Discussion about Majority/ Byzantine Priority Text

Following on from Mark's comment on my previous post, this discussion on Yahoo is worth reading.

John Wenham's Changed View of the Byzantine N.T. Text

"This is a shocking book — at least it delivered a shock to my system. It is not often that one reads a book which reorientates one's whole approach to a subject, but that is what this one has done for me. It is a frontal attack upon the Westcott and Hort theory of the NT text, the general soundness of which I had accepted without question for forty years. Two or three years ago I had the first tricklings of doubt about it; then I chanced to read George Salmon's Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (1897), which increased the trickle to a stream: now with this book it has become a flood." — John Wenham on Pickering's "The Identity of the NT Text".

Many will know John Wenham from his "Elements of New Testament Greek" (now revised by other authors), but how many will be aware of his changed views about the Byzantine (a.k.a. Traditional or Ecclesiastical) Text of the NT? The following is a copy of his review of Wilbur Pickering's "The Identity of the NT Text", which I urge all believers with a good intellect (and an open mind) to read.

I am putting this in to show that it is not just fundamentalists, those inclined to right-wing views or easily-led-astray, young zealots, who have concerns about the N.T. text being used in the likes of the ESV. Please may I state that we should not overemphasise the differences, but neither should we ignore them. (See here for a list of the differences, although your Bible's margins will usually show this, and here for an explanation of terminology.)

I have read Pickering's rebuttal of Gordon Fee's Critique, but I still have to get my hands on Fee's article. I would add that there is a critique that is popularly available: D.A. Carson has an appendix on Pickering's book in "The King James Version Debate: A Plea for Realism". There is a lot that I agree with in Carson's critique, but I would note that Carson also sees the value in Pickering's collation of material and that I would read Carson in the light of Robinson.

(Please note that I view Robinson's thesis as the most reasonable explanation of textual history that I have seen so far, although I diverge with him in his insistence on a neutralist/ naturalist presupposition. One's theology cannot be wholly excluded, even if some push the consequences of the theology of preservation too far, i.e. TR'ists and esp. Ruckmanites.)

It appears to me that for some plausible, but flawed reasons we have rejected the Majority Text of the Church for a localised (Egyptian) textual tradition that is highly variable within itself. (I acknowledge that the modern UBS/NA text is supposedly eclectic, but it treats the Majority Text as inferior and unworthy of any serious consideration, and is basically Alexandrian.)

A Review of Wilbur N. Pickering's The Identity of the New Testament Text by John Wenham

This is a shocking book-at least it delivered a shock to my system. It is not often that one reads a book which reorientates one's whole approach to a subject, but that is what this one has done for me. It is a frontal attack upon the Westcott and Hort theory of the NT text, the general soundness of which I had accepted without question for forty years. Two or three years ago I had the first tricklings of doubt about it; then I chanced to read George Salmon's Some Thoughts on the Textual Criticism of the New Testament (1897), which increased the trickle to a stream: now with this book it has become a flood. The author is not outstandingly erudite, nor outstandingly skilful in presentation, nor always convincing in detail, but he has gone to the experts and he has assembled an impressive array of facts and arguments.

He reminds us that Fenton J. A. Hort was a man with a brilliant mind and forceful character, who at age twenty-three conceived an animosity against what he called "that vile Textus Receptus leaning entirely on late MSS." As E. C. Colwell says, "Hort organized his entire argument to depose the Textus Receptus." His main positions were: (1) There are no signs of deliberate falsification of the text for dogmatic purposes. (2) Witnesses are not to be counted individually, but grouped by the genealogical method. (3) This method gives three (main) ancestral types: Syrian, Western and Neutral. (4) The Syrian text, though represented by the majority of MSS, is inferior because: (a) it is a late text, the result of authoritative revisions completed about A.D. 350; (b) its characteristic readings are not found in texts or quotations before that date; and (c) it was "conflated" from the other two. (5) Judged by internal criteria, then, the Western text however early, is an edited text and inferior to the Neutral tradition. (6) The Neutral text, headed by B and Aleph, is close to the original.

Hort's advocacy convinced the learned world and as K. W. Clark said: "the Westcott-Hort text has become today our textus receptus," on which practically all Greek texts and modern translations are now based.

