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{{Short description|Analysis of the manuscripts of the New Testament}}
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[[File:P46.jpg|thumb|right|300px|A folio from [[Papyrus 46]], one of the oldest extant New Testament manuscripts]]
'''Textual criticism of the New Testament''' is the [[textual criticism|identification of textual variants, or different versions]] of the [[New Testament]], whose goals include identification of transcription errors, analysis of versions, and attempts to reconstruct the original text. Its main focus is studying the [[textual variants in the New Testament]].
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== Purpose ==
After stating that the [[Westcott and Hort
<blockquote>Again, textual criticism is always negative, because its final aim is virtually nothing more than the detection and rejection of error. Its progress consists not in the growing perfection of an ideal in the future, but in approximation towards complete ascertainment of definite facts of the past, that is, towards recovering an exact copy of what was actually written on parchment or papyrus by the author of the book or his amanuensis. Had all intervening transcriptions been perfectly accurate, there could be no error and no variation in existing documents. Where there is variation, there must be error in at least all variants but one; and the primary work of textual criticism is merely to discriminate the erroneous variants from the true.<ref>Westcott and Hort,[https://archive.org/details/newtestamentinor82west/page/n39/mode/2up ''The New Testament in the original Greek, second edition with Introduction and Appendix''] (1882), p. 1–3.</ref></blockquote>
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== Text-types ==
{{See also|Categories of New Testament manuscripts}}
The sheer number of witnesses presents unique difficulties, chiefly in that it makes stemmatics in many cases impossible, because many copyists used two or more different manuscripts as sources. Consequently, New Testament textual critics have adopted [[
{| border="1" style="margin:auto; width:100%;"
|- style="background:#cef2e0; text-align:center;"
! width="20%"|Text-type !! width=" 10%" |Date!!Characteristics!! Bible version
|-
| The [[Alexandrian text-type]]<br />(also called the "Neutral Text" tradition; less frequently, the "Minority Text")||2nd–4th centuries CE||
|-
|The [[Western text-type]]||3rd–9th centuries CE ||The main characteristic of the Western text is a love of paraphrase: "Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness."<ref name="Hort">[[Brooke Foss Westcott]], [[Fenton John Anthony Hort]]. ''The New Testament In The Original Greek'', 1925. p. 550</ref> One possible source of glossing is the desire to harmonise and to complete: "More peculiar to the Western text is the readiness to adopt alterations or additions from sources extraneous to the books which ultimately became canonical."<ref name="Hort" />
Some modern textual critics doubt the existence of a singular Western text-type, instead viewing it as a group of text-types.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Ehrman |first1=Bart D. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=guYq9rohFQ8C |title=The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis. Second Edition |last2=Holmes |first2=Michael W. |date=2012-11-09 |publisher=BRILL |isbn=978-90-04-23604-2 |pages=190–191 |language=en}}</ref>
|[[Vetus Latina]], [[Syriac versions of the Bible#Old Syriac version|Old Syriac]]
|-
| The [[Byzantine text-type]]; also, [[Koine Greek|Koinē]] text-type <br />(also called "Majority Text")||4th–16th centuries CE||Compared to [[Alexandrian text-type]] manuscripts, the distinct Byzantine readings tend to show a greater tendency toward smooth and well-formed Greek, they display fewer instances of textual variation between parallel [[Synoptic Gospel]] passages, and they are less likely to present contradictory or "[[Lectio difficilior potior|difficult]]" issues of [[exegesis]].<ref>"The Syrian text has all the appearance of being a careful attempt to supersede the chaos of rival texts by a judicious selection from them all." [[Brooke Foss Westcott]], [[Fenton John Anthony Hort]]. ''The New Testament In The Original Greek'', 1925. p. 551</ref>|| The [[List of English Bible translations|Aramaic Peshitta]],<ref name="ident-nt">{{Cite book |last=Pickering |first=Wilbur N. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Ii5bzgEACAAJ |title=Identity of the New Testament Text III |publisher=Wipf & Stock Publishers |year=2012 |isbn=978-1-4982-6349-8}}</ref> [[Ulfilas|Wulfila's Gothic translation]],<ref>Bennett, William, 1980, ''An Introduction to the Gothic Language'', pp. 24-25.</ref> the [[World English Bible|WEB]],<ref>{{Cite web |title=World English Bible (WEB) - Version Information - BibleGateway.com |url=https://www.biblegateway.com/versions/World-English-Bible-WEB/ |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=www.biblegateway.com}}</ref>
Bible translations relying on the ''[[Textus Receptus]]'' which is close to the Byzantine text: [[King James Version|KJV]], [[New King James Version|NKJV]], [[Tyndale Bible|Tyndale]], [[Coverdale Bible|Coverdale]], [[Geneva Bible|Geneva]], [[Bishops' Bible]], [[Orthodox Study Bible|OSB]]
|}
== History of research ==
=== Classification of text-types (1734–1831) ===
