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Introduction to Johann Jakob Griesbach’s Approach

Johann Jakob Griesbach, an influential 18th-century textual critic, made significant contributions to the field of New Testament textual criticism. His methodological principles, especially those outlined in his second edition of the Greek New Testament (Halle, 1796), provided a systematic approach to evaluating manuscript evidence and determining the most likely original readings. Griesbach’s rules, grounded in a thorough understanding of the scribal habits and the manuscript tradition, remain foundational in the discipline.

The Reading Culture of Early Christianity

The Principle of Shorter Readings

Preference for Shorter Readings

Griesbach’s first rule emphasizes that the shorter reading should be preferred, provided it has the support of old and weighty witnesses. This principle is based on the observation that scribes were more prone to add material to the text than to omit it. Additions often occurred through errors of the eye, ear, memory, imagination, and judgment.

Example: In Mark 1:1, some manuscripts include “the Son of God” (υἱοῦ τοῦ θεοῦ) while others do not. Griesbach would prefer the shorter reading, “Jesus Christ,” especially if it is supported by reliable manuscripts, as scribes might have added “the Son of God” to clarify Jesus’ identity.

Scriptural Support: Deuteronomy 4:2 warns, “You shall not add to the word that I command you, nor take from it, that you may keep the commandments of Jehovah your God that I command you.”

Exceptions to the Rule

However, Griesbach acknowledges exceptions where a fuller reading might be preferred. For instance, if the shorter reading could have arisen from homoioteleuton (similarity of endings) leading to accidental omission, or if the shorter reading is less characteristic of the author’s style.

Example: In 1 John 5:7-8, the longer reading includes the Johannine Comma, a Trinitarian formula found in later manuscripts but absent in the earliest and most reliable ones. Despite its theological significance, the shorter reading is preferred due to its stronger manuscript support.

The Principle of More Difficult Readings

Preference for More Difficult Readings

Griesbach’s second rule states that the more difficult or obscure reading is to be preferred. Scribes tended to simplify texts to make them more comprehensible, often altering difficult passages.

Example: In Matthew 24:36, some manuscripts add “nor the Son” (οὐδὲ ὁ υἱός) to the statement about the day or hour of Jesus’ return. The inclusion makes the passage more theologically clear, indicating that even Jesus does not know the timing. However, the more difficult reading, which omits this phrase, is preferred because scribes were likely to add it to clarify the theology.

Scriptural Support: Proverbs 25:2 notes, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” This supports the idea that more obscure readings, requiring deeper investigation, might be closer to the original.

The Principle of Harsher Readings

Preference for Harsher Readings

Griesbach’s third rule prefers the harsher reading, which might be ungrammatical, reflect Hebrew idiom, or be offensive to Greek ears. Scribes often smoothed out such harsh readings.

Example: In Luke 14:5, the reading “son” (υἱός) is harsher than “donkey” (ὄνος) and is less likely to have been added by a scribe. The preference for the harsher reading helps retain the original sense of the text.

Scriptural Support: 1 Corinthians 1:27 states, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.” This supports the notion that the original text might not always conform to human expectations of smoothness and clarity.

The Principle of More Unusual Readings

Preference for More Unusual Readings

Griesbach’s fourth rule favors the more unusual reading over the common one. Scribes often replaced rare words or phrases with more familiar ones, leading to the preference for readings that are rare or unusual.

Example: In Mark 10:24, the phrase “how hard it is for those who trust in riches” is unusual compared to the simpler “how hard it is.” The more unusual reading, supported by strong manuscript evidence, is preferred as scribes were likely to simplify the text.

Scriptural Support: Isaiah 55:8 states, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares Jehovah.” This highlights the possibility that the original text might contain unexpected or unusual elements reflecting divine revelation.

The Principle of Less Emphatic Readings

Preference for Less Emphatic Readings

Griesbach’s fifth rule suggests that less emphatic readings are closer to the genuine text unless the context demands emphasis. Scribes often added emphasis to make the text more compelling.

Example: In Luke 22:43-44, the account of Jesus’ agony in the garden includes an angel strengthening Him and His sweat becoming like drops of blood. The less emphatic reading omits these verses in some early manuscripts, indicating they might have been added for dramatic effect.

