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New Testament textual criticism is basically the story of how we receive the text of the New Testament. We as English-speaking people normally need to rely upon translations of the Greek text of the New Testament.
As you know, the Bible was written in three languages. The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and 12 chapters in a language known as Aramaic. The New Testament was written in Greek. This writing, of course, was handwritten on rather perishable materials for 1 ,450 years approximately until the first printing press was invented.
And obviously over that period of time, despite Xerox commercials to the contrary, the scribes and the monks who were involved in doing these things didn't have a photocopier. They had to copy things by hand.
And you and I both know that copying things by hand can cause some difficulties. So how is it that we can stand before our congregations or before a Bible study group or in front of anyone else and say, the New Testament says this, the Bible says this.
Well, how do you know? How do you know that over the millennium and more of transcription by hand that things were not changed, the doctrines were not deleted? How do you know that when you pick up your Bible and you read it, that the underlying Greek text is accurate?
Now, please differentiate, before we get started, between two important issues. The first issue that we must deal with is the text itself. We must determine what was originally written by Paul, by John.
What did they actually write in Greek, in the language they wrote in? That's important and that's what we're talking about tonight. A separate issue from that is, how do you translate that Greek language into whatever language you might be dealing with?
German, French, or for us, English. Those are two issues, however. Obviously, you must determine the textual issue before you can even start the translational issue. So it is the primary of the two issues.
Translational issues come at a secondary point in time and are of secondary importance. I'm not saying they're not important, but if you don't know what the text says, you're never going to be able to spend much time talking about how you're supposed to translate it into English.
Now the problem we're faced with, if we should even use the term problem, it probably is more a blessing that we are faced with, and I think you will see if this is the case. But the situation that the New Testament textual critic faces, and the term textual critic does not mean that you are attempting to sit in judgment of the Bible or anything else.
Textual criticism is simply a factual, scholarly examination of factual data and material to determine the reading of the text. And so textual critics, a lot of Christians have a concept of any type of critical thinking is somehow negative.
This is not negative in any shape or form. It is simply dealing with the situation that we have, and the situation is this. There are over 5 ,000 manuscripts in the Greek language of the New Testament.
Now that is not 5 ,000 complete manuscripts of all 27 books of the New Testament. That is 5 ,000 manuscripts that contain a portion of the New Testament. Now some of them do contain all of it. Some of the great unsealed texts, some of the great codices contain all of the New Testament.
We'll be looking at that. Some contain as little as just a few verses. In fact, on page 29 of your booklet, you have a photocopy of the oldest manuscript of the New Testament in existence, P52, from about 125 A .D., and that's the whole thing that you've got right there.
That's the two sides of it. It's John chapter 18, verses 31 -33, and John chapter 18, verses 37 -38. That's all it is. It's the oldest one we've got, but that's all there is to it. That's one of the 5 ,000 is right there, P52.
But we have 5 ,000 manuscripts, and not one of them reads exactly like another. In each of the manuscripts, you will find some variation from the other manuscripts. Now when I'm talking about variation, some can be extremely small.
In fact, the vast majority of them are extremely small variations, such as the misspelling of a word, the deletion of the word and, or the addition of the word and, or etc., etc. We'll be looking at a number of the copyist errors that we will encounter.
At the same time, though we have all these manuscripts and none of them read identical to another, at the same time, however, 85 of the text exhibits no variation at all. No variation at all. They all say the same thing about 85 of the time.
And 95 of the remaining 15 of the text yields variants that are easily resolved and have no impact on meaning whatsoever. So what you're left with is approximately three quarters of 1 of the text, .0075, which is a very small portion, obviously, where there is a real difficulty that must be addressed.
Okay? That's what textual criticism deals with, is utilizing this entire mountain of evidence to determine the original reading of the New Testament as it was originally written by the authors themselves.
Now there is no question, and I will emphasize this again at the end of our discussion, there is no question that we have the original readings in every single situation. The question is when you are faced with a variation that has three different readings, which of those three is the original?
One of them is. One of the readings you have is the original. We have the original. There is no doubt in anyone's mind about that, at least not anyone who studied it. The question is determining which one of those variant readings is the original.
Okay. Let's look at some background concerning this. First of all, what were the individuals at this time writing on? Well, the originals would have been written on papyri. Papyri was a paper-like substance that was made from taking the papyrus reed from the, for example, the banks of the Nile is filled with papyri plants that yield the material for papyri, and you took it and you would press one layer this direction and another layer at a 90 degree angle to that, so cut across it diagonally.
By pressing it together and roughing it and letting it dry, et cetera, et cetera, you could create a writing material that on one side would have lines going horizontally and on the back side would have lines going vertically.
Obviously, therefore, most papyri documents were only written on one side, because if you were writing along, it would be a whole lot easier to have the lines going this way. If you turn it over, you've got the lines going up and down, which would make writing very difficult.
Now, this papyri material lasted for quite a while, probably 50, 60, 70 years, as long as our paper today probably lasts before it becomes brittle with age, if you've seen an older book. But when you're talking about two millennia ago, it's obvious that this material, the vast majority, has passed away.
Most papyri materials are found in the dry sands of Egypt, and you can understand why. The dry, warm climate would be conducive to papyri's survival, whereas, for example, a cold, wet climate in the northern reaches of the Mediterranean area, et cetera, et cetera, would not be conducive to the survival of papyri for two millennia.
Now, papyri was used until approximately the 4th century, at which time we have a switching over to a material known as vellum. Vellum is basically animal skins. Donkeys, predominantly sheep, were used.
It is their hide that was utilized and specially prepared and then scraped to make a soft and very durable writing material. From the 4th century on, most New Testament manuscripts are written on vellum.
And of course, the vast majority of the 5 ,000 manuscripts are vellum manuscripts. Paper became accessible for writing much later, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th centuries. And so, it's much farther down the road, and it's not extremely important for New Testament textual criticism once you get 1 ,500 years away from the original.
Now, on these manuscripts and in these manuscripts, we discover a large number of copyist errors. Where did copyist errors come from? Well, first of all, in New Testament manuscripts, you'll frequently find what is known as a colophon.
A colophon is a note made by the scribe that might describe the situation at the time or his feelings finishing the story, et cetera, et cetera. But Dr. Bruce Metzger in his book, The Text of the New Testament, it's Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration.
It's about a 20-year-old book. It's still very, very good. There's only one book out really that is more up-to-date than it is, and that is a book entitled The Text of the New Testament by Kurt and Barbara Aland.
And the Alands are the editors of both of the modern texts that we utilize and are really the outstanding experts in the field. But Dr. Metzger gives us some information about colophons. He says, quote, something of the drudgery of copying manuscripts can be learned from the colophons or notes which scribes not infrequently placed to close their books.
A typical colophon found in many non-biblical manuscripts reveals in no uncertain terms what every scribe experienced. He who does not know how to write supposes it to be no labor. But though only three fingers write, the whole body labors.
A traditional formula appearing at the close of many manuscripts describes the physiological effects of prolonged labor at copying. Writing bows one's back, thrusts the ribs into one's stomach, and fosters a general debility of the body.
In an Armenian manuscript of the Gospels, a colophon complains that a heavy snowstorm was raging outside and that the scribe's ink froze, his hand became numb, and the pen fell from his fingers. It is not surprising that a frequently recurring colophon in manuscripts of many kinds is the following comparison.
As travelers rejoice to see their home country, so also is the end of a book to those who toil in writing. Other manuscripts close with an expression of gratitude, the end of the book, thanks be to God, unquote.
So obviously the situations that a scribe in say the 8th century is he was sitting or frequently standing. He had what is known as an exemplar in front of him and he was copying his exemplar. As he would be doing that, this was not an easy thing to do.
He did not have nice fluorescent lights. He frequently had a candle in front of him by which he could read his exemplar, his master copy that he was making a copy of. Frequently, he would be very tired or he might need glasses, but they didn't have glasses back then.
There are many things like this that we need to remember when we look at the text that we have. Many of the scribal errors, therefore, are unintentional changes. They're unintentional errors. For example, you could have some errors of sight and you have some examples of this in the booklet before you.
