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BIBLE VERSIONS

and recommended for repeated transcription” (Burgon, consideration? Why, for example, can Kurt and Barbara
The Revision Revised, pp. 278-287). Aland say of a “great many” of the uncials that “since
That being said, it is evident that Burgon turned they offer nothing more than a Byzantine text ... they
Hort’s Syrian recension theory on its head and are in consequence quite irrelevant for textual
demonstrated that if such a thing actually occurred it criticism” (The Text of the New Testament, p. 104)? They
would provide devastating evidence AGAINST Hort’s do so on the ground that this text was allegedly created
Alexandrian text. If churches actually met together in in the 4th century by means of a recension, thus
the 3rd or 4th centuries to revise the New Testament allowing them to treat the thousands of Traditional text
text so as to purge away any impurities that had crept manuscripts merely as so many copies of one alleged
in, they would surely have had the resources and and, in their eyes, inauthentic revision. Without such a
understanding to accomplish such a task. They lived theory, they have no reason to despise the witness of the
only a short time from the passing of the apostles. They majority of manuscripts. “But it is clear that with this
would have had the testimony of the apostolic churches hypothesis of a ‘Syrian’ text,--the immediate source and
themselves, because they still existed. They would have actual prototype of the commonly received Text of the
had the testimony of countless treasured manuscripts N.T.,--stands or falls their entire Textual theory. Reject it,
that have long since disappeared from the record. They and the entire fabric is observed to collapse, and subside
would have had an intimate knowledge of the devises of into a shapeless ruin” (Burgon, The Revision Revised, p.
heretics that had operated in the previous century or 294).
two. For scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries to claim Modern Textual Criticism Principle: The shorter
that they are better able, with the pathetically slim reading is to be preferred, because corruption by addition
manuscript evidence that has survived from those is more likely than corruption by omission.
earliest centuries, to discern the apostolic text than the This rule was stated by Westcott and Hort in their
majority of churches in the 3rd and 4th centuries is Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek,
simply ridiculous. but it was invented by Johann Wettstein, a Unitarian,
Some contemporary textual critics have abandoned and Johann Griesbach, a modernist. It has not been
the idea that the Received Text was created through one proven by actual textual evidence; it is merely a theory
historical revision, replacing this with the theory that it designed to support the shorter Alexandrian text. In
was created over a long process. But whereas the first fact, the evidence points in the other direction, as stated
idea has no historical evidence, the second is absurd by B.H. Streeter: “The notion is completely refuted that
upon its very face. Zane Hodges wisely observes: “No the regular tendency of scribes was to choose the longer
one has yet explained how a long, slow process spread reading. ... The whole question of interpolations in
out over many centuries as well as over a wide ancient MSS has been set in an entirely new light by the
geographical area, and involving a multitude of researches of Mr. A.C. Clark, Corpus Professor of Latin
copyists, who often knew nothing of the state of the text at Oxford. ... in The Descent of Manuscripts, an
outside of their own monasteries or scriptoria, could investigation of the manuscript tradition of the Greek
achieve this widespread uniformity out of the diversity and Latin Classics, he proves conclusively that the error
presented by the earlier [Western and Alexandrian] to which scribes were most prone was not interpolation
forms of text ... An unguided process achieving relative [addition] but accidental omission” (Streeter, The Four
stability and uniformity in the diversified textual, Gospels: A Study of Origins, 1930).
historical, and cultural circumstances in which the New Everyday experience demonstrates the truth of this.
Testament was copied, imposes impossible strains on When copying something, it is easier to omit things than
our imagination” (Hodges, “The Implications of add things. And when heretics are tampering with the
Statistical Probability for the History of the Text,” text, it is easier to get away with omissions than
Appendix C in Wilbur N. Pickering, The Identity of the additions.
New Testament Text, 1980 edition, p. 168). Indeed. The vast majority of extant manuscripts throughout
If modern textual criticism’s principle of a Recension the church age have the “longer readings” that are left
were true, it would destroy the doctrine of Bible out of or questioned in the modern versions, such as the
preservation in any conceivably practical sense, because “long” ending to Mark 16.
it would mean that the apostolic text was, for all Modern Textual Criticism Principle: The hard reading
practical purposes, discarded for 15 centuries! is to be preferred to the easy reading.
If modern textual criticism’s principle of a recension This was one of Johann Bengel’s principles as stated
is rejected, the entire superstructure falls to the ground. in his Greek New Testament, p. 420. It is another theory
Why do the modern textual critics reject the Traditional
or Majority Text out of hand and give it no serious

84 Way of Life Encyclopedia of the Bible & Christianity