18th-century German scholars were the first to discover the existence of textual families, and to suggest some were more reliable than others, although they did not yet question the authority of the ''Textus Receptus''.<ref name="Puskas">{{Cite book |last1=Puskas |first1=Charles B |last2=Robbins |first2=C Michael |date=2012 |title=An Introduction to the New Testament |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R-jkDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA70 |location= |publisher=ISD LLC |
=== Development of critical texts (1831–1881) ===
{{See also|Critical apparatus#New Testament studies}}
[[File:The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882).pdf|thumb|page=9|[[Westcott and Hort]]'s ''Introduction and Appendix'' (1882)]]
[[Karl Lachmann]] became the first scholar to publish a critical edition of the Greek New Testament (1831) that was not simply based on the ''Textus Receptus'' anymore, but sought to reconstruct the original biblical text following scientific principles.<ref name="Puskas"/> Starting with Lachmann, manuscripts of the Alexandrian text-type have been the most influential in modern critical editions.<ref name="Puskas"/> In the decades thereafter, important contributions were made by [[Constantin von Tischendorf]], who discovered numerous manuscripts including the [[Codex Sinaiticus]] (1844), published several
The critical method achieved widespread acceptance up until in the [[Westcott and Hort]] text (1881), a landmark publication that sparked a new era of New Testament textual criticism and translations.<ref name="Puskas"/> Hort rejected the primacy of the Byzantine text-type (which he called "Syrian") with three arguments:
# The Byzantine text-type contains readings combining elements found in earlier text-types.
# The variants unique to the Byzantine manuscripts are not found in Christian writings before the 4th century.
# When Byzantine and non-Byzantine readings are compared, the Byzantine can be demonstrated not to represent the original text.<ref name="Puskas"
Having diligently studied the early text-types and variants, Westcott and Hort concluded that the Egyptian texts (including [[Codex Sinaiticus|Sinaiticus (א)]] and [[Codex Vaticanus|Vaticanus (B)]], which they called "Neutral") were the most reliable, since they seemed to preserve the original text with the least changes.<ref name="Puskas"/> Therefore, the Greek text of their critical edition was based on this "Neutral" text-type, unless internal evidence clearly rejected the reliability of particular verses of it.<ref name="Puskas"/>
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Nevertheless, there are some dissenting voices to this consensus. A few textual critics, especially those in France, argue that the [[Western text-type]], an old text from which the ''[[Vetus Latina]]'' or [[Old Latin]] versions of the New Testament are derived, is closer to the originals.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}
In the United States, some critics have a dissenting view that prefers the [[Byzantine text-type]], such as [[Maurice A. Robinson]] and
The argument for the authoritative nature of the latter is that the much greater number of Byzantine manuscripts copied in later centuries, in detriment to the Alexandrian manuscripts, indicates a superior understanding by scribes of those being closer to the [[autograph]]s.
The evidence of the papyri suggests that, in Egypt, at least, very different manuscript readings co-existed in the same area in the early Christian period. Thus, whereas the early 3rd century papyrus {{Papyrus|75}} witnesses a text in Luke and John that is very close to that found a century later in the Codex Vaticanus, the nearly contemporary {{Papyrus|66}} has a much freer text of John; with many unique variants; and others that are now considered distinctive to the Western and Byzantine text-types, albeit that the bulk of readings are Alexandrian. Most modern text critics therefore do not regard any one text-type as deriving in direct succession from autograph manuscripts, but rather, as the fruit of local exercises to compile the best New Testament text from a manuscript tradition that already displayed wide variations.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}
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A minority position represented by ''The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text'' edition by [[Zane C. Hodges]] and Arthur L. Farstad argues that the Byzantine text-type represents an earlier text-type than the surviving Alexandrian texts. This position is also held by [[Maurice A. Robinson]] and William G. Pierpont in their ''The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform'', and the [[King James Only Movement]]. The argument states that the far greater number of surviving late Byzantine manuscripts implies an equivalent preponderance of Byzantine texts amongst lost earlier manuscripts. Hence, a critical reconstruction of the predominant text of the Byzantine tradition would have a superior claim to being closest to the autographs.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}
