James Snapp Jr. wrote a rebuttal to Wallace’s article in four parts. It doesn’t mean they will enter the majority, but it’s a possibility. For example, of 522 complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the General Epistles collated by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Mü… Other examples include when one manuscript has “Jesus Christ”, and another has “Christ Jesus”, with only the order changed. are rather similar to each other, but they are not identical. While the Confessional Position does claim that support, they don’t have it. own personal abilities as text editors, and the principles followed in trying to As you may remember, both Aland and Westcott & Hort had trouble sticking to their rules (except “older is better”). 10 Because of this, the woman is morally obligated to have authority on her head, because of the angels. In fact, it was Roman policy to destroy Biblical manuscripts at one time. That means the only support for the Doctrine of (perfect) Preservation is the tradition of men. Furthermore, manuscripts should be weighed, not counted, and the peculiar traits of each manuscript should be duly considered. a lot of times. The Textus Receptus, In fact, the most common type of Textual Variant is spelling differences, often a single letter, Combined with the ones that aren’t meaningful, you have. The British museum has 694 pages, which is over half the original length. It was a combination of primarily Westcott & Hott’s work, along with two other Greek New Testaments. According to Herman C. Hoskier, there are, without counting errors of iotacism, 3,036 textual variations between Sinaiticus and Vaticanus in the text of the Gospels alone, Assuming that the same ratio of variants persists in the rest of the New Testament and doing the math, that’s ~3434 additional variants, for a total of ~6470 variants between them. Westcott & Hort thought the Byzantine text family resulted from some scribes combining the other two text types to try and get closer to the original document (much like they were doing). A But what about the early versions and the church fathers? Wow, if you’ve stayed to the end I congratulate you on your tenacity. It makes sense, but that doesn’t mean it’s what happened. Not only is the parallel between NT transmissional history and that of Homer striking, it would appear that normal scribal activity and transmissional continuity would preserve in most manuscripts “not only a very ancient text, but, Origen, the Alexandrian church father in the early third century, said, the extant versional manuscripts are virtually triple the extant Greek manuscripts in number. 56 That there are not many ‘A’ ratings (virtual certainty about the original) in the UBS text does not indicate overall uncertainty of reasoned eclectics about the text of the New Testament. Westcott-Hort text as their starting point and departed from it as their Epiphanius (d. 403) supported MT 74% (41% against Alexandrian); You’re copying it down, O Jerusalem, The WEB translation reads: For this cause the woman ought to have authority over her own head, because of the angels. Westcott and F. J. the church If so, then whatever the merits of this viewpoint are—and there are many—it must be stressed that as long as majority text advocates hold this view of preservation, no amount of evidence will convince them that reasoned eclecticism is right, because the majority text view is “a statement of faith.”10 And as Pickering has so clearly articulated, this is not just a presupposition—it is a doctrine.11, In many respects this theological premise is commendable. orthodoxy are entirely One appears to be of mediocre quality, the other of good quality. the oldest forms of the Syriac, in particular the Sinaitic and Curetonian And it means: So, “truth” in the KJV isn’t unwarranted, but hardly the primary meaning. These many Greek texts display a rather close One of the major underpinnings for the Majority Text theory is that scribes will generally choose to copy better manuscripts over worse manuscripts. It’s currently in its 28th edition (as of spring 2020). practically, rather to 48 When it comes to Byzantine readings in the Fathers or in some of the papyri, the evidence will not bear the inference that the Byzantine texttype existed before the fourth century. There’s a closed door between us (so I don’t’ disturb her sleep) so I can’t actually see her in bed. Thy word is true from the beginning: and every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever. Again, Beza’s 1598 text formed much – but definitely not all – of the basis for the KJV. While translations aren’t very useful for deciding the exact wording of Greek, they can be very useful in deciding if certain words, phrases, and/or verses were included. be legitimately described as being regularly Byzantine in text. To dispel the confusion, I’m going to quote from the primary source: the finder’s own account of how he found it. It’s “παρέρχομαι” (parerchomai), just like in Matthew 5:18 which we just looked at. is a more faithful representation of the original form of the Greek New First, we should reiterate that the differences we’re talking about here occur in less than 1% of the New Testament. It is a remarkable fact that the Latin churches do not seem to have retained any memory of this great event in their history. Nevertheless the point is not disturbed. The short version is this. Long = characterized by Scribal “improvement” and expansion. We’ll look more at how we got to the present Greek Critical Text soon. 26 Sometimes it is alleged that there is no ascension of Christ in the Western texts (e.g., Theo. (Eberhard Nestle and Kurt Aland). 28 Zane Hodges is much more cautious in how he weds preservation and majority text (but see Ehrman, “New Testament Textual Criticism: Quest for Methodology,” pp. This introduction to patristic use of Scripture is necessary to underscore the following two points. F.H.A. (You can see one such set of rules here, as part of a longer treatise on the Majority Text.). David Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, argued against miracles on the basis of statistical probability. differ from each other, that 2 For his merciful kindness is great toward us: and the truth of the LORD endureth for ever.