Textual Criticism 2

I. Principles of Textual Criticism

a. Many of the Old Manuscripts have two columns: the original greek and the translation.

b. External evidence:
i. The History of a text is like the growth of a tree. Scribes will copy from the original and increasingly from the other copies. Groups that go back the original along the same path are called families.

c. The date of the manuscript
i. Once we know which family a manuscript is in, we must discover when it was written. The earlier a manuscript was written, the more helpful it will be in determining what the original originally said.
1. the amount of copies with a certain discrepancies does not matter. The history of it matters. So if it’s one thousand say “that” and one hundred say “this” but the hundred were older and the thousand go back to one copy, written later, the hundred wins.
2. Alexandria seems to be the best, Byzantine seems to be most conflated.

d. These two factors, the family type and the date along with the geographical distribution, determine the quality of the manuscript
i. It’s quality over quantity

e. Internal Evidence: basic principle: choose the reading which best explains the origin of the others. Example of cheating: teachers have to figure out who copied who.
i. Transcriptional probabilities: say two lines bothe end with “Jesus” with a line in the middle: some scribes might accidentally skip the line in the middle.
ii. Intrinsic Probabilities: we have one word that makes perfect sense in the context, and one word that is nonsensical. We will tend to choose the one that makes sense.
1. Luke uses certain words more frequently.
2. so you choose the one that luke would have used.

II. Conclusions:

a. We have more evidence for the NT than any other ancient manuscript.

b. No NT doctrine is in question based on a discrepancy. There is one place in John 1:18 where we don’t know if it affirms Christ’s Godhood. But there are plenty of other places which affirm his Godhood. Sometimes there is a meaningless “the”

c. There is probably only one in 1000 words about which there is any doubt.

d. There are about one hundred, one hundred-twenty five places in the OT where there is any doubt.

e. Therefore, we may rest assured.

f. Thus, the claim of having an inerrant Bible is a meaningful one.

III. The King James is to be rejected as the best translation because it is based upon late, inferior manuscripts.

a. King James wanted to have a translation without any anti-monarchy notes.
i. The Greek NT that was used was a translation that Erasmus created.
ii. Textus Receptus: the publisher used this term to sell copies of the book (Erasmus’s Greek translation)

b. The translation that we have now has been compiled by an number of scholars.

c. The KJV comes from maybe 8 manuscripts, all from the Byzantine family
i. None of the manuscripts were from earlier than the 10th century.

d. Sometimes Erasmus utilized the Vulgate. The Vulgate most likely contradicts the original, since scores of other manuscripts contradict it in certain places.

e. Why is there even an issue? People are worried that other people are attacking the faith to change the faith.