For example, minuscules, and we'll talk about what minuscules are later, minuscules 614, 1611, and 2138 in Acts 20 -35 have kapionta edai, which means work hard. For the original reading, kapiontas dai, it is necessary to be working.
Now, as you notice, I have placed them in the text so that you can see how closely the two phrases represent one another and how easy it would be to misunderstand the two. A rather famous textual variant that is probably the result of an error of sight is found in 1 Timothy 3, verse 16, where, for example, the King James Version reads, God was manifest in the flesh.
The New American Standard says, he who was manifest in the flesh. They'd think that the word God or he who would be pretty different from one another, but in reality, as you can see from your text, the difference is only a difference of a line because in the uncial text that was utilized up until about the 8th century or so, which was all capital letters, the word God was a contraction.
And as a contraction, it would be the theta with the final sigma, which looks somewhat like a big C, with a line above it. And has is basically the same thing, which means he who, except doesn't have the theta.
And the difference between the theta and the omicron there is just simply one line. So you can see, especially if you were reading somebody else's writing, or you were writing it was written on vellum, and that particular piece of vellum may have happened to have a crease there or something like that, how this type of variation could take place.
The next one, Romans 6, 5. If you can even tell what the difference is, you'll notice the first one is Allah, those are two L's there in our understanding, and Amma, which is just a matter of joining the bottom two sections there.
Allah means but and Amma means together. You can see how that would be an error of sight. Codex Bezae, which we will look at later at Acts 1540, has, and you might have to look rather closely to see what this difference is, it's the fourth letter in, epidexamenos, for the original epilexamenos.
And that one little line there that changes a lambda into a delta changes it from having chosen, which is epilexamenos, to having received epidexamenos. Okay, and you can see quite easily how that kind of an error of sight can take place.
Another common copyist error that we can encounter is parablepsis and homoeteleton. Homoeteleton basically means similar endings, and parablepsis means to see beside. And homoeteleton can contribute to parablepsis.
And here's a good example. I guess an example is the best way to explain to you what this is. The great Vatican manuscript, B, at John 1715, it is evident that whatever the copyist, the original scribe of Vaticanus was writing, had at the end of each line the phrase autous echtu, which you have here in your text.
Now, have you ever been copying something? And I have examples of this. I even keep examples when I'm copying on my word processor on my computer. When I'm typing something, I have a book or something like that, or out of a letter, and I'm entering it into my word processor, I keep examples where I do this, and I have a number of them already.
Where you go to an end of a line, and the next line ends in the same word, in the same ending, and when you get done writing or looking, you look back, and instead of looking at where you were, you skip down to the next line where you find the same ending.
Well, whoever was the original copyist on Vaticanus, his exemplar, his original, ended two lines with autous echtu. And instead of going back when he was copying to the proper place, he skipped a line, and hence deleted an entire section of John 1715.
But John 1715 in Vaticanus ends up saying, I do not pray that thou shouldst take them from, and the original said, from the world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one. Remember in John 1715.
But because he lost that section because of the same endings, Vaticanus says, I do not pray that thou shouldst take them from the evil one. Now, that's absurd, obviously. It's an obvious mistake, but you can see how it happened.
And obviously, we're not worried about that error because, you know, the other 4 ,909 manuscripts all read the same thing, and it's obvious what it originally said. But the two phrases there came out of that passage.
This example of homo eteluton, similar endings, is found all through the textual variations that we find in the scripture. And as we look at some examples later on this evening, we will be able to see how this appears.
We also have something called haplography, which basically involves itself with seeing only half of a word, writing only half of a word, having a similar word in the same line, and we jump from one word to another.
For example, Codex Sinaiticus omits Luke chapter 10, verse 32, because Luke 10 .31 and Luke 10 .32 end with the same word in the exemplar that Sinaiticus was following, that is antipar aethon, which means passing by on the other side.
Since the same word ended both, even though it may not have been at the end of the same line, when they looked back from writing, they caught the wrong one and ended up deleting a portion of the Gospel of Luke.
Other errors were not sight errors, but were errors of hearing because after Christianity was no longer something that you could be thrown to the lions for embracing, you could more openly produce manuscripts.
And so scriptoriums came into existence where you would have one person standing up front reading from the text, then you'd have a room full of scribes writing down what was dictated to them by the person in the front of the room.
This led to errors of hearing because instead of copying from exemplar, you were listening as someone was reading to you. Now in most scriptoriums, of course, there would be someone who would check your work and would proofread your work, and hence we have many manuscripts where there are actually corrections made in the text.
Sometimes the corrections though were wrong, that the original was right and the corrections were wrong. But be that as it may, we have examples of errors of hearing. One of the main ones is found here in your text where I have written for you, Humin and Hamin.
Now that is how we would pronounce it, but that's not how they pronounced it. I use what is known as the Erasmian pronunciation, which would differentiate between these two words because it's easier, it's just easier to use.
But that's not how they said it. In ancient Greek, seemingly, both would be emin. No difference between the two. Two different words, one would be for you and for us. So it's the difference between first person, us, and second person, you, is the difference between those two words.
We have many, many places in the New Testament where the difference is between these two. For example, in 1 John 1 .4, when John says, we write these things so that your joy may be full or our joy may be full.
The textual variant there is a difference between hamon and humon, but in theirs, it would be just simply emon and emon. And if you weren't thinking or even just got confused in your listening, you might mix the two of them up.
The same thing in Galatians 4 .28, humaiste or haimaiste, you or us, Matthew 2 .6. Now these two aren't the same word, but notice how these two different readings would be pronounced, ek-su or ek-su.
Almost identical to one another, obviously. Some of these end up causing some rather humorous things. In Hebrews 4 .11, Codex D has aleithias for apithias. Now what that is, in Hebrews 4 .11, the writer was talking about following the Israelites' same example of disobedience.
But in Codex D, it ends up being following their example of truth, which completely changes the meaning of the passage, obviously. But it was just simply probably an error of hearing. Someone just wasn't paying close attention.
It had been a long day. They had had a fight with their wife, whatever it might have been. Who knows? Then you could have some errors of the mind. I probably wouldn't be a good thing to have, but there are also errors of the mind.
For example, substitution of synonyms. If you knew a passage real well, maybe in Matthew, and you're writing it in Luke, and Luke used a different word that was actually a synonym, you might not be carefully watching what Luke actually said and substitute a synonym for a word.
You might have a change in the order of the words. For example, in the place you live, your dialect of that language, even if you even knew Greek, we remember by the Middle Ages, a lot of these scribes didn't even know the language they were copying.
But early on, which is when most of the variation took place in the first three or four centuries of the text, if your dialect of Greek was different than the dialect spoken of, for example, Luke, it has a very classical Attic style of Greek.
If your dialect would express it differently, you might read a whole phrase, and when you write it down, you write it down the way you'd use it in your dialect rather than the way Luke actually did. So, there could be a transposition in the order of the words.
There could be just a clear transposition of words. For example, in John 5, 39, the correct reading is haimarturusai, but Codex C has hamartanusai. Now, Jesus is talking about, these are the ones testifying concerning me.
Hamartanusai changed it, these are the ones sinning concerning me. This was a transposition of words, and you can see how the iota sort of disappeared there, and the article got stuck with marturusai, and it just sort of ended up changing.
Then, many changes, and this is predominantly the characteristic of a text type that we'll discuss later known as the Byzantine textual tradition, of harmonization. That is, a scribe would be so familiar with the text that when writing a phrase in, for example, Colossians, he would remember that over in Ephesians chapter 1, it said such and so, and would harmonize the two so they'd say the same thing.
For example, in Ephesians 1, 7, the phrase, through his blood. Okay, if you look at Ephesians 1, 7, and Colossians 1, 14, you'll see that in the King James Version, the phrase, through his blood, occurs in both because it's based upon a Byzantine text that contains this harmonization.
Now, through his blood is not in the best texts, but it's in the text because of the fact that it appeared elsewhere in Paul's writings in the same context, and therefore, a scribe when writing it would harmonize them.
This occurs very often. See, Ephesians and Colossians are very similar books, contain sometimes the very same material, and you can obviously see how harmonization would take place in the Gospels. When Mark and Matthew are narrating the same event, and Matthew doesn't tell you something Mark does, or frequently vice versa, you will find many of the variants in the New Testament are where scribes would harmonize these accounts.