Scriptural Support: Matthew 5:37 instructs, “Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.” This supports the preference for simplicity and authenticity over added emphasis.

The Principle of Suspect Readings Supporting Piety

Preference Against Pious Readings

Griesbach’s sixth rule warns against readings that overly support piety, particularly monastic or ecclesiastical agendas. Scribes with theological biases might alter texts to align with their doctrinal views.

Example: In 1 Timothy 3:16, the reading “He was manifested in the flesh” is preferred over “God was manifested in the flesh.” The latter, while theologically significant, might reflect scribal alteration to support the doctrine of Christ’s divinity.

Scriptural Support: Revelation 22:18-19 warns against adding to or taking away from the words of Scripture, underscoring the need for textual integrity.

The Principle of Readings with Apparent Falsehoods

Preference for Apparent Falsehoods

Griesbach’s seventh rule states that a reading that seems false but is found to be true upon examination is preferable. This principle helps preserve difficult or counterintuitive readings that scribes might have altered.

Example: In John 5:4, the verse about an angel stirring the waters is absent in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts. Its inclusion in later texts likely arose from attempts to explain the narrative context, making the shorter, seemingly incomplete reading preferable.

Scriptural Support: Psalm 119:160 states, “The sum of your word is truth, and every one of your righteous rules endures forever.” This supports the preservation of the original, even if difficult, readings.

The Principle of Orthodox Dogma

Preference Against Orthodox Readings

Griesbach’s eighth rule suggests suspecting readings that align too closely with orthodox dogma, as scribes might have altered texts to support their theological positions.

Example: In Acts 8:37, the confession of faith by the Ethiopian eunuch is absent in the earliest manuscripts but included in later ones, likely added to reinforce baptismal theology.

Scriptural Support: Galatians 1:6-7 warns against altering the gospel message, underscoring the importance of preserving the original text.

The Principle of Repetition Errors

Rejection of Repetition Errors

Griesbach’s ninth rule highlights the tendency of scribes to repeat words or sentences due to similar endings or beginnings, leading to errors. Such readings are to be rejected.

Example: In Matthew 6:13, the doxology “For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever” is absent in the earliest manuscripts and likely added due to liturgical use, reflecting repetition errors.

Scriptural Support: Proverbs 30:6 warns, “Do not add to his words, lest he rebuke you and you be found a liar,” supporting the rejection of scribal additions.

The Principle of Scribes’ Reading Habits

Rejection of Errors from Reading Habits

Griesbach’s tenth rule addresses errors arising from scribes misreading or miscopying texts due to similar syllables or letters. Such readings, even if widespread, are to be rejected.

Example: In Romans 5:1, the variant “let us have peace” (ἔχωμεν) versus “we have peace” (ἔχομεν). The latter is preferred due to its strong manuscript support and the likelihood of scribal error in copying similar forms.

Scriptural Support: Matthew 5:18 emphasizes the permanence of God’s word, supporting the careful preservation of the original text without scribal errors.

The Principle of Midway Readings

Preference for Midway Readings

Griesbach’s eleventh rule prefers readings that fall midway between other variants, holding together the threads of the text and explaining the descent of errors.

Example: In Luke 4:17, the variant “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah” versus “the scroll of Isaiah the prophet.” The former is preferred as it explains the descent of errors and aligns with the manuscript tradition.

Scriptural Support: Psalm 119:89 states, “Forever, O Jehovah, your word is firmly fixed in the heavens,” supporting the stability and reliability of the original text.

The Principle of Definition or Interpretation

Rejection of Interpretative Readings

Griesbach’s twelfth rule rejects readings that appear to incorporate definitions or interpretations, as these likely result from scribal attempts to clarify the text.

Example: In John 1:18, “the only begotten God” (μονογενὴς θεός) is preferred over “the only begotten Son” (μονογενὴς υἱός), as the latter could be an interpretative addition.

Scriptural Support: Proverbs 30:5 states, “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him,” supporting the preservation of the original text.

The Principle of Marginal Readings

Rejection of Marginal Readings

Griesbach’s thirteenth rule advises rejecting readings brought into the text from marginal annotations or commentaries by the Fathers.

Example: In John 5:3-4, the angel stirring the water is absent in early manuscripts but included in marginal notes, suggesting it is not original.

