New Testament Textual Criticism

A Concise Guide

David Alan Black

© 1994 by David Alan Black

Published by Baker Academic

a division of Baker Publishing Group

P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49516-6287

www.bakeracademic.com

Sixth printing, July 2006

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

ISBN 10: 0-8010-1074-8

ISBN 978-0-8010-1074-3

Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

To

Dr. Bernhard Wyss

Professor Emeritus of Greek Philology

at the University of Basel,

who, in the tradition of Erasmus,

taught me the joy of

New Testament textual criticism

Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments

1. Scribes, Scrolls, and Scripture

The Purpose and Materials of New Testament Textual Criticism

2. From Corruption to Restoration

The History and Methods of New Testament Textual Criticism

3. From Theory to Practice

Selected Examples of New Testament Textual Criticism

Appendix 1: Types of Errors in the New Testament Manuscripts

Appendix 2: Text Types and Groupings of Witnesses

Appendix 3: A Worksheet for New Testament Textual Criticism

Select Bibliography

Subject Index

Preface and Acknowledgments

A. T. Robertson, the famous Greek scholar, once called the Greek New Testament “the Torchbearer of Light and Progress for the world” (The Minister and His Greek New Testament, p. 116). If this is true (and it is), then any light we can shed on the text of the New Testament ought to help us gain light from it.

Unfortunately, many Christians have never had the opportunity to learn even the basics about New Testament textual criticism—the study of the original wording of the New Testament. Recently, in a church in Hawaii, a bright young pastor came up to me and said, “I have some people who are quite fanatical about the King James Version. They say it is based on the ‘best’ Greek texts. I know that others in my congregation disagree. Can you help me?” This pastor wasn’t alone in his dilemma. I have met many others like him in churches large and small. They wonder, for example, why the King James Version includes the confession of the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:37) and the doxology of the Lord’s Prayer (Matt. 6:13), while the New International Version does not.

I wrote this book for people like that young pastor and his congregation in Hawaii. It represents material I have presented to literally hundreds of pastors and lay persons in Bible-teaching workshops. In a sense, this book packages up those workshops and delivers them in a readily accessible form. You might call it a “teach yourself” clinic. And you can either work through it on your own or use it to guide a group study.

Like its predecessors Linguistics for Students of New Testament Greek (Grand Rapids: Baker, ...