Sat Feb 17 01:03:52 1996

From majordom  Sat Feb 17 01:03:52 1996
Return-Path: 
Received: by scholar.cc.emory.edu (5.0/SMI-SVR4)
	id AA27100; Sat, 17 Feb 1996 01:03:52 +0500
Date: Sat, 17 Feb 1996 01:01:12 -0500 (EST)
From: Maurice Robinson 
To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Subject: Re: "Majority Text"
In-Reply-To: <9602151629.AA12577@Np.nosc.mil>
Message-Id: 
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Length: 2568
Sender: owner-tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: tc-list@scholar.cc.emory.edu



On Thu, 15 Feb 1996, Vincent Broman wrote:

> dwashbur@nyx.net said:

> > virtually all internal criteria of the eclectic method leave Byzantine 
> > readings lacking anyway.

> This claim is often heard, but aside from the unsatisfying summaries
> given in Hort's intro, I haven't seen this claim documented.
> Any references?  (to evidence, that is, not to repetitions of the claim).

I would dispute this claim, since my own practice in defending Byzantine 
readings on internal ground makes use of almost all the same internal 
criteria as the eclectics themselves use.  I merely redirect their 
application in favor of the Byzantine text.  I have no problem with the 
judicious application of the "harder reading" or "reading which explains 
the rise of all the others" concept.  I do question the "shorter" reading 
criterion -- as many eclectics themselves have done, e.g. Royce -- since 
it almost becomes a case of begging the question to prejudice the 
internal criteria in favor of the Alexandrian witnesses.

There are certain criteria which presume too much about what scribes
"regularly" or "generally" did or what their overall "tendency" might be
(e.g. expand divine names and titles, harmonize parallels etc.).  Most of
these claims (again going back to Hort) are often incorrect when taken to
the texttype level.  If the scribes were indeed so "regular" in these 
cases we should always find "the Lord Jesus Christ" and never "Jesus" or 
"Christ" alone on the texttype level; also parallel passages would be in 
FAR greater harmony than actually exists, etc.  The evidence is plainly 
that scribes of any era did NOT have these tendencies en masse.

Certainly, individual scribes may have had their own tendencies, but all
scribes certainly were not alike, nor did they possess common tendencies. 

Metzger's Textual Commentary volume continually berates Byzantine readings
for being "typical" of what scribes would do in a given situation, but he
almost never applies the same criteria to the Alexandrian scribes.  Like
Hort, Metzger seems to think all the early scribes were angels (Colwell
said that about Hort -- not me. *:-)


=========================================================================
                       Maurice A. Robinson, Ph.D.
            Associate Professor of Greek and New Testament
              Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary
                      Wake Forest, North Carolina
                   
=========================================================================

Back