On Byzantine-Priority Theory Stephen L. Brown Introduction This essay presents a brief introduction to and defense of Byzantine-priority theory, which posits that the original text of the NT is to be found in the consensus of the entire MS tradition.*We adopt here the traditional position on the goal of NT textual criticism: The discovery of the autographic, first-century text of the NT. A full discussion of these matters is beyond the scope of this essay, but it should be clear that scribal innovations or errors are not to be placed on the same level as the written revelation which God gave to the several NT writers. To be sure, a study of the NT MSS as physical artifacts is a fruitful avenue for historical study (see, for example, Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods, pp. 133–141), and individual variation units can shed interesting light on the communities that saw their genesis (for example, the εὐχαριστίας reading in 1 Cor 10:16 is regarded by few as original, but it might assist in reconstructing the history of the Eucharist) or use (consider, for instance, theological reflection in communities with and without the long version of 1 Jn 5:7-8), but these inquiries are of secondary importance. This essay will begin with two observations that point in this direction, briefly explicate Byzantine-priority theory and praxis, respond to certain objections to the theory, and finally point out some apparent deficiencies in the standard model of reasoned eclecticism. Note that a basic familiarity with the field is assumed in the following pages, though an attentive reader should be able to glean much from the discussion.†A good, theologically sound starting point would be Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, supplemented by Köstenberger, Merkle, and Plummer, Going Deeper with New Testament Greek, pp. 24–39 (note that p. 26 might give the impression that Maurice A. Robinson agrees with the “King James Only” movement, which is not the case). A complementary work focusing on theological issues and the reliability of the NT text is J. B. Williams, God’s Word in Our Hands. Observation 1: Scribal Inertia One of the most important factors in the transmission of the NT text is perhaps the least interesting: Scribal inertia.‡This claim runs directly counter to the current trend of treating corruption by orthodox hands as a major factor in the history of the text. We will presently see some arguments in favor of our claim from a Byzantine-priority perspective, but note that other critics of the orthodox corruption theory have written some quality material on the subject from other text-critical perspectives. See, for example, Minnick, “How Much Difference”; Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus; Wallace, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament Text; and Wasserman, “Misquoting Manuscripts?” There are many hundreds of places in the NT where scribes could have been expected to harmonize, clarify, amplify, ensure the orthodox interpretation of, or otherwise emend the text, but apparently none did so, even as great theological controversy beset the early church.§“Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, wrote ... of the prevailing conditions in the second half of the fourth century: 'Everything is full of those who are speaking of unintelligible things—streets, markets, squares, crossroads. I ask how many obili I have to pay; in answer they are philosophizing on the born or unborn; I wish to know the price of bread; one answers: “The Father is greater than the Son”; I inquire whether my bath is ready; one says, “The Son has been made out of nothing”'” (Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 79–80). Indeed, the theological battleground of Col 1:15-20 has astonishingly survived virtually unscathed at the hands of copyists.*That is to say, theological considerations led to few or no alterations in this passage. It is just possible that the addition of the article before ἀρχή in verse 18 (P46, B, 075, 0278, 6, 81, 104, 1175, 1739, 1881) is an attempt to preclude the interpretation that Jesus was one primordial element among others, but more likely it is an inadvertent error based on the articular nouns which precede ἀρχή. The omission of ἐκ (P46, א*, Irenlat pt) later in the verse could be intended to make Jesus ruler over and not first from among the dead, but such an emendation would be irrelevant to the question of Jesus' eternality, and it is likely a mere scribal recollection of Rev 1:5 (as found in many MSS). Other units of variation are even less likely to be theologically motivated. Remarkably, NA28 records no variation concerning Col 1:15. Similarly, most scribes seem to have borrowed readings from MSS other than their exemplar only rarely.†See the footnote in Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, p. ii. Then too, excepting perhaps very small fragments, any two MSS, even if they originated in widely divergent regions and eras, will agree on the vast majority of their readings.[g] Furthermore, based on full collations in John 18[h] and Jude,*Wasserman, The Epistle of Jude. we can see that most minority readings are present in a small handful of MSS (see Tables 1 and 2).[j] These data suggest that when errors came into existence, scribes did not generally circulate them widely.[k] All these observations dovetail with the difficult conditions under which NT scribes worked[l] and other practical factors.*Payment was based on the amount of the text copied and “the quality of the script” (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 71), meaning that scribes would naturally focus their energies on speed and aesthetics, not semantics, such that departures from an exemplar would generally entail clerical errors rather than theological or stylistic refinements. In short, scribes normally did little beyond copying the text that lay in front of them. So far from recognizing this principle, NT textual criticism as normally practiced in recent history has stood athwart it. Bruce M. Metzger's textual commentary on the NT†Metzger, Textual Commentary. has tended to be the first and last resource for inquiry into text-critical matters for both students and scholars, and this commentary brims with claims or assumptions that scribes deliberately altered the text.[o] These claims and assumptions often involve a strained sort of psychoanalysis.§To supply just a few examples, in Jn 5:2 a reading is thought to have been “introduced because of its edifying etymology” (Metzger, Textual Commentary, p. 178), even as few NT scribes were likely to be aware of this (non-Greek) etymology. In Acts 13:31, the supposedly errant absence of νῦν is “accounted for either because it was regarded as unnecessary, or because the apostles not only now first, but for a long time past, were witnesses” even though “in similar passages (2.32; 3.15; 5.32; 10.39) it is not read (even as a variant reading)” (ibid., p. 361).
Troubling, too, is the sort of logic that led to this comment on the competing readings πιστεύητε and πιστεύσητε in Jn 20:31: “The aorist tense, strictly interpreted, suggests that the Fourth Gospel was addressed to non-Christians so that they might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah; the present tense suggests that the aim of the writer was to strengthen the faith of those who already believe ('that you may continue to believe'). In view of the difficulty of choosing between the readings by assessing the supposed purpose of the Evangelist ... the Committee considered it preferable to represent both readings [!] by enclosing σ within square brackets” (ibid., pp. 219–220). Such thinking has begun to lead to the circulation of NT editions and translations characterized by peculiar and improbable readings.*For example, the reading ὀργισθεὶς in Mk 1:41 is becoming increasingly popular. This reading is attested only by a few witnesses, all of them Western (D, a, ff2, r1*). As P. J. Williams demonstrates, this reading is (in the script that saw wide use in early MSS) similar enough graphically to the majority reading σπλαγχνισθεὶς to have arisen from it by mistake, and it is a stretch to imagine that ὀργισθεὶς was original, but there just happened to be a word like σπλαγχνισθεὶς available which shared several of the visual features of ὀργισθεὶς and also turned out to be even more fitting to the context (P. J. Williams, “An Examination of Ehrman's Case for ὀργισθεὶς in Mark 1:41,” pp. 6–8). Further argumentation on internal grounds can be found in the rest of Williams's article. An extensive treatment of the external evidence can be found in Lorenz, “Counting Witnesses for the Angry Jesus in Mark 1:41.”
Another example appears in 2 Pet 3:10, where the reading οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται is extremely unlikely to be authentic to Peter on external grounds. The extant support for this reading is entirely versional (syp, syh mss, sa, cvvid); it might never have existed in the Greek language. Translators are generally eager to produce something intelligible and might have resorted to conjectural emendation, given the great difficulty inherent in the reading εὑρεθήσεται that was likely known to them (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg). However intriguing it is to imagine centuries of inventive scribes and a NT text at which these men took umbrage, such a scenario has little connection to reality. Certainly, scribes did occasionally overthink, and the original text of the NT does possess some linguistic, literary, and exegetical puzzles. But to the extent that we can correctly characterize the scribal tradition as slow to emend, individual emendations can be assumed largely to have remained in the direct descendants of the MS affected.†Different, of course, is the matter of unintentional error: Oversights common to scribes in general will at times make appearances in independent lines of transmission, likely as not in more than one locale; Trovato describes these as “polygenetic errors” (Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method, pp. 52–57). But given the substantial number of lines of transmission for the NT (see §3), it is unlikely that even an error of this nature would wholly overwhelm the MS tradition or reduce support for the true reading to a handful of extant MSS. Observation 2: Multiple Lines of Transmission This brings us to another vital matter: Scribal inertia is particularly important to NT textual criticism because the NT text exists in a plurality of largely independent lines of transmission. A reading which sees widespread distribution in the MS tradition has in all likelihood attained this status because of its originality, while a reading with a limited presence is, by the same token, probably only a scribal misstep. We have already seen that borrowing happened only on a limited scale, but there are a number of other related points to consider. For one thing, most or all books of the NT propagated their texts through multiple lines of transmission virtually from the moment of their release to the public. The book of 1 Peter provides one of the clearest examples of this phenomenon. According to 1:1, the letter was sent to a large number of churches (Peter addresses himself to several regions of Asia Minor, each of which would have contained a plurality of churches by that time). As Silvanus (5:12) made the rounds, he either brought with him an appropriate number of copies of the autograph, or he lent the autograph to a local copyist in each case. Presumably, a similar practice was used for 2 Peter, James, Revelation, and quite possibly for 1, 2, and 3 John and Jude. Matthew, Mark, and John likely saw their distribution commence much in the manner of classical literature generally: The author announced the completion of his work, possibly read it aloud (in this context, the reading would surely have taken place in a church setting), and allowed various learned friends to borrow, copy, and promote it. Luke and Acts were probably open letters, seeing a similar method of initial circulation with the added benefit of a wealthy and influential patron (Theophilus). Admittedly, the case is less certain with respect to those books which had their genesis in private correspondence (most or all of the Pauline epistles). Many or all of these books, however, seem with little appreciable interval to have been recognized as canonical and normative for the Christian faith.[s] For another thing, numerous transmissional lines can be identified from surviving MSS. Such is evident upon a perusal of the MS tradition,§“The number of corruptions in the earliest manuscripts indicates that during the first several centuries these texts were widely circulated and frequently copied and that Christian books were not reproduced under tightly controlled conditions” (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 74). and recent computer-assisted analyses of collation data have allowed for identification of textual clusters with a degree of precision not hitherto achievable.[u] While the traditional generalization that NT MSS fall into one of three or four categories (Alexandrian, Western, Byzantine, and possibly Caesarean) is not without value, the analyses just mentioned have suggested that one ought to take into account a significantly larger number of MS families. The Byzantine texttype in particular can be broken up into a number of groups, showing it to be anything but monolithic. Indeed, some of the clusters, having been isolated solely on the basis of readings, contain MSS of such geographic diversity that they themselves might be comprised of a number of independent lines of textual tradition. The vast temporal and spatial separation that exists among Byzantine MSS suggests that the Byzantine texttype does not speak with one voice, but rather represents the essential agreement of numerous sources whose shared ancestor goes back to antiquity. Readings on which the Byzantine MSS substantially agree cannot quickly be set aside.†One might argue that so many MSS have been lost to history that the data sample provided by extant MSS is scarcely representative of what once existed. But probably only about one in ten Christians in the early centuries was literate (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 10), let alone wealthy enough to procure a copy of the NT (especially during times of persecution). Moreover, examples of early congregational libraries known to history (ibid., pp. 145–150) indicate that ancient churches valued scriptural MSS, yet possessed few of them. One library from the fourth century, for example, contained several volumes, but apparently only the four gospels and Acts from the NT (ibid., p. 149). So important a city as Rome, though populated by an unusually large concentration of Christians, saw for the most part a poor Christianity, unlikely to have owned or sponsored the production of a vast quantity of MSS; compare Jensen et al., “Italy and Environs,” pp. 392–395.