Okay, now sometimes you simply had errors of judgment. For example, if you were reading someone else's text that had been copied a century before, the guy was now dead, you couldn't go back and ask him what he meant anymore, and he had placed something in the margin.
Now you see, frequently, let's say you were writing along and all of a sudden you realized you did something like you delete, you skipped a verse, you went back over and went, oh no. So what'd you do with it?
You wrote it in the margin, you know, put a little arrow, you know, put it in there. Well, you could also be writing along and say, you know, I heard a great sermon about this, and I need to remember a point, and you put something in the margin here.
Now a hundred years later, the guy can't come along and say, is this supposed to be in the text or not? Okay, and so some of the larger variations seem to be the result of a note scribbled in the margin being copied into the text by the next person copying from that manuscript.
For example, in John chapter 5, verses 3 through 4 will not be found in your most modern text, where it talks about the angel coming down and stirring the water, and the first one in the water will be healed, etc., etc.
It seems that that story was written into the margin of an early manuscript in the New Testament by someone who was explaining what was going on in the text, and the next person who took that ended up putting that gloss, that note that was put in the margin, into the text itself.
Okay, so this kind of error of judgment could frequently take place, and there are many other kinds of just simply judgment errors that could be included. Then you do have a very small group of intentional changes, but look at the nature of the intentional changes.
Spelling and grammar changes. A scribe would have an exemplar, and they would change the spelling of words and say, that's not spelled correctly. Well, that may be how you spell it where this scribe was, but that may not have been how it was spelled by the original author in their particular part of the country.
I mean, we have examples of this in English. I was just reading when I read from Dr. Metzger's thing. Dr. Metzger is British, and he spells labor L-A-B-O-U-R. We don't. We spell it L-A-B-O-R.
So if I were to type that out myself, I probably, if I just noticed, okay, it's labor and typed it into my word processor, I probably wouldn't spell it L-A-B-O-U-R. In fact, if my word processor's spelling checker went through the document, it would probably tell me I misspelled that word, okay?
So that kind of intentional change could happen where they say, oh, hey, this guy misspelled it, and I'm going to spell it correctly. Or if the grammar was different. I mean, I had a professor in college whose grammar was a whole lot different, man, because he was from the South, and I mean the deep South.
And he was a great man of God and a great teacher, but his grammar wasn't like mine because I don't come from the South. So that kind of change could take place. Harmonization changes. We've already mentioned that.
Here's another example, Luke 11 .2 and Matthew 6 .9. The phrase, which art in heaven? In Matthew, Matthew has our Father which art in heaven. Luke doesn't. Luke just simply says our Father. Well, any scribe who is used to the liturgical use of the Lord's Prayer, as it came to be known, in Matthew would naturally say, oh, wait a minute, it's supposed to say our Father which art in heaven.
I mean, if that's what the person had grown up hearing in church, our Father which art in heaven, and all of a sudden they copy a manuscript of Luke, and all of a sudden they notice, hey, wait a minute, this simply says our Father.
And so many manuscripts of Luke will say our Father which art in heaven, even though the earliest manuscripts of Luke just simply say our Father. So there is another area where variation can take place.
Sometimes there will be an expansion, many expansions in the Byzantine text. One of the most obvious expansions is on the name of Jesus. Jesus, rightfully so, being the most important person the scribes thought, hopefully, you would frequently come across a passage that would say someone said to Jesus, and many manuscripts will add someone said to the Lord Jesus.
Or if it originally said the Lord Jesus, they'd say to the Lord Jesus Christ. And so you've got this massive long title, and this does happen frequently, expansions. Corrections, sometimes they would, a scribe would think, well, no, this needs to be corrected, and would make an intentional change, a correction.
It could be in many different things, even to correcting an entire story at times. Conflation, very common, very common. Conflation is the joining together of two variant readings. So let's say that you had two manuscripts that you were copying from, and one said the Lord Jesus, and the other said Christ.
Well, instead of choosing which one to conflate them, you'd end up putting them together as the Lord Jesus Christ. Or if one had, they were worshiping in the temple each day, and the other one said they worshiped and prayed in the temple, you'd put them together, and they worshiped and prayed in the temple each day.
It's a conflate reading. It takes two earlier readings and puts them together. And of course, it's quite obvious when this happens, because you have manuscripts that have this reading, manuscripts that have this reading, and manuscripts that put them both together, and the ones putting them both together probably ain't the original.
It's pretty obvious that that one is the result of these earlier ones. Sometimes there were doctrinal changes, always toward orthodoxy. And remember, you're talking about here, for example, people would be careful or scared of a passage that might seem to contradict a doctrine of the faith.
So, for example, many later manuscripts, for example, a real good example is in Luke chapter two, verse 33, where many later manuscripts don't like the fact that Luke described Joseph as Jesus' father.
Where the original reading is Jesus' father and mother, many later manuscripts say Joseph and his mother, taking away the word father because they thought that maybe that would detract from the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Well, it doesn't, because Luke is very clear about the fact of the true father of Jesus. There's no problem with the fact that Jesus obviously would have called Joseph his father during his lifetime, however long Joseph lived.
It seems that he did not live all that long. But the point is, that is an intentional change, but it was always toward what the scribe considered to be orthodox theology. It wasn't some wacko and wild type thing.
And again, we know that the changes took place. Nobody could make a change in the manuscript tradition without us knowing it today. Because you've got to remember, if someone in Gaul, for example, in Spain, did this type of thing, there's somebody in Egypt someplace that isn't doing it.
And there is no one who can come along and gather up all the manuscripts at once and make a change in all of them at once. And so whenever any variant took place, we've got other manuscripts that correct it.
And that's what we're dealing with. Others, such as book titles. Let me give you an example of an expansion on a book title. The titles of the books of the New Testament, this is again from Dr. Metzger, the titles of the books of the New Testament were the objects of a good deal of elaboration by scribes.
It will be obvious that titles of, for example, Paul's epistles were not needed until the apostles' correspondence had been collected into one corpus, or body. The earliest titles were short and to the point.
Later scribes, however, were not content with a bare and unadorned title. They embroidered it in ways they thought to be in accord with the position and reputation of the author. Thus, in Sinaiticus and in C, the book of Revelation is entitled simply Apocalypse Eanu, Revelation of John.
Later manuscripts describe John as the divine, i .e. the theologian. Manuscripts 35, 69, 498, and 1957. Others expand by prefixing saint to the name. And still others add the evangelist and or the apostle.
The longest and most fulsome title is that found in the manuscript at Mount Athos. That is as follows, quote, the revelation of the all-glorious evangelist, bosom friend of Jesus, virgin, beloved to Christ, John the theologian, son of Salome and Zebedee, but adopted son of Mary, the mother of God, and son of thunder.
The only designation which the scribe omits, probably by accident, was apostle. So these kinds of expansions, though obviously, are rather obvious, as are almost all of these scribal errors. If you'll notice, the very fact that we can describe these kinds of errors demonstrates that they're not a problem for us.
We can recognize them when we encounter them in the manuscripts. Now what is perhaps the most atrocious of all scribal blunders, Dr. Metzger tells us, is contained in the 14th century Codex 109. This manuscript, the four gospels, now in the British Museum, was transcribed from a copy which must have had Luke's genealogy of Jesus, that is in chapter 3, verses 23 through 28, in two columns of 28 lines of the column.
Okay, so you've got two columns of the genealogy, and it starts up here, goes down, and goes back to the top and goes down. Instead of transcribing the text by following the columns in succession, the scribe of 109 copied the genealogy by following the lines across the two columns.
As a result, not only has almost everyone made the son of the wrong father, but because the names apparently did not fill the last column of the exemplar, the name of God now stands within the list instead of at its close.
It should end, of course, Adam, the son of God. In this manuscript, God is actually said to have been the son of Aram, and the source of the whole race is not God, but Ferus. So here's an obvious blunder where the scribe was obviously quite asleep at the time he transcribed this, but it's obvious to us that this is the case.
These type of errors are easily recognized in the text. Now, textual critics work with the concept of text types. What that means is, see, textual variation slowed down a great deal, and this is the important variations, after about the fourth or fifth century.