Another position is that of the Neo-Byzantine School. The Neo-Byzantines (or new Byzantines) of the 16th and 17th centuries first formally compiled the New Testament Received Text under such textual analysts as [[Erasmus]], [[Robert Estienne|Stephanus (Robert Estienne)]], [[Beza]], and Elzevir. The early 21st century saw the rise of the first textual analyst of this school in over three centuries with Gavin McGrath (b. 1960). A religiously conservative Protestant from Australia, his Neo-Byzantine School principles maintain that the representative or majority Byzantine text, such as compiled by Hodges & Farstad (1985) or [[Maurice A. Robinson|Robinson]] & Pierpont (2005), is to be upheld unless there is a "clear and obvious" textual problem with it. When this occurs, he adopts either a minority Byzantine reading, a reading from the ancient [[Vulgate]], or a reading attested to in the writings of an ancient [[Church Father]] (in either Greek or Latin) by way of quotation. The Neo-Byzantine School considers that the doctrine of the Divine Preservation of Scripture means that God preserved the Byzantine Greek manuscripts, Latin manuscripts, and Greek and Latin church writers' citations of Scripture over time and through time. These are regarded as "a closed class of sources" i.e., non-Byzantine Greek manuscripts such as the Alexandrian texts, or manuscripts in other languages such as Armenian, Syriac, or Ethiopian, are regarded as "outside the closed class of sources" providentially protected over time, and so not used to compose the New Testament text.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.easy.com.au/~gmbooks/ |title=Gavin McGrath Books |website=www.easy.com.au |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100410190056/http://www.easy.com.au/~gmbooks |archive-date=2010-04-10}}</ref>
Other scholars have criticized the current categorization of manuscripts into text-types and prefer either to subdivide the manuscripts in other ways or to discard the text-type taxonomy.{{citation needed|date=September 2021}}
== Interpolations ==
In attempting to determine the original text of the New Testament books, some modern textual critics{{who|date=March 2022}} have identified sections as [[Interpolation (manuscripts)|interpolations]]. In modern translations of the Bible such as the [[New International Version]], the results of textual criticism have led to certain verses, words and phrases being left out or marked as not original. Previously, translations of the New Testament such as the [[King James Version]] had mostly been based on [[Erasmus]]'s redaction of the New Testament in Greek, the ''[[Textus Receptus]]'' from the 16th century based on later manuscripts.<ref>{{
According to [[Bart D. Ehrman]], "These scribal additions are often found in late medieval manuscripts of the New Testament, but not in the manuscripts of the earlier centuries," he adds. And because the King James Bible is based on later manuscripts, such verses "became part of the Bible tradition in English-speaking lands."<ref name=autogenerated1>[[Bart D. Ehrman|Ehrman, Bart D.]]
Most modern Bibles have footnotes to indicate passages that have disputed source documents. Bible
These possible later additions include the following:<ref>Ehrman 2006, p. 166</ref><ref name="Metzger1994">[[Bruce Metzger]] "A Textual Commentary on the New Testament", Second Edition, 1994, German Bible Society</ref>
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Opinions are divided on whether Jesus is referred to as "unique [or only-begotten: Gk. ''monogenes''] Son" or "unique [''monogenes''] God", in {{bibleverse||John|1:18}}<ref name="Metzger1994" />
{{
Various groups of highly conservative Christians believe that when Ps.12:6–7 speaks of the preservation of the words of God, that this nullifies the need for textual criticism, lower, and higher. Such people include [[Gail Riplinger]], [[Peter Ruckman]], and others. Many theological organisations, societies, newsletters, and churches also hold to this belief, including "AV Publications", ''Sword of The LORD Newsletter'', The Antioch Bible Society<ref>[http://antiochbiblesociety.org/ Antioch Bible Society]</ref> and others. On the other hand, [[Reformation]] biblical scholars such as [[Martin Luther]] saw the academic analysis of biblical texts and their provenance as entirely in line with orthodox Christian faith.<ref name="Kramm 2009 p. 110">{{cite book | last=Kramm | first=H.H. | title=The Theology of Martin Luther | publisher=Wipf & Stock Publishers | year=2009 | isbn=978-1-60608-765-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=FzBMAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA110 | accessdate=14 May 2017 | page=110}}</ref><ref name="Hendrix 2015 p. 39">{{cite book | last=Hendrix | first=S.H. | title=Martin Luther: Visionary Reformer | publisher=Yale University Press | year=2015 | isbn=978-0-300-16669-9 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=NHKhCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA39 | accessdate=14 May 2017 | page=39}}</ref><ref>Note, however, that Luther did not exclusively advocate for disinterested historical reconstruction of the original text. See {{cite book | last=Evans | first=C.A. | title=The World of Jesus and the Early Church: Identity and Interpretation in Early Communities of Faith | publisher=Hendrickson Publishers | year=2011 | isbn=978-1-59856-825-7 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6sTLA0LRx_cC&pg=PA171 | accessdate=14 May 2017 | page=171}}</ref>
==See also==
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{{reflist}}
[[Category:Textual criticism|*]]
[[Category:New Testament]]
[[Category:Biblical criticism]]
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