True, the number of lost MSS can be supposed to be larger than the number of extant MSS, given the paucity of extant exemplars for extant MSS. But the general scribal disinclination to do other than copy offers assurance that lost exemplars of extant MSS were not substantially different from their children. Some patristic sources mention non-Byzantine readings found in most MSS, but given the difficulties of ancient travel, it is unlikely that such assessments can be expected to reflect more than a given church father's immediate locale. In short, the number of MSS that have disappeared forever (and most notably those descending from an exemplar the text of which has not been basically perpetuated in some extant MS) is surely not so high as to render negligible the extant evidence. Indeed, if one theorizes that many of the MSS from the eighth through eleventh centuries (see §5.3) represent exemplars from the seventh and earlier centuries with general accuracy, then one can safely claim access to a genuinely informative sample of the MSS in circulation in the early centuries. Thus, while a reading attested by only a narrow majority of lines of transmission might not have been wholly dominant among the earliest MSS (the present approach will posit that internal and other criteria need to be applied in these cases), a reading with support from very few transmissional lines probably never represented a widespread lectio Byzantine-priority Theory and Praxis In light of factors like the foregoing, one ought not to overlook the fact that there is for the NT text a main stream of transmission (generally called “the Byzantine texttype” or “the Byzantine textform”) that can be readily seen to reflect the autographic text where its members are in principal agreement.[w] It is worth quoting Maurice A. Robinson at length here: The Byzantine Textform preserves with a general consistency the type of New Testament text that dominated the Greek-speaking world. This dominance existed from at least the fourth century until the invention of printing in the sixteenth century. Under the present theory, this text is also presumed in centuries prior to the fourth to have dominated the primary Greek-speaking region of the Roman Empire (southern Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor)—a large and diverse region within which manuscript, versional, and patristic evidence is lacking during the pre-fourth century era, yet the primary region of Byzantine Textform dominance in subsequent centuries. From a transmissional standpoint, a single Textform would be expected to predominate among the vast majority of manuscripts in the absence of radical and well-documented upheavals in the manuscript tradition. This “normal” state of transmission presumes that the aggregate consentient testimony of the extant manuscript base is more likely to reflect its archetypal source (in this case the canonical autographs) than any single manuscript, small group of manuscripts, or isolated versional or patristic readings that failed to achieve widespread diversity or transmissional continuity. In support of this presumption is the fact that a consensus text—even when established from manuscripts representing non-dominant transmissional lines—tends to move toward rather than away from the dominant tradition.[x] Byzantine-priority theory posits that the Byzantine texttype is to be equated with the autographic text, and that it necessarily claims priority over all rival forms of the text. Rival forms of the text can plausibly be explained as localized phenomena characterized by common scribal failings at various points[y] mixed with occasional text-critical emendation,[z] interpolation,‡For example, the TR has the following reading at Acts 8:37: Εἶπεν δὲ ὁ Φίλιππος· Εἰ πιστεύεις ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας, ἔξεστιν. Ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ εἶπεν· Πιστεύω τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι τὸν Ἰησοῦν χριστόν. The NA28 apparatus lists the majority of MSS as omitting the verse in its entirety, and of the few that are cited as including it, not one is cited as preserving the form of the verse as found in the TR. Even slimmer is the support for the long addition following πνεῦμα in Acts 8:39 (ἅγιον ἐπέπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸν εὐνούχον, ἄγγελος δὲ), which the TR does not contain. Moreover, the only Greek-language MS cited by NA28 that contains some form of verse 37, but not the addition in verse 39, is E. A combination of readings even close to that found in the TR at Acts 8:37-39, then, exists in no Greek-language MS mentioned by NA28; at best, it is preserved in one Egyptian version (an irony, given the aversion of many TR advocates to Egyptian sources) and possibly (to argue from silence) two patristic sources. Moreover, TR advocates ask their readers and auditors to believe that (with the partial exception of E and the possible exceptions of an Egyptian version and one or two patristic sources) the few MSS that somehow resisted the urge to excise verse 37 are precisely the few MSS that gave into an urge to insert a substantial amount of material into verse 39. Such is a tall order. There is no more reason for many scribes to have dropped this passage if it was original than there is for many scribes to have objected to Eph 2:8-9, 1 Cor 1:16, or, for that matter, Mk 16:16, so its absence from a huge and diverse array of witnesses is inexplicable apart from its being a later interpolation. paraphrase,[bb] attempts to copy something sensible from a poorly-written or damaged exemplar,[cc] and sundry other alterations, generally limited to a small minority of witnesses. Byzantine-priority praxis can be summarized thus: Whenever a reading can claim support from an overwhelming proportion of known transmissional lines,[dd] no other reading can plausibly be accepted.‡For instance, Mk 16:9-20 is found in the vast majority of MSS and under the present theory must be accepted. For a lengthy defense of this passage on a variety of grounds, see Lunn, The Original Ending of Mark. When the previous situation does not obtain, it is necessary to make recourse to a careful study of readings that compete for dominance, taking into account such matters as geographic diversity, authorial style, and scribal habits.§In Gal 5:4, von Soden records about 43% of the Κ group as reading ἐξεπέσατε, while the remaining 57% (including Κc and Κr) read ἐξεπέσετε. The Κc group seems to be fairly small, and the Κr group is predominantly late; the external evidence is thus not as imbalanced as it might first appear. The aorist tense-form fits the context well, while the present tense-form can be explained as an assimilation to the present tense-form immediately preceding, a failing due to the sequence epsilon-consonant-epsilon-consonant-epsilon-consonant immediately following the letter in question, or both. Defending the Byzantine Texttype The theory just outlined involves the rejection of many readings long preferred by critics and the acceptance of many readings long condemned as secondary. This observation leads us to offer a reappraisal of the basic arguments used against the Byzantine texttype. These arguments are the following: (1) The Byzantine MSS stem from a secondary source or process; (2) they simply were the only MSS available to scribes when Christianity was legalized; (3) their late dates negate their value; and (4) internal evidence favors competing readings. We will address these issues in turn. The Byzantine Texttype as a Secondary Source or Process There have been two basic explanations advanced in an attempt to reduce the extremely large class of Byzantine witnesses to one or a few witnesses (of limited value). In what follows, we will briefly respond to these arguments. Explanation 1: Syrian Recension Westcott and Hort supposed the Byzantine MSS to be the descendants of a mid-fourth century recension done in Syria.*Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, Vol. 2, pp. 132–139. Their only historical argument was a guarded suggestion that Lucian was responsible, on the basis that Jerome had charged Lucian with producing a recension of the LXX.[hh] But Jerome never said that Lucian produced a recension of the NT, and Lucianic MSS of the LXX have been found at Qumran, casting much doubt on Jerome's accusations.‡See Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, p. 58 and Jobes and Silva, Invitation, pp. 54–55, 283. On a similar note, only one major effort in late antiquity by Greek-speaking authorities to promulgate a particular form of the NT text has been documented, and this effort, led by Marcion, failed to perpetuate itself.[jj] The historical case for a recensional origin of the Byzantine texttype is weak. Just as weak is the internal case for a recensional origin. Arguments that an ancient recension of the NT would have included harmonizations, conflations, and smooth readings, as the Byzantine texttype is said to,[kk] amount only to speculation.[ll] What is known about ancient recensional activity points rather to the Alexandrian, and perhaps Western, texttypes, as bearing traces of secondary readings;[mm] the Byzantine texttype looks decidedly unlike any known form of ancient Greek recension. There are, moreover, readings in the Byzantine texttype that hardly reflect a bent towards an easy[nn] or uniform[oo] text even if such a bent could be said to have existed among Christians sufficiently learned, wealthy, and influential enough to promote a recension so successfully.†Cf. Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, pp. 576–578. Explanation 2: Byzantine Evolution Recent scholarship has favored the idea that the Byzantine texttype is the end result of an anonymous process, a product of textual evolution. But the principle of scribal inertia that we noticed above speaks against this theory: No theological, stylistic, or other trend seems to have led scribes to depart from their exemplars apart from scattered lapses of attention. Put simply, large numbers of scribes generally do not share erroneous readings. Moreover, in light of the existence of a plurality of transmissional lines, evolutionary developments would mainly afflict only a portion of the MS transmission, not the great majority. Assuredly, to suppose that some exemplars were copied more often than others is hardly to make an improbable claim. But for all the importance of Constantinople, neither this city nor any other seems to have been a holy site to which individuals would travel to procure a copy of a single, venerated exemplar.[qq] A survey of monastic and other copying sites will show that NT copying was a decentralized phenomenon. There is no reason, then, to dismiss the mass of more or less Byzantine MSS as simply many copies of a faulty source, though of course the independence of testimony offered in the consensus of a textual cluster is more important than the number of MSS contained within it. The Byzantine Texttype as the Last Surviving Text One theory is that the Byzantine texttype gained dominance in the fourth century because it was the “last man standing”: The persecutions that raged against Christians up to the time of Constantine destroyed most Greek-language MSS, and when Christianity was legalized, the texttype that happened to have survived and to have subsequently perpetuated itself through copying was a secondary (and presumably localized) one, the Byzantine. However, it does not appear that the persecutions were so severe as to leave only an infinitesimal remnant. So widespread a destruction would have been very difficult, given the geographical lengths to which the original form of the text (or something very close to it) would have spread by the early fourth century—locales as diverse as, say, Rome,[rr] Corinth, Antioch, Ephesus, Caesarea in Palestine, and Caesarea in Cappadocia. Note the significance of this last place in particular: The ancient underground cities of Cappadocia[ss] became places of refuge for many Christians. It appears that the Christians who fled there were well-supplied, so among their possessions must have been copies of the NT, copies which left these cities when the danger passed. One of the more heated early Christian controversies was the Donatist, and this controversy presupposes that only so many Christians cooperated with the authorities in the destruction of Christian texts. If more than tiny fragments of the MS tradition survived, then one is faced with the improbable theory that persecutors largely destroyed MSS bearing a certain form of the text. The imperial authorities and local opponents of Christianity surely knew little or cared little about units of variation in the NT.†Compare Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, pp. 572–574. In short, the theory of early persecution is an inadequate account of the dominant position of the Byzantine varieties of the text within the MS tradition as a whole.‡The Κr or f 35 group occupies a substantial proportion of MSS after the year 1204 (the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders), so much so that much of this dominance might stem from Κr MSS happening to survive in greater number than other types of MSS in the latter days of the Byzantine empire (though we suppose that this group existed well before that date). This proposal, however, is quite different from that which seeks to explain the origin of the Byzantine texttype on the basis of persecution in the first few centuries. After the battle of Manzikert in 1071, and particularly after the sack of Constantinople just mentioned, the Byzantine empire, and with it the Greek-speaking world, was increasingly reduced to a beleaguered rump state; by 1453 it had been all but totally consigned to the fires of destruction. Places like Egypt, Syria, and Italy had long ago passed from Byzantine political control and, more importantly, ceased to use Greek to any appreciable extent; these regions had set off on a course of their own, and to posit the rise to prominence of a textual cluster containing secondary readings in so shrunken a society is nothing strange. The same cannot be said for the claim that the Alexandrian text, Western text, or some hybrid apparent in no extant MS (see §6.2) disappeared from practically the whole Mediterranean world, leaving a previously obscure texttype to dominate the scene. The large degree to which readings of the Byzantine texttype appear in non-Byzantine witnesses also speaks against the texttype merely being a broad development from what was originally a purely local text. There are few Byzantine texttype readings that are especially difficult or peculiar in comparison to distinctively Alexandrian and Western readings; a text derived from a single exemplar other than the autograph would naturally contain various oddities.[vv] Finally, we shall see that the Byzantine empire faced multiple periods of upheaval in which many MSS and MS repositories were lost. Yet minuscules that date to relatively late phases of Byzantine history essentially echo the earliest sorts of text found within the Byzantine realm (Basil of Caesarea,*Racine, The Text of Matthew in the Writings of Basil of Caesarea. The author shows that the earliest patristic source that can be properly classified as “Byzantine” is Basil of Caesarea (c. 330—379). See also Robinson, “Rule 9,” p. 55. Chrysostom of Antioch,[xx] and the Gothic version[yy] ). If the Byzantine texttype of the fourth and later centuries survived into the later phases of the Byzantine empire, then it seems reasonable to suppose that the original text of the NT survived the first few centuries of its existence.[zz] Manuscript Age All other things being equal, an early MS has a greater claim on accuracy than a late one. But qualifications are in order: A late MS might stem from an early, well-done exemplar,[] while an early MS might come from a long chain of copies or from a MS marred by recensional activity, sloppy or inexact copying, or an attempt to wrench sensibility from a heavily damaged or poorly written exemplar.[] Then too, it seems normal for many textual variants to appear early in the life of a well-received document, so that as long as various lines of transmission come to be perpetuated, the age of a reading by itself proves little.‡Such seems to be the case with the LXX, Cato, Virgil, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache. This phenomenon is not restricted to antiquity: Take, for example, the texts of the Talmud, Ramban, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, and so recent a work as The Lord of the Rings.
