of manuscripts, the original text has most probably lived on in some of these copies. The task of the textual critic is to find where the original reading lies at each and every point of divergence in the manuscripts, and, ideally, to try to explain how and why the variant or variants arose in the first place. Related to this is point 4 following. 4. The number of manuscripts and the antiquity of many of them place the NT textual critic in a position envied by scholars attempting to edit the Greek