Scriptural Support: Matthew 24:35 states, “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away,” supporting the integrity of the original text.

The Principle of Lectionary Readings

Rejection of Lectionary Additions

Griesbach’s fourteenth rule rejects readings that originated in lectionaries, added for clarity in public readings.

Example: In Luke 4:17, the reading “the scroll of the prophet Isaiah” versus “the scroll of Isaiah the prophet” reflects lectionary influence, with the former preferred.

Scriptural Support: Isaiah 40:8 states, “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever,” supporting the preservation of the original text.

The Principle of Latin Influence

Rejection of Latinized Readings

Griesbach’s fifteenth rule condemns readings brought into Greek manuscripts from Latin versions, as these often reflect later alterations.

Example: In 1 John 5:7-8, the Johannine Comma is found in Latin manuscripts but absent in the earliest Greek ones, suggesting it is not original.

Scriptural Support: Revelation 22:18-19 warns against adding to or taking away from the words of Scripture, underscoring the importance of textual integrity.

Conclusion of Griesbach’s Methodological Approach

Johann Jakob Griesbach’s systematic approach to New Testament textual criticism, characterized by detailed rules and principles, provides a rigorous framework for evaluating manuscript evidence and establishing the original text. By prioritizing shorter, more difficult, and harsher readings, Griesbach aimed to preserve the authentic words of Scripture, ensuring that the New Testament remains a faithful representation of the divine revelation.

Griesbach’s Fifteen Rules

In the Introduction to his second edition of the Greek New Testament (Halle, 1796) Griesbach set forth the following list of critical rules, by which the intrinsic probabilities may be weighed for various readings of the manuscripts. Rules for the prior evaluation of documentary evidence, such as the ones formulated by Bengel, are implicit in Griesbach’s theory of the manuscript tradition, and so they are not taken up here. What follows is a translation of Griesbach’s Latin as it was reprinted by Alford in the Introduction of his Greek Testament (London, 1849. Moody reprint, page 81).

1. The shorter reading, if not wholly lacking the support of old and weighty witnesses, is to be preferred over the more verbose. For scribes were much more prone to add than to omit. They hardly ever leave out anything on purpose, but they added much. It is true indeed that some things fell out by accident; but likewise not a few things, allowed in by the scribes through errors of the eye, ear, memory, imagination, and judgment, have been added to the text. The shorter reading, even if by the support of the witnesses it may be second best, is especially preferable– (a) if at the same time it is harder, more obscure, ambiguous, involves an ellipsis, reflects Hebrew idiom, or is ungrammatical; (b) if the same thing is read expressed with different phrases in different manuscripts; (c) if the order of words is inconsistent and unstable; (d) at the beginning of a section; (e) if the fuller reading gives the impression of incorporating a definition or interpretation, or verbally conforms to parallel passages, or seems to have come in from lectionaries.

But on the contrary we should set the fuller reading before the shorter (unless the latter is seen in many notable witnesses) — (a) if a “similarity of ending” might have provided an opportunity for an omission; (b) if that which was omitted could to the scribe have seemed obscure, harsh, superfluous, unusual, paradoxical, offensive to pious ears, erroneous, or opposed to parallel passages; (c) if that which is absent could be absent without harm to the sense or structure of the words, as for example prepositions which may be called incidental, especially brief ones, and so forth, the lack of which would not easily be noticed by a scribe in reading again what he had written; (d) if the shorter reading is by nature less characteristic of the style or outlook of the author; (e) if it wholly lacks sense; (f) if it is probable that it has crept in from parallel passages or from the lectionaries.

2. The more difficult and more obscure reading is preferable to that in which everything is so plain and free of problems that every scribe is easily able to understand it. Because of their obscurity and difficulty chiefly unlearned scribes were vexed by those readings– (a) the sense of which cannot be easily perceived without a thorough acquaintance with Greek idiom, Hebraisms, history, archeology, and so forth; (b) in which the thought is obstructed by various kinds of difficulties entering in, e.g., by reason of the diction, or the connection of the dependent members of a discourse being loose, or the sinews of an argument, being far extended from the beginning to the conclusion of its thesis, seeming to be cut.