An important factor here is the author's loss of control over a published text. The problems associated with this loss of control have plagued authors (and their initial publishers) down to the modern era. An extreme example (if it is not apocryphal) is that Rashi, convinced that his commentaries needed thorough revision, destroyed his own copies of his books but was unable to prevent the copies that had left his presence from not only being read but coming to undergird much of modern Judaism. Thus, MS age cannot have the final say.§This principle has generally been recognized by classical and secular critics. See for example, Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method, pp. 125–128; Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 217–218; and Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism, pp. 25–28. Note also that Westcott and Hort believed the late Byzantine MSS to be, on the whole, an accurate reflection of an early text (Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, Vol. 2, p. 92). Compare, too, Scrivener, Full and Exact Collation, pp. lxvii–lxviii. In the case of the NT, we have a number of relatively early MSS*P52 is probably the oldest MS, generally thought to date to approximately 150 AD. Not only is this date uncertain, but several decades (perhaps even a century or more) likely still separate this MS from the autograph, especially if the gospel of John predates the destruction of the Second Temple. and a much larger number of MSS from the ninth century and onward. Those of the early MSS that are Alexandrian are subject to two criticisms: They seem to reflect recensional activity,[] and they seem largely to reflect regional phenomena. Those of the early MSS that are not Alexandrian attest to an early diversity, though not to chaos,[] in the early MS tradition. The later, largely Byzantine MSS are not subject to either objection. Why is it that the early MSS largely come from a distinct textual group not well represented in later MSS? Climate is a major factor: Almost no MS of any document, secular or biblical, survives to the present, except in Egypt (apart from clay and other especially durable writing surfaces, not generally utilized as a channel of transmission for the NT text).§“The ancient historian would have very little in the way of [documentary evidence] at all, if it were not for the sands of Egypt ... [B]ecause of the dryness of the land that was where almost all of it has been preserved” (Hooper, Roman Realities, p. 556). There the dry climate vastly extends the life of written material. The difference of climate between Egypt and the larger Mediterranean world, of course, reflects geography; the geographic isolation of Egypt would naturally lead to a recognizably local form of the text developing over time, especially as the breakdown of the Roman Empire reduced the feasibility of long-distance travel and trade. Another factor is historical. After the Islamic conquest, Egypt became for centuries a rather stagnant, uneventful place, standing in marked contrast to the Levant, Asia Minor, Greece, the Balklands, and Italy. In those lands centuries of persecution, plague, warfare, and civil unrest hindered those interested in propagating the NT text (in any case, an arduous business prior to the introduction of printing), so much so that for a period of time there was “a near cessation of copying manuscripts.”*Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 396; compare Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 230. (Note, however, that not all lost MSS were burned; a common fate for old MSS in late antiquity was re-use, especially in receding economies.†See, for example, Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 397. There is no reason to suppose, as some defenders of the TR do, that any of these lost MSS mirrored the TR precisely, nor does the argument that the best MSS were worn out from over-use commend itself. ) The sack of Constantinople in 1204 was particularly devastating to the world of literature,[] and while not all MSS from the first few centuries were lost in this event, no doubt many copies of important exemplars were. The relative uniqueness of the early MSS stems in part from the loss of most early representatives of the texttype reflected in the majority of MSS. But do the late Byzantine MSS constitute the end of a long line of copying events, each of which introduced new errors? No scribe is perfect; a judicious comparison of a range of MSS is necessary in any case to eliminate errors.[] The main point to notice in this connection is that fewer transmissional steps than might be supposed seem to lie between many an unexceptional Byzantine MS and the autograph. Byzantine societal interest in the written page waxed and waned throughout the centuries.* For a brief introduction to these fluctuations in literary activity, see Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, especially pp. 116–126, 179–187, 230–233, 291–298, 361–371. At times, pressing circumstances put most scribal work in an area or across most of the empire on hold: The horrific plagues from 542–544†“By the spring of 542, the plague spread to most of the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, among them Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople. As the largest city, Constantinople had a particularly terrible epidemic, aggravated by a breakdown of arrangements for the food supply. The authorities are said to have counted 230,000 dead, which probably would have been well over half the population. The plague killed many government officials” (Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 196) and 558 surely killed many scribes,[] and the chaos of the Byzantine dark age curtailed literary activity for several centuries, meaning in this case that many ninth-century minuscules, copied as the Greek-speaking world emerged from that crisis, are likely copies of MSS from several centuries earlier.§Among the MSS preserved at Herculaneum, “some [were] 120 to 160 years old when Vesuvius erupted,” and some were a century or two older (Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, p. 121). This situation does not seem to have been unusual. Compare also this statement by Warren Treadgold: “Byzantium's dark age was much less dark than that of the contemporary West. Although because of shrinking readership few new manuscripts needed to be copied, most old manuscripts were preserved in the libraries of Constantinople until the following period. The Byzantines continued to possess almost every literary work that they had known [prior to the dark age]” (Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 402). Thus there is every reason to suppose that very many Byzantine MSS from the ninth through twelfth centuries are copies of MSS predating the onset of the Byzantine dark age. Byzantine MS copying was, in other words, spasmodic. New MSS were not continually produced from the latest generation of exemplars, but rather spurts of activity would motivate scribes to dust off and work with the old volumes of yesteryear. Furthermore, many Byzantine MSS were likely to have been made from exemplars significantly earlier than themselves when the format of these exemplars had become obsolete.*Compare Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 35, 60. What is truly vital is not so much how old a MS happens to be, but where the text of that MS fits within a larger history of transmission. All readings that are not clearly polygenetic ought to be accounted for on stemmatic grounds.[] Even a glance at the diversity behind a few of the oldest Byzantine witnesses (codices A and W,‡Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace suggest the block mixture of codex W to be a symptom of persecution, Christians being left with only tatters from which to collect complete NT texts (Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, p. 276). Perhaps the locale in which W was copied might have suffered more than most locales did, but whatever led to its unique nature must not have been operative in many other places; otherwise, many or most MSS would exhibit a similar sort of mixture. the Gothic version, Chrysostom, and Basil of Caesarea) begs the conclusion that this form of the text predates the fourth century. Furthermore, the existence and nature of the MSS of the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries cannot convincingly be accounted for apart from the early existence of the Byzantine texttype.§There are certainly other hints about an early Byzantine texttype. For example, there is evidence from MS comparison efforts that Jerome used and highly regarded as ancient some Byzantine MSS of the Gospels; see Finney, “Varieties,” pp. 89–90. Thomas of Harkel, meanwhile, whose translation shares many readings and patterns of readings with the textual families 1216 and Λ, described the MSS he used as “renowned for their accuracy,” even as he worked in Egypt and presumably had access to Alexandrian MSS (CSPMT news post dated February 28, 2016; url: http://cspmt.org/). There is also the possibility that P28 is more or less Byzantine, being apparently a close relative of N. Bear in mind that not much rises or falls on any of these suggestions; the decisive question is how the text found in the undeniably Byzantine MSS is to be explained. Internal Evidence Internal evidence principally concerns the identification of readings more likely to be original on the grounds of (1) intrinsic probability, which considers what the author is most likely to have written, given his style, the context of the variant, and so on; and (2) transcriptional probability, which considers how scribes were most likely to change the text they were copying.*This essay by no means aims to offer full bibliographic information, but one source deserves special mention: Worthington, Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism, pp. 44–63 offers a clear yet nuanced discussion of internal evidence as it relates to a different branch of textual criticism. Both lines of evidence have been thought to support a basically Alexandrian text. In fact, neither does. Intrinsic Probability Take the first kind of internal evidence mentioned, intrinsic evidence. A few examples will show that the Byzantine texttype is not to be summarily dismissed on intrinsic grounds: In Mat 8:28, Mk 5:1, and Lk 8:26 the sequence of readings found in many editions is Γαδαρηνῶν, Γερασηνῶν, and Γερασηνῶν, respectively, while the Byzantine reading in these three places is Γεργεσηνῶν, Γαδαρηνῶν, and Γαδαρηνῶν. Of these Γεργεσηνῶν is probably the only plausible term to use if a very specific locale is intended,†See Edwards, Mark on Mk 5:1. and it seems reasonable to suppose that the author of Matthew, writing more than any other gospel writer with a Jewish audience in mind, would be the one most likely to employ great specificity on geography in the Levant. Γερασηνῶν implies an improbable location,[] while Γαδαρηνῶν refers to an important city in its area§Kitto and Alexander, A Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, p. 51. and so would provide a convenient point of reference for readers less familiar with the area, as Mark's and Luke's intended audiences likely were. In Lk 2:14, the Byzantine reading is εὐδοκία, while the minority reading found in most critical texts is εὐδοκίας. The Hebrew-language phrases discovered at Qumran sometimes adduced in favor of the minority reading do not support it strongly, for they all include a third-person singular possessive suffix, and such would surely have been reflected in translation. James R. Edwards notes that “the word for 'favor' (Gr. eudokia, eudokein) means God's saving pleasure rather than humanity's good will whenever used in Luke (2:14; 3:22; 10:21; 12:32).”*Edwards, Luke, p. 79, emphasis original. Edwards takes this usage to support the minority reading, viewing the Byzantine as ascribing the goodwill to certain men. Yet the opposite seems to be true: For the genitive εὐδοκίας to be understood as referring to God's election and not to the moral character of the men in question would seem to require some mark of specificity (τῆς εὐδοκίας, or better τῆς εὐδοκίας αὐτοῦ); εὐδοκία, however, is naturally parallel to εἰρήνη, which item (1) is itself parallel to δόξα (θεῷ), something man's efforts cannot achieve,[] and (2) comes from God's intervention, not man's, as the whole tenor of Luke's infancy narrative indicates (see especially 1:46-55, 66-79). Intrinsic evidence, then, favors the Byzantine reading. Concerning the Byzantine inclusion of Acts 28:29, observe that every time Luke records a discourse of Paul, he also notices the reaction of the auditors (Acts 13:42, 48, 14:18-19, 17:32, 20:37-38, 22:22, 25:12, 26:24-32) with the possible exception of the discourse of 24:10-21 (but even there note verse 25). Thus from a stylistic perspective it seems more likely that Luke would record a reaction here than that he would not. The exact wording of the present verse is not lifted from any known source, and its very uniqueness is of a piece with the other reactions, none of which is verbally identical to another or to this verse. Furthermore, the verse looks Lukan: Forms of συζητέω and συζήτησις are rare in the NT as a whole, but occur several times in Luke-Acts. In 1 Cor 14:21, the majority reading (P46, Ds, F, G, K, L, P, 365, 630, 1175, 1505, 1881, Byz, lat, (sy p), co, Mcion[E]) is ἑτέροις, while the minority reading (א, A, B, Ψ, 0201, 0243, 6, 33, 81, 104, 326, 1241, 1739, 2464) is ἑτέρων. Paul is here quoting from Is 28:11, and a glance at the Hebrew[] there will verify the majority reading.§The Byzantine MSS are not merely importing wording from the LXX, for that translation, although reflecting the same text as the Masoretic text, translates differently than Paul does.
