1.7 - Textual Criticism
November 08, 2004 | Comments: 2Biblical Hermeneutics Part First Chapter 7
Textual Criticism, also known as Lower Criticism, is the discipline of deriving and applying rules to determine the original authentic texts of the Scripture from the extant manuscript evidence. A good exegete ought to have a working facility with these principles in order to evaluate the variant readings on an uncertain text, to arrive at its likeliest true reading.
The evidence by which variant readings are judged is broadly classified as either external or internal evidence. External evidence consists of the character, age, and weighted value of the particular manuscript evidence. The New Testament has an abundance of available external evidence compared to other ancient writings. The rules of internal evidence are more subjective and hence must be exercised with great care. Following these rules the textual critic would tend to prefer the text that accords more with the author’s style, is the shorter, is the more difficult or obscure, and is that from which the other variants could be derived.
The vast majority of the New Testament text rests upon decisive evidence over which there is no dispute. For the relatively few passages where variant readings exist, most have to do only with differences of spelling, or other slight differences which are of no consequence. Only a small portion have variants which substantially affect the meaning of the text, and of these only a very few touch on important doctrinal issues.
Comments
and those few that do touch on significant doctrinal issues, I am assigning to you to sort out so that you can enlighten and correct the rest of us! Seriously, you may have some good insight into some of these and I would delight in hearing from you on some of them. By the way, there are a few large texts (e.g. John 8:1-11 and Mark 16:9-20)that are in need of text crit tools. What do you do with these two? Nathan.
nathan on November 23, 2004 at 06:19 PM
hmmm…you’re tough. What do I do with them? Nothing in particular—certainly I do not excise them from Scripture.
As you know, the textual evidence for the pericope of John 7.53-8.11 and the longer ending of Mark not being part of the original manuscripts is very strong. But if they were added by another author after the Johannine and Markan writings were initially completed, what shall we say?
We discussed in another thread that the role of compilers and redactors in the inscripturation of God’s revelation does not diminish it’s claim to inspiration and authority. I see these cases in much the same way. While I acknowledge what an honest employment of the principles of textual criticism shows regarding these texts, that does not mean that I therefore must reject the validity, inspiration and historicity of the texts in question. I receive them as part of the canon.
For my own part, I suspect the narrative of the woman caught in adultery was a primitive oral account, which somehow did not get into any of the Synoptics. Rather than lose it altogether, it was, under God’s providence, interpolated into John.
andrew on November 23, 2004 at 10:09 PM