But Pickering argues that on almost all counts Hort was wrong:
(1) Deliberate change was the principal cause of early variants.
(2) The genealogical method is totally unworkable in New Testament texts and was not used by Hort. Among all the five thousand Greek MSS, we have only one known parent-child relationship and only two (not well-knit) families (fam. 1 and fam. 13). Readings in the various MSS occur in endless different combinations which cannot be reduced to genealogical trees.
(3) The so-called text-types have no cohesion and therefore no one common ancestor: "the Caesarean text is disintegrating" (B. M. Metzger); the Western text has "an infinitely complicated and intricate parentage" (F. G. Kenyon); "any attempt to reconstruct an archetype of the (Neutral) Beta Text-type ... is doomed to failure" (E. C. Colwell); "the great bulk of Byzantine (Syrian) manuscripts defies all attempts to group them" (G. Zuntz).
(4) It is now acknowledged that both the Neutral and the Western texts are edited.
(5) Aleph and B differ from one another in three thousand places in the gospels alone-not including differences of spelling. B is "disfigured by many blunders in transcription" (F. G. Kenyon); Aleph is far worse. They are not good witnesses. Furthermore, Hort's faith in B depended partly on the dubious theory "the shorter reading is preferable." G. D. Kilpatrick suggests that a substitute canon, "the longer reading is preferable," would be no worse. K. W. Clark sums up the position: "our failure suggests that we have lost the way, that we have reached a dead end, and that only a new and different insight will enable us to break through."

In looking for a breakthrough, Pickering poses the crucial question: How are we to account for the Byzantine stream of MSS — a stream which is enormously varied, yet relatively homogeneous? His answer is simply that it had a common source, not in a fourth century revision, but in the autographs. The Western and Neutral texts are the aberrations, while the Syrian text represents the best tradition. (Because of the accident of climate we happen to be better informed about early texts in Egypt than elsewhere, but Egypt was not necessarily the home of the best text. It is quite doubtful whether we should look to Alexandria as the safest guide to the New Testament: Antioch's tradition of scholarship might serve us better. Certainly antiquity alone is no criterion of dependability.)

In his assault on the Textus Receptus, Hort convinced the world that the witness of the majority of MSS was unimportant. But he could only sustain this if he could plausibly argue for his fourth century-revision. If that theory collapses, we have to reckon with many independent witnesses. In a church with no centralized censorship and with copyists working away independently all over the Near East and Mediterranean world, new errors would constantly occur, but their influence would be local. The true reading at any particular point in a text would almost invariably be preserved by the majority of MSS. This means that the recently despised symbol Byz, representing the majority of MSS, should in fact be treated with the utmost respect. The Institut fur neutestamentliche Textforschung at Munster has done much research on Greek minuscules to identify those which most frequently exhibit independence from the Byzantine tradition. Perhaps it would be even more valuable to identify those which most frequently give the majority readings. Hort had every right to be dissatisfied with a text based on an arbitrary selection of late MSS, but he had less right to be dissatisfied with the basic tradition. The breakthrough in textual criticism may come through tracing this tradition back to its most primitive forms and dropping our reverence for Aleph and B.

This is not an academic matter, for it affects the wording of the hundreds of millions of scriptures which we are distributing across the globe. It is shocking to think that we may have been giving the world a bad text.

Reproduced from "The Majority Text: Essays and Reviews in the Continuing Debate", edited by Theodore P. Letis, and originally printed in the Evangelical Quarterly, Vol. 51, no. 1 (January - March 1979).
READ ARTICLE.

A Brief Guide to the Textual History of the Qu'ran

The following notes are taken from 'Jam al'Quran: The Codification of the Qu'ran Text' written by John Gilchrist, which relies on the Hadith, or Traditions, that are second only to the Qu'ran in authority. This is important in the light of most Muslims' claim that the text of the Qu'ran has been miraculously and perfectly preserved.

Mohammed (A.D. 570 - 632) had various visions during which he claimed to receive the text of the Qu'ran from the angel Gabriel (Jibril). These so-called revelations were generally memorised by his companions or written on various materials, including parchment, white stones and palm-leaf stalks.

Mohammed died without producing a definitive collation of these sayings, and no attempt was made to produce a definitive Qu'ran immediately. Shortly after his death, various tribes rebelled, which led to the Battle of Yamana. In this battle, several of Mohammed's closest companions, who had devoted themselves to memorising his sayings died, taking with them some which are now lost. The 1st Caliph, Abu Bakr, who led the Nation of Islam after Mohammed's death, saw that the Qu'ran could be lost, so he asked Zaid ibn Thabit to search far and wide for the various fragments and compile them as one codex (i.e. a book as opposed to a scroll).