The reason was a standardized text became predominant, and therefore textual variation, because it could be controlled more and there is now an organized church in control, could safeguard the particular form of the text they were utilizing.
Most textual variation, and indeed the text types, come from the first three centuries. A text type is basically a family or group of manuscripts that contain pretty much the same readings, variations, kinds of variations, etc., etc.
Text types, as you can see, derive from genealogies. If you look at the diagram on page three of your booklet, you'll see, let's say Z is the original, or Z is any manuscript. Z could be a third-century manuscript, whatever.
Z is copied, oh, let's say a century later. Let's say the first generation is a century later. It is copied into X and Y. Now, X and Y have their own particular variations. They are not going to be identical to Z.
If I sat you down and had you, each one of you here this evening, copy the book of John from the very same Bible, and then compared the handwritten results of each of the three of you, you would not find that any one of your handwritten copies of John would be identical to anybody else's.
There is no possible way that you would do that. You would make errors. You would skip things. You'd see the exact same scribal errors we've been talking about. So X and Y are different from one another.
They have a small amount, obviously it would not be a great amount of textual variation, but they have a small amount of textual variation between the two. Then, let's say a hundred years later, which is the next line, you have another copy made of Z.
This is A. Then you have three copies made of X, which are B, C, and D, and three copies made of Y, which are E, F, and G. Now, A, B, C, D, E, F, and G are going to read differently from one another, but B, C, and D are probably going to contain the same variations that were in X, whereas E, F, and G are going to contain the same variations that were in Y.
And A is going to have a completely different group of variations because it's not related to X or Y. This is the genealogical principle. This recognizes where manuscripts came from. Now obviously, A is going to have a more important text for us than B, C, or D.
Why? Because it's an entire generation closer to the original. Even though it was copied at the same time as B, C, and D, it goes back to an earlier form of the text and therefore has less opportunity for textual variation in it.
Do you understand what I'm saying there? Okay, now there are examples of this in our witnesses. For example, on page 4 you'll notice the example I've given. Minuscule text 1739. You will notice in a modern Greek text that lists manuscripts, you'll find the minuscule 1739.
It's given a good bit of prominence. Why? Well, it is a 10th century manuscript, so it was copied 1 ,000 years after Christ. However, its exemplar, its model text it was copied from, was from the 3rd or 4th century.
So it contains a very early form of text. So even though it's 1 ,000 years old, it has a great deal more weight to it and accuracy to it than many manuscripts that were copied 200 years before it or even 400 years before it.
Because you see, you could have 1739, which is maybe only a 3rd or 4th century, 3rd or 4th generation, excuse me, copy and you might have a manuscript written in say 800 AD that's 20 generations from the original.
20 generations separated down the road. Now, which one is going to contain a pure form of the text? Obviously, the one that is the closest in the number of generations to the original. Now, textual criticism absolutely blows away the concept of having ironclad rules.
Because you could have a manuscript written even in the 12th century that uses an ancient manuscript as its exemplar and if your scribe is half blind, you're still going to end up with a rotten manuscript.
So you've got to look at each individual case. 1739 happens to be an excellent manuscript. The scribe was excellent. He did a great job and the exemplary he had was a very early one. So 1739, despite the fact that it's from the 10th century, which is not considered to be extremely ancient, has a lot of weight in it.
So, this genealogical principle, and this is not something someone came up with, it's just simply a recognition of history. This is how things happen. This is how scribes copied things and this is how manuscripts came about.
This genealogical principle leads us to the recognition of the standard text types. Now, realize that there is no one manuscript that we can point to and say, for example, this is the Alexandrian text, which is the first one I listed.
There's no one that you can say, this is the Alexandrian text. What you can do is you can say, here are a number of manuscripts that agree with one another on most variations. They have the same characteristics and this group of manuscripts is the Alexandrian manuscript tradition.
Or this group over here is the Western, or this group is the Caesarean, or this group is the Byzantine. Those are the four major text types. Now, it is at this point that there is unfortunately a vast amount of ignorance proclaimed by individuals who are of the so-called King James only position, who have basically said that if it's not Byzantine, it's satanic.
That is absolutely and totally absurd and has no foundation reality in fact whatsoever. In actuality, the best or the closest to the original text of the text types is the Alexandrian text. It is extremely early and you will notice as we go over the list of individual manuscripts that most of our earliest manuscripts display an Alexandrian text.
That does not mean that as soon as you find the Alexandrian reading in a variant, that's it. No more discussion. That doesn't necessarily follow at all. In fact, if you look at the texts that are utilized in, for example, the United Bible Society text, the Nestle Alon text, you will discover that frequently they will reject the Alexandrian reading because there are reasons to do so.
Each variation must be examined on its own merit. You cannot write down ironclad rules for each and every one. You've got to examine each one as it comes. The Western tradition is not Western. Western, you would assume, would mean coming from the West, Spain or something like that.
It's true that you'll find a large proportion of Western readings in, for example, the Latin versions, Vulgate, etc., etc., but the Vulgate wasn't done in the West. And the chief representative manuscripts of the Western tradition probably don't come from the West, but that's just simply the terminology that's been used.
Dr. Alond would even question the utilization of the term at all, as if there was not even a full text type that could be called Western, but he's predominantly alone at that point. I think it's somewhat splitting hairs there.
One where there is some real question is the Caesarean text. The Caesarean text has only been identified in the Gospels. In other words, there are a lot of career opportunities in textual criticism open today.
They're not exactly flooded with lots of people coming out of college and etc., etc., going into the field of textual criticism, but the Caesarean text has been predominantly identified only in the Gospels, and even then there will be some textual critics who would say, well, it's not really a text type, it's sort of a joining of, say, Alexandrian and Western readings, etc., etc., but most, I think, would identify it as a separate text type.
And then the Byzantine. The Byzantine textual tradition comprises 95 of the Greek manuscripts. You say, wow, that obviously must be the one that carries the most weight. No, it doesn't. In fact, in most textual critical theory today, the Byzantine is given the least weight.
The reason for this goes back to history, and this is where knowing your history helps out a lot. Remember what happened in about 700 years after Christ? Let's go back a little bit before that. By the 4th century, most people were abandoning Greek as a spoken language.
In fact, it started earlier than that. Latin was quickly taking over, even amongst the church. And in many sections of the empire, before the Roman Empire actually even fell, Greek was being totally abandoned as a language.
Where was it not abandoned? In Greece, obviously. Guess where Byzantium is? It's just north in that area. It's Constantinople, Istanbul, Byzantium, just north of Greece, and it is a Greek-speaking area.
Then, in 700, what happens? Islam, the Muslims take over the vast majority of the known world, including all of those areas that up to this time were still speaking Greek, except for, guess where? The Byzantine Empire, Byzantium.
Greek continues to be the language in that area, in the Byzantine area, until the 15th century, when the Muslims finally conquered Constantinople. So, it obviously follows that that area and the text type that was popular in that area, which is the Byzantine text type, would have the vast majority of manuscripts following it, because Greek continued to be spoken there and used there for a thousand years after it stopped being spoken and used every place else.
So, to do as many have done, and say, no, you do not weigh manuscripts, you count them, and simply count up all the manuscripts that read this way, and well, I've got more manuscripts that read this way than you've got reading that way, and so we're going to read it this way, which is what the majority text is based upon.
There is an actual text known as the majority text, and that's how it's determined. You just count up the number of manuscripts that read a certain way. That ignores what happened in history. That ignores what happens in history, and therefore should be rejected on that basis.
So, you have the four text types, the Alexandrian, the Western, the Caesarean, and the Byzantine. The two major ones you're going to be dealing with are Alexandrian and Byzantine. Remember that the Caesarean text has only been identified in the Gospels, and therefore you will not hear anybody discussing a Caesarean text, for example, in Paul.
Now, what kinds of manuscripts are we working with? Manuscripts are divided into two categories on the basis of the kind of writing that you find in it. The first is an unsealed text. An unsealed text is written in all capitals, and normally with no space between words at all.
It's just simply run together. You have a number of examples of unsealed texts. For example, on pages 8 and 9, you have two unsealed texts there, two of the greatest manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus.
