The Importance of the Documentary Considerations
“Reasoned eclecticism” or the “local-genealogical” method in actual practice tend to give priority to internal evidence over external evidence, resulting in the atomistic eclecticism. I agree with Westcott and Hort that it has to be the other way around if we are going to recover the original text. In their compilation of The New Testament in the Original Greek, Hort wrote, “Documentary evidence has been in most cases allowed to confer the place of honour against internal evidence” (1881, 17).
Colwell was of the same mind when he wrote “Hort Redivivus: A Plea and a Program.” In this article, Colwell decried the “growing tendency to rely entirely on the internal evidence of readings, without serious consideration of documentary evidence” (1969a, 152). Colwell called upon scholars to attempt a reconstruction of the history of the manuscript tradition. But very few scholars have followed Colwell’s urgings because they believe (in agreement with Aland as quoted in appendix B) that it is impossible to reconstruct a stemma (a sort of manuscript “family tree”) for the Greek New Testament. Perhaps they hold this line because they fear that some will attempt to make a stemma leading back to the original, and that such a reconstruction will involve a subjective determination of the best line of manuscripts. Westcott and Hort have been criticized for doing this when they posited the “Neutral” text, leading from B back to the original.
However, a reconstruction of the early manuscript tradition does not necessarily mandate a genealogical lineage back to the original text—although that is the ultimate purpose of making a stemma. The reconstruction can help us understand the relationships between various manuscripts and provide insights into origin and associations. In the process, it might also be discovered that, out of all the extant manuscripts, some of the earliest ones are, in fact, the closest replications of the original text.
One of the most compelling reasons for returning to a documentary approach is the evidence that the second-century papyrus 𝔓75 provides. This is the gospel manuscript (containing Luke and John) that has changed—or should have changed—nearly everyone’s mind about abandoning a historical-documentary approach. It is a well-known fact that the text produced by the scribe of 𝔓75 is a very accurate manuscript. It is also well-known that a manuscript like 𝔓75 was the exemplar for Codex Vaticanus; the texts of 𝔓75 and B are remarkably similar, demonstrating 83-percent agreement (see Porter 1962, 363–376, a seminal article on this issue).
Prior to the discovery of 𝔓75 (which was published in 1961), many textual scholars were convinced that the second- and third-century papyri displayed a text in flux, a text characterized only by individual independence. The Chester Beatty Papyrus, 𝔓45, and the Bodmer Papyri, 𝔓66 (uncorrected) and 𝔓72 (in 2 Peter and Jude), show this kind of independence. Scholars thought that scribes at Alexandria must have used several such manuscripts to produce a good recension—as is exhibited in Codex Vaticanus. Kenyon conjectured:
During the second and third centuries, a great variety of readings came into existence throughout the Christian world. In some quarters, considerable license was shown in dealing with the sacred text; in others, more respect was shown to the tradition. In Egypt this variety of texts existed, as elsewhere; but Egypt (and especially Alexandria) was a country of strong scholarship and with a knowledge of textual criticism. Here, therefore, a relatively faithful tradition was preserved. About the beginning of the fourth century, a scholar may well have set himself to compare the best accessible representatives of this tradition, and so have produced a text of which B is an early descendant. (1940, 250)
Much of what Kenyon said is accurate, especially about Alexandria preserving a relatively pure tradition. But Kenyon was wrong in thinking that Codex Vaticanus was the result of a “scholarly recension,” resulting from “editorial selection” across the various textual histories (1949, 208). Kenyon cannot be faulted for this opinion, because 𝔓75 had not yet been discovered when he wrote. However, the discovery of 𝔓75 and Vaticanus’s close textual relationship to it have caused textual critics to look at things differently, for it is now quite clear that Codex Vaticanus was a copy (with some modifications) of a manuscript much like the second-century papyrus 𝔓75, not a copy of a fourth-century recension.
Zuntz held an opinion similar to Kenyon’s, positing an Alexandrian recension. After studying 𝔓46, Zuntz imagined that the Alexandrian scribes selected the best manuscripts and gradually produced a text that reflected what they considered to be the original. In other words, they functioned as the most ancient of the New Testament textual critics. Zuntz believed that, from at least the middle of the second century to the fourth century, the Alexandrian scribes worked to purify the text from textual corruption. Speaking of their efforts, Zuntz wrote:
The Alexander correctors strove, in ever repeated efforts, to keep the text current in their sphere free from the many faults that had infected it in the previous period and which tended to crop up again even after they had been obelized [i.e., marked as spurious]. These labours must time and again have been checked by persecutions and the confiscation of Christian books, and counteracted by the continuing currency of manuscripts of the older type. Nonetheless they resulted in the emergence of a type of text (as distinct from a definite edition) which served as a norm for the correctors in provincial Egyptian scriptoria. The final result was the survival of a text far superior to that of the second century, even though the revisers, being fallible human beings, rejected some of its own correct readings and introduced some faults of their own. (1953, 271–272)
The point behind Zuntz’s conjecture of a gradual Alexandrian recension was to prove that the Alexandrian text was the result of a process beginning in the second century and culminating in the fourth century with Codex Vaticanus. In this regard, Zuntz was incorrect. This, again, has been proven by the close textual affinity between 𝔓75 and B. The “Alexandrian” text already existed in the late second century; it was not the culmination of a recension. In this regard, Haenchen wrote:
In 𝔓75, which may have been written around 200 a.d., the “neutral” readings are already practically all present, without any need for a long process of purification to bring them together miro quodam modo out of a multitude of manuscripts.… 𝔓75 allows us rather to see the neutral text as already as good as finished, before that slow development could have started at all; it allows us the conclusion that such manuscripts as lay behind Vaticanus—even if not for all New Testament books—already existed for centuries. (1971, 59)
Kurt Aland’s thinking was also changed by 𝔓75. He used to speak of the second- and third-century manuscripts as exhibiting a text in flux or even a “mixed” text, but not after the discovery of 𝔓75. He wrote, “𝔓75 shows such a close affinity with the Codex Vaticanus that the supposition of a recension of the text at Alexandria, in the fourth century, can no longer be held” (1965, 336).