The text of the OT supports the Byzantine texttype in other cases as well, even as one rightly sets criteria for the relevance of OT citations (the OT text needs to be without major variants, and one should be reasonably sure that the variant or variants apparently at odds with the OT wording are not merely paraphrastic or interpretive renderings of the same Hebrew or Aramaic text). In both Mat 22:44 and Mk 12:36, Ps 110:1 supports the reading ὑποπόδιον rather than ὑποκάτω. Notice that the graphic difference between these two readings is slight, the two readings beginning with the same letters and having approximately the same number of letters; the ὑποκάτω reading surely originated as a transcriptional error for ὑποπόδιον. Similar is Heb 12:26, the participle in Hag 2:6 supporting σείω rather than σείσω. Now, any one of these instances might perhaps be explained as paraphrase or something related, but taken together they point strongly to the originality of the Byzantine texttype. Cf. also Mat 2:18 (= Jer 31:15; cf. the comments at tcgnt.blogspot.com), Rom 15:11 (= Ps 117:1), 1 Cor 15:55 (= Hos 13:14), 2 Cor 6:16 (= Lev 26:12), and Heb 3:9 (= Ps 95:9). (Jewish hermeneutical practices explain the rendering of Ps 69:25 found in Acts 1:20, what is true of a group, traitors, being true of an individual, Judas, typical of that group.) A few MSS of Eph 1:1 (P46, א*, B*, 6, 1739, (Mcion[T, E]) omit ἐν Ἐφέσῳ. Because of the importance modern textual criticism has traditionally attached to some of these MSS, many editors and commentators have dismissed ἐν Ἐφέσῳ as inauthentic (or at least open to suspicion). Yet Black, in defense of the inclusion, notes that “2 Corinthians, Galatians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians all lack personal greetings, yet all were written to congregations founded by Paul, as was the church at Ephesus. On the other hand, the Epistle to the Romans has more greetings than any other epistle of Paul, yet this church was not founded by the apostle ... In other words, it seems that the better Paul knew a church to which he was writing the fewer personal greetings he included.”[] Eadie's commentary agrees, stating that “Paul's long years of labour at Ephesus must have made him acquainted with so many Christian people there, that their very number may have prevented him from sending any salutation.”†Eadie, Ephesians, p. xxx. Of course, one must take careful note of the limitations of intrinsic evidence. First, there is often a lack of scholarly agreement as to which reading intrinsic evidence supports;[] all must agree that intrinsic evidence is not always easy to assess. Some elements of the Greek language, in fact, might be too subtle for internal evidence in and of itself to highlight the right reading.§The Greek article might best be included in this category; statements about its subtlety are commonplace in grammars, and it is often described as little understood, especially in its application to proper names. For this reason, caution must be used with respect to the text-critical findings of Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (Middleton, Doctrine of the Greek Article), though a perusal of Middleton's notes of Matthew shows that he favors the Byzantine reading in cases concerning the presence or absence of the article about 88% of the time. The situation might be similar with the much-disputed topic of verbal aspect. Second, authorial style is variable.*For instance, Maximilian Zerwick notices that “[t]he particle τε occurs eight times in St Luke's gospel, and 158 times in his Acts. This huge disproportion is noteworthy; for since the particle in question is ... one which the author, had he wished, might again and again have used instead of καὶ, the enormous difference of frequency between the same author's two works cannot be explained as due to the subject matter as such, but must be the result of deliberate choice of style” (Zerwick, Biblical Greek, pp. 156–157). Third, ancient scribes could (like modern critics) become overly sensitive to perceived stylistic markers.[] Fourth, those interested in deliberate interpolation would no doubt tend to mimic an author's style.[] Still, intrinsic evidence often supports the Byzantine reading. Transcriptional Probability Turning to the second major type of internal evidence, transcriptional probability, we observe that NT scholars have long made certain assumptions about the ways scribes would tend to depart from the text of their exemplars,[] supposing addition, harmonization, conflations, and easier readings generally to characterize scribal error.[] But these assumptions amount to little more than guesswork.†“[N]o specific reading of a manuscript is cited anywhere within [J. J.] Greisbach's [seminal] Prolegomena ... [this] makes it difficult (if not impossible) for later students to know what exactly he would have considered as evidence, to check the evidence upon which his statements rest, or to revise his statements in the light of new evidence” (Royse, Scribal Habits, p. 5, emphasis original). A better approach lies in the use of singular and sub-singular readings.[] These readings, most scholars agree, are much more likely to be errors than to be original. Several NT textual critics have studied several thousand singular readings between them,[] with similar results: Scribes omit somewhat more often than they add (transcriptional error only accounting for around a third of these omissions),[] disharmonize more than twice as often as they harmonize,[] and make the style and / or sense harder vastly more often than they make it easier.[] This last statistic especially stands to reason, inasmuch as the principle of scribal inertia suggests that most variants arose inadvertently, and accidents are more likely to obfuscate than clarify the sense of a written passage.§The minority reading in Rom 8:2 (σε), for instance, is extraordinarily difficult on intrinsic grounds, since the second person is not used in Greek for hypothetical or timeless situations; see Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, pp. 392–393. Wallace claims that σε here is “the use of the singular for the plural ... for the apostle is not making a universal statement, true of believers and unbelievers alike” (ibid., p. 392). It is not clear, however, on what evidence he posits such a usage of the singular for the plural, or what bearing the grammatical number of this word has on the question of whether unbelievers are being spoken of. The exegete should probably not overwork himself on σε. The reading με makes excellent sense, for the first person singular can be used of hypothetical or timeless situations (ibid., pp. 391–392), and the first person figures prominently in the latter part of chapter seven (note that ἄρα in verse 1 explicitly connects the present passage with the previous one). The reading με is well supported, and σε might be an error influenced by the -σέ- of ἠλευθέρωσέν (especially if the moveable nu was not present in an early exemplar; the rules for this linguistic phenomenon do not appear to have been fixed in ancient times, and little collation work has been done on it). Furthermore, the intent of the various writers of Scripture was generally to be understood. The principle of preferring the harder of two or more readings is not to be abandoned altogether: It can be expected that a few perplexing passages in the original text prompted attempts at emendation.*For example, consider Acts 13:20:
Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα, ὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα, ἔδωκεν
D2, E, L, Ψ, 323, 945, 1241, 1505, 1739, Byz
ὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα. Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἔδωκεν
P74, א, A, B, C, 33, 81, 453, 1175, 2818, vg
The majority reading is highly problematic if it is taken to say that the period of the judges lasted for about 450 years, even though (1) the period seems to have been much shorter than that, and (2) the reigns of Saul and David, when added to 450, do not approximate the sum given in 1 Kgs 6:1. It is likely this apparent contradiction that led to emendation. (Other emendations appear in smaller sets of witnesses.) But the majority reading does not have to be taken this way: If one punctuates as above (recall that the original text and early MSS did not have punctuation), one gets the sense “after that, by the space of four hundred fifty years, He gave judges” (Jamieson, Fausset, and D. Brown, New Testament Commentary Volume 1, p. 514), wherein the 450 years refers to the time which elapsed before the period of judges commenced. Luke often uses ὡς as a temporal marker, and while this exact construction does not seem to occur elsewhere in his writings, there is a comparably complex statement in Acts 1:10 (καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ... ). In these passages, however, it seems more reasonable to suppose that a few related witnesses inherited the same error than to say that many scribes independently converged on one and the same alteration.†Take the widely adopted reading εὑρεθήσεται (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg) in 2 Pet 3:10. The sense is extraordinary difficult, and one might argue on precisely that basis that it is original. But why would virtually all scribes (note the geographic spread as well as the huge proportion of the MSS inherent in the support A, 048, 33, 81, 307, 436, 442, 642, 1611, 1739vl, 2344, Byz, vgcl, syp, syh mss vl, syh, Cyr) emend specifically to κατακαήσεται? Why do the MSS not waver between this reading and others like κριθήσεται, ἀπολεῖται, and οὐκ ἔσται? The exceptions prove the rule: Only P72, C, and a few versional witnesses contain attempts to resolve the problem of εὑρεθήσεται (and all of these witnesses have strong connections to those that have εὑρεθήσεται). The εὑρεθήσεται reading might have resulted from a smudge, tear, or case of poor penmanship in the exemplar that gave rise to the Alexandrian texttype: If that reading was original, and if scribes were inclined to emend difficult places, then a welter of competing readings should have arisen. Even when one makes adjustments to the traditional canons, this aspect of internal evidence has its limitations. For example, while wrongful omissions certainly occur frequently, wrongful additions also afflict the MS tradition, and it seems unlikely that textual critics will always be able to predict with justifiable confidence under which circumstances the less common scribal blunder took place.‡P. J. Williams notes, “There are many readings in D and the Old Latin witnesses that are difficult to explain but a great many scribal corruptions follow no pattern and therefore cannot be 'explained'” (Evangelical Textual Criticism blog post dated January 16, 2007; url: evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2007/01/mark-141.html). Most likely, certain non-Western corruptions will be similarly inexplicable. In as complex a matter as NT textual criticism, a theory which gives equally confident and specific answers to every issue might actually be suspect. Yet all in all, considerations of transcriptional probability provide no barrier to a favorable view of the readings of the Byzantine texttype, and tend rather to promote these readings.§A further example is Lk 8:30, where the majority reads Λεγεών rather than Λεγιών. Both forms are ancient, but the form with iota is more “correct,” the Latin word being legio. It seems more likely that a few fastidious scribes emended the form based on their knowledge than that many scribes would move the word away from the Latin form. Many of the earlier Byzantine scribes would have known Latin, so, if anything, one would expect the iota form to be prevalent in the Byzantine tradition. That this is not the case further suggests the originality of the epsilon form and the general trustworthiness of Byzantine scribes. Unpopular Byzantine Readings While a full-scale textual commentary on even a small portion of the NT text is beyond the scope of the present essay, it would be worthwhile briefly to defend four readings long used to condemn the Byzantine texttype wholesale. Mk 1:2
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τοῖς προφήταις A, K, P, W, Γ, f 13, 28, 579, 1424, 2542, Byz, vgms, syh, (bomss), Irenlat τῷ Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ א, B, L, Δ, 33, 565, 892, 1241, syp, syh mg, co, Origpt Ἠσαΐᾳ τῷ προφήτῃ D, Θ, f 1, 700, l844, l2211, Iren, Origpt, Epiph
Witnesses Readings Witnesses Readings 1 560 1578 13 2 164 1579 6 3 87 1580 7 4 64 1581 9 5 45 1582 3 6 32 1583 6 7 30 1584 4 8 23 1585 7 9 19 1586 9 10 11 1587 12 11 8 1588 9 12 9 1589 10 13 7 1590 5 14 12 1591 10 15 7 1592 13 16 6 1593 12 17 8 1594 11 18 5 1595 14 19 4 1596 11 20 6 1597 10 21 6 1598 9 22 4 1599 7 23 4 1600 13 24 5 1601 9 25 6 1602 10
table 2: Frequency table of readings grouped by number of supporting witnesses in Jn 18, based on Morrill's collation. The two peaks of the distribution are detailed here; all other numbers of supporting witnesses correspond to fewer than 10 readings.
a We adopt here the traditional position on the goal of NT textual criticism: The discovery of the autographic, first-century text of the NT. A full discussion of these matters is beyond the scope of this essay, but it should be clear that scribal innovations or errors are not to be placed on the same level as the written revelation which God gave to the several NT writers. To be sure, a study of the NT MSS as physical artifacts is a fruitful avenue for historical study (see, for example, Hurtado, Destroyer of the Gods, pp. 133–141), and individual variation units can shed interesting light on the communities that saw their genesis (for example, the εὐχαριστίας reading in 1 Cor 10:16 is regarded by few as original, but it might assist in reconstructing the history of the Eucharist) or use (consider, for instance, theological reflection in communities with and without the long version of 1 Jn 5:7-8), but these inquiries are of secondary importance.
b A good, theologically sound starting point would be Black, New Testament Textual Criticism, supplemented by Köstenberger, Merkle, and Plummer, Going Deeper with New Testament Greek, pp. 24–39 (note that p. 26 might give the impression that Maurice A. Robinson agrees with the “King James Only” movement, which is not the case). A complementary work focusing on theological issues and the reliability of the NT text is J. B. Williams, God’s Word in Our Hands.
c This claim runs directly counter to the current trend of treating corruption by orthodox hands as a major factor in the history of the text. We will presently see some arguments in favor of our claim from a Byzantine-priority perspective, but note that other critics of the orthodox corruption theory have written some quality material on the subject from other text-critical perspectives. See, for example, Minnick, “How Much Difference”; Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus; Wallace, Revisiting the Corruption of the New Testament Text; and Wasserman, “Misquoting Manuscripts?”
d “Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa, wrote ... of the prevailing conditions in the second half of the fourth century: 'Everything is full of those who are speaking of unintelligible things—streets, markets, squares, crossroads. I ask how many obili I have to pay; in answer they are philosophizing on the born or unborn; I wish to know the price of bread; one answers: “The Father is greater than the Son”; I inquire whether my bath is ready; one says, “The Son has been made out of nothing”'” (Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, pp. 79–80).
e That is to say, theological considerations led to few or no alterations in this passage. It is just possible that the addition of the article before ἀρχή in verse 18 (P46, B, 075, 0278, 6, 81, 104, 1175, 1739, 1881) is an attempt to preclude the interpretation that Jesus was one primordial element among others, but more likely it is an inadvertent error based on the articular nouns which precede ἀρχή. The omission of ἐκ (P46, א*, Irenlat pt) later in the verse could be intended to make Jesus ruler over and not first from among the dead, but such an emendation would be irrelevant to the question of Jesus' eternality, and it is likely a mere scribal recollection of Rev 1:5 (as found in many MSS). Other units of variation are even less likely to be theologically motivated. Remarkably, NA28 records no variation concerning Col 1:15.
f See the footnote in Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, p. ii.
g Comparable situations do not always obtain with respect to other documents. Contrast, for instance, the so-called one hundred and fifty-first psalm in the LXX with that in 11Q5.
h Morrill, “Complete Collation and Analysis.”
i Wasserman, The Epistle of Jude.
j For the interested reader, we also recommend Solomon's more recent collation of Philemon (Solomon, “Philemon”); we have not yet tabulated the data from this work, but we trust that it will paint a similar picture to the one we have found in other collations.