3. The harsher reading is preferable to that which instead flows pleasantly and smoothly in style. A harsher reading is one that involves an ellipsis, reflects Hebrew idiom, is ungrammatical, repugnant to customary Greek usage, or offensive to the ears.

4. The more unusual reading is preferable to that which constitutes nothing unusual. Therefore rare words, or those at least in meaning, rare usages, phrases and verbal constuctions less in use than the trite ones, should be preferred over the more common. Surely the scribes seized eagerly on the more customary instead of the more exquisite, and for the latter they were accustomed to substitute definitions and explanations (especially if such were already provided in the margin or in parallel passages).

5. Expressions less emphatic, unless the context and goal of the author demand emphasis, approach closer to the genuine text than discrepant readings in which there is, or appears to be, a greater vigor. For polished scribes, like commentators, love and seek out emphases.

6. The reading that, in comparison with others, produces a sense fitted to the support of piety (especially monastic) is suspect.

7. Preferable to others is the reading for which the meaning is apparently quite false, but which in fact, after thorough examination, is discovered to be true.

8. Among many readings in one place, that reading is rightly considered suspect that manifestly gives the dogmas of the orthodox better than the others. When even today many unreasonable books, I would not say all, are scratched out by monks and other men devoted to the Catholic party, it is not credible that any convenient readings of the manuscripts from which everyone copied would be neglected which seemed either to confirm splendidly some Catholic dogma or forcefully to destroy a heresy. For we know that nearly all readings, even those manifestly false, were defended on the condition that they were agreeable to the orthodox, and then from the beginning of the third century these were tenaciously protected and diligently propagated, while other readings in the same place, which gave no protection to ecclesiastical dogmas, were rashly attributed to treacherous heretics.

9. With scribes there may be a tendency to repeat words and sentences in different places having identical terminations, either repeating what they had lately written or anticipating what was soon to be written, the eyes running ahead of the pen. Readings arising from such easily explained tricks of symmetry are of no value.

10. Others to be led into error by similar enticements are those scribes who, before they begin to write a sentence had already read the whole, or who while writing look with a flitting eye into the original set before them, and often wrongly take a syllable or word from the preceding or following writing, thus producing new readings. If it happens that two neighbouring words begin with the same syllable or letter, an occurance by no means rare, then it may be that the first is simply ommitted or the second is accidentally passed over, of which the former is especially likely. One can scarcely avoid mental errors such as these, any little book of few words to be copied giving trouble, unless one applies the whole mind to the business; but few scribes seem to have done it. Readings therefore which have flowed from this source of errors, even though ancient and so afterwards spread among very many manuscripts, are rightly rejected, especially if manuscripts otherwise related are found to be pure of these contagious blemishes.

11. Among many in the same place, that reading is preferable which falls midway between the others, that is, the one which in a manner of speaking holds together the threads so that, if this one is admitted as the primitive one, it easily appears on what account, or rather, by what descent of errors, all the other readings have sprung forth from it.

12. Readings may be rejected which appear to incorporate a definition or an interpretation, alterations of which kind the discriminating critical sense will detect with no trouble

13. Readings brought into the text from commentaries of the Fathers or ancient marginal annotations are to be rejected, when the great majority of critics explain them thus. (“He proceeds at some length to caution against the promiscuous assumption of such corruptions in the earlier codices and versions from such sources.” – Alford)

14. We reject readings appearing first in lectionaries, which were added most often to the beginning of the portions to be read in the church service, or sometimes at the end or even in the middle for the sake of contextual clarity, and which were to be added in a public reading of the series, [the portions of which were] so divided or transposed that, separated from that which preceeds or follows, there seemed hardly enough for them to be rightly understood. (“Similar cautions are here added against assuming this too promiscuously.” – Alford)

15. Readings brought into the Greek manuscripts from the Latin versions are condemned. (“Cautions are here also inserted against the practice of the earlier critics, who if they found in the graeco-latin MSS. or even in those of high antiquity and value, a solitary reading agreeing with the Latin, hastily condemned that codex as latinizing.” – Alford)

About the Author

EDWARD D. ANDREWS (AS in Criminal Justice, BS in Religion, MA in Biblical Studies, and MDiv in Theology) is CEO and President of Christian Publishing House. He has authored over 220+ books. In addition, Andrews is the Chief Translator of the Updated American Standard Version (UASV).