Christian Publishing House Blog
Apologetic Defense of the faith, the Bible, and Christianity
Textual variants in the New Testament are the subject of the study called textual criticism of the New Testament. Textual variants in manuscripts arise when a copyist makes deliberate or inadvertent alterations to a text that is being reproduced.
New Testament textual criticism analyzes manuscript evidence to establish original biblical wording, focusing on variations in Matthew 10:14’s phrase.
Johann Jakob Wettstein forged a documentary, manuscript-driven Greek New Testament, training readers to weigh early evidence over later harmonizing expansions.
The sad state of affairs is that textual scholarship as a whole is unwittingly or knowingly moving the goalposts for some unknown reason. In textual criticism, it is now the earliest knowable text, the sociohistorical approach to New Testament Textual Studies, and, the newest trend of trying to redate our earliest NT papyri.
The Codex Alexandrinus (London, British Library, Royal MS 1. D. V-VIII; Gregory-Aland no. A or 02, Soden δ 4) is a fifth-century Christian manuscript of a Greek Bible, containing the majority of the Greek Old Testament and the Greek New Testament. It is one of the four Great uncial codices.
In the days of Westcott and Hort, the argument was that the Alexandrian scribes removed what we have in the Byzantine manuscripts, while the other argument was that the Byzantine scribes added and altered. How could we ever solve it once and for all?
ζητειτε την βασιλειαν αυτου “seeking his kingdom” ζητειτε την βασιλειαν του θεου “seeking the kingdom of God”
SERIOUS IMPLICATIONS If the WH NU reading is correct, then it is possible that this disciple of Jesus was zealous for the law or was “a zealous nationalist prior to his call to follow Jesus.
Samuel P. Tregelles restored the Greek New Testament by strictly weighing the earliest manuscripts, versions, and Fathers, establishing a documentary method.
Lachmann reset New Testament editing by privileging early, independent witnesses over the Textus Receptus, launching evidence-driven documentary textual criticism.