The discovery of 𝔓75 shows that Hort was basically right in his assertion that Codex Vaticanus must trace back to a very early and accurate copy. Hort (1882, 250–251) had written that Codex Vaticanus preserves “not only a very ancient text, but a very pure line of a very ancient text.” But some scholars may point out that this does not automatically mean that 𝔓75 and B preserve the original text. What it does mean, they say, is that we have a second-century manuscript showing great affinity with a fourth-century manuscript whose quality has been highly esteemed. However, Gordon Fee (1974, 19–43) has demonstrated that there was no Alexandrian recension before the time of 𝔓75. In an article appropriately title “𝔓75, 𝔓66, and Origen: The Myth of Early Textual Recension in Alexandria,” Fee posits that there was no Alexandrian recension before the time of 𝔓75 (late second century) and Codex Vaticanus (early fourth) and that both these manuscripts “seem to represent a ‘relatively pure’ form of preservation of a ‘relatively pure’ line of descent from the original text.” In other words, the original text of Luke and John is virtually preserved in 𝔓75. Of course, 𝔓75 is not perfect, but it is closer to perfect than Codex Vaticanus, partially because it is 125–150 years closer to the original text.
Some textual critics, however, are not convinced that the 𝔓75/B type of text is superior to another type of early text, which has been called the “Western” text. The “Western” form of the text was early in that it appears to have been used by Marcion, Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Cyprian—all of whom were alive in the second century. The name “Western” was given to this type of text because it circulated primarily in western regions like North Africa, Gaul, and Italy, but it was also present in Syria and even in Egypt. Thus, most scholars recognize that the “Western” text is not really a text-type; rather, it is a loose categorization of early texts that were not Alexandrian (which is why “Western” is often put in quotation marks in the literature). Some scholars see it as a complete misnomer. Colwell, for example, states, “The so-called Western text or Delta type text is the uncontrolled, popular edition of the second century. It has no unity and should not be referred to as the ‘Western text’ ” (1969b, 53). The Alands also see it to be nothing more than a loose association of manuscripts, arguing, “Wherever we look in the West, nowhere can we find a theological mind capable of developing and editing an independent ‘Western text.’ ” (1987, 54).
These observations aside, some scholars are still skeptical that the 𝔓75/B type of text is at all superior to the Western text. They argue that the preference given to B and 𝔓75 is based on a subjective appreciation of the kind of text they contain (generally terser than the “Western” text), rather than on any kind of theoretical reconstruction of the early transmission of the text (see Epp 1974, 390–394). It is argued that this same subjective estimation was at work when Westcott and Hort decided that B was intrinsically superior to D (Westcott and Hort 1882, 32–42). However, the notion that manuscripts like 𝔓75 and B represent the best of textual purity is persistent, particularly among textual critics who have worked with many actual manuscripts—both of the proto-Alexandrian type and the so-called Western type. In the task of compiling transcriptions and/or doing textual analysis these critics have seen firsthand the kind of errors, expansions, harmonizations, and interpolations that are far more present in Western manuscripts.
In conclusion, my preference for emphasizing the documentary method in making text-critical choices is revealed in the fact that I decide against many choices made by the editors of the NU text. The reader may see these decisions in the following notes:
Matthew 3:16; 4:24; 5:28; 8:21; 9:14, 26; 12:47; 13:35b; 14:16, 27, 30; 15:6b, 14; 17:9; 18:15; 19:22; 21:44; 25:6; 27:49 Mark 3:32; 6:51; 7:4; 15:12; 16:8 [ending to Mark] Luke 3:22a; 8:43; 14:17; 17:24; 20:9; 22:43–44 John 1:34; 3:31–32; 5:44; 6:14; 7:9; 7:53–8:11; 9:4, 38–39a; 10:8, 16, 18; 11:45–46; 13:2a, 2c, 32; 16:23; 20:31; 21:18 Acts 3:6; 7:13, 38; 9:12; 16:12 Romans 3:4; 7:17; 8:11a, 23; 11:17; 12:14; 15:33 [placement of doxology] 1 Corinthians 1:14; 3:13; 4:2; 7:7, 15; 8:3a, 3b; 9:9b; 10:2; 12:10 2 Corinthians 4:5b; 5:3, 12 Galatians 1:3, 6, 15a; 2:12a, 12b; 3:21a Ephesians 1:1b, 15, 18; 3:19; 4:24, 28; 5:2a, 20; 6:12a, 19 Philippians 3:3, 7, 10, 12a Colossians 2:7a, 10, 13, 23; 3:6, 22b, 23; 4:8, 12 1 Thessalonians 3:2, 13; 5:4, 9 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 3:6 2 Timothy 3:15 Philemon 25 Hebrews 1:8; 3:2; 4:3a; 7:4, 28; 9:1, 19; 11:4; 12:1, 3, 4; 13:15, 21c, 24, 25a James 1:17; 2:3; 4:14a; 5:4 1 Peter 1:12b; 2:21; 3:14, 18; 4:11; 5:8, 10b, 10c 2 Peter 1:3; 2:6a; 3:18b 1 John 3:23a; 5:20b 2 John 8 Jude 5 Revelation 1:6b; 9:12–13a, 13b; 11:8; 12:8a, 10; 13:18; 14:3a, 5; 15:3, 6; 16:5b; 18:2, 3; 19:11[6]
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