How To Study Your Bible – Part 2: Which Bible Should You Study?

 The methods used in editing the modern Critical Text

In 1831, Karl Lachmann the first major editor to break from the Received Text, tried applying the criteria that he used in editing other classics to remove errors in the New Testament. This was the first Critical Text. There have been many versions since.

In 1881 using the codex Vatacanus and codex Sinaiticus B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort’s came out with The New Testament in the Original Greek. Westcott and Hort called their manuscript ”the neutral text”.

At this point, some critics will expect an attack on the character of Westcott and Hort. However, the purpose of this writing is not to attack anybody. If you want to study Westcott and Hort, you can read the Life and Letters of Brooke Foss Westcott, the Life and Letters of Fenton John Anthony Hort, or go to a pro-Westcott and Hort website where you can find more of their writings. With a little study, you can answer for yourself what they believed and taught.

At any rate, all modern translations except the New King James Version use Westcott and Hort’s New Testament as their basis. You may assume thereby that most modern scholars consider it the most faithful in preserving the original autographs.

So starting with the Alexandrian manuscripts, what was the procedure that the editors used to create a modern critical text?

All the quotes in this section are in blue italics and come from the Introduction to A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, 1971 by Bruce M. Metzger. The underlined words are my emphasis.

Dr. Metzger was on the committee that created the United Bible Societies third addition of the Greek New Testament (UBS3). The purpose of his commentary was to be a companion to their Greek New Testament. Since he was on the committee Dr. Metzger would be qualified to describe the guidelines they used to edit their manuscripts. You can read all his quotes in their original context, without my comments.

What are the criteria used in editing the critical text?

According to Dr. Metzger, we must first decide what are the words of God and what are the words of men.

These considerations depend, it will be seen, upon probabilities, and sometimes the textual critic must weigh one set of probabilities against another

Did the committee have any rules to determine what would be probable?

The range and complexity of textual data are so great that no neatly arranged or mechanically contrived set of rules can be applied with mathematical precision.

If there were no neat set of rules and they based their considerations on probabilities, who then decided what was probable?

It is inevitable that in some cases different scholars will come to different evaluations of the significance of the evidence

What Dr. Metzger is saying is that there was not an agreement among scholars on what evidence was most significant. However, while there were no rules, there were guidelines.

The first guideline:
The more difficult reading is to be preferred.

In general, the more difficult reading is to be preferred, particularly when the sense appears on the surface to be erroneous but on more mature consideration proves itself to be correct. (Here ”more difficult” means ”more difficult to the scribe,” who would be tempted to make an emendation. The characteristic of most scribal emendations is their superficiality, often combining ”the appearance of improvement with the absence of its reality.” Obviously the category ”more difficult reading” is relative, and sometimes a point is reached when a reading must be judged to be so difficult that it can have arisen only by accident in transcription.)

How did the committee decide what was difficult for the scribe?

What is a ”more mature consideration”?

How does one decide that a reading is not mature enough to override this guideline?

If a point can be reached when a reading is judged to be so difficult, that it could have arisen only by accident in transcription, could not some of the less difficult passages also arise in the same way?

If ”the category ‘more difficult reading’ is relative” is a true statement, how can you apply this guideline with any accuracy, especially to the difficult passages?

The second guideline:
The shorter reading is to be preferred.

In general the shorter reading is to be preferred, except where… The scribe may have omitted material which he deemed to be (i) superfluous, (ii) harsh, or (iii) contrary to pious belief, liturgical usage, or as ascetical practice.

However, as we saw when we compared the differences, the Critical Text does omit material scribes ”deemed to be superfluous, harsh, or contrary to pious belief, liturgical usage, or as ascetical practice”. This single guideline – preferring the shorter text – is a completely arbitrary guideline.

When you practice your memory verses, do you usually have troubles remembering all of a verse or do you error by adding words to it? When you copy a paragraph, are you more likely to leave out a small portion or add extraneous words to it? For these reasons I would assume that the longer reading is more faithful to the original manuscript. The committee introduced many errors by arbitrarily preferring the shorter version. This guideline is worse than arbitrary and explains why so many passages have been removed from the Critical Text and our modern Bibles.

The third guideline:
The reading with verbal dissidence is to be preferred.

Since scribes would frequently bring divergent passages into harmony with one another, in parallel passages (whether quotations from the Old Testament or different accounts in the Gospels of the same event or narrative) that reading which involves verbal dissidence is usually to be preferred to one which is verbally concordant.

It seems highly unlikely that ”scribes would frequently bring divergent passages into harmony” for several reasons, the main one being the verses in the Bible that curse those who do so. The only people who deliberately add or remove passages from the Word of God are those who have no fear of God and as Peter said, they are doing it to their own destruction.

If an apostle is unable to quote Scripture, why should young Christians believe the Word of God? Is it not an assumption that later scribes would have had access to the documents they were quoting while the Apostles did not? Imagine trying to write a letter in which you are quoting a scripture passage. Imagine for a moment that God used you to write one of the epistles that would later become the Bible. Do you suppose that your original letter would be more harmonious or dissident than later copies? Could not a scribe with an agenda cause a dissident passage? For these reasons, having a guideline like choosing ”that reading which involves verbal dissidence is usually to be preferred” is worse than arbitrary.

