Byzantine Priority

In the book “Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism [LINK]” Moisés Silva provides a closing chapter which addresses many points brought out by Maurice A. Robinson’s contribution titled, “The Case for Byzantine Priority”.

He writes: “[T]he more you reflect on it the more you realize that the appearance of a mishmash is exactly what you would expect unless you have the prior conviction that one particular witness or group of witnesses has not been susceptible to normal scribal changes. But if every copyist is vulnerable to such changes and thus is fallible, we should hardly be surprised to notice a lack of correspondence between a properly reconstructed text and the surviving witnesses.” (p.148)

He goes on to note that similarly there is a “lack of an early evidence for the pattern of readings characterizing the [Byzantine] Majority text”.

Rob

 

P66 as you note, has been dated to around A.D. 200.
It was found in the Dishna plain, east of the Nile River and is considered an Alexandrian-type manuscript.
It contains John 1:1–6:11; 6:35–14:26, 29–30; 15:2–26; 16:2–4, 6–7; 16:10–20:20, 22–23; 20:25–21:9, 12, 17.
Of special note: P66 is the earliest witness not to include the pericope of the adulteress (John 7:53–8:11)!

I’m not very familiar with the Peshitta, although I believe the date you offer is much too early; I think it dates to around the fourth or fifth century.

The testamony of the early church fathers (as you mentioned) are an enigma.
It has been suggested that their references to Scripture were modified to bring them into line with the text at the time and place where they were being transcribed.
There might have been an even greater tendency to adjust the text in the writings of Ignatius of Antioch to the Byzantine textform since he espoused some very “Catholic” doctrine.
Just as there are critical texts of the Hebrew and Greek Scriptures, we may soon see critical texts of the church fathers.

This would only make sense, wouldn’t it?

Modern eclecticism does have its problems.
I don’t think we have reached the stage where all questions are answered in a single paradigm.
Maurice A. Robinson has shaken things up a bit and perhaps allowed a re-evaluation of things.
There is still much work to do

Rob

 

What's laughable is that even M. Robinson believes that his precious Byzantines were indeed susceptible to such normal scribal changes and thus made by fallible scribes, yet the evidence of those textual errors within the Byzantine Textform only confirms the non-standardized nature of the Consensus, the natural median text still dominant with only minor streams and aberrations that persisted in the transmission of the text regardless of their difference from the median text. Thus we see the MSS containing the Alexandrian Text still being almost perfectly reproduced with only minor variation through the 14th century in the Minuscules. The Alexandrian stream was a minor stream in the 4th century just as it was in the 14th century.

And the pattern of readings of the consensus of the 10 earliest MSS found outside of Egypt is overwhelmingly Byzantine.

 

Wouldn't the way to adjust for scribal error be to compare the witnesses that have survived and go with the text that is most repeated among those documents?

By doing this exercise, wouldn't one be able to construct a reliable MS based on the agreement of the sources?

Isn't this agreement of sources what is largely missing from the modern approach?

If the Byzantine Textform includes the majority of manuscripts and those manuscripts largely agree, then I would think this the most reliable transmission.

Older doesn't necessarily equate to better. Documents may have been discarded because of massive error, therefore not copied extensively, but with a priority given to older texts, may be taken as reliable now. This, to my mind, is the problem with the modern approach.

 

Great topic fellows I'm very happy to see scholarship in this area and not only emotional KJV onlyism debates.

 

It appears to me that one either questions the evidence or questions the scholarship or both when faced with conclusions which are not fitting ones expectations.

I believe that we have some of the oldest extents of Scripture in history and we find ourselves unsatisfied with that fact.

What is the problem?

 

In theory that would work, presuming:
1. Each copy of each document was copied with equal care and,
2. Each copy of each document was copied with equal precision and,
3. Each copy of each document was copied an equal number of times.

But we can demonstrate that each of these factors were not equivalent.
There is a multiplicity of other factors that can distort the picture too.

And then we should assign value to each of the known manuscripts.

Older texts are closer in time to the original text and may display a lesser tendency of compounding error upon error.
The closer to the original, the less hands that may have manipulated the text.

If any given manuscript is copied a lot, does that make it original?

Rob

 

If any given manuscript is copied a lot, it doesn't make it original, but it may be an indicator that the people who copied it held it in higher regard than those that were copied less often, or not at all.

Assigning value could be an idea, but then you run into what constitutes a higher value as opposed to a lower one. That would start a whole other load of angst.

 

It's a matter of opinion.

I prefer the CT because I feel it is closer to the originals. Less chance of scribal errors etc...

Between the CT and BT there is not a single doctrine changed.

 

Not really.

As a Baptist I could care less about confessions. Sola Scriptura is all that matters to me.

 

Perhaps someone could explain how things were left out of the earlier manuscripts if they in fact did belong. This explination escapes me still.

Doesnt it make more sense that later scribes would attempt to harmonize, rather than early scribes blatantly delete phrases?

It just doesnt make sense to me.

Now, as to the number, didnt Greek cease to be used as the common language around the 4th century everywhere EXCEPT around Byzanthium? Also, I'm sure everyone is aware of how manuscripts last longer there than they would in Egypt.

How does this show what the true numbers would have been back then?

Also, there are CLEAR corruptions in the Byzantine manuscripts that even KJV users admit, such as 1 John 5:7-8.