the objective of Textual Criticism

[KUWN]

The Text-Critical Case Against Biblical Inspiration seems to imply that if we have anything less than full certainty about the text of the Bible, then we can't have confidence in it or its inspired origin. But this is to ask of history more than it can ever supply. What we should expect from text criticism is not 100% certainty about the biblical text, which is impossible, but rather a high level of confidence that the text reconstructed by text critics is very close to the original. This sort of confidence, I believe, is quite defensible on scholarly grounds.(quote from one of my textbooks which I no longer have, taken from my notes)

Dan Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary, a noted Textual Critic, says what we have today is not the exact copy of the originals, but due to the many manuscripts that we do have, we actually have about 103% of the New Testament text. What he means is we've got the original wording of the NT, but we also have additional words that do not belong. What needs to happen now is to remove the dross and approach 100% of the NT text.

Sometimes you will hear a critic say that we don't have the original text of the New Testament. Actually, what we do have is the original text, but what we don't have are the original documents. There is a big difference in this statement. The original TEXT and the original DOCUMENTS are two different things. This should better equip you should you have to give a reason for the hope that lies within you.

 

[Lambano]

Dan Wallace of Dallas Theological Seminary, a noted Textual Critic, says what we have today is not the exact copy of the originals, but due to the many manuscripts that we do have, we actually have about 103% of the New Testament text.

"103%, eh?", he said mischievously. "How do we know we have all the inspired texts that are out there?"

I read a book called The Constantine Codex, a fictional work by Christian historical scholar Paul Maier. In his book, ou intrepid archaeologists find an old Bible codex that contains two unique features: A different ending to the book of Mark that is written more in Mark's characteristic style, and a sequel to the book of Acts, written again to "Theophilus" and detailing the life of Paul starting from where Acts leaves off and ending with Paul's martyrdom. (Maier notes in the afterword that these two would be high on Biblical scholars' Christmas wish list.) The works seem to be authentic, and dating the parchment gave an old date similar to Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus. So, should the new Mark and "Acts 2" be canonized? The book ended with that question still up in the air.

 

[KUWN]

"103%, eh?", he said mischievously. "How do we know we have all the inspired texts that are out there?"

We have too many ancient manuscripts and translations by which the NT can be reconstructed. This is due to having about 6,000 Greek manuscripts, and 10,000 Latin manuscripts, and another 10,000 translations into other languages. BTW, we have not analyzed all these manuscripts and translations to hone it down from 103% to approximately 99.9 to 100.1%. Actually, as you probably know, we are not after certainty of the NT text (this is impossible) by applying the principles of Textual Criticism. We are looking for an accurate text/copy of the autographa. There are only a handful of wordings that are in question, like Rom 5.1.

I read a book called The Constantine Codex, a fictional work by Christian historical scholar Paul Maier. In his book, ou intrepid archaeologists find an old Bible codex that contains two unique features: A different ending to the book of Mark that is written more in Mark's characteristic style, and a sequel to the book of Acts, written again to "Theophilus" and detailing the life of Paul starting from where Acts leaves off and ending with Paul's martyrdom. (Maier notes in the afterword that these two would be high on Biblical scholars' Christmas wish list.) The works seem to be authentic, and dating the parchment gave an old date similar to Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus. So, should the new Mark and "Acts 2" be canonized? The book ended with that question still up in the air.

No, they should not be added to the NT canon. I will expound on this tomorrow.

 

[KUWN]

Lambano said:
@Lambano

I read a book called The Constantine Codex, a fictional work by Christian historical scholar Paul Maier. In his book, ou intrepid archaeologists find an old Bible codex that contains two unique features: A different ending to the book of Mark that is written more in Mark's characteristic style, and a sequel to the book of Acts, written again to "Theophilus" and detailing the life of Paul starting from where Acts leaves off and ending with Paul's martyrdom. (Maier notes in the afterword that these two would be high on Biblical scholars' Christmas wish list.) The works seem to be authentic, and dating the parchment gave an old date similar to Codex Sinaiticus or Vaticanus. So, should the new Mark and "Acts 2" be canonized? The book ended with that question still up in the air.
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The manuscripts that contain the New Testament evidence are basically complete. If another early manuscript were found, that would mean one reading out of tens of thousands. One reading out of thousands would not be a viable option. Also, what you would actually have is one manuscript with several variants out of 400,000 to 500,000 variants in all. Textual Criticism is the safeguard for the trustworthiness of our Bible. To be included in the Bible, you have to have a lot of evidence to support its inclusion. This recently found manuscript would have to be able to explain why not one Greek manuscript out of about 6,000, not one Latin Translation out of 10,000, and why not one of the 9,000 translations in other than Latin do not contain this text. As you can see, it is practically impossible to have a unique reading be considered part of the canon.

An interesting side note is a manuscript that contains part of the book of Revelation. It reads that the number of the beast is 616, not 666. And, the 616 reading is the oldest reading of the verse we have today. So, why wasn't, after more manuscripts were written, the number 666 adjusted to 616. The issue is there are just too many manuscripts and versions that the reading of 616 can be compared to. This one manuscript will not trump all the others. Much of TC is common sense, and follows the laws of historical research.

 

[Lambano]

The hypothetical "Acts 2" case is different because it's not a variant of a known manuscript.

The "Real ending of Mark" would be an interesting variant because Mark has many variants, some which have no verses after Mark 16 verse 8, some with different versions of Jesus's resurrection appearance that don't agree with each other and have a style different from the body of the letter. Without those, Mark has Jesus making no resurrection appearances, verse 16 could be considered salvic in nature (requiring baptism), and, well, redacting verse 18 removes all support for snake handling.