The unseals are written in all capitals and run together. Most unseals are written, most of the papyri are unsealed texts. The unsealed writing continued on until, oh, approximately the 8th or 9th century, at which time you have a transition to the second kind, that is, minuscules.
Minuscules is the standard type of writing where you have capitals and small letters running together, and you also have the words separated by a space, which is pretty much what we are used to. And so when you talk about various texts, it is common to identify them as unsealed or minuscule texts.
Now, let's look at some individual manuscripts. You can get a taste or feel for that which we are working with. I have given you in photocopy, in your booklet, a number of the most important texts. For example, on page 6, you will find a photocopy from P46.
P means papyri. This is a papyri manuscript. P46, approximately from AD 200, so this is a very early text, and you can see here what some of the writing looks like in P46, one of the papyri manuscripts.
On page 7, you will find P75. P75 is from the year 200, and you will notice that both P46 and P75 are Alexandrian in text. They are of the Alexandrian text type. Now, I did not give you a photocopy of P66.
P66 is also a very important manuscript as well. Now, by consulting a critical edition of the Greek New Testament, such as the Nestle-Alan text or the UBS text, they will tell you what each of these individual manuscripts contain.
P66, for example, contains only passages from the Gospel of John. P46 contains 10 of Paul's epistles, and you can look these things up so that you can know for yourself. On page 8, you will encounter the great Codex Sinaiticus.
Codex Sinaiticus was found in the monastery at St. Catherine's on Mount Sinai. It was, up to its time, the greatest textual discovery, and the story of this discovery is fascinating, which I had the time tonight to share it with you.
You might want to read it in Dr. Metzger's book, but it is a fascinating story about how the manuscript was found. It is unsealed number 1 from the 4th century and contains, you'll notice that I have typed EAPR.
EAPR means the Gospels, that's E. The Acts and the quote-unquote Catholic epistles, 1st 2nd Peter, 1st 2nd 3rd John, etc. The Pauline Corpus is the P, and the R is Revelation. So Sinaiticus contains all of it, contains the entire New Testament.
That doesn't mean that they are not what are known as lacunae or holes or pages that have fallen out of a codex. A codex is, in our understanding, a book in opposition to a scroll, which would be wrapped up.
A codex is a book that has pages, as we would understand it. On page 9, you'll see an example from Codex Alexandrinus, which is from the 5th century, also contains the entire New Testament. Codex Alexandrinus has a predominantly Byzantine text in the Gospels, but a better, an Alexandrian text in the Pauline Corpus.
On page 10, you will find Codex Vaticanus, which is from the 4th century. It's very similar to Sinaiticus, and it is missing Revelation. So you'll notice it only says E, A, and P. And it is designated by the letter B, Alexandrinus by the letter A, and Codex Sinaiticus by the Hebrew letter Aleph.
That funny-looking thing there is the Hebrew letter Aleph. Now, the next one on the list that I do not have pictured for you is C, which is Codex Ephraimi. It's from the 5th century. It contains the entire New Testament, but notice I mentioned to you that Codex Ephraimi is a palimpsest.
A palimpsest is a vellum manuscript that has been erased and something else written over the top of it. In this case, the writing is the early church father, Ephraimi. So by special photographic technique, the original writing is brought out, even though it's been erased, scrubbed off, and is read.
So Codex Ephraimi, the actual lettering on it that you'd see if you looked at it straight would be the writings of the early church father, Ephraimi. But if you look very closely, you can see underneath it, having been wiped out, a text of the New Testament.
And it is that text that they are utilizing. So by special photographic techniques, special lights, etc., etc., they can bring that text back out that was originally there and then was wiped off. Because if you think of writing on leather, you're going to leave scratch marks no matter how much of the ink you end up taking off.
So that's what Codex Ephraimi is all about. Now, the next one that you will encounter in the citations, in the footnotes in Greek text, which we'll be looking at tonight, is D. Now, D, without anything else, is Codex Beze.
And it is number 5. It's from the 5th century. And it contains the Gospels and the Catholic Epistles. But there is another D in the Pauline Epistles, which is a totally different text. I know it's confusing, but that's just the way they've done it.
Codex Claremontanus, which is from the 6th century. So whenever you see a D, you've got to remember where you are. Am I in Paul? Or am I in the Gospels? Etc., etc. And finally, we've already mentioned on page 29, P52, the oldest New Testament fragment from 125.
Now, the number system that we go with today, the Gregory system, the unseals begin with a zero. So, for example, if you see someone cite 033, you automatically know that what they are citing is an unseal text.
Minuscules just simply don't have the zero in front of it. So if you see 33, that's a minuscule text. It is different than 033. 033 is an unseal. Simply 33 is minuscule. Okay? Now, there are other witnesses that will be drawn on by textual critics for determining a citation of a passage.
For example, the early church fathers. The early church fathers will quote from Scripture. In fact, it has been well said that you could recreate the entire New Testament text simply from the citations of all the early church fathers.
So how did they cite the text when they did cite it? This gives us insights into what kind of textual tradition was in their area. Now, you've got to be careful because you cannot put as much weight into their citation as you can into a direct manuscript because they may not have been intending to cite it directly.
They may have been paraphrasing. How often in a sermon, for example, does a pastor paraphrase a passage rather than citing it exactly? Okay? So, though the early church fathers are important for determining if something was actually in the text.
So, you know, if there is a question about whether a certain phrase was in the text that that man had, and he cites it, obviously he did. So if your variant is, is this phrase original or is it not, the early church father can tell you, hey, at the time he wrote, this phrase was a part of the manuscript tradition that he drew from.
Now, just because he doesn't cite it doesn't mean it wasn't there. So they can be a positive witness to something being there, but you cannot interpret their silence on an issue as meaning it wasn't there.
So you've got to be careful when looking at the early church fathers and their citations. Then you have other versions because as soon as the gospel began going out into other cultures, obviously translations will be made into other languages.
So you will have, for example, the Coptic, Boheric, Sahitic, Latin versions coming out of your ears. You've got 10 ,000 copies of the 10 ,000 manuscripts in the Latin tradition. Versions cannot sometimes help you differentiate between tenses.
Let's say you have two variants and they're different tenses in Greek. Well, that other language may not be able to distinguish between those two tenses. So it may not be able to help you there, but again, in determining whether a verse was a part of the early tradition, etc., etc., they can help you in things like that.
So you've got to, when you look at the various resources you have, you've always got to weigh all the factors. It is not a simple thing to do, obviously. Now, I have given you here some general rules of textual criticism.
These are just general. You cannot take any of these and write them in stone. You can't ask a computer to go by a certain standard and determine the text in the New Testament. You just can't do that. So, for example, number A first, the shorter reading is often preferable.
That does not mean that every single time you have a shorter reading that it's the right one, but it is more likely that someone has expanded or conflated readings than it is they've deleted something.
Now, obviously, if you can prove what Homo Etelyuton, Haplography, Parablepsis, those other things we've looked at, then you might see that a longer reading is the better. But if there is no reason why there would have been a deletion, there's no similar endings, et cetera, et cetera, then the shorter reading is often preferable.
B, the harder reading is often preferable. In other words, in copying a manuscript, it's more likely the scribe would make an error toward making it flow easier than it would be he would make an error that would make things more difficult to understand.
So, the harder reading is often preferable. C, the reading from which the other readings in a variant could most easily have developed is preferable. So, for example, if you have reading A, which says one thing, reading B, which says another thing, and reading C, which says both A and B, it's pretty obvious that your choice is between A and B and not C, because C is obviously the result of a scribe who had earlier manuscripts that contain both A and B.
We'll look at a couple examples of that. So, what you need to do when you're examining a variant is you need to look at it and say, which one of these could not have resulted from the others? And you can frequently make a list of the variants in a verse, and once you list them out and you actually write them out there in front of you, it's quite easy to see the evolution of the variant reading and get back to the original.
And finally, the reading which is characteristic of the author is generally preferable. Okay, so if you have a variant where one of the two variants is a word that Paul never ever uses, and the other is a word that he uses a lot, especially in this context, then all other things being equal, it's probably the word that Paul used a lot and not the introduction of a word that Paul would never use anyplace else.
