Thu Oct 24 09:41:35 1996

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Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 08:36:04 -0700
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From: "Robert B. Waltz" 
Subject: Re: Textual Criticism Theories
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On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, jgvalentin@arcadis.be (Jean Valentin) wrote:

>Hello all! Just a remark in passing, I don't know how you will react about
>it, but I would find it interesting to have your comments...
>
>Seen from here (Europe) it's quite strange to see all these (often
>passionnate) discussions about the Byzantine text / Received text /
>Majority text that are going on in the US. How do you explain this
>difference?
>
>Here in Europe, most of the discussion goes between the german school
>(Aland and his text) and the French school (arguing for the Western text,
>even more specially, as with C. Amphoux, for Codex Bezae). For Europeans,
>the question of the Byzantine text is settled for a century.
>
>Why is it so, why are our approaches so exotic to one another? Is
>theological background the only reason?

[ ... ]

Being theologically liberal, I am perhaps not the one to answer this,
but I'm going to try anyway. :-)

I don't think it is exclusively a matter of theology, but it has an
influence. The U.S. has a very large "fundamentalist" (extremely
conservative) theological movement. Since this movement believes
in "verbal inerrancy," many of its members (not all!) are
committed to a particular text -- frequently the King James translation,
and hence the Textus Receptus.

Those who argue for Byzantine priority but not for the TR are more
diverse. They correctly observe that some of Hort's arguments about
the Byzantine text (e.g. the "conflations"). Then they go off on
their own. This group, while still conservative, is much less
rigid than the TR-only group.

>From there I'll let Maurice Robinson or someone else explain things.

Bob Waltz
waltzmn@skypoint.com

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