This codex was kept in private possession by Abu Bakr (the 1st Caliph from A.D. 632-634), then Umar (the 2nd Caliph from A.D. 634-644) and then Hafsah, the daughter of Umar and wife of Mohammed. Nineteen years after Mohammed's death, General Hudayfah ibn al-Yaman led a military expedition into northern Syria. Arguments broke out amongst the various nations in his army over the content of the Qu'ran. Some from Iraq used text derived from a codex prepared by a companion of Mohammed called Abdullah ibn Mas'ud; others from Syria used another text derived from a codex prepared by another companion called Ubayy ibn Ka'b.

The General expressed his concerns to the 3rd Caliph, Uthman, (reigned A.D. 644 - 656) about the consequences of this divergent text-base for the unity of Islam. Uthman turned to Zaid and his codex to provide unity. He appointed three men to assist him in editing this codex (technical term: redaction): an Arabic expert and two men who spoke the local dialect of Arabic which Mohammed spoke. Zaid also came across portions of the Qu'ran that he had previously not included in his original codex.

The competing copies of the Qu'ran, which had many variant readings, including significant omissions, were destroyed through Uthman's power, despite the protests of their owners, including Abdullah ibn Mas'ud, who is described in the Hadith as one of the foremost authorities of the Qu'ran and who Mohammed first instructed to memorise it. The other main text was that of Ubbay, who was described by the 2nd Caliph, Umar, as the best reciter of the Qu'ran. These were the versions of the Qu'ran in public use, not the version produced by Zaid from which the modern Qu'ran is descended.

Despite this, other copies existed at this time, which were also later destroyed, both of which were owned by two of Mohammed's wives, Aishah and Hafsah. These ladies got their scribes to correct the Zaidic version because it disagreed with what they themselves had heard from the Prophet.

Despite this recension by Zaid under Abu Bakr and the subsequent redaction under Uthman, further editing took place under the Governor of Iraq, al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf, during the Caliphate of Abd al-Malik.

As the Uthamanic recension was distributed throughout the provinces, it came in a consonantal form without vowel points (i.e. not vowels). This led to disputes over what the Qu'ran said. In A.D. 934, the Qu'ranic expert Ibn Mujahid of Baghdad used his political influence to have these variant readings reduced to seven "text-types" (for want of a better word).

Over the centuries, all but two of these readings became unused. Of these two, one has gained the ascendancy: the Hafs, edited by Asim. The other reading is mainly confined to west and north-west Africa and is called the Warsh transmission (Warsh had revised the reading of Nafi).

Can such a preservation be described as "miraculous"? Remember this is all from the Muslim sources, mainly, possibly exclusively from the Hadith.

A good list of various contradictions in the Qu'ran may be found in "The Islamic Invasion: Confronting the World's Fastest Growing Religion" by Robert Morey. There is lots of useful information in it. See also Ron Rhodes' excellent "Reasoning from the Scriptures with Muslims".

Continued...

The Case for Byzantine Priority

One of the best-known advocates of the Byzantine Priority approach to NT textual criticism is Maurice A. Robinson, Senior Professor of New Testament at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. He summarises his theory as follows (extracted from here):

What is the leading argument in your mind for the inferiority of the Alexandrian text type?

“Reasoned transmissionalism”! Had any texttype other than the Byzantine more closely represented the autograph form of the text in any nt book, that texttype should have thoroughly permeated the primary Greek-speaking region of the Empire beyond the first few centuries. Any later-developing “new” texttype would fail to dominate against a presumed liturgically entrenched and widely disseminated “original” Textform. One need only consider in this regard the failure of the “Western” text to gain a substantial hold within the Greek ms tradition; similarly, one can consider the limited and apparently “localized” nature of the Alexandrian texttype.

Westcott and Hort acknowledged that the Byzantine Textform dominated the Greek-speaking Eastern Empire from the mid-4th century onward. They also noted that such dominance could have occurred only in two ways: either (1) the Byzantine Textform was the product of a formal, ecclesiastically sanctioned revision, promulgated with full ecclesiastical authority behind it (the Alands’ “Byzantine Imperial Text”); or (2) the Byzantine Textform reflects the autograph form of the text, which — under a normal process of transmission — would be expected to produce an overwhelming number of descendants “at each stage of transmission” (W-H, Introduction, 45). W‑H argued the first alternative, without which their preferred B-א type of text could not be maintained.