So, that sometimes comes into play as well. Now, what is the process that a textual critic goes through? Well, very, very briefly, pretty much you first examine the external evidence. And you can do that with any critical addition of the Greek New Testament, because where there is a variation, you will find a footnote that will list for you the variants and what text read what.
And so, what we will do a little bit later on this evening is we will look at some of these, and we will be able to see that the text will be identified for us. If we have a knowledge of where these texts came from, what textual family they come from, we can determine, well, this is the Alexandrian reading, and this is the Byzantine reading, and maybe if there's a third reading, it's Western.
Or in some places, you'll find the Alexandrian text split down the middle and the Byzantine text split down the middle, and then you've got to go with other things from there. But you will examine the external evidence, which would include looking at all the manuscripts, looking at the early church fathers, looking at the versions.
Very, very rarely, there is another group of manuscripts called lectionaries that were basically a scripture passage that was to be read on a certain day of the year, et cetera, et cetera, with a lesson along with it.
Very few of the lectionaries have anything but a Byzantine text in them, and so not a lot of them have a lot of weight, but you look at the lectionaries. You look at the external evidence first and examine it.
That's the most important thing you do right off the bat. If you still even must go from there, sometimes that alone will determine the reading. Then you look at internal evidence, internal evidence regarding the context, internal evidence regarding the author's flavor of writing or his dialect, et cetera, et cetera.
There are a lot of things that go into determining internal evidence. If you're looking at a variant that uses language that is never found anywhere else in this person's writings, obviously that's going to have some weight in what you're examining.
Now, I've mentioned to you a number of texts before. What are the texts that we'd be working with? Well, the oldest text, as far as a printed text goes, has unfortunately received the name Textus Receptus.
Sometimes you'll see this briefly addressed as TR. This is the basis of the King James Version, the quote-unquote Textus Receptus, though I say it in quote-unquote because the very phrase Textus Receptus was not coined until 1624 by the Elsevier brothers in an advertisement to sell their edition of the Greek New Testament.
That's where the name came from. That was 13 years after the King James Version was translated, so it obviously wasn't called the Textus Receptus. Textus Receptus means the received text. It is largely based on the work of Desiderius Erasmus, a Roman Catholic priest who first published a Greek New Testament in 1516.
In 1522, he published the third edition, and that is basically, without too much change, the Textus Receptus. Erasmus' work was based on only about 10 manuscripts, and even the two best of the 10 he had, he mistrusted and did not utilize a lot of.
The result of being based on so few manuscripts and such inferior manuscripts, they were predominantly just minuscule texts, the earliest was from the 10th century, and were all Byzantine in text, resulted in a number of poor readings.
In his first two versions, he did not have the famous Comma Johannium, 1 John 5 -7, because no Greek manuscript he had ever seen had it. However, a lot of people, because it was in the Latin Vulgate, attacked him and said he was attempting to hide the doctrine of the Trinity or something like that.
In response to this, he wrote to his friend Bombasius in Rome and asked him to consult with the Vatican manuscript, Codex Vaticanus, as we know it today. It was not there, and so Erasmus rather rashly said, well, if you can show me any Greek manuscript anywhere that contains 1 John 5 -7, I will put it in my next edition.
Well, one was quickly written up for him and comes from the same time period, from the 16th century, and so in the third edition he included it with a lengthy footnote complaining he had been deceived, but it stuck.
That was the edition that became the basis of King James, and that's why 1 John 5 -7 is in the King James version. It is in no Greek manuscript that precedes the days of Erasmus. It has absolutely no textual basis whatsoever.
Okay, that was the text up until the 1880s. The other two texts that we utilize today are in reality not a different text, but you will find them in two different forms. The text known as the UBS, or the United Bible Society's text, is really word for word the same text as the 26th edition of the Nestle-Alan text.
The only difference between the two used to be punctuation, but even that has now been brought into conformity. The two are identical to one another. They just are printed differently, and the United Bible Society text is predominantly intended for translators.
The Nestle-Alan text is predominantly intended for scholars and textual critics. The reason for that is the UBS text will not give you as many of the variants. If it's pretty clear, if there's really no question about the variant, it's not going to even tell you it's there.
But when it does give you the evidence for a variant, it gives you all the evidence for the variant. The Nestle-Alan text, in kind of distinction of that, will give you about every variant there is, but it's not going to go quite in depth, into as much depth, on that particular one.
So that is the difference between the two. Now, if you want to see some of these different texts, I've given you examples of what they look like in your booklet. For example, on page 12, you'll see one of the minuscule texts actually used by Erasmus.
In fact, in the columns, excuse me, in the margin and down the bottom of the page, you'll even see some of Erasmus' own handwriting, where he made corrections in the text. On page 13, you'll have an example of the Westcott-Hort text from 1881.
That is what it looks like. On page 14, you'll have an example of what I mentioned earlier, the majority text, edited by Zane C. Hodges. This is the one that basically counts manuscripts instead of weighs them.
It's rather intriguing, because on page 14, where I have a quotation from the section from Revelation chapter 17, if you look at the footnotes, you'll notice that the TR, the textus receptus, the basis of the King James Version, is frequently rejected by the majority text here.
In fact, the TR differs from the majority text in over 400 places, because of some of the problems that Erasmus had. Page 15 will give you an example of two pages of the Nestle-Alan text, 26th edition.
You'll notice that it has a great deal of references. The footnoting system, we will not get into this evening. It's very complicated, but extremely well done and extremely scholarly. Then on pages 16, 17, and 18, we have some examples from the TR itself, the textus receptus.
In fact, I have underlined some sections. For example, on page 16, you have 1 John chapter 5, verse 7, the passage I was just talking about in the TR. On page 17, you'll notice I have underlined, in verse 9, the Greek phrase, ouk esti kaiper estin.
That was an error of Erasmus' scribe, because ouk esti kaiper estin means is not and yet is, which makes no sense. The original reading was ouk estin kaiper esti, but obviously his scribe simply put the last, put kai and the first part of perestai together to come up with kaiper.
There are no Greek manuscripts, for example, that support the TR's reading. Page 18 shows chapter 22 of the Book of Revelation, the TR. What most people don't realize is that Erasmus didn't have a Greek text that had this.
What he did was he translated from Latin into Greek. The process, all the words that are underlined here, do not appear in any Greek manuscript in the world. Erasmus made them up by translating them from Latin.
Yet here they are, still maintained in the TR today. There are some people that claim that TR is infallibly inspired. Yet here you have a number of words that some of them are not even Greek words at all.
Erasmus made up because he was translating from the Latin. All of those that are underlined fall into that category. There are some examples there for you. Let's go over some textual variants. Let's look at pages 20 and 21, which is a photocopy from the United Bible Society text, which I would suggest for the beginner because the textual footnotes are much clearer and easier to follow than the textual notation system found in the Nestle Elan text.
The Nestle Elan text will give you more information, but it's a whole lot harder to learn exactly how it works. Let's look at John chapter 5, verses 3 through 4. You'll notice that there are a lot of footnotes at the bottom of the page underneath that line, a lot of them.
The one we're looking at is at the bottom of page 337 in the text, page 20 in our booklet, where it says verse 5, excuse me, variation number 5 in verse 3. That's at the very end. You'll notice it has in brackets the letter A.
That is a general rating by the editors of the text of the reading in the text. In other words, they're saying that it's predominantly sure. A means this is almost completely sure with almost no degree of doubt.
B would be there's some doubt. C would be there's a lot of doubt. D would be we have the foggiest idea. It's a toss-up between what we've put in the text and what we've put in the footnote. The reading of the text is omit verse 4.
The things following this will tell you what manuscripts omit verse 4. You'll notice that both Papyri 66 and Papyri 75 omit this verse. Remember, these are some of the earliest, in fact, they are the earliest witnesses to the Gospel of John other than P52, which is only four verses.
So P66 and P75. Then you have the little Aleph, and if you remember what Aleph is, Aleph is Codex Sinaiticus. B, which is Codex Vaticanus, both from the fourth century, the two great codices. C, and then with an asterisk.
C with an asterisk means the original reading, which means at this point there is a correction. Somebody later down the road added these verses back in, in Codex Ephraim. That's what the asterisk means.
