autograph" -- Michael Holmes in "A Case for Reasoned Eclecticism," not yet published at the time of this writing.) So how do we decide?

This is a matter that scholars have been working on for centuries. When they began, the number of manuscripts known was much smaller than today, and old manuscripts were especially rare. Still, at about the turn of the nineteenth century a scholar named Griesbach (following the lead of Semler) discovered that the manuscripts known to him seemed to fall into three distinct groups. The largest of these groups, by far, he called the "Byzantine," because most of the manuscripts it included were written in the late Byzantine period. The two smaller groups he labelled "Alexandrian" (because it agreed with the readings of such Alexandrian fathers as Origen and Cyril) and "Western" (because it was associated with the Latin versions used in the western Roman Empire). Thus arose the concept of "Text-types" -- groups of manuscripts related at a stage more recent than the original.

This concept was refined in the second half of the nineteenth century by Fenton John Anthony Hort (1828-1892), who did most of his work in collaboration with Brooke Foss Westcott (1825-1901). Westcott and Hort adopted Griesbach's Western and Byzantine types as given (although they called the Byzantine text "Syrian"); the Alexandrian text they split into two groups which they called "Neutral" and "Alexandrian." (This latter distinction has been rejected by most scholars, who believe that the Neutral and Alexandrian text-types are just earlier and later forms of the same sort of text; they generally call it by the name "Alexandrian.")

But Hort didn't just affirm the identity of these types. The discovery that made Hort famous was that the Byzantine text was (in his view) late. Hort based this argument on a number of points (I have amplified some of these):

That none of the fathers before the fourth century preserve a characteristically Byzantine text (some have Byzantine readings, but not on a consistent basis).
That there are no early Byzantine manuscripts (in the Gospels, the earliest witness to the Byzantine text is A of the fifth century, and even it is not fully Byzantine; outside the gospels, there are no fully Byzantine witnesses prior to the ninth century)
That the Byzantine text is a consistently full, smooth text. Any difficult or disharmonious readings have been wiped away. This implies a gradual process of improvement over the years. Even if it came about suddenly (as a result of editing), the smooth readings must somehow have been before the editor.
That the Byzantine text shows many conflations -- places where two earlier readings have been combined.
All of these points have problems. The first two remain true, but they are an argument from silence. The fourth point is weakened by the fact that conflations are not as common as Hort would imply, and occur in all types of manuscripts. The third point is the strongest by far, but has never been so fully tested as to satisfy everyone. (See the article on Byzantine priority.) Still, the overall thrust of Hort's logic has convinced the majority of scholars. The Byzantine text-type -- even though it contains nearly 90% of the witnesses, and has influenced most of the others -- is regarded as a secondary product, derived from earlier text-types.

This left the field open to the earlier text-types, the Western and Alexandrian.

The Western text in the Gospels consisted of only one Greek witness (Codex Bezae, D/05, a well-known fifth or sixth century uncial), but it is supported by most of the Old Latin versions, and by quotations from many early writers such as Irenæus and Tertullian. The Old Syriac versions also seem to belong here, although they are not as pure and may have elements of other types. In the Acts, Bezae and the Old Latins are still the key elements of the type, although 614, the margin of the Harklean Syriac, and the other manuscripts of Family 2138 are believed by many to belong here. In Paul, the Old Latin still supports the type, as do the uncials D (here D is 06, Codex Claromontanus, of the sixth century, not Codex Bezae) and the closely-related ninth century pair F G. There are no known witnesses to the type in the Catholic Epistles or the Apocalypse.

The Alexandrian text, which includes the majority of the non-Byzantine witnesses, is more amorphous. It consists of both uncials and minuscules, as well as versions. In Hort's time, the most important and basic witness to the type was the famous Codex Vaticanus, B/03, which contains the Gospels, Acts, and Catholic Epistles complete as well as most of the Pauline Epistles. It was also the earliest representative of the type, dating from the fourth century. Also from the fourth century, and nearly as important, is Codex Sinaiticus, Aleph /01, the only uncial to contain the entire New Testament. They are supported by the Coptic versions. In addition, they are supported in part by manuscripts such as the uncials C and L in the gospels and the uncials A and C in the Acts and Epistles, as well as by minuscules such as 33 579 892 1241 in the gospels and 33 81 1175 in the Acts and Epistles.