k These data also put the burden of proof on those who would put forward a reading supported by a small number of MSS as original, since by any count most errant readings have similarly weak MS support.
l “[T]he [NT] scribe was burdened down with numerous materials. These included a penknife for sharpening points, a sponge for wiping pens, a ruler to make lines and margins, a paperweight to mark the place, an ink horn, tongs for drawing circles, and a pumice stone for smoothing. The scribe often stood or sat in what today would seem to be an awkward position, sometimes holding the manuscript in one hand while copying with the other. An additional complication is the constant necessity to re-ink the pen ... causing delays in transcribing and interruption of the scribe's thought process” (Edgar, “Orthodox Corruption,” p. 110). These inconveniences surely encouraged adherence to the principle of least effort.
m Payment was based on the amount of the text copied and “the quality of the script” (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 71), meaning that scribes would naturally focus their energies on speed and aesthetics, not semantics, such that departures from an exemplar would generally entail clerical errors rather than theological or stylistic refinements.
n Metzger, Textual Commentary.
o For instance, “in the Gospel of Matthew ... out of 216 'sets of variant readings' discussed, 177 [82%] are interpreted as intentional. The 177 intentional readings are either specifically stated to be, or the discussion makes clear, by orthodox scribes” (Edgar, “Orthodox Corruption,” p. 103).
p To supply just a few examples, in Jn 5:2 a reading is thought to have been “introduced because of its edifying etymology” (Metzger, Textual Commentary, p. 178), even as few NT scribes were likely to be aware of this (non-Greek) etymology. In Acts 13:31, the supposedly errant absence of νῦν is “accounted for either because it was regarded as unnecessary, or because the apostles not only now first, but for a long time past, were witnesses” even though “in similar passages (2.32; 3.15; 5.32; 10.39) it is not read (even as a variant reading)” (ibid., p. 361).Troubling, too, is the sort of logic that led to this comment on the competing readings πιστεύητε and πιστεύσητε in Jn 20:31: “The aorist tense, strictly interpreted, suggests that the Fourth Gospel was addressed to non-Christians so that they might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah; the present tense suggests that the aim of the writer was to strengthen the faith of those who already believe ('that you may continue to believe'). In view of the difficulty of choosing between the readings by assessing the supposed purpose of the Evangelist ... the Committee considered it preferable to represent both readings [!] by enclosing σ within square brackets” (ibid., pp. 219–220).
q For example, the reading ὀργισθεὶς in Mk 1:41 is becoming increasingly popular. This reading is attested only by a few witnesses, all of them Western (D, a, ff2, r1*). As P. J. Williams demonstrates, this reading is (in the script that saw wide use in early MSS) similar enough graphically to the majority reading σπλαγχνισθεὶς to have arisen from it by mistake, and it is a stretch to imagine that ὀργισθεὶς was original, but there just happened to be a word like σπλαγχνισθεὶς available which shared several of the visual features of ὀργισθεὶς and also turned out to be even more fitting to the context (P. J. Williams, “An Examination of Ehrman's Case for ὀργισθεὶς in Mark 1:41,” pp. 6–8). Further argumentation on internal grounds can be found in the rest of Williams's article. An extensive treatment of the external evidence can be found in Lorenz, “Counting Witnesses for the Angry Jesus in Mark 1:41.”Another example appears in 2 Pet 3:10, where the reading οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται is extremely unlikely to be authentic to Peter on external grounds. The extant support for this reading is entirely versional (syp, syh mss, sa, cvvid); it might never have existed in the Greek language. Translators are generally eager to produce something intelligible and might have resorted to conjectural emendation, given the great difficulty inherent in the reading εὑρεθήσεται that was likely known to them (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg).
r Different, of course, is the matter of unintentional error: Oversights common to scribes in general will at times make appearances in independent lines of transmission, likely as not in more than one locale; Trovato describes these as “polygenetic errors” (Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method, pp. 52–57). But given the substantial number of lines of transmission for the NT (see §3), it is unlikely that even an error of this nature would wholly overwhelm the MS tradition or reduce support for the true reading to a handful of extant MSS.
s For example, the Pauline corpus is recognized as canonical in so early a text as 2 Pet 3:16-17.
t “The number of corruptions in the earliest manuscripts indicates that during the first several centuries these texts were widely circulated and frequently copied and that Christian books were not reproduced under tightly controlled conditions” (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 74).
u Such analyses have been the focus of much effort at Andrews University, where the classification process typically involves an unsupervised, quantitative analysis done entirely by computer (the most recent and robust of which is principal component analysis), followed by a supervised step to confirm and interpret the computer results (usually the Claremont Profile Method). For more details, see Awoniyi, “Classification”; Robertson, “Relationships”; Yoo, “Classification”; Baldwin, “The So-Called Mixed Text”; and Baldwin, “Factor Analysis.” The present editors have applied non-negative matrix factorization (similar to principal component analysis, but simpler in its formulation, easier to interpret in its results, and more robust to contamination among MSS) to a complete dataset in Jude, with promising results; a preprint can be found at McCollum and S. L. Brown, “Biclustering Readings and Manuscripts.”
v One might argue that so many MSS have been lost to history that the data sample provided by extant MSS is scarcely representative of what once existed. But probably only about one in ten Christians in the early centuries was literate (Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church, p. 10), let alone wealthy enough to procure a copy of the NT (especially during times of persecution). Moreover, examples of early congregational libraries known to history (ibid., pp. 145–150) indicate that ancient churches valued scriptural MSS, yet possessed few of them. One library from the fourth century, for example, contained several volumes, but apparently only the four gospels and Acts from the NT (ibid., p. 149). So important a city as Rome, though populated by an unusually large concentration of Christians, saw for the most part a poor Christianity, unlikely to have owned or sponsored the production of a vast quantity of MSS; compare Jensen et al., “Italy and Environs,” pp. 392–395.True, the number of lost MSS can be supposed to be larger than the number of extant MSS, given the paucity of extant exemplars for extant MSS. But the general scribal disinclination to do other than copy offers assurance that lost exemplars of extant MSS were not substantially different from their children. Some patristic sources mention non-Byzantine readings found in most MSS, but given the difficulties of ancient travel, it is unlikely that such assessments can be expected to reflect more than a given church father's immediate locale. In short, the number of MSS that have disappeared forever (and most notably those descending from an exemplar the text of which has not been basically perpetuated in some extant MS) is surely not so high as to render negligible the extant evidence. Indeed, if one theorizes that many of the MSS from the eighth through eleventh centuries (see §5.3) represent exemplars from the seventh and earlier centuries with general accuracy, then one can safely claim access to a genuinely informative sample of the MSS in circulation in the early centuries. Thus, while a reading attested by only a narrow majority of lines of transmission might not have been wholly dominant among the earliest MSS (the present approach will posit that internal and other criteria need to be applied in these cases), a reading with support from very few transmissional lines probably never represented a widespread lectio
w There is a truism that all MSS and MS families contain error. This truism is factual, so far as it goes. For instance, there is no reason to think that the Alexandrian group has escaped all error. Still less is a rigorous adherence to the text of a single MS advisable. But as one and the same reading turns up in one MS family after another, the chances that that reading is authentic rise, since scribal inertia will tend to restrict an error to one or a few lines of transmission. The Byzantine MSS should not quickly be waved aside, then, where a significant number of clusters formerly grouped together under the heading “Byzantine” are in agreement. True, any given Byzantine MS can be expected to contain errors; moreover, any given error stems, more likely than not, from an earlier, imperfect archetype. But when a reading appears to represent the consensus of a large number of independent clusters, it is unlikely to be an error. The Byzantine texttype involves so large and diverse a bundle of witnesses that its readings are only likely to be original. The main stream of textual transmission, not transient side streams, provides the most trustworthy account of the original text.
x Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, p. v, emphasis original.
y Maurice A. Robinson supplies the following examples, among others, of probable homoioteleuton that are likely traceable to the Alexandrian archetype: Mat 5:13, 22, 11:8, 15, 22:3, 23:3, 24:7, 26:3, 28:14; Mk 1:4, 13, 28, 2:22, 4:24, 8:16, 15:39; Lk 2:38, 51, 4:5, 6:2, 3, 10:42, 11:34, 17:24, 23:8, 24:40; Jn 10:31, 19:7; Acts 4:17, 17:26; Rom 1:29, 40-31, 13:1; 1 Cor 5:7, 11:27; Gal 5:21; Col 1:20; 1 Thes 2:17, 4:11, 5:2; Jas 4:4; 1 Pet 4:1, 3 (Robinson, “Alexandrian Archetype”).
z In Jas 1:5, where some scribes substitute μὴ for οὐκ, it is hard to explain the minority reading as other than an emendation: Participles in classical Greek are more often preceded by μὴ than by οὐ, but such distinctions had become blurry in this period, such that a construction like this could be employed (cf., for example, Acts 7:5); Greek-language scribes generally received training in an academic register of their language and accordingly felt discomfort at such departures from what was considered standard usage.
aa For example, the TR has the following reading at Acts 8:37: Εἶπεν δὲ ὁ Φίλιππος· Εἰ πιστεύεις ἐξ ὅλης τῆς καρδίας, ἔξεστιν. Ἀποκριθεὶς δὲ εἶπεν· Πιστεύω τὸν υἱὸν τοῦ θεοῦ εἶναι τὸν Ἰησοῦν χριστόν. The NA28 apparatus lists the majority of MSS as omitting the verse in its entirety, and of the few that are cited as including it, not one is cited as preserving the form of the verse as found in the TR. Even slimmer is the support for the long addition following πνεῦμα in Acts 8:39 (ἅγιον ἐπέπεσεν ἐπὶ τὸν εὐνούχον, ἄγγελος δὲ), which the TR does not contain. Moreover, the only Greek-language MS cited by NA28 that contains some form of verse 37, but not the addition in verse 39, is E. A combination of readings even close to that found in the TR at Acts 8:37-39, then, exists in no Greek-language MS mentioned by NA28; at best, it is preserved in one Egyptian version (an irony, given the aversion of many TR advocates to Egyptian sources) and possibly (to argue from silence) two patristic sources. Moreover, TR advocates ask their readers and auditors to believe that (with the partial exception of E and the possible exceptions of an Egyptian version and one or two patristic sources) the few MSS that somehow resisted the urge to excise verse 37 are precisely the few MSS that gave into an urge to insert a substantial amount of material into verse 39. Such is a tall order. There is no more reason for many scribes to have dropped this passage if it was original than there is for many scribes to have objected to Eph 2:8-9, 1 Cor 1:16, or, for that matter, Mk 16:16, so its absence from a huge and diverse array of witnesses is inexplicable apart from its being a later interpolation.
bb One cannot help thinking of the Western texttype in this context.
cc Take the choice between the common reading ποιοῦντες τὰς ἐντολὰς αὐτοῦ and the minority reading πλύνοντες τὰς στολὰς αὐτῶν in Rev 22:14. Though the auditory and semantic differences between these two readings is great, the visual difference is not: A scribe might have come across a damaged or badly written exemplar and been able to make out only π—ντες τας —ολας αυτ— at this point, in which case the minority reading is, one must admit, not a bad guess. Yet intrinsic evidence favors the majority reading: Where μακάριος language appears in this book (1:3, 14:13, 16:15, 19:9, 20:6, 22:7), the following verbiage varies considerably, but the verb τηρέω occurs several times (1:3, 16:15, 22:7), while only in 16:15 does imagery involving clothing appear (note also 19:8). (Also, 14:13 mentions τὰ ἔργα of the saints, something that would dovetail with the majority reading here.) The (near) synonym ποιέω stands as a fitting stylistic variation on τηρέω for this passage (and not a term scribes bent on assimilation would invent; perhaps the majority reading would be more suspicious if τηροῦντες appeared here, as in 1:3 and 14:12, but it does not). Thus, there is a good explanation for the existence of the minority reading (an attempt to read a damaged exemplar), and the majority reading fits well with the rest of the book without appearing to be patently borrowed from another passage.
dd Robinson and Pierpont generally accept no reading supported by fewer than 40% of MSS. It is unclear how specific one can be, but this figure provides a good rule of thumb. Few variation units seem to be affected by shifting this figure a few percentage points in either direction.
ee For instance, Mk 16:9-20 is found in the vast majority of MSS and under the present theory must be accepted. For a lengthy defense of this passage on a variety of grounds, see Lunn, The Original Ending of Mark.