Then you have D, which would, as you saw, if you look back on what I mentioned, since we're here in the Gospels, that's Codex Bezae, Codex Bezae Catebrugensius, if you want the full name, from the fifth century.
W, in a supplemental reading, gives this. Then O125 and O141, since there's an O at the beginning, what are those? They're unsealed texts. Okay, they're unsealed texts. And both the UBS text and Nestle Alon will give you a listing at the back of the book that'll tell you about where these things are found today.
Are they in Dublin? Are they in London? What they contain? When they were written? The whole nine yards. You can look all that up for yourself. Minuscule text 33, which is known as the Queen of the Minuscules, which has an extremely accurate text amidst the verse.
IT means Latin versions, Italian. IT and then the little D, F, L, and Q, those give you certain kinds of the Latin text. VG means Vulgate text. WW is a certain kind of Vulgate text. SYR means Syriac. COP means Coptic.
And the SA and BO means Sahitic and Boheric manuscripts. GEO means the Georgian version. And then Nanus is one of the early church fathers. Okay? So by looking at that, you now know the manuscripts and the editions that delete that verse.
And it's a pretty impressive group of manuscripts. It's pretty much the earliest witness. If you would go back and look at the type of text these represent, it's the Alexandrian text. The Western text, D is predominantly normally Western, as is sometimes W.
Vulgate in the Latin, that's Western. So you've got the Alexandrian and the Western text types delete the verse. The double lines mean here's the next variant reading. Include verse four, and then the UBS text is nice enough to give you what verse four is in Greek.
Okay? For an angel, the Lord would come down and stir the waters and so on and so forth. The first one to make it into the water would be healed, et cetera, et cetera. Okay. With variations in manuscripts, do you see where I am?
The third line right up here with variations in manuscripts. See footnotes six through 10, and then below in paragraph form, you'll notice there's a large amount of variation even within the verses themselves.
That should always be a little red light to you. If you have a passage that's not included in some manuscripts, and it's got a bunch of variations in it as it is, that should tell you immediately this is probably not original.
Okay? But it is included by, and then here you have them, A, which is Alexandrinus, which as I mentioned to you, has a predominantly Byzantine or prominently inferior text in the Gospels. C3, which means the third corrector of C.
Remember I said C, the original reading didn't have it? The third corrector, or the third, we can recognize different types of handwriting, and the third corrector of Codex Ephraim added this in. K, L, and X, which are Byzantine texts, X in its commentary, Delta, Theta, Psi, 063 and 078 have the verses.
F1 and F13 mean Family 1 and Family 13. These are groups of manuscripts, and again, if you had one of these Greek texts, which you can pick up in almost any Christian bookstore, it'll list which manuscripts are in, Family 1, Family 13.
Then you have a whole list of miniscule texts, followed by the letters BYZ, which is this text's way of telling you the Byzantine textual tradition reads this way, which is predominantly the majority text.
The largest number of miniscules read this way. LECT means the lectionaries, the lectionaries read this way. Then these Latin versions read this way, and you'll notice there are a number of them. The Clementine Vulgate, over against WW, which you saw down below, reads this way.
The Syriac, Palestinian, and the Peshitta, that's what the P and the PAL mean. The Coptic and some Boheric manuscripts, you'll notice that was listed down below as well, so the Boheric manuscripts of the Coptic tradition are split in half on this one, they're split for both readings.
The Armenian ARM, the Diatessaron reads this way. Tertullian, Ambrose, Didymus, Chrysostom, and Cyril, all early church fathers, read this way. Then, and this is really important, S, and Lambda, and Pi, and 047, and 1079, and 2174, and the Harkleian, that's the H Syriac version, all include verse 4, but notice, with asterisks or obelis.
In other words, those manuscripts include the verses, but they put asterisks around them and say, this is an addition. That's always important, if they do that, that means they're aware of the fact that those verses are not included in other manuscripts.
So there, in your own hand, you have access to literally hundreds of manuscripts and their readings in that one little footnote, and you can make a decision on your own concerning whether verses 3 through 4 should be there or they should not.
Let's look at a couple of others. Look at Romans 5 .1 on page 22. On page 22. Now, I've underlined the variant reading, and you notice in 5 .1 there on page 5 .4 is the word Ecumen. Now, down below, you'll find it says 1 and it has a little C.
So in other words, the editors have a good bit more doubt as to whether this is the actual reading. Ecumen is found in Sinaiticus, and then notice it says A. That is the first of the correctors of Sinaiticus.
It says Ecumen. Vaticanus, the third corrector, reads this. G, in the Greek portion, G is a bilingual manuscript. It's in Latin and Greek, and so the Greek portion reads this. You will notice later on, sometimes if that one is cited, it'll split.
The Greek will say one thing, the Latin will say another. It's rather intriguing. But anyways, the Greek reading of G, P, Psi, then it says 0, 2, 2, 0, Vid. That's unsealed, 2, 2, 0, and Vid means the manuscript isn't in the greatest condition at that point, and they're not really sure whether it says that or not.
It looks like it does, but there's a bit of doubt attached to it. That's when you see Vid. Then all these manuscripts, 88, 104, 326, 330, notice down there at the end, good old 1739, which I mentioned earlier, that 10th century manuscript that is a very important one, reads Ecumen.
1877, 1881 is another important minuscule text. 1984, you can go on through there. Notice it is the Byzantine reading, which is rather intriguing. The lectionary reading, the Latin reading, Syriac, Coptic, Ephraim, Didymus, Epiphanius, Cyril, Julius, Scotus.
Then you have the next reading. If you don't know Greek, you might go, it looks the same. One is Ecumen, this is Ecomen. If you know Greek, the difference is between the indicative and the subjunctive.
In other words, Romans 5, 1 says, therefore, having been justified by faith, if you take the text as it is, it says, we have peace with God. Ecomen would be, let us have peace with God. That's the only difference between the two, is the difference in tense.
Now, Ecumen is the original reading of Sinaiticus. It is also the reading of Alexandrinus, the original reading of Vaticanus, that's B with a little star there. It's the reading of Ephraim. Here we're in Romans now, so D is not Codex Beze, it is the other, D2.
K, 33, 81, 181, et cetera, et cetera. You've got some lectionaries listed here because these are some of the more important lectionaries, a little L with the 597 and 599, it's two of the lectionaries.
These Latin versions, the Vulgate, the Syriac, both the Palestinian and the Peshitta, P means Peshitta, P-A-L, Palestinian. The Coptic, Boheric, B-O is Boheric, Armenian, Ethiopic. Then Martian, Tertullian, the Latin version of Origen, Ambrosiaster, Titus Bostra, Chrysostom, Cyril, Euthalius, the Odorates, and John Damascus all read Ecumen.
Now, you look at that and maybe now you can realize when if you read a commentary on Romans, you'll find like a footnote in C .B. Cranfield, et cetera, et cetera, and there is a great debate about it because the papyri evidence is pretty well split down the middle.
In fact, if it really favors anyone, I have to say it actually favors the reading that they don't put in the text, that's a subjunctive. Now, I personally, my choice would be Ecumen, but it would be Ecumen because of internal decisions and not necessarily just simply the manuscript material.
Let's look at some others before we run out of time this evening. I've given you some examples. Let's look at an important one on page 23, John 118. Page 23 gives you the textual information on that. You'll notice the variance is listed there under number 5.
Verse 18 is given a B rating, which is a strong rating. The first reading is Monogenes Theos, Unique God. That is the reading of P66, which is always a very heavy-weighted witness, the original reading of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus.
Normally, when you put Sinaiticus and Vaticanus together with an early papyri, it's going to be pretty hard to overthrow that kind of early attestation and documentation. You'll normally notice that if you put a papyri with those two, it's going to be the reading in the text, pretty much.
The original reading of Codex Ephraim, L, and then Ha Monogenes Theos, that is with the article, is the reading of P75, another heavy witness, the corrected reading of Sinaiticus. There's 33, the Queen of Minuscules, and the Boheric version of the Coptic version.
It is also the reading of the Syriac, Peshitta, and the margin of the Harklion. The Ethiopian, Theodotus, as he's quoted by Clement. Valentinians, according to Irenaeus and Clement, as they quoted the Valentinians.
