Subject: Re: Byz MSS (lack thereof)

From: Mike Arcieri <[email-masked]>
Date: 21 Mar 96 23:15:33 EST

>As a preface to the following comments, let me say to those reading this
>list and who are tempted to use my comments out of context in another forum,
>that it is not only proper "netiquette," but it would seem to me the
>appropriate behaviour of a Christian gentleman/gentlewoman, to ask if it is
>okay to quote someone else's comments in another context or forum.  Thank
>you for your consideration.

Dale, if I may be permitted to put in my 2 cents in this discussion between
yourself and J. Adair.

First, let me say that I sympathize with you. It is quite frustrating to have
your words deliberately (or carelessly) quoted out of context. But, you must
remember which crowd you're dealing with. The TR/KJV worshippers have the
scholarly integrity and intellectual honesty of the WatchTower Society - this
has been amply demonstrated by J. White (esp. with Gail Riplinger) and J. Price
(re: D. A. Waite) in their respective works against this position. I know this
firsthand - I was part of that crowd for a number of years, and only through
diligent study, correspondance with various scholars in this field, and a
decision to be HONEST in dealing with the MS evidence did I completely abandon
it.

>But Jimmy wouldn't you acknowledge that since we have no manuscripts from
>the early period in the Byz area that any conclusion we draw about what
>happened in that area is simply a theory and not a demonstrable fact of
>history (I assume that you would believe that such mss did at one time
>exist.).  The fact that none of the earliest NT mss reflect a distinctly Byz
>text tells us nothing more than that

An argument from silence. Because there are no early Byz MSS THEREFORE it did
not exist.

The point you raise concerning the lack of Byz evidence in the early stages of
transmission is a point I likewise dealt with (in passing) in my review of the
Robinson-Pierpont GNT:

"One objection dealt with is that of 'no early Byzantine MSS' (pp. xxvi -
xxxii). It is surprising that this argument be used today (unfortunately by
those who know better), when 

a] we are reminded again and again that the age of a particular MSS does not
reflect the age of its text, and 

b] the comparative lack of data from the Antiochian area (as to the text used in
that locality in the earliest centuries of the Church) cannot be properly turned
into an 'argument from silence' against the Byzantine text. 
On this last point, D. Wallace comments as follows : "Even G. D. Kilpatrick, who
has defended not a few Byzantine readings (cf. 'The Greek New Testament Text of
Today and the Textus Receptus' in The New Testament in Historical and
Contemporary Perspective, edd. H. Anderson and W. Barclay [Oxford: Blackwell,
1965] 189-208) - and is, predictably, oft-quoted by majority-text advocates - in
his review of The Majority Text, argues on the basis of the history of
transmission (which seems so unlike a thorough-going eclectic!) that the
Byzantine text-type is decidedly inferior: 'Hodges' and Farstad's view must
explain two features, first, that there is no evidence for Hort's Syrian text
before the fourth century, and second that the dominant text of the second and
third centuries is so different' "The Majority Text: A New Collating Base? New
Testament Studies, vol. 35 (1989), pp. 616. 

But what exactly does Kilpatrick mean by the use of the term "evidence"? Does he
mean physical evidence, i.e. MSS? By the same logic, there was no "physical"
evidence that a purely Egyptian text existed before codices B and Aleph untill a
few decades ago, with the discovery of the Bodmer papyri. But if Kilpatrick
means 'readings', he is using an argument against the Byzantine text which he
himself said cannot and should not be used! Please note the following from his
above mentioned article, The Greek New Testament Text of Today..

."Professor H. Vogels has suggested that, apart from errors, the great majority
of variants in the New testament text came into being before A. D. 200. this
seems reasonable. Many readings can be shown to be in existence before that
date: few demonstrably came into being after it. On this hypothesis most
readings distinctive of the Syrian text will be older than A.D. 200 even if the
selection of these readings in that text appeared later. Consequently we cannot
condemm these variants as a product of the depravity of the fourth century. We
may ask why it is that we hear nothing of Hort's syrian text from before the
fourth century. The answer may be that we lack information in general about the
Greek texts of syria before A. D. 300. We have no manuscripts comparable to P66
P72 P75 in date and patristic quotations are few and comparatively late. We have
clear evidence of the western text from Irenaeus onward. THE COMPARATIVE LACK OF
EVIDENCE FROM THE AREA OF ANTIOCH CANNOT PROPERLY BE TURNED INTO AN EFFECTIVE
ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE ARGUMENT FROM SILENCE THAT THE SYRIAN TEXT IS NOT EARLIER
THAN LUCIAN." (emphasis added) p. 190. "

Hope this helps.

Mike A.