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”?
NTTC: Mark 9:29 “This kind does not come out except by prayer”?
NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL STUDIES: Bruce Metzger’s Judgment of Variant Readings According to Text-Types
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.
New Testament Textual Studies and Scribal-Gap Filling
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?
The Process of Attempting to Ascertain the Original Wording of the Original Texts of the New Testament
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
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.
NTTC 1 CORINTHIANS 14:33–35: Did the Apostle Paul Forbid Women to Speak?
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?
NTTC JAMES 5:5 Misuse of Riches or Copyist Purposely Miscopied James?
What does James say about the rich? Was James misspeaking in James 5:5? What did he mean by the words that he used?
NTTC JAMES 5:7 “Rain” or “Fruit” Supplemental or Explanatory Information?
The WH NU reading has weighty manuscripts (𝔓74 B 048 1739 cop), both the Alexandrian and the Western text-types. However, ...
NTTC JAMES 5:20a “let him know that” or “you know that”
The first two words of 5:20, the third-person imperative and the demonstrative pronoun (γινωσκέτω ὅτι ginōsketō hoti) would seem to be the original reading and were altered to the second-person plural imperative (γινώσκετε ginōskete).
Daniel B. Wallace (1950–Present): New Testament Textual Criticism, the Documentary Method, and the Greek Manuscript Record
Daniel B. Wallace advances a documentary approach to the Greek New Testament, privileging early papyri and majuscules and grounding decisions in verifiable evidence.