Ptolemy, Diatessaron, Harklion, the Irenaeus, about a third of his Latin versions read that way. About three-fifths of Clement origin, both the Greek and the Latin. Arius even had that, surprisingly enough.
Hillary, Basil, the Apostolic Constitutions, Didymus, Gregory of Nysa, Epiphanius, Synesius, Jerome, Cyril, and Pseudo-Ignatius all read Thaos, a unique god. Ha-Monogenes-Huios, which is the only begotten son, is the reading of Alexandrinus, the third corrector of C, K, W, and all these others here following are the Byzantine manuscripts.
You notice B-Y-Z at the end of the second line. The lectionaries, Latin, Vulgate, Syriac, Armenian, Ethiopian, Georgian, and then a large number of the early church fathers. And then notice these other readings, Monogenes-Huios-Theus, a conflate reading.
See, it's the addition of the two other readings that are available to it, putting Huios and Theus together. Then simply Ha-Monogenes, let's just check the other two because we're confused, is the reading of a couple.
But you can see that Ha-Monogenes could not possibly be the original because there just simply isn't enough manuscript evidence. There's not one Greek manuscript listed, only the few manuscripts of the Vulgate and certain early church fathers.
That's all. So its external manuscript evidence is extremely weak and therefore could not possibly be the original reading. Now, if you apply the rules that we had at the beginning, we talked about general rules, you'll notice that this is most definitely the hardest reading.
There is no other place in the testament where you have Monogenes-Theus. So it's definitely the harder reading. It's a reading from which other of the readings could have come from. Where would Monogenes-Huios come from?
John 3 .16. For gods of the world, he gave his Monogenes-Huios. So it easily could have come from there. So most scholars, and I would definitely join with them in saying Monogenes-Theus is the original reading of John because that fits so perfectly with his teaching in the entire prologue concerning John 1 .1, the word was God.
So rather very clear. The next one is Ephesians 1. This is a fascinating one. Because was Ephesians written to the church at Ephesus? Or was it a circular letter meant to go around the whole area? Was it the letter spoken of in Colossians 4 .16 where Paul said, read the letter that is coming from Laodicea?
Well, all that revolves around whether the words in Ephesus in Ephesians 1 .1 are actually there. You can decide for yourself. They are included in the text here. And in Ephesus is included in the Corrector of Sinaiticus, in Alexandrinus, in the Third Corrector of Vaticanus, DGKP, maybe in Psi, it's hard to tell, 3381.
It's the majority reading because it's the Byzantine reading. It's in all the electionaries. It's in most of the Latin, Bulgate, Syriac, Coptic, Gothic, Armenian, Ambrosiaster, and all these others. But it is omitted by some very important witnesses.
You'll notice it is omitted by P46, which is about the earliest witness to the Pauline Corpus. It's originally omitted by Sinaiticus, originally omitted by Vaticanus. 424 is a fascinating manuscript that has a rather special history to it.
It, like 1739 listed next to it, is a copy of an extremely early manuscript. 424 itself isn't, but its exemplar was. Martione did not have it. Tertullian, Origen, Ephraim, and certain manuscripts according to Basil.
Now that's not a whole lot, but P46, Sinaiticus, Vaticanus, 424, and 1739 are some pretty heavy witnesses. It's hard to determine whether it was there originally or not, but there is good evidence it may not have been.
The Ephesian letter may have been a circular letter. There is internal evidence that strongly supports that idea that it was supposed to be a circular letter. Let's look at 1 Timothy 3 .16. We looked at this in our examples earlier, but in 1 Timothy 3 .16, here you'll notice, is it God or is it Haas?
Let's look down at the footnote. Haas is the original reading of Sinaiticus. Maybe the original reading of Alexandrinus, but it's hard to tell. That's what the little vid means. It's the original reading of C, Codex Bese.
It's the original reading of G in the Greek, 33, 365, 442, 2127, Lectionary 599, which is an important lectionary. The Syriac, Gothic, Ethiopic, Origen, Epiphanius, Jerome, Theodoret, Euthyrius, Cyril, and Liberatus.
Haas, which is just simply a different gender, is the original reading of D, which is a bilingual manuscript. A number of the Latin manuscripts, Vulgate, and a few others. Then you have some other little readings in here, and they're predominantly due to the fact that the other languages that it was translated into, those versions, couldn't tell you whether it was a masculine or a neuter, etc., etc.
The next main reading is Theos, God, which is what is in the TR and is the basis of King James. That is in one of the later correctors of Sinaiticus. The second corrector of Alexandrinus, the second corrector of Ephraim, another one of the correctors of D.
KLP, and whenever you see KLP, you're just automatically Byzantine. Bingo. They're Byzantine texts. A long list of minuscules, this time joined, notice, by 1739 and 1881. It's the Byzantine reading, the lectionaries, Gregory, etc., etc.
So you've got another interesting one here. I don't have any problem with the reading Theos. It could be Theos. Doctrinally, it could have been Theos. God was manifest in the flesh. I have no problem with that at all.
But Haas looks like it has the stronger external evidence because it's the original reading of all these manuscripts, and it's very easy to see how it could go either direction, either direction. Now, after having gone through all of this, let me emphasize one thing as we're running out of time.
The variation in the text, I believe, is God's way of preserving the text. If we only had one text that said only one thing, we would have no safeguard against the possibility of someone having changed the text and actually changed God's word at some point in time.
We have no checks and balances against that. Dr. Alain says something very, very important in his book, and I'm going to read you a fairly lengthened section here, but listen closely to what he said as we close.
When an alteration was made in the text of the New Testament, however strategically important the text, however extensively it was adopted for theological or pastoral reasons, and even if it became the accepted text of the Church, there always continued to be a stream of the tradition, sometimes broad, sometimes narrow, which remained unaffected, and this for purely technical reasons.
Major disturbances in the transmission of the New Testament text can always be identified with confidence, even if they occurred during the second century or at its beginning. This confirms the tenacity of the tradition, but it also shows something else which is new for the beginner, although it is a familiar fact for the experienced textual critic, or at least it should be.
The limitless variety and complexity of the New Testament textual tradition serves the function of a seismograph, because the higher it registers, the greater the earthquake, or in the present context, the greater the disruption of the New Testament textual tradition.
In our view, this demonstrates two reliable principles. One, when the text of the New Testament has been tampered with in its transmission, the readings scatter like a flock of chickens attacked by a hawk or even by a dog.
And two, every reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition is stubbornly preserved, even if the result is nonsense. This confirms the conclusion that any reading ever occurring in the New Testament textual tradition from the original reading onward has been preserved in the tradition and needs only to be identified.
Any interference with the regular process of transmission is signaled by a profusion of variants. This leads to a further conclusion, which we believe to be both logical and compelling, that where such a profusion of does not exist, the text has not been disturbed, but has developed according to the normal rules.
None of the composition theories advanced today in various forms with regard to the Pauline letters, for example, has any support in the manuscript tradition, whether in Greek in the early versions or in the patristic quotations from the New Testament.
At no place where a break has been posited in the Pauline letters does the critical apparatus show even a suspicion of any interference with the inevitable deposit of telltale variants. In other words, from the beginning of their history as a manuscript tradition, the Pauline letters have always had the same form they have today.
In other words, what he's saying is, if any change occurs, there's variation there. If there's no variation, there's been no change. See, some people come up with ideas, well, Paul actually didn't write this, and this was added three centuries later, and actually Paul's stopped here, and then somebody added this long.
There is no evidence for that, and if there had been any change at all, there would be variants there all over the place. We must emphasize that the existence of these variants proves that one of those variants is the original.
We have not lost any of the Word of God. The task that is then placed before us is the determination of which one of the originals that is. But this is very important because people have the idea that someone could have come along and changed God's Word and changed the theological teaching.
That is not true. That couldn't have happened. That could not have happened. And I believe that this is God's method of preservation. This is how he has guided the process so that the text could be kept safe from man's desire to destroy it and pervert its teaching.
No one could have gathered up all the manuscripts and changed something. If they change it anywhere, boom, all of a sudden out comes all these textual variants that the manuscripts demonstrate for. So this is a safeguard.
It is a method by which God has preserved the New Testament, has preserved his Word, and I think it is a wonderful thing to see.