INTRODUCTION: THE PRACTICE OF NEW TESTAMENT TEXTUAL CRITICISM I. Definition and Purpose of Textual Criticism Textual criticism of the NT is the study of biblical texts in ancient manuscripts in order to determine as closely as possible the exact text of the original writings (called “autographs”) before copyists made changes and errors as they copied them. As Holmes has noted, this task has three major aspects:1 (1) gathering and organizing the evidence; (2) developing a methodology by which to
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