Because there are so many individual manuscripts, textual critics are hard-pressed to know the individual characteristics of each manuscript. Consequently, many textual critics categorize the manuscripts into text-types, which they then use in their evaluation of textual variants.
Bruce M. Metzger (1914–2007) New Testament Textual Scholar and Bible Translator
Dr. Bruce Metzger was unquestionably one of the greatest New Testament scholars of the 20th century. (Dr. Daniel B. Wallace) Bruce Metzger was one of the finest minds in New Testament studies in the twentieth century. Indisputably, all textual scholars would agree that he was the leading textual scholar of the 20th century.
What Do We Find When We Enter the Period of the Critical Text of the New Testament?
New Testament textual criticism goes back to Origen (185-254), in the third century of our common era. The historical roots of textual scholarship actually go back to the 3rd-century B.C.E. in the Library of Alexandria. We are going to the 18th-19th centuries for the purposes of this article.