The W-H “revision” hypothesis generally has been discarded, due to lack of historical corroborating evidence. A “process” view is now instituted in its place, suggesting that, over a lengthy period of time, the Byzantine Textform slowly evolved into what finally becomes a relatively fixed form during the post-ninth century minuscule era. But, as Zane Hodges long ago pointed out:

“No one has yet explained how a long, slow process spread out over many centuries as well as over a wide geographical area, and involving a multitude of copyists, who often knew nothing of the state of the text outside of their own monasteries or scriptoria, could achieve this widespread uniformity out of the diversity presented by the earlier forms of text. Even an official edition of the New Testament — promoted with ecclesiastical sanction throughout the known world — would have had great difficulty achieving this result as the history of Jerome's Vulgate amply demonstrates. But an unguided process achieving relative stability and uniformity in the diversified textual, historical, and cultural circumstances in which the New Testament was copied, imposes impossible strains on our imagination” (Hodges, Appendix C, in Wilbur N. Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, 166).

Other claims, such as the influence of Chrysostom, the Constantinopolitan Church, or the supposed destruction of Alexandrian mss due to the Islamic conquest, are discussed in my full-length essay, “The Case for Byzantine Priority”, available on the internet and as an appendix to the R-P Byzantine Greek nt. I might observe that, if the Alexandrian text could have been wiped out by the Islamic conquest, that predominantly Egyptian text was not widespread, but reflected only a more localized tradition; also, for either Chrysostom or Constantinople to effect such a significant change in the Church’s base text, full ecclesiastical authority and proclamation would have been necessary in order to accomplish its general acceptance throughout the Eastern Empire. No such proclamation or imposition of ecclesiastical authority seems ever to have occurred. The implication returns to Byzantine originality as the more probable cause of that Textform’s dominance within the transmissional history of the nt.

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His full essay, The Case for Byzantine Priority, is here. At last, a textual critical theory and methodology that makes cogent sense and isn't top-to-toe with plausible arguments, which on further examination evidence logical fallacies and inconsistencies.

See also this discussion of the theory, although after reading both documents, there is much misunderstanding and other flaws in Waltz' discussion of the matter.

Any way, I'm back off to bed with my laryngitis...

The End of Mark's Gospel

In my consideration of whether to transfer from the NKJV to the ESV, I have been doing a lot of study of NT textual criticism again, after quite a number of years. One major difference between the Alexandrian Priority Eclectic Text (i.e. UBS and Nestle-Aland) and the Traditional Text stream is the ending of Mark. Is Mark 16:9-20 part of Scripture? I have always been convinced that it is and my recent research continues to confirm this belief.

A very good summary of the arguments for the Longer Ending are set forth by Jim Snapp here. Pastor Snapp is not pro-Byzantine, but is purely Eclectic, which is evident from his summary of textual criticism here.

Metzger's basic argument for rejecting the Longer Ending ("UBS orthodoxy") is here, along with Schriver's arguments. Burgon's longer defence of the Longer Ending can be found here. (See also Scaff's discussion here.)

Interestingly, even Metzger is suspicious of the abruptness of ending at verse 8 as he states in The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption and Restoration (3rd Edition, p. 228):

"It appears, therefore, that έφοβουντο γάρ of Mark xvi. 8 does not represent what Mark intended to stand at the end of his Gospel. Whether he was interrupted while writing and subsequently prevented (perhaps by death) from finishing his literary work, or whether the last leaf of the original copy was accidentally lost before other copies had been made, we do not know."

Such a statement is typical of Metzger's unorthodox (higher-critical) beliefs about Scripture (e.g. that the Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistles of Clement were inspired, but not canonical), while professing to be Evangelical. (I am not trying to make an ad hominem argument against Metzger, but trying to neutralise the ad hominem arguments which try to say, "How can you disagree with an expert like Metzger?")

To those who argue that the Longer Ending is a different narrative style to the rest of the Gospel, I would note two things (n.b. there is much more that has been said on this):

1. There is an abrupt change in narrative style at the end of John's Gospel, but it is not rejected due to the "afterglow" of W&H's glorification of Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus as the end of Mark is.

2. As my wife pointed out, what could be more Markan than beginning nearly every sentence with the word και (i.e. "and")? The non-Markan theory of the Longer Ending is plausible from a neutralist perspective, but the arguments, e.g. words not used elsewhere in the Gospel, are very weak.

