Biblica
Text Critical Preliminaries

Scriptorium: The Multiplication of Copies by Mediaeval Scribes

On the main page of the Biblica section, we have distinguished between a text's authorial growth process and its scribal later corruption process. We here look more closely at the corruption process, as a necessary preliminary to the growth analysis toward which we are working.

Text Criticism

The criticism of a text, as that term is now understood, involves comparing manuscript copies, noticing differences, and, of two or more variant readings of the same passage, eliminating those which seem to be due to later copyists and retaining the one which most probably, or more nearly, represents the original text. In this way, the corruptions and additions of later copyists are gradually removed. The end result, in favorable cases, is the reconstruction of the archetype: the master copy from which all later copies can be thought to be descended. This is not necessarily the "author's original" text; it is simply the earliest and therefore the best one that text criticism, working on the available manuscripts, can give us.

In principle, text criticism should be carried out before the text is analyzed on its own terms, or used as evidence for history. In practice, a certain amount of circularity is involved in the adjucation of manuscript variants. For instance, one valid criterion of genuineness, for a variant in a passage of Mark, is that it is typical of the style of Mark. But what do we actually know of "the style of Mark" before we have arrived at the text of Mark? Handling such circularities is one of the things that text critics strive to be good at. As Housman has said, text criticism is not a mechanical process. It requires experience, judgement, and a sense of reality. It requires thought.

The choice between two manuscript readings is basically a matter of determining the directionality of their relationship. The experience of many scholars over many years has led to guidelines and expectations and reminders of what can actually happen to a text in the course of being recopied.

Does one version make smooth sense, and does the other involve a difficult but possible reading? Then the smoother one may be the later, since scribes often improve the clarity of their text (thinking thereby to restore the presumably clear original). Does a passage have little to do with what comes before and after it, and does the sense of the surrounding text improved when that passage is taken out? Then the passage is probably an interpolation, placed there for a reason of its own, but disturbing the original text in some way.

Out the solution of many such problems, the art of the text critic gradually emerges. Some aspects of that art get embodied in rules, and the rules are always foolish. One such rule is "lectio brevior potior" (the shorter of two readings is better). The rule is eloquent, being in Latin, and it is easy to remember, being itself brief. But it also leads to wrong results if it is applied to situations, such as a scribally dropped word or letter, where the longer reading is actually the better. The only valid short rule is one that was first identified as basic by Tischendorf in 1854, and a century later, by Grant in 1943 and by Metzger in 1964, could be treated as self-evident. This is the idea that the reading is to be judged earlier from which the other can most plausibly be derived. In Metzger's words:

"Perhaps the most basic criterion for the evaluation of variant readings is the simple maxim 'choose the reading which best explains the origin of the others.' We all follow this common-sense criterion when confronted with errors and "variant readings" in modern books . . . " (p207).

Or newspapers. Viewers may note that their automatic mental correction of a misprint in the morning newspaper is not based on the comparison of different manuscript readings. In this case, there can be no different manuscript readings: it is the nature of the printing process that all copies of that newspaper will have the same error. Correction of such an error is based on recovering an error process for which we have only the single erroneous text as evidence. In such cases we see that the Tischendorf Principle applies also to single-text situations, and is not limited to the adjudication of parallel but different versions. This is an important theoretical extension of the usual "multiple text" situation. A single text, properly handled, can also be evidence for the process which lies behind it.

The present preliminaries are meant to establish some facts about the texts we will later be analyzing, using standard methods of text criticism, as well as giving viewers an idea of text criticism itself. The cases we will consider include some where two or more manuscript variants are adjudicated, and some where only the evidence of a single text is available. The arguments can be complex, and it helps in following them if one has met some of the terms before. Here is a very brief sample of that background knowledge:

For a more detailed treatment, we recommend Metzger Text, in toto.

Results

In the rest of this section, we take up, for decision and future reference, certain high-profile passages in various NT texts, chiefly in the Gospels.

Text problems which are attested by multiple manuscripts, since they obviously arose within the later history of the text, belong to that later history. Solving them is how we get rid of that later history, and back (as near as we can) to the texts themselves. We will not routinely pause over other problems of the above sort in the following pages. Instead, for the most part we will silently accept the verdict of decades of scholarly effort, beginning with Benson and continuing through Lachmann, and will regard the Westcott/Hort critical text, itself chiefly based on Codex Vaticanus (4th century) as our base text. Now and then, attention to some detail will be required. Otherwise, we end our glimpse of text criticism at this point.

With this sample of how texts are made safe for later analysis by text criticism, and with Luke in particular usefully clarified and thus brought closer to its presumptive archetype, we may now turn to the analysis of the texts themselves.

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25 Sept 2005 / Contact The Project / Exit to Biblica Page