Which Majority Text?

I prefer Robinson/Pierpont. I believe their methodology is superior. I remember many years ago when I first got the Hodges/Farstad and read the Introduction, I felt their method was somewhat unwieldy, though an improvement on the eclectic method.

I feel that Maurice Robinson has a better grasp on textual criticism in general than Hodges did. I think he's proven that by his scholarly defenses of the Byzantine Textform. In Translating the New Testament, (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), ed. by Stanley Porter and Mark Boda, Robinson and Barbara Aland both teed up on textual criticism. Dr. Robinson blew Rule 9 of the eclectic method out of the water with his article, "Rule 9, Isolated Variants, and the 'Test-Tube' Nature of the NA27/UBS4 Text: A Byzantine-Priority Perspective" (pp. 27-61).

Later in the book Robinson dealt with Luke 19. In her brief article introducing the section, "The Text of Luke 16" (pp. 93-95) Barbara Aland started out by saying, "First of all, I agree with Dr. Robinson that the Byzantine text is by far not as bad as former generations thought" (p. 93). So the Byzantine is getting more respect nowadays.

Here is a sample quote from the Preface of the Byzantine Textform NT that illustrates what I mean:

 

Great link. Thanks!

 

I've been sent the link to a great website: http://koti.24.fi/jusalak/GreekNT/NTTexts.htm

You can download the Byzantine Textform 2005 and other great files here, including the Antoniades 1904/1912. Also, there is a link to a PDF which collates the Antoniades Patriarchal edition against the Robinson-Pierpont NT.

According to my information, the versions of the 1904 Antoniades you can find on the Internet are "woefully inadequate." To get the true differences between the Antoniades 1904/1912 and the Robinson-Pierpont, download the version on this link as edited, checked and verified by by Maurice A. Robinson and Jussi Ala-Könni.

Furthermore, my informant tells me that the Antoniades does not have good manuscript support. It was edited mainly from lectionary mss, so while it is "'acceptable' text for Greek Orthodox liturgical purposes" it is certainly not the best representative of the Byzantine text type.

 

We're using Scrivener, but in doing the first draft I compared Robinson/Pierpont to Scrivener and Stephanus throughout the NT and was impressed. I've toyed with the idea of doing a R/P translation parlell to what we're doing, but probably won't ever have the time.

 

So it is mostly Byzantine, but has some other readings, eh?