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Could the Alexandrian Text of the NT be the Product of Textual Criticism?

“... [T]he LXX presents marked differences from the Hebrew text. In the first place, the order of the prophecies against foreign nations differs in the LXX from the Hebrew… In the second place, the LXX is considerably shorter than the Hebrew. In fact, it is shorter by about one-eighth (about 2700 words, or six or seven chapters).

“How are these divergences to be explained? ...The LXX translators, being Alexandrian Jews, were doubtless influenced by Greek philosophy. Hence it may be that they deliberately sought to introduce what seemed to them a more logical arrangement of the prophecies. Evidently they were, to an extent at least, moved by such considerations. For example, in the phrase ‘the Lord of Hosts,’ the words ‘of hosts’ are generally omitted by the LXX. Also, in the phrase ‘Jeremiah the prophet’ we find the words ‘the prophet’ often omitted.”

An Introduction to the Old Testament by Edward J. Young, pp. 234, 235 (Wm. B. Eerdmans 1964)

This post is pointed at those who think about the current debate about the value of the Alexandrian text-type vs. the Byzantine tradition.

It is often argued, in general terms, that one reason why the Alexandrian text-type should be preferred over the Byzantine tradition is because the Alexandrian usually has a shorter reading, whereas the Byzantine has a longer reading, based on the textual theory of lectio brevior praeferenda (the shorter reading is to be preferred).

One thought I would offer in regards to this is: there seems to be a tradition of preferring shorter readings when doing textual criticism in that region. Given that is the case, could it be that the Alexandrian Text diverges from the Traditional Text because it is the product of textual criticism that was biased toward shorter forms of the text? The fact that the Alexandrian Texts meshes with modern critical canons may be simply down to the fact that they used the same canons to produce that text type. It could be analogous to a "self-fulfilling prophecy".

After reading quite a bit from the various sides of the argument, but not professing in any way to be a critical expert, I remain sceptical about the arguments for the priority of the Alexandrian tradition, esp. since I am suspicious that the arena is still suffering from the 'afterglow' of the explosion of W&H's theory about the Byzantine/ Alexandrian debate. There is still this assertion that because the Egyptian manuscripts are older that they are to be preferred. The reality is that the Egyptian manuscripts are older because they survived due to the climactic conditions of that region. We don't have evidence of what the text was like in the Byzantine region at that time. This is more of an argument from silence. See here for some discussion about this debate from a source not naturally disposed towards the Byzantine tradition.

About 200 AD, Tertullian wrote a treatise entitled ‘The Prescription against Heretics’, in which he write the following in Chapter 36:

"Come now, you who would indulge a better curiosity, if you would apply it to the business of your salvation, run over the apostolic churches, in which the very thrones of the apostles are still pre-eminent in their places, in which their own authentic writings are read, uttering the voice and representing the face of each of them severally. Achaia is very near you, (in which) you find Corinth. Since you are not far from Macedonia, you have Philippi; (and there too) you have the Thessalonians. Since you are able to cross to Asia, you get Ephesus. Since, moreover, you are close upon Italy, you have Rome, from which there comes even into our own hands the very authority (of apostles themselves).”

Does it seem likely that the churches which had the autographs were more likely to have the true text, or that churches far removed from these areas should have a purer text? (Some dispute that this refers to the autographs, but does this seem likely? Why tell them to go to the actual churches themselves? He at least is referring to the purity of the texts.)

From a neutralist/ naturalist perspective, why shouldn't the later manuscripts of the Byzantine region be considered as any less close relatives of the earlier manuscripts of this region as early Egyptian manuscripts? I haven't yet come across arguments to shore-up the theory that Alexandria should come first, or that Byzantium shouldn't be given priority. This does not say they don't exist, it is just a statement of where I'm at.

Given that this is the case, should we turn from the general textual family providentially preserved and transmitted through the centuries by the Greek church, used by the general church for its originals, and forming the majority of texts, to texts undiscovered and unused in God's worship for centuries, esp. when the scholarly practice of Alexandria would produce the sort of text that we do find? I admit that such theological concerns are anathema to naturalists.

(Note that I am not a TR advocate. Clearly it needs revised as most, even Burgon, admit, esp. in Revelation. I do remain sceptical about the priority of the Alexandrian text and cannot arbitrarily poo-poo the "providential preservation" argument. )

Please note these are meandering, sceptical thoughts about modern textual criticism, not water-tight arguments for the Byzantine text-type.
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