ff In Gal 5:4, von Soden records about 43% of the Κ group as reading ἐξεπέσατε, while the remaining 57% (including Κc and Κr) read ἐξεπέσετε. The Κc group seems to be fairly small, and the Κr group is predominantly late; the external evidence is thus not as imbalanced as it might first appear. The aorist tense-form fits the context well, while the present tense-form can be explained as an assimilation to the present tense-form immediately preceding, a failing due to the sequence epsilon-consonant-epsilon-consonant-epsilon-consonant immediately following the letter in question, or both.
gg Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, Vol. 2, pp. 132–139.
hh ibid., p. 138.
ii See Würthwein, The Text of the Old Testament, p. 58 and Jobes and Silva, Invitation, pp. 54–55, 283.
jj Similarly, if “Theodora's MS” (GA 565) does indeed have some connection with the Byzantine royal family (and this connection would be doubly significant, given the close ties between Byzantine political and ecclesiastical hierarchies), then this MS shows either a failure to impose a preferred text or a disinterest in the entire enterprise: The MS in question contains several texttypes, not just the Byzantine, and its text seems to have had little impact on later copying efforts. Similarly, while Mt. Athos seems to have represented an imperial interest in transmitting the NT text, the MSS found there do not appear to be stringently uniform or to have exerted much influence outside that peninsula.
kk The accusations are hardly fair. See, for example, Robinson, “Two Passages in Mark.”
ll For partial documentation, see A. Wilson, “Scribal Habits,” pp. 31–33.
mm See §6.1.
nn Observe, for example, the εἰδότες reading in 1 Pet 1:7, and the αὐτούς reading in Jd 24.
oo One need only look at the opening and closing phrases of the Pauline epistles to come to the conclusion that consistency of expression was not a goal of those responsible for the Byzantine texttype.
pp Cf. Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, pp. 576–578.
qq The Jerusalem Colophon (on which see Wasserman, “Manuscripts in Sweden”) indicates that pilgrimages to consult highly-esteemed exemplars did happen, but a survey of the MSS bearing this colophon will demonstrate that such events happened rarely and had little influence on the MS tradition as a whole.
rr “In the immigrant culture of early Roman Christianity, Greek was used as the main language. It was not until the 240s that the shift to Latin predominated, indicating that the majority of Roman Christians came from a Latin background” (Jensen et al., “Italy and Environs,” p. 398).
ss Some famous examples include the cities now called Derinkuyu and Kaymaklı.
tt Compare Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, pp. 572–574.
uu The Κr or f 35 group occupies a substantial proportion of MSS after the year 1204 (the sack of Constantinople by the Crusaders), so much so that much of this dominance might stem from Κr MSS happening to survive in greater number than other types of MSS in the latter days of the Byzantine empire (though we suppose that this group existed well before that date). This proposal, however, is quite different from that which seeks to explain the origin of the Byzantine texttype on the basis of persecution in the first few centuries. After the battle of Manzikert in 1071, and particularly after the sack of Constantinople just mentioned, the Byzantine empire, and with it the Greek-speaking world, was increasingly reduced to a beleaguered rump state; by 1453 it had been all but totally consigned to the fires of destruction. Places like Egypt, Syria, and Italy had long ago passed from Byzantine political control and, more importantly, ceased to use Greek to any appreciable extent; these regions had set off on a course of their own, and to posit the rise to prominence of a textual cluster containing secondary readings in so shrunken a society is nothing strange. The same cannot be said for the claim that the Alexandrian text, Western text, or some hybrid apparent in no extant MS (see §6.2) disappeared from practically the whole Mediterranean world, leaving a previously obscure texttype to dominate the scene.
vv That any such oddities were not corrected by some enterprising scribe who dusted off the Byzantine archetype when the coast was clear is suggested by the preservation of unexpected readings which do occur, such as the surprising placement of the doxology between Rom 14 and 15.
ww Racine, The Text of Matthew in the Writings of Basil of Caesarea. The author shows that the earliest patristic source that can be properly classified as “Byzantine” is Basil of Caesarea (c. 330—379). See also Robinson, “Rule 9,” p. 55.
xx Admittedly, the MS or MSS Chrysostom used for his works might have been copied in Constantinople or some locale besides Antioch.
yy Presumably, Ufilas used one or more Greek MSS either from Cappadocia or from the environs of Constantinople.
zz It would seem that if persecution had stamped out the local text of any area, it would have been one under the firmest imperial control, like Asia Minor or Greece. If so, Christians would have had to seek copies from remote areas, such as eastern Syria, Gaul, or North Africa. Yet these areas attest to the Western texttype, not the Byzantine.
The minuscule 1739, for example, is widely regarded as having been copied from a MS much earlier than itself.
Certain readings which, if not original, would have required knowledge not likely in wide circulation after the first century or two after the completion of the canon suggest the antiquity of the Byzantine texttype. Note, for instance, Acts 1:19, where the Byzantine Ἁκελδαμά is to all appearances an accurate transcription of a first-century pronunciation of חקל דמא, even as few Byzantine scribes would have known Aramaic. The minority readings reflect confusion over a foreign term compounded by a reminiscence of the LXX (in which many non-Greek names end in -χ.)
Such seems to be the case with the LXX, Cato, Virgil, the Shepherd of Hermas, and the Didache. This phenomenon is not restricted to antiquity: Take, for example, the texts of the Talmud, Ramban, Shakespeare, Pilgrim's Progress, and so recent a work as The Lord of the Rings.An important factor here is the author's loss of control over a published text. The problems associated with this loss of control have plagued authors (and their initial publishers) down to the modern era. An extreme example (if it is not apocryphal) is that Rashi, convinced that his commentaries needed thorough revision, destroyed his own copies of his books but was unable to prevent the copies that had left his presence from not only being read but coming to undergird much of modern Judaism.
This principle has generally been recognized by classical and secular critics. See for example, Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method, pp. 125–128; Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 217–218; and Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism, pp. 25–28. Note also that Westcott and Hort believed the late Byzantine MSS to be, on the whole, an accurate reflection of an early text (Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, Vol. 2, p. 92). Compare, too, Scrivener, Full and Exact Collation, pp. lxvii–lxviii.
P52 is probably the oldest MS, generally thought to date to approximately 150 AD. Not only is this date uncertain, but several decades (perhaps even a century or more) likely still separate this MS from the autograph, especially if the gospel of John predates the destruction of the Second Temple.
See §6.1.
The early papyri have introduced no arresting new readings into the apparatuses.
“The ancient historian would have very little in the way of [documentary evidence] at all, if it were not for the sands of Egypt ... [B]ecause of the dryness of the land that was where almost all of it has been preserved” (Hooper, Roman Realities, p. 556).
Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 396; compare Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, p. 230.
See, for example, Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 397. There is no reason to suppose, as some defenders of the TR do, that any of these lost MSS mirrored the TR precisely, nor does the argument that the best MSS were worn out from over-use commend itself.
“The destruction of manuscripts in the fires and looting of 1204 seems to have caused the greatest loss of Greek texts ever to occur at one time, more even than in the Turkish sack of 1453” (ibid., pp. 827–828).
See §3 for a discussion of the diversity that stands behind the Byzantine texttype.
For a brief introduction to these fluctuations in literary activity, see Vasiliev, History of the Byzantine Empire, especially pp. 116–126, 179–187, 230–233, 291–298, 361–371.
“By the spring of 542, the plague spread to most of the ports of the eastern Mediterranean, among them Alexandria, Antioch, and Constantinople. As the largest city, Constantinople had a particularly terrible epidemic, aggravated by a breakdown of arrangements for the food supply. The authorities are said to have counted 230,000 dead, which probably would have been well over half the population. The plague killed many government officials” (Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 196)
Plagues, unlike war, would harm copyists only, leaving their MSS to be taken up at a later time. Given the severity of the plague, it might in some cases have taken years or decades before new scribes were trained and ready to copy exemplars left behind by those who perished, reducing the overall number of steps in the transmission process.
Among the MSS preserved at Herculaneum, “some [were] 120 to 160 years old when Vesuvius erupted,” and some were a century or two older (Houston, Inside Roman Libraries, p. 121). This situation does not seem to have been unusual. Compare also this statement by Warren Treadgold: “Byzantium's dark age was much less dark than that of the contemporary West. Although because of shrinking readership few new manuscripts needed to be copied, most old manuscripts were preserved in the libraries of Constantinople until the following period. The Byzantines continued to possess almost every literary work that they had known [prior to the dark age]” (Treadgold, History of the Byzantine State, p. 402). Thus there is every reason to suppose that very many Byzantine MSS from the ninth through twelfth centuries are copies of MSS predating the onset of the Byzantine dark age.
Compare Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 35, 60.
See ibid., pp. 216.
Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace suggest the block mixture of codex W to be a symptom of persecution, Christians being left with only tatters from which to collect complete NT texts (Komoszewski, Sawyer, and Wallace, Reinventing Jesus, p. 276). Perhaps the locale in which W was copied might have suffered more than most locales did, but whatever led to its unique nature must not have been operative in many other places; otherwise, many or most MSS would exhibit a similar sort of mixture.
There are certainly other hints about an early Byzantine texttype. For example, there is evidence from MS comparison efforts that Jerome used and highly regarded as ancient some Byzantine MSS of the Gospels; see Finney, “Varieties,” pp. 89–90. Thomas of Harkel, meanwhile, whose translation shares many readings and patterns of readings with the textual families 1216 and Λ, described the MSS he used as “renowned for their accuracy,” even as he worked in Egypt and presumably had access to Alexandrian MSS (CSPMT news post dated February 28, 2016; url: http://cspmt.org/). There is also the possibility that P28 is more or less Byzantine, being apparently a close relative of N. Bear in mind that not much rises or falls on any of these suggestions; the decisive question is how the text found in the undeniably Byzantine MSS is to be explained.
This essay by no means aims to offer full bibliographic information, but one source deserves special mention: Worthington, Principles of Akkadian Textual Criticism, pp. 44–63 offers a clear yet nuanced discussion of internal evidence as it relates to a different branch of textual criticism.
See Edwards, Mark on Mk 5:1.
ibid.
Kitto and Alexander, A Cyclopaedia of Biblical Literature, p. 51.
Edwards, Luke, p. 79, emphasis original.
The phrase ἐν ὑψίστοις means the heavenly realm, not “in the highest degree,” as Edwards notes (ibid., p. 78).
Few Christian scribes knew Hebrew, and thus few scribes would have been able to engineer a reading which agreed with the Masoretic text. Paul, however, being trained by Gamaliel, knew Hebrew and was not dependent upon the LXX.
The Byzantine MSS are not merely importing wording from the LXX, for that translation, although reflecting the same text as the Masoretic text, translates differently than Paul does.The text of the OT supports the Byzantine texttype in other cases as well, even as one rightly sets criteria for the relevance of OT citations (the OT text needs to be without major variants, and one should be reasonably sure that the variant or variants apparently at odds with the OT wording are not merely paraphrastic or interpretive renderings of the same Hebrew or Aramaic text). In both Mat 22:44 and Mk 12:36, Ps 110:1 supports the reading ὑποπόδιον rather than ὑποκάτω. Notice that the graphic difference between these two readings is slight, the two readings beginning with the same letters and having approximately the same number of letters; the ὑποκάτω reading surely originated as a transcriptional error for ὑποπόδιον. Similar is Heb 12:26, the participle in Hag 2:6 supporting σείω rather than σείσω. Now, any one of these instances might perhaps be explained as paraphrase or something related, but taken together they point strongly to the originality of the Byzantine texttype. Cf. also Mat 2:18 (= Jer 31:15; cf. the comments at tcgnt.blogspot.com), Rom 15:11 (= Ps 117:1), 1 Cor 15:55 (= Hos 13:14), 2 Cor 6:16 (= Lev 26:12), and Heb 3:9 (= Ps 95:9). (Jewish hermeneutical practices explain the rendering of Ps 69:25 found in Acts 1:20, what is true of a group, traitors, being true of an individual, Judas, typical of that group.)
Black, “Peculiarities of Ephesians,” pp. 63–64.
Eadie, Ephesians, p. xxx.
See, for example, Blumell, “Luke 22:43-44,” pp. 32–33.
The Greek article might best be included in this category; statements about its subtlety are commonplace in grammars, and it is often described as little understood, especially in its application to proper names. For this reason, caution must be used with respect to the text-critical findings of Thomas Fanshaw Middleton (Middleton, Doctrine of the Greek Article), though a perusal of Middleton's notes of Matthew shows that he favors the Byzantine reading in cases concerning the presence or absence of the article about 88% of the time. The situation might be similar with the much-disputed topic of verbal aspect.