Most of these latter manuscripts, however, display a phenomenon known as "mixture." This means that they contain readings from more than one text-type. Typically they will have some Alexandrian and some Byzantine readings, although there may be a few "Western" readings thrown in as well.

The reason for this is not hard to imagine. Unlike today, when books are cheap enough to simply be purchased and referred to only intermittently, old books were used. So the users were always writing notes, commentaries, and corrections in the margin. It was not unusual for a later copyist to assume these marginal remarks belonged in the text (or at least might belong in the text), and insert them into the manuscript he was writing.

Then, too, manuscripts were copied in a scriptorium, and corrected. A corrector (diorqwtes) would carefully read over the new copy, comparing it to some official, reputable copy. Often this reputable copy would not be of the same type as the manuscript used to make the original copy, meaning that the corrector would add readings of a second text-type to the once-pure text of the manuscript. We can actually see this happening in some manuscripts; 424 has a Byzantine text that has been corrected toward the readings of 1739, while many famous manuscripts (including Aleph and both Ds) have been corrected toward the Byzantine text. When new copies are made from these manuscripts, of course, the corrections go straight into the text of the copy, producing mixed manuscripts.

Mixture makes the task of textual criticism much harder. Since most manuscripts have more than one "parent," it means that we cannot trace a simple genealogy. Although P75, B, and L are all related, L is not a child of B, which is not a child of P75. This means that we cannot simply go back up the generations to find the original reading of a text-type, let alone of the original text.

Still, by careful use of both internal and external evidence, it is usually possible to determine the readings of text-types. Hort, for instance, found that B preserved the readings of the Alexandrian/Neutral text in the large majority of cases.

But at this point Hort faced a problem. Both the Alexandrian and "Western" types were early, and went directly back to the original. How, then, did one decide between the two in cases where they disagreed?

Here Hort turned to internal evidence. The "Western" text, he found, was marked by paraphrase, expansion, and stylistic "improvements" of all sorts. The Alexandrian text, by contrast, was concise -- even abrupt -- and had more than its share of infelicitous readings.

On this basis, Hort concluded, the Neutral (Alexandrian) text was best and most reliable. Unlike the Western text, it was not rewritten; unlike the Byzantine text, it was not a mixture of older elements. The text printed by Westcott & Hort was largely that of the Alexandrian text, and of B in particular. And it was widely felt that the Westcott & Hort text was the best New Testament edition of the nineteenth century. Even today, our printed texts are strongly "Hortian."

But the twentieth century has seen changes. New manuscripts -- including all the papyri and many early uncial fragments -- have been discovered. Our knowledge of the versions is much greater.

This has had many consequences. A new text-type -- the "Cæsarean" -- has been proposed (though its existence is not so widely accepted today as in the early part of the twentieth century). The various substantial papyri -- particularly P46 and P75 -- have altered our understanding of the early history of the text. Discoveries of new and better manuscripts of the Fathers have helped us understand all stages of that history. And new tools, some computer-aided, have allowed us to assess many manuscripts (especially minuscules) that had never previously been studied. We know of many manuscript groupings we had not previously been aware of. We have also learned that even the Byzantine text is not one great monolith; although it is the most coherent of the text-types, even it has phases and has undergone a certain amount of evolution.

This site is detailed and based upon the latest info about textual criticism and the bible.  It is based on facts and not belief.  That makes it a very tough read for those who only believe and don't like to think or reason about religion.  The site demonstrates why there is not one single bible and that it is impossible to know what the autographs (the originals) actually said.  So, LittleNipper, when somebody claims that the bible is the inerrant word of god, I have to ask, what, exactly was that word and how do you know?  I know that there is no bible penned by god, nor is there any surviving autographs even if god channeled his thoughts through a man's hand.  It is all a falsehood.  Which you will NOT want to see, I know. 

[stromboli]

Excellent. This is one of the methods used to debunk the Book of Mormon and other texts supposedly derived from ancient sources. Anyone dealing with ancient texts should familiarize themselves with this.

[PickelledEggs]

[mod]Two things:
1. That is a HUGE wall of text.

2. I have to close this thread as per rule 5. No calling out other members in a new thread. We've had this discussion before about other members. If you wish to talk to a member directly, you can private message them.

If you would like to re-do this thread in a way that it is not singling out another member, you have my "go ahead".

Thank you.[/mod]