The fourth guideline:
What was the author more likely to have written?

Intrinsic Probabilities depend upon considerations of what the author was more likely to have written. The textual critic takes into account (1.) In general: The style and vocabulary of the author throughout the book, the immediate context; and Harmony with the usage of the author elsewhere; and, (2) In the gospels: The Aramaic background of the teaching of Jesus; The priority of the Gospel according to Mark; and the influence of the Christian community upon the formulation and transmission of the passage in question.

When you decide, ”what the author was more likely to have written”, it is your opinion that becomes the final authority. This is plainly using doctrine to edit the Bible. It should be the other way around, use the Bible to edit your doctrine! As Dr. Metzger pointed out earlier, using this guideline it is not possible for all scholars to agree.

The fifth guideline:
The textual critic knows when to give consideration of one kind of evidence over another.

It is obvious that not all of these criteria are applicable in every case. The textual critic must know when it is appropriate to give greater consideration to one kind of evidence and less to another. Since textual criticism is an art as well as a science, it is inevitable that in some cases different scholars will come to different evaluations of the significance of the evidence. This divergence is almost inevitable when, as sometimes happens, the evidence is so divided that, for example, the .more difficult reading is found only in the later witnesses, or the longer reading is found only in the earlier witnesses.

This guideline is very confusing. If The textual critic [knows] when it is appropriate to give greater consideration to one kind of evidence and less to another; how come different scholars will come to different evaluations?

What does textual criticism is an art as well as a science imply? As artists, are they creative? Perhaps this is it a gentle way of saying textual criticism is not always accurate?

The sixth guideline:
Numerical support counts for nothing.

Let us not forgot to mention one guideline that might prove useful. The guideline should read something like; The committee took into consideration what the verse looked like in the vast majority of ancient manuscripts. Well incredibly,

Witnesses are to be weighed rather than counted.

For example, if in a given sentence reading x is supported by twenty manuscripts and reading y by only one manuscript, the relative numerical support favoring x counts for nothing if all twenty manuscripts should be discovered to be copies made from a single manuscript, no longer extant, whose scribe first introduced that particular variant reading. The comparison, in that case, ought to be made between the one manuscript containing reading y and the single ancestor of the twenty manuscripts containing reading x.

Saying that the vast majority of ancient manuscripts come from a ”single manuscript no longer extant” is obvious. Actually, all of the manuscripts, every single scrap, are copies of the single and original manuscript that no longer exists.

Even so, instead of giving the words in the vast majority of manuscripts any consideration the committee chose one of the previous guidelines to decide what our Bibles will now contain.

Dr. Metzger is right, though he may not have meant to imply this; the ancient manuscripts (including things like letters that quote Scripture or torn pages) support the Received Text over the Alexandrian versions at a ratio of about 20 to 1. Therefore, scholars, while preferring them, call ancient manuscripts that support the Alexandrian version the Minority Text and all the ancient manuscripts that support the Received Text they call the Majority Text.

Being constrained by their six guidelines, could a God fearing person really create an accurate reproduction of the apostle’s manuscripts? Who created these guidelines? Prominent Christians serving on this committee give it credibility. Believers should refuse the honor of working on a committee when it is hamstrung with such rules.

 Do the committee members agree?

There is another place where Dr. Metzger’s Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament is useful in learning about the committee. It shows how they concurred in their final manuscript. In his own words:

”In order to indicate the relative degree of certainty in the mind of the Committee for the reading adopted as the text, an identifying letter is included within braces at the beginning of each set of textual variants. The letter {A} signifies that the text is virtually certain, while {B} indicates that there is some degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text. The letter, {C} means that there is a considerable degree of doubt whether the text or the apparatus contains the superior reading, while {D} shows that there is a very high degree of doubt concerning the reading selected for the text. In fact, among the {D} decisions sometimes none of the variant readings commended itself as original, and therefore the only recourse was to print the least unsatisfactory reading.

”None of the variant readings commended itself as original”, how could a sentence make it clearer that this committee does not believe in the inerrancy of scripture?

So how in agreement are the scholars? Let us look at the epistles of James and 1st John, two books picked at random. On the Epistle of James, Dr. Metzger comments on nineteen verses edited by the committee. Only one verse got an {A}, ‘the text is virtually certain’. Seven verses got a {B}, ‘some degree of doubt’. Eight verses received a {C}, ‘there is a considerable degree of doubt.’ Finally three verses received a {D}, ‘the only recourse was to print the least unsatisfactory reading.’

The 1st Epistle of John did not fare much better. Three verses got an {A}, ‘the text is virtually certain’. Eleven verses got a {B}, ‘some degree of doubt’. Eight verses received a {C}, ‘there is a considerable degree of doubt.’ Again three verses received a {D}, ‘the only recourse was to print the least unsatisfactory reading.’

Since the scholars themselves were virtually certain in only 7% of their editing, why should the church have more confidence in the manuscript?