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In the case of the New Testament papyri manuscripts, our early evidence for the Greek New Testament, size is irrelevant. They range from centimeters encompassing a couple of verses to a codex with many books of the New Testament. But all of them add something significant.
Uncial 0189 (in the Gregory-Aland numbering) is the oldest parchment manuscript of the New Testament. It consists of a single vellum leaf of a middle second-century Greek codex
Interesting;y, the text of 𝔓118 runs straight through Romans 15:33 to 16:1, so it differs from 𝔓46, which has the doxology (usually printed at 16:25-27) immediately following 15:33.
What is the original reading: (1) “This kind does not come out except by prayer” or the longer (2) “This kind does not come out except by prayer and fasting”?
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.
It is my opinion that scribal gap-filling accounts for many of the textual variants (especially textual expansions) in the New Testament—particularly in the narrative books (the Four Gospels and Acts). What is scribal gap-filling?
Confronted by a mass of conflicting readings, editors must decide which variants deserve to be included in the text and which should be relegated to the apparatus. Although at first, it may seem to be a hopeless task amid so many thousands of variant readings to sort out those that should be regarded as original, textual scholars have developed certain generally acknowledged criteria of evaluation.
Textual criticism of the New Testament is the identification of textual variants. or different versions of the New Testament, whose goals include identification of transcription errors, analysis of versions, and attempts to reconstruct the original text.
Are these verses original, and if so what did the apostle Paul mean for women to keep silent in the congregations? Are the women not to speak at all?
What does James say about the rich? Was James misspeaking in James 5:5? What did he mean by the words that he used?