For instance, Maximilian Zerwick notices that “[t]he particle τε occurs eight times in St Luke's gospel, and 158 times in his Acts. This huge disproportion is noteworthy; for since the particle in question is ... one which the author, had he wished, might again and again have used instead of καὶ, the enormous difference of frequency between the same author's two works cannot be explained as due to the subject matter as such, but must be the result of deliberate choice of style” (Zerwick, Biblical Greek, pp. 156–157).
Probably no textual critic would accept every possible instance of τε offered by the MS tradition of Acts.
The so-called “Secret Gospel of Mark” would be a case in point.
Of course, it is theoretically possible that a scribe might depart from the text of his exemplar precisely by restoring the original reading, but excepting perhaps cases in which the scribe had himself earlier produced that exemplar and made a simple mistake in the process, this scenario is surely atypical.
Compare A. Wilson, “Scribal Habits,” pp. 31–33.
“[N]o specific reading of a manuscript is cited anywhere within [J. J.] Greisbach's [seminal] Prolegomena ... [this] makes it difficult (if not impossible) for later students to know what exactly he would have considered as evidence, to check the evidence upon which his statements rest, or to revise his statements in the light of new evidence” (Royse, Scribal Habits, p. 5, emphasis original).
See, for example, ibid., Head, “Observations on Early Papyri,” and Head, “The Habits of New Testament Copyists.”
See the summaries in A. Wilson, “Scribal Habits,” pp. 21–26.
ibid., pp. 21–23.
ibid., p. 26. There is clearly a significant amount of overlap in source material among the canonical gospels, so verbal identity between two or more passages is at times to be expected, leaving any scribal error at all in those places as disharmonizing errors.
ibid., pp. 23–25.
The minority reading in Rom 8:2 (σε), for instance, is extraordinarily difficult on intrinsic grounds, since the second person is not used in Greek for hypothetical or timeless situations; see Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, pp. 392–393. Wallace claims that σε here is “the use of the singular for the plural ... for the apostle is not making a universal statement, true of believers and unbelievers alike” (ibid., p. 392). It is not clear, however, on what evidence he posits such a usage of the singular for the plural, or what bearing the grammatical number of this word has on the question of whether unbelievers are being spoken of. The exegete should probably not overwork himself on σε. The reading με makes excellent sense, for the first person singular can be used of hypothetical or timeless situations (ibid., pp. 391–392), and the first person figures prominently in the latter part of chapter seven (note that ἄρα in verse 1 explicitly connects the present passage with the previous one). The reading με is well supported, and σε might be an error influenced by the -σέ- of ἠλευθέρωσέν (especially if the moveable nu was not present in an early exemplar; the rules for this linguistic phenomenon do not appear to have been fixed in ancient times, and little collation work has been done on it).
For example, consider Acts 13:20:Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα, ὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα, ἔδωκεν D2, E, L, Ψ, 323, 945, 1241, 1505, 1739, Byzὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα. Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἔδωκενP74, א, A, B, C, 33, 81, 453, 1175, 2818, vgThe majority reading is highly problematic if it is taken to say that the period of the judges lasted for about 450 years, even though (1) the period seems to have been much shorter than that, and (2) the reigns of Saul and David, when added to 450, do not approximate the sum given in 1 Kgs 6:1. It is likely this apparent contradiction that led to emendation. (Other emendations appear in smaller sets of witnesses.) But the majority reading does not have to be taken this way: If one punctuates as above (recall that the original text and early MSS did not have punctuation), one gets the sense “after that, by the space of four hundred fifty years, He gave judges” (Jamieson, Fausset, and D. Brown, New Testament Commentary Volume 1, p. 514), wherein the 450 years refers to the time which elapsed before the period of judges commenced. Luke often uses ὡς as a temporal marker, and while this exact construction does not seem to occur elsewhere in his writings, there is a comparably complex statement in Acts 1:10 (καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ... ).
Take the widely adopted reading εὑρεθήσεται (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg) in 2 Pet 3:10. The sense is extraordinary difficult, and one might argue on precisely that basis that it is original. But why would virtually all scribes (note the geographic spread as well as the huge proportion of the MSS inherent in the support A, 048, 33, 81, 307, 436, 442, 642, 1611, 1739vl, 2344, Byz, vgcl, syp, syh mss vl, syh, Cyr) emend specifically to κατακαήσεται? Why do the MSS not waver between this reading and others like κριθήσεται, ἀπολεῖται, and οὐκ ἔσται? The exceptions prove the rule: Only P72, C, and a few versional witnesses contain attempts to resolve the problem of εὑρεθήσεται (and all of these witnesses have strong connections to those that have εὑρεθήσεται). The εὑρεθήσεται reading might have resulted from a smudge, tear, or case of poor penmanship in the exemplar that gave rise to the Alexandrian texttype: If that reading was original, and if scribes were inclined to emend difficult places, then a welter of competing readings should have arisen.
P. J. Williams notes, “There are many readings in D and the Old Latin witnesses that are difficult to explain but a great many scribal corruptions follow no pattern and therefore cannot be 'explained'” (Evangelical Textual Criticism blog post dated January 16, 2007; url: evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2007/01/mark-141.html). Most likely, certain non-Western corruptions will be similarly inexplicable. In as complex a matter as NT textual criticism, a theory which gives equally confident and specific answers to every issue might actually be suspect.
A further example is Lk 8:30, where the majority reads Λεγεών rather than Λεγιών. Both forms are ancient, but the form with iota is more “correct,” the Latin word being legio. It seems more likely that a few fastidious scribes emended the form based on their knowledge than that many scribes would move the word away from the Latin form. Many of the earlier Byzantine scribes would have known Latin, so, if anything, one would expect the iota form to be prevalent in the Byzantine tradition. That this is not the case further suggests the originality of the epsilon form and the general trustworthiness of Byzantine scribes.
Robinson, “Two Passages in Mark.”
ibid., pp. 68–72.
ibid., p. 73.
ibid., p. 74.
Robinson, “Two Passages in Mark,” p. 75.
ibid., pp. 75–78.
See Donaldson, “Explicit References,” pp. 188–189, 368–372, which points out that Jerome may not have seen such witnesses himself and that he may have been recycling an emendation proposed by Eusebius or possibly Origen.
Robinson, “Two Passages in Mark,” p. 79.
Borland, “Luke 24:53.”
ibid., p. 118.
ibid., p. 118.
ibid., pp. 117–120.
ibid., p. 122.
Tregelles, Account of the Printed Text, p. 241.
A. Wilson, “The Adulteress and Her Accusers,” p. 131.
ibid., p. 125.
Robinson, “A Johannine Tapestry with Double Interlock,” pp. 135–141.
ibid., pp. 125–126.
ibid., pp. 123–124.
ibid., pp. 144–145.
ibid., p. 118.
Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, p. 341.
More specifically, a western scribe might have felt it preferable to link the latter part of 1 Tim 3:16 syntactically with the former.
This very error can be seen in Col 1:27; see the NA28 apparatus there.
Cf. the minority reading in Col 4:3.
Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, p. 341.
Aland et al., Novum Testamentum Graece 28, p. 59*.
See 1 Tim 1:15-17, 3:5 with 3:15, 5:21, 6:13-16; 2 Tim 4:1, 18; and Tit 2:13.
Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, pp. 340–342.
ibid., p. 230.
This possibility admittedly does not rule out the Western reading.
The change in case does not make a difference; compare 1 Pet 2:4-8.
Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 11–12.
ibid., pp. 13–14.
ibid., p. 12.
Even aside from the Western texttype, it must be admitted that there was a tendency on the part of some scribes to supply words from other passages. Observe Col 1:14, where a number of mostly late witnesses supply διὰ τοῦ αἵματος αὐτοῦ from Eph 1:7. In the opposite direction, we find that the eleventh-century minuscule 81 expands the phrase χαριζόμενοι ἑαυτοῖς in Eph 4:32 to χαριζόμενοι ἑαυτοῖς ἐάν τις πρός τινα ἔχῃ μομφήν, the text found in Col 3:13. These examples, however, suggest that such interpolations had only a limited effect on the MS tradition; a vast array of Byzantine and other witnesses are satisfied with readings that do not assimilate to similar passages.
So Allen, Homer: The Origins and the Transmission, pp. 325–326.
It is our contention that most Alexandrian scribes shared a concern for piety. In this contention we differ from some TR proponents who argue, without sufficient evidence in our estimation, for Gnostic or other heretical doctrines as the driving force behind that texttype.
Some of the witnesses for the short reading, to be sure, might have suffered from a mere oversight, since this verse and the previous both end in -ς.
The scribes responsible for the shorter reading likely did not excise it based solely on Mk 12:40 or Lk 20:47, since the wording is far from identical (they would more likely have excised either Mk 12:40 or Lk 20:47 as being based on the other), but the partial parallel might have led them to select this woe, rather than some other, for deletion.
The poorly attested reading μὴ κατὰ σάρκα περιπατοῦσιν is probably an accidental omission based on the long reading; multi-word omissions, and omissions with “no detectable mechanical reason” are not uncommon: See A. Wilson, “Scribal Habits,” pp. 22–23.
For example, the absence of πολλοὶ γάρ εἰσιν κλητοί, ὀλίγοι δὲ ἐκλεκτοι in Mat 20:16 might be the result of a recensional omission (see 22:14), or it might simply be due to homoeoteleuton.
Note the principal differences between this theory and that according to which the Byzantine MSS trace to a recensional archetype. The former is based on known practices from ancient times; the latter makes otherwise unsubstantiated claims regarding editorial activity. The former posits a rather limited and uneven result; the latter claims that the various revisions made in Syria or elsewhere went on to dominate about nine tenths of the MS tradition.
In a handful of instances, some Byzantine MSS might depart from the Byzantine texttype owing to Hellenistic recensional theory. (Such might even be expected, given the widespread acceptance of this theory among ancient scholars.) Notice Lk 14:24, where a sizable minority of Byzantine MSS omits Πολλοὶ γάρ εἰσιν κλητοί, ὀλίγοι δὲ ἐκλεκτοί, homoeoteleuton not being available as an explanation. The long reading might have been thought to be (1) non-Lukan, as Luke uses this clause nowhere else, while the Byzantine text of Matthew uses it twice, and / or (2) an interpolation from an earlier book (see Mat 20:16 and 22:14).
These marks do occasionally show up in NT MSS, showing a connection with the Alexandrian school of thought or at least an awareness of its conventions.
Maurice A. Robinson has found “more than 100 whole verses as printed in NA27/UBS4 [that] lack extant manuscript support in the aggregate ... [O]ne has to wonder how ... the presumed Ausgangstext (NA27/UBS4/ECM) ever could have existed in actuality, let alone have given rise to all other forms of text” (Robinson, “Rule 9,” pp. 56–57).
NA27 contained (and NA28 likely contains) “more than 180 ... whole verses ... that have their aggregate support apparently in only one Greek manuscript” (ibid., pp. 36–37). The NA28 text of Heb 9:10b-11 is supported only by P46 and 1739. It seems unlikely that the remainder of the MS tradition descends from a faulty copy of one of these MSS; if it was not, it seems odd to suppose that about 99% of it became infected with error, for why under such circumstances would these two witnesses be spared? Stranger still are cases like Mat 1:24-25, where support for the NA28 text comes only from the relatively late witnesses 33 and f 1.
NA28 also rejects some notable readings of D in the previous verse and in the next verse.
Compare Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek, pp. 536–538. Note that such reasoning is not an innovation of Byzantine-priority theory; see, for example, Jarvis, Scholars and Gentlemen, pp. 37–38.
If a particular MS can be confidently said to have suffered from a particularly common type of scribal slip at a certain point, and if the text of its exemplar (or exemplar's exemplar) can be confidently supposed to have been identical with some group of MSS, the testimony of this MS probably ought not to be taken as really differing from said group.
Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann's Method, pp. 174–178 responds to objections to eclecticism similar to those raised here, but note that the issue here is not the failure of the entire text of a given NT edition to conform to some known MS, but the presence of many improbable combinations of readings in closely related variant units.
Some notable passages are affected, such as Jd 22-23, where the text of NA28 is supported only by א and Ψ; Mk 1:1-2, where the text of the SBL GNT is supported only by 2211 and possibly a MS of the Sahidic version (both of which are rejected in verse 4); and Lk 3:32, a verse without support from any known witness as it is found in NA28.
