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The necessity of Textual Criticism

Textual criticism concerns itself with the problems suggested by various kinds of errors. textual evidence is so vast—exceeding that of any other literature, as has been seen—that two results follow: First, since the copying by hand of any document of appreciable length almost inevitably involves change and error, many textual errors and variants will be found in this great quantity of MSS. Second, such a wealth of evidence makes it all the more certain that the original words of the have been preserved somewhere within the MSS. Conjectural emendation (suggesting a reading that is not found in any MS), to which editors have resorted in the restoration of other ancient writings, has almost no place in the textual criticism of the. The materials are so abundant that at times the difficulty is to select the correct rendering from a number of variant readings in the MSS.

It must not be overlooked, however, that the textual critic deals with a relatively small percentage of the text. With the NT, as with ancient literature in general, the wording of perhaps 85 percent of the text is unquestioned. It is true that if the total number of variant readings of all the MSS were counted, the sum would be many thousand. But the true perspective is probably given by E. Abbot: “About nineteen-twentieths of the variations have so little support that … no one would think of them as rival readings, and nineteen-twentieths of the remainder are of so little importance that their adoption or rejection would cause no appreciable difference in the sense of the passages in which they occur.” The is of such supreme importance, however, that it is worth the attention of the textual critic to improve the text, if possible, even to a small degree.

Of the errors that give rise to variant readings, some are unintentional, and others are intentional.

Unintentional Errors

Errors of the Eye: The copyist sometimes confuses similar-appearing uncial letters, e.g., ⲤⲈⲐⲞ, ⲖⲆ, Ⲡ with ⲦⲒ or ⲄⲒ. The fibrous surface of papyrus could have caused confusion between ⲞⲤ, “who,” and Ⲑ︦Ⲥ︦, the abbreviation for ⲐⲈⲞⲤ, “God,” in 1 Tim. 3:16. Homoioteleuton is an error in which the scribe’s eye skips from the first to the second nearby occurrence of an identical word or group of letters, omitting all the intervening text. Thus the Greek word underlying the AV in 1 Jn. 2:23 skips from the first “has the Father” (tón patéra échei) to the second, with the result that many editions of the AV put the entire second half of this verse in italics, indicating that the words “he that acknowledgeth the Son hath the Father also” are not in the Greek Text. The opposite error sometimes occurs, in which the scribe copies letters or words twice.

Errors of the eye also include the transposition of letters, producing a different word. In Mk. 14:65 some MSS changed élabon, “took,” to ébalon, “cast.” In Acts 13:23 two MSS changed s̄r̄āīn̄, the abbreviation for sōtḗra Iēsoun, “a savior Jesus,” to s̄r̄īān̄, the abbreviation for sōtērían, “salvation.”

Errors of the Pen: Here is classed all that body of variation due to the miswriting by the penman of what is correctly enough in his mind but through carelessness, he fails rightly to transfer to the new copy. Transposition of similar letters has evidently occurred in Codices E, M, and H of Mr 14:65, also in H2 L2 of Ac 13:23.

The Reading Culture of Early Christianity

Errors of Speech: These errors arise from similarities of pronounciation. For example, from early in the Christian era several Greek vowels were pronounced alike. One result of this “itacism” is confusion of “we/our/us” and “you/your” (plural), e.g., in 1 Jn. 1:4, chará hēmṓn, “our joy,” or chará hymṓn, “your joy.”

Errors of the Mind: These errors, resulting from misunderstanding or forgetfulness, include: changes in word order; the substitution of synonyms, such as eípen for éphē, “he said,” or ek for apó, “from”; and such changes as the substitution of karpós, “fruit,” for the less common word kárphos, “speck,” in one MS of Lk. 6:42. Some harmonizations of parallel passages might be unintentional, such as the addition in a few MSS of “through his blood” to Col. 1:14 from the parallel in Eph. 1:7. Also, a scribe might have misunderstood an explanatory note in the margin of the MS he was copying and added it to the text of the new MS he was making. This could be the origin of the reference to the troubling of the waters in Jn. 5:3f.

Errors of Memory: These are explained as having arisen from the “copyist holding a clause or sequence of letters in his somewhat treacherous memory between the glance at the manuscript to be copied and his writing down what he saw there.” Here are classed the numerous petty changes in the order of words and the substitution of synonyms, as eipen for ephee, ek for apo, and vice versa.

Errors of Judgment: Under this class Dr. Warfield cites “many misreadings of abbreviations, as also the adoption of marginal glosses into the text by which much of the most striking corruption which has entered the text has been produced.” Notable instances of this type of error are found in Joh 5:1-4, explaining how it happened that the waters of Bethesda were healing; and in Joh 7:53 through Joh 8:12, the passage concerning the adulteress, and the last twelve verses of Mark.

C. F. Sitterly & J. H. Greenlee & Edward D. Andrews

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