Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism

Black, David Alan

• Publisher: Baker Academic
• Year: 2002
• ISBN:
  9781441206077
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Criticism & Interpretation

New Testament textual criticism is an important but often overlooked field of study. Results drawn from textual studies bear important consequences for interpreting the New Testament and cannot be ignored by serious students of Scripture. This book introduces current issues in New Testament textual criticism and surveys the various methods used to determine the original text among variant readings. These essays from Eldon Jay Epp, Michael Holmes, J. K. Elliott, Maurice Robinson, and Moisés Silva provide readers with an excellent introduction to the field of New Testament textual criticism.

1

ISSUES IN NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM

Moving from the Nineteenth Century
to the Twenty-First Century

ELDON JAY EPP

I begin with a textual variant, though not from the New Testament.[1] For many years I kept on a note card—and in my mind—a couplet that has guided my own work, for it describes a common weakness of interpreters that I was determined to avoid. It read:

Exegetes who major issues shun
And hold their farthing candles to the sun.

My scribbled note said that this was from Alexander Pope (1688–1744), and when I decided to quote it here, I consulted a complete concordance of Pope’s poetry. I was unable, however, to confirm the reference, so I put a footnote in the preliminary version of the essay saying I had been unsuccessful in locating its source. Almost immediately, J. K. Elliott sent an email message, kindly informing me that my quotation obviously was a textual variant (probably by way of oral tradition) of the following couplet by Edward Young (1683–1765), whose life overlapped that of Pope for fifty-seven years; it reads:

How commentators each dark passage shun
And hold their farthing candle to the sun.

The former reading had considerable influence on me, yet it now appears to be a variant of the latter that has been altered in the process of transmission. Therefore, in the face of these two variant readings, I decided to follow a line of interpretation that I shall describe near the end of this essay, namely, adopt both readings and pronounce that textual critics will do well (a) if they do not try to avoid dark, difficult passages and (b) if they stick to major issues. Both actions will prevent the light they cast on the New Testament text from being obliterated by the sunshine of the great textual critics that have gone before.

In what follows, I hope to sketch several major issues facing the discipline at this fascinating point in its history. Some may be rather familiar, traditional issues, while others will offer new challenges well beyond the familiar. If we are to move further toward resolution, some issues will require continued labors on long-standing and well-defined tasks, while others not only will demand accommodation to radical new ideas but also are likely to generate resistance among those who may view them as paths too risky to follow.

As an instructive framework for our considerations, I shall identify several issues facing New Testament textual criticism at the outset of the twenty-first century and then compare them with the same or similar issues in the nineteenth century. More specifically, I shall describe, first, the status of each issue at the end or perhaps in the latter half of the nineteenth century, a period of significant progress in discovering and analyzing manuscripts, in addressing principles for approving or disapproving variant readings, and in creating widely accepted critical editions of the Greek New Testament text. Second, after tracing progress during the twentieth century, each issue’s present status will be assessed, followed by suggestions about where the discipline might be headed in the year 2000 and beyond. Incidentally, merely postulating this particular framework implies at the outset that the issues in textual criticism have not changed markedly during the past century, and, indeed, to a large extent this is the case, since some issues remain largely or partially unresolved and we have learned to live with compromises. At the same time, however, with the entire twentieth century now in view, we can see the prodigious labors expended in analyzing the numerous and notably early manuscripts that came to light during that period and in the development of theories, tools, and methods for studying the transmission, history, and nature of the New Testament text—including some radical new approaches and attitudes.[2] So, the trick is to determine how our successes or failures during the twentieth century position us now to move forward decisively in this new century.

I propose to identify five issues currently requiring attention, though some will have to be treated in cursory fashion due to space limitations. I begin with a truism: Since New Testament textual criticism is both an art and a science, as a discipline it is all about choice and decision. I therefore characterize the major issues as follows:

1. Choosing among variants—and deciding on priority. This is the issue of the so-called canons of criticism—what are the arguments we employ to decide between the variant readings in a given variation unit, and, as a consequence, how do we put it all together to reconstruct readings that make up a text most like that of the early Christian community?
2. Choosing among manuscripts—and deciding on groups. Here the concern is text-types—can we isolate clusters of manuscripts that constitute distinguishable kinds of texts as evidenced by shared textual characteristics? And can we marshal these to sketch the history of the New Testament text?
3. Choosing among critical editions—and deciding for compromise. Do our current critical editions of the Greek New Testament reflect a reasonable approximation to the text (or a text) that was extant in very early Christianity? The difficulties inherent in reconstructing such a text suggest that compromise may be the order of the day.
4. Choosing to address context—and deciding on influence. This engages the issue of placing manuscripts and variant readings in their church-historical, cultural, and intellectual contexts—how did they influence the church and its theology, and how, in turn, did the church and the surrounding culture influence the manuscripts and their variant readings?
5. Choosing to address goals and directions—and deciding on meanings and approaches. What is the goal or what are the goals of New Testament textual criticism? More specifically, what do we mean by original text and what can we mean by it? And how will our decisions inform our future directions and our methods?

Obviously, this is a tall order for a single essay, and at point after point we shall have to be content with broad strokes on a very large canvas (and tolerate numerous footnotes).

