Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peter AT qaya.org>]

On 18/10/2006 18:18, Schmuel wrote:
> ...
>   In contrast, the Greek NT in the great majority of manuscripts was rather 
> homogeneous (the Byzantine Text) with reasonably high copyist standards 
> (although not up to the Masoretic Text).  Only in recent years has there been 
> a tendency to elevate a couple of clearly scribally-deficient texts.  That 
> is, since the late 19th century.  Texts full of scribal blunders became the 
> darlings of the text-critical crowd.  Codex Sinaiticus especially, but also 
> similarly Codex Vaticanus and Codex Bezae come to mind (although the usage of 
> Bezae is less).   Vaticanus and Sinaticus are also at the base of Greek OT 
> (LXX) studies although the Orthodox (Christians with the Byzantine Text) I 
> believe disclaim their individual significance and have their own text.
>
>   
This discussion of NT text criticism is clearly off topic, but it is 
also clearly in error and so I must correct it. I accept that by the 
later Byzantine times copies may have been made to a reasonably high 
standard as well as in large numbers, but this is effectively irrelevant 
because they are copies of a textual tradition which had already become 
seriously corrupt during the Byzantine period, with for example many 
very obvious interpolations and adjustments to make the text correspond 
to Byzantine theology. Just because there are a large number of almost 
identical copies of something, that by no means implies that that 
something is in itself reliable or of high quality. Meanwhile the recent 
(20th rather than 19th century) scholarly text critics base their 
studies and their critical texts of the NT on a rather large selection 
of early manuscripts, not largely on the two or three which you mention. 
In fact the introduction to the standard Nestle-Aland 27th edition lists 
hundreds of papyri and uncials which are "consistently cited witnesses 
of the first order" used as the main basis of their text.

--
Peter Kirk
E-mail:  peter AT qaya.org
Blog:    http://speakertruth.blogspot.com/
Website: http://www.qaya.org/