A look at the collation data in Wasserman, The Epistle of Jude shows that the Byzantine text of Jude (as reconstructed in the Robinson-Pierpont edition) is supported by 105 MSS in verses 1-5, 59 in verses 6-10, 85 in verses 11-15, 42 in verses 16-20, and 158 in verses 21-25 (this is with about 560 MSS extant). No one MS supports the entire text of Jude as found in RP, but this situation is unsurprising; see above. Eclectic texts, in comparison, manage only a few MSS in some of these sections.
On occasion the adoption of mutually-exclusive readings in widely separate variation units must be questioned. For example, the rejection by some scholars of the last chapter of the gospel of John (an omission just possibly supported by P5 and P75; see Comfort, Quest for the Original Text, pp. 157–166) is, alongside the rejection of Mk 16:9-20, a strange choice on external grounds: The principal Greek-language MS support for ending the second gospel at 16:8 consists of א and B, but neither of these witnesses omits Jn 21.
There are in the NA28 main text 33 readings supported by one named MS (and not the same one, at that), 88 readings supported by two named MSS, and 210 readings supported by three named MSS. (These data are from Robinson, “A Johannine Tapestry with Double Interlock,” p. 116.)
The reading θεοῦ in Eph 5:21 is attested by apparently about two thirds of minuscules and some ancient witnesses, while the reading χριστοῦ is attested by about one third of minuscules and by a number of the more ancient witnesses. It is difficult to account for the presence of θεοῦ in so large a proportion of the MS tradition, especially when there is no immediately obvious parallel passage with that reading. True, 2 Cor 7:1 contains the words ἐν φόβῳ θεοῦ, but that passage is neither an especially famous one nor a close parallel to this one, such that many scribes would think of it. Col 3:22 includes the phrase φοβούμενοι τὸν θεόν, but, if anything, that parallel supports the reading θεοῦ here: Ephesians and Colossians are so closely related that some expressions found in one are likely to find foreshadowing or echoes in the other, yet the exact verbiage in the present case is dissimilar enough that few scribes are likely to have confused one for the other. The χριστοῦ reading could be an assimilation to the immediate context (see 5:14, 20, 23, 24, 25, 32). Indeed, a similar error affects Col 3:22, where a number of scribes, surrounded by appearances of the word κύριος (3:16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24), trade θεόν for κύριον. On the other hand, the phrase ἐν φόβῳ θεοῦ does occur a number of times in the psalms, and the book of Psalms was influential in the monastery and, later, in the Byzantine schoolroom; see N. G. Wilson, Scholars of Byzantium, p. 276. Perhaps some scribes accidentally substituted the more common phrase for the less. Preliminary analysis suggests that scribes more often changed an original θεός to χριστὸς than vice-versa. A decision is difficult, especially as von Soden's data is not wholly reliable. The reading χριστοῦ is perhaps preferable, but more research could easily overturn this decision.
Troubling, too, is the sort of logic that led to this comment on the competing readings πιστεύητε and πιστεύσητε in Jn 20:31: “The aorist tense, strictly interpreted, suggests that the Fourth Gospel was addressed to non-Christians so that they might come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah; the present tense suggests that the aim of the writer was to strengthen the faith of those who already believe ('that you may continue to believe'). In view of the difficulty of choosing between the readings by assessing the supposed purpose of the Evangelist ... the Committee considered it preferable to represent both readings [!] by enclosing σ within square brackets” (ibid., pp. 219–220). Such thinking has begun to lead to the circulation of NT editions and translations characterized by peculiar and improbable readings.*For example, the reading ὀργισθεὶς in Mk 1:41 is becoming increasingly popular. This reading is attested only by a few witnesses, all of them Western (D, a, ff2, r1*). As P. J. Williams demonstrates, this reading is (in the script that saw wide use in early MSS) similar enough graphically to the majority reading σπλαγχνισθεὶς to have arisen from it by mistake, and it is a stretch to imagine that ὀργισθεὶς was original, but there just happened to be a word like σπλαγχνισθεὶς available which shared several of the visual features of ὀργισθεὶς and also turned out to be even more fitting to the context (P. J. Williams, “An Examination of Ehrman's Case for ὀργισθεὶς in Mark 1:41,” pp. 6–8). Further argumentation on internal grounds can be found in the rest of Williams's article. An extensive treatment of the external evidence can be found in Lorenz, “Counting Witnesses for the Angry Jesus in Mark 1:41.”
Another example appears in 2 Pet 3:10, where the reading οὐχ εὑρεθήσεται is extremely unlikely to be authentic to Peter on external grounds. The extant support for this reading is entirely versional (syp, syh mss, sa, cvvid); it might never have existed in the Greek language. Translators are generally eager to produce something intelligible and might have resorted to conjectural emendation, given the great difficulty inherent in the reading εὑρεθήσεται that was likely known to them (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg). However intriguing it is to imagine centuries of inventive scribes and a NT text at which these men took umbrage, such a scenario has little connection to reality.
True, the number of lost MSS can be supposed to be larger than the number of extant MSS, given the paucity of extant exemplars for extant MSS. But the general scribal disinclination to do other than copy offers assurance that lost exemplars of extant MSS were not substantially different from their children. Some patristic sources mention non-Byzantine readings found in most MSS, but given the difficulties of ancient travel, it is unlikely that such assessments can be expected to reflect more than a given church father's immediate locale. In short, the number of MSS that have disappeared forever (and most notably those descending from an exemplar the text of which has not been basically perpetuated in some extant MS) is surely not so high as to render negligible the extant evidence. Indeed, if one theorizes that many of the MSS from the eighth through eleventh centuries (see §5.3) represent exemplars from the seventh and earlier centuries with general accuracy, then one can safely claim access to a genuinely informative sample of the MSS in circulation in the early centuries. Thus, while a reading attested by only a narrow majority of lines of transmission might not have been wholly dominant among the earliest MSS (the present approach will posit that internal and other criteria need to be applied in these cases), a reading with support from very few transmissional lines probably never represented a widespread lectio
An important factor here is the author's loss of control over a published text. The problems associated with this loss of control have plagued authors (and their initial publishers) down to the modern era. An extreme example (if it is not apocryphal) is that Rashi, convinced that his commentaries needed thorough revision, destroyed his own copies of his books but was unable to prevent the copies that had left his presence from not only being read but coming to undergird much of modern Judaism. Thus, MS age cannot have the final say.§This principle has generally been recognized by classical and secular critics. See for example, Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method, pp. 125–128; Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribes and Scholars, pp. 217–218; and Renehan, Greek Textual Criticism, pp. 25–28. Note also that Westcott and Hort believed the late Byzantine MSS to be, on the whole, an accurate reflection of an early text (Westcott and Hort, New Testament in the Original Greek, Vol. 2, p. 92). Compare, too, Scrivener, Full and Exact Collation, pp. lxvii–lxviii.
The text of the OT supports the Byzantine texttype in other cases as well, even as one rightly sets criteria for the relevance of OT citations (the OT text needs to be without major variants, and one should be reasonably sure that the variant or variants apparently at odds with the OT wording are not merely paraphrastic or interpretive renderings of the same Hebrew or Aramaic text). In both Mat 22:44 and Mk 12:36, Ps 110:1 supports the reading ὑποπόδιον rather than ὑποκάτω. Notice that the graphic difference between these two readings is slight, the two readings beginning with the same letters and having approximately the same number of letters; the ὑποκάτω reading surely originated as a transcriptional error for ὑποπόδιον. Similar is Heb 12:26, the participle in Hag 2:6 supporting σείω rather than σείσω. Now, any one of these instances might perhaps be explained as paraphrase or something related, but taken together they point strongly to the originality of the Byzantine texttype. Cf. also Mat 2:18 (= Jer 31:15; cf. the comments at tcgnt.blogspot.com), Rom 15:11 (= Ps 117:1), 1 Cor 15:55 (= Hos 13:14), 2 Cor 6:16 (= Lev 26:12), and Heb 3:9 (= Ps 95:9). (Jewish hermeneutical practices explain the rendering of Ps 69:25 found in Acts 1:20, what is true of a group, traitors, being true of an individual, Judas, typical of that group.)
Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα, ὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα, ἔδωκεν
D2, E, L, Ψ, 323, 945, 1241, 1505, 1739, Byz
ὡς ἔτεσιν τετρακοσίοις καὶ πεντήκοντα. Καὶ μετὰ ταῦτα ἔδωκεν
P74, א, A, B, C, 33, 81, 453, 1175, 2818, vg
The majority reading is highly problematic if it is taken to say that the period of the judges lasted for about 450 years, even though (1) the period seems to have been much shorter than that, and (2) the reigns of Saul and David, when added to 450, do not approximate the sum given in 1 Kgs 6:1. It is likely this apparent contradiction that led to emendation. (Other emendations appear in smaller sets of witnesses.) But the majority reading does not have to be taken this way: If one punctuates as above (recall that the original text and early MSS did not have punctuation), one gets the sense “after that, by the space of four hundred fifty years, He gave judges” (Jamieson, Fausset, and D. Brown, New Testament Commentary Volume 1, p. 514), wherein the 450 years refers to the time which elapsed before the period of judges commenced. Luke often uses ὡς as a temporal marker, and while this exact construction does not seem to occur elsewhere in his writings, there is a comparably complex statement in Acts 1:10 (καὶ ὡς ἀτενίζοντες ἦσαν εἰς τὸν οὐρανὸν πορευομένου αὐτοῦ, καὶ ἰδοὺ ... ). In these passages, however, it seems more reasonable to suppose that a few related witnesses inherited the same error than to say that many scribes independently converged on one and the same alteration.†Take the widely adopted reading εὑρεθήσεται (א, B, P, 1175, 1448, 1739txt, 1852, syp, syh mss txt, syh mg) in 2 Pet 3:10. The sense is extraordinary difficult, and one might argue on precisely that basis that it is original. But why would virtually all scribes (note the geographic spread as well as the huge proportion of the MSS inherent in the support A, 048, 33, 81, 307, 436, 442, 642, 1611, 1739vl, 2344, Byz, vgcl, syp, syh mss vl, syh, Cyr) emend specifically to κατακαήσεται? Why do the MSS not waver between this reading and others like κριθήσεται, ἀπολεῖται, and οὐκ ἔσται? The exceptions prove the rule: Only P72, C, and a few versional witnesses contain attempts to resolve the problem of εὑρεθήσεται (and all of these witnesses have strong connections to those that have εὑρεθήσεται). The εὑρεθήσεται reading might have resulted from a smudge, tear, or case of poor penmanship in the exemplar that gave rise to the Alexandrian texttype: If that reading was original, and if scribes were inclined to emend difficult places, then a welter of competing readings should have arisen.
table 1: Frequency table of readings grouped by number of supporting witnesses in Jude, based on Wasserman's collation. Singular readings have a “Witnesses” value of 1, readings supported by two witnesses, a value of 2, and so on. The two peaks of the distribution are detailed here; all other numbers of supporting witnesses correspond to fewer than 10 readings.
| Witnesses | Readings | Witnesses | Readings |
| 1 | 560 | 1578 | 13 |
| 2 | 164 | 1579 | 6 |
| 3 | 87 | 1580 | 7 |
| 4 | 64 | 1581 | 9 |
| 5 | 45 | 1582 | 3 |
| 6 | 32 | 1583 | 6 |
| 7 | 30 | 1584 | 4 |
| 8 | 23 | 1585 | 7 |
| 9 | 19 | 1586 | 9 |
| 10 | 11 | 1587 | 12 |
| 11 | 8 | 1588 | 9 |
| 12 | 9 | 1589 | 10 |
| 13 | 7 | 1590 | 5 |
| 14 | 12 | 1591 | 10 |
| 15 | 7 | 1592 | 13 |
| 16 | 6 | 1593 | 12 |
| 17 | 8 | 1594 | 11 |
| 18 | 5 | 1595 | 14 |
| 19 | 4 | 1596 | 11 |
| 20 | 6 | 1597 | 10 |
| 21 | 6 | 1598 | 9 |
| 22 | 4 | 1599 | 7 |
| 23 | 4 | 1600 | 13 |
| 24 | 5 | 1601 | 9 |
| 25 | 6 | 1602 | 10 |
table 2: Frequency table of readings grouped by number of supporting witnesses in Jn 18, based on Morrill's collation. The two peaks of the distribution are detailed here; all other numbers of supporting witnesses correspond to fewer than 10 readings.