Choosing among Variants—and Deciding on Priority: The Issue of the Canons of Criticism

Utilizing canons of criticism, that is, rules or principles to judge the quality and priority of competing variant readings in New Testament manuscripts, goes back at least as far as Irenaeus (second century), Origen (third century), and Jerome (fourth and early fifth centuries), who on occasion discuss the age or nature of manuscripts or explain why they prefer one reading over another. As examples, Irenaeus prefers a reading in the Apocalypse 13:18 “found in all the good [or weighty] and ancient copies,” and Origen rejects the reading Jesus prefixed to Barabbas in Matthew 27:16–17 both because “in many copies” it is not present and because the name Jesus would not be used of evildoers.[3]

The modern formulation and discussion of criteria for judging variants accelerated from the list of forty-three drawn up by Gerhard von Mastricht in 1711 to Richard Bentley’s Proposals for Printing a New Edition [of a Greek and Latin New Testament] in 1720, to the increasingly influential canons of J. A. Bengel (1725), J. J. Wettstein (1730 and 1751–52), J. J. Griesbach (1796–1806), and Karl Lachmann (1831–1850).[4] Noteworthy from this period is Bentley’s insistence on using “the most ancient and venerable MSS. in Greek and Roman capital letters,” whose readings are to be confirmed by the old versions and fathers “within the first five centuries,” because “what has crept into any copies since is of no value or authority.”[5] Noteworthy also are Bengel’s celebrated principle that “the harder reading is to be preferred”[6] and his reliance on the oldest Greek manuscripts and the geographical distribution of witnesses. In addition, Bengel was the first to enunciate the influential affirmation that textual witnesses must be weighed and not merely counted.[7] Wettstein reaffirmed most of these criteria in 1730, stating also his preference for the shorter reading and for the reading in conformity with the author’s style, though not necessarily preferring the more orthodox reading. Wettstein, however, had abandoned this general approach by the time his 1751–52 edition appeared, having convinced himself that the oldest Greek manuscripts had been corrupted by those in Latin—not a defensible view. Then, Griesbach reinforced and refined Bengel’s criterion of preferring the harder reading, and, like Wettstein, he also favored the shorter reading (the first criterion in his list, though stated with numerous qualifications); however, again like Wettstein, Griesbach was suspicious of readings that supported piety or suited orthodox theology. In addition, Griesbach clearly favored the ancient witnesses, as did Lachmann after him. Indeed, it was the latter who afforded the “received text” of the sixteenth century no authority, thus effecting a decisive break with the textus receptus, until then the standard critical text of the New Testament.[8]

In the mid- to late nineteenth century, however, these canons of criticism came into their own in the hands of Constantin von Tischendorf (1849), S. P. Tregelles (1854), and B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort (1881–82). Tischendorf and Tregelles provided straightforward principles, while those employed by WH must be extracted and systematized from Hort’s detailed discussions. Overall, the result was extensive agreement among the three approaches.[9] Tischendorf, for example, stressed that “the text should be sought solely from ancient witnesses” and, echoing Lachmann, that the resulting authority of the oldest Greek codices is not “surmounted by the disagreement of most or even of all the recent codices.”[10] He also gave preference to “the reading that appears to have occasioned the other readings,” which he describes as the basic rule.[11] Tregelles, in turn, emphasized “the authority of ancient copies without allowing the ‘received text’ any prescriptive rights” and preferred the harder reading and the shorter reading.[12] Finally, as we near the end of the nineteenth century, WH exemplified all of the principles highlighted above, particularly its editors’ preference for the older readings, manuscripts, or groups; for the reading that most aptly explains the existence of the others; for the harder (rather than the smoother) reading; and for “quality” readings rather than those with numerous supporting witnesses. In addition, WH preferred the single elements in a conflated reading, the reading best conforming to the author’s style and grammar, and readings that are found in a manuscript that habitually contains superior readings, especially if such a manuscript is also an older one. As for the textus receptus, which they called the Syrian text, it is the farthest removed chronologically and qualitatively from the original text. Also, WH established a clear division between external and internal criteria,[13] an approach that will characterize all subsequent discussion of the canons of criticism. At the end of the nineteenth century, then, there was widespread agreement in the use of two differing sets of criteria, external and internal.

Before summarizing these categories, the term criteria deserves some thought. The Alands use the word rules (“Twelve Basic Rules [Grundregeln] for Textual Criticism”) in their manual,[14] but they and all theorists and practitioners in the field know that these are not really rules that are or can be applied mechanically to decide priority among variants. On occasion, however, the criteria are misunderstood as functioning in that fashion,[15] for all the terms employed—“rules,” “criteria,” “principles,” and the like—lend themselves to that kind of rigid interpretation. For a brief moment I considered a return to the old, perhaps obsolete term canons for these criteria, because canon refers to a measure; we might then call the criteria “measures” or “yardsticks” of priority, which we hold up to each variant to “take its measure” (as we say), even if that measure is not scientifically exact. Yet, the term canon more commonly implies a fixed and final measure, as in a limited collection of writings or a canonized saint. The criteria for priority, however, really are measures of probability or various complementary or even competing arguments for priority. Hence, we might use probabilities, a term drawn from Hort’s phrases transcriptional probabilities and intrinsic probabilities (WH 2:20–22), which Bruce Metzger employed along with the term criteria.[16] Better, perhaps, is the simple term arguments, for arguments, after all, are of varying force, some more compelling and some less compelling, some more relevant and some less relevant, to a given situation or context, and arguments also can be used singly or in multiple, complementary fashion. All of this fits very well the external and internal canons as they have developed historically and have been applied practically—and as they have been weakened or strengthened in efficacy during their utilization by textual criticism.

External arguments involve documentary factors—information about manuscripts and the history of their transmission—that is, the more clearly empirical data, such as the age and provenance of a manuscript in which a given reading is found, the age of a reading as ascertained by patristic support, the geographical range of a...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. Issues in New Testament Textual Criticism
• 2. The Case for Reasoned Eclecticism
• 3. The Case for Thoroughgoing Eclecticism
• 4. The Case for Byzantine Priority
• 5. Response
• Subject Index
• Scripture Index
• Notes