Sat Feb 17 02:11:21 1996

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From: Maurice Robinson 
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Subject: Re: Majority Text?
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On Fri, 16 Feb 1996, James R. Adair wrote:

> Maurice Robinson described five different positions which might be 
> labeled as "Majority Text" positions, and he identified himself with the 
> fifth group.  I agree that the term "Majority Text," even (or 
> especially!) for this fifth group, is problematic, because the fact that 
> the resulting text agrees with the Majority Text most of the time is 
> presumably mere happenstance.  

It is more than "happenstance," unless one would consider that the Byzantine 
Textform merely "happens" to have the greatest numerical support.  I 
would suggest that the reason for such "happenstance" would be directly 
interrelated to the transmissional history of the text which resulted in 
that numerical dominance of that particular texttype -- but if it is a 
historical result which should be expected from a certain transmissional 
hypothesis, it isn't happenstance....(are we talking in circles here?)

> I would think adherents of the fifth 
> position would call their position the Byzantine Priority position, since 
> it is supposed to be based on the stemmatic priority of a Byzantine-like 
> text.  

I definitely prefer the term "Byzantine-priority," though I do not
directly proceed from a stemmatic basis in the manner of Westcott and 
Hort (wherein the lower elements on a stemma are supposedly combined from 
earlier elements).  I rather see the Western and Alexandrian elements as 
two distinct divergences from a Byzantine text placed higher on a stemma, 
but with no subsequent interdependence or combining.

> On the other hand, if this fifth position actually ends up 
> reflecting the Majority Text all of the time, rather than most of the 
> time (which is it?), one has to question whether the purported 
> methodology of independent analysis of readings is really being 
> followed.  Isn't the proof in the pudding?

Within a Byzantine-priority method, the internal criteria do remain
secondary to the external data as well as to the theoretical history-of-
transmission model which has been developed for the hypothesis.  There is
no grand design, however, to improperly "force" the internal defense of
Byzantine readings to that end by perverting or misapplying standard
text-critical criteria.  Were this the case, any internal defense 
statements made by pro-Byzantine partisans would be so full of holes you 
could drive the proverbial truck through.  I trust my own comments on 
individual readings from internal grounds are not that sloppy -- I do 
attempt to maintain a "normal" use and approach regarding the application 
of internal evidence to any given variant unit.

I would suggest that the "forcing" and misapplication of internal criteria
is often done by the eclectic school merely by virtue of their
anti-Byzantine bias.  My mention of the cases in Metzger's Textual
Commentary stand as an example, since he clearly deprecates Byzantine
readings as due to scribal tendencies continually, but fails to apply the
same standards when the external evidence is reversed. 


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

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