Majority Text (Textus Receptus) versus Alexandrian Texts

[Dmckay]

The majority text and the "Texstus Receptus" are not necessarily the same thing, consider:

In recent years a small but growing number of New Testament scholars have been promoting what appears to be a return to the Textus Receptus, the Greek text that stands behind the New Testament of the King James Version. But all is not what it appears. In reality, those scholars are advocating “the majority text”—the form of the Greek text found in the majority of extant manuscripts. That the Textus Receptus (TR) resembles the majority text is no accident, since in compiling the TR Erasmus simply used about a half dozen late manuscripts that were available to him. As Hodges points out:
The reason for this resemblance, despite the uncritical way in which the TR was compiled, is easy to explain. It is this: the textual tradition found in Greek manuscripts is for the most part so uniform that to select out of the mass of witnesses almost any manuscript at random is to select a manuscript likely to be very much like most other manuscripts. Thus, when our printed editions were made, the odds favored their early editors coming across manuscripts exhibiting this majority text.
But the TR is hardly identical with the majority text, for the TR has numerous places where it is supported by few or no Greek manuscripts. Precisely because advocates of the majority text can
dissociate themselves from the TR in these places, their argumentation is more sophisticated—and more plausible—than that of TR advocates.
In a previous article the present writer interacted with the majority text theory as it has been displayed concretely in The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text. For the most part the interaction was with Zane Hodges’s particular defense of the majority text view. Not all majority text advocates share his approach, however. Indeed, several of the critiques made in that article of Hodges’s “stemmatic reconstruction” are voiced by other majority text advocates. The present article, therefore, is a more general critique of the majority text theory and is specifically intended to interact with Wilbur Pickering’s defense of it.
The present author writes from the perspective of “reasoned eclecticism,” the text critical theory that stands behind almost all modern versions of the New Testament (the New King James Version excepted). Three points in the current debate will be discussed: the theological premise of the majority text theory, the external evidence, and the internal evidence.

 

[Dmckay]

Continuation:
Preservation and the Majority Text
For many advocates of the majority text view, a peculiar form of the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture undergirds the entire approach. Their premise is that the doctrine of the preservation of Scripture requires that the early manuscripts cannot point to the original text better than the later manuscripts can, because these early manuscripts are in the minority.
Pickering also seems to embrace such a doctrine. For example in 1968 he argued that this doctrine is “most important” and “what one believes does make a difference.” Further he linked the preservation of Scripture to the majority text in such a way that a denial of one necessarily entails a denial of the other: “The doctrine of Divine Preservation of the New Testament Text depends upon the interpretation of the evidence which recognizes the Traditional Text to be the continuation of the autographa.” In other words, Pickering seems to be saying, “If we reject the majority text view, we reject the doctrine of preservation.”
This theological premise has far-reaching implications. For one thing Pickering has charged Hort with being prejudiced against the Byzantine texttype from the very beginning of his research: “It appears Hort did not arrive at his theory through unprejudiced intercourse with the facts. Rather, he deliberately set out to construct a theory that would vindicate his preconceived animosity for the Received Text.” But has not Pickering done the same thing? His particular view of preservation seems to have dictated for him that the majority text must be right. In one place he argues:
Presumably the evidence is the same for both believer and unbeliever, but the interpretation of the facts depends upon the presuppositions used. Let the conservative Christian not be ashamed of his presuppositions—they are more reasonable than those of the unbeliever…. God has preserved the text of the New Testament…the Traditional Text is in the fullest sense of the term, just that.
In other words, according to Pickering, it seems that the Christian’s presupposition is that the majority text is the original text. Apparently to jettison the majority text would be a departure from orthodoxy for many of its advocates. If so, then whatever the merits of this viewpoint are—and there are many—it must be stressed that as long as majority text advocates hold this view of preservation, no amount of evidence will convince them that reasoned eclecticism is
right, because the majority text view is “a statement of faith.” And as Pickering has so clearly articulated, this is not just a presupposition—it is a doctrine.
In many respects this theological premise is commendable. Too many evangelicals have abandoned an aspect of the faith when the going got tough. That the majority text proponents have held tenaciously to this doctrinal position—in spite of an ever-increasing mass of evidence—speaks highly of their piety and conviction. But nowhere do they explain why this view of preservation is the biblical doctrine. At one point, for example, Pickering argues, “I believe passages such as Isa 40:8; Matt 5:18…John 10:35 [etc.]…can reasonably be taken to imply a promise that the Scriptures will be preserved for man’s use (we are to live ‘by every word of God’).” But he gives no further argument, no exegesis. His one clear statement about preservation is this: “God has preserved the text of the New Testament in a very pure form and it has been readily available to His followers in every age throughout 1900 years.” No proof text is given, just a bare statement.
The present writer has several serious problems with this view of the doctrine of preservation, three of which are as follows. First, Scripture does not state how God has preserved the text. It could be in the majority of witnesses, or it could be in a small handful of witnesses. In fact theologically one may wish to argue against the majority: usually it is the remnant, not the majority, that is right.
Second, assuming that the majority text is the original, then this pure form of text has become available only since 1982. The Textus Receptus differs from it in almost 2,000 places—and in fact has several readings that have “never been found in any known Greek manuscript,” and scores, perhaps hundreds, of readings that depend on only a handful of very late manuscripts. Many of these
passages are theologically significant texts. Yet virtually no one had access to any other text from 1516 to 1881, a period of over 350 years. In light of this it is difficult to understand what Pickering means when he says that this pure text “has been readily available to [God’s] followers in every age throughout 1900 years.” Purity, it seems, has to be a relative term.
Third, again assuming that the majority text is the original and that it has been readily available to Christians for 1,900 years, then it must have been readily available to Christians in Egypt in the first four centuries. But this is demonstrably not true. Literally scores of studies in the last 80 years have demonstrated this point. Due to space considerations only one recent doctoral dissertation will be cited. After carefully investigating the Gospel quotations of Didymus, a fourth-century Egyptian writer, Ehrman concludes, “These findings indicate that no ‘proto-Byzantine’ text existed in Alexandria in Didymus’ day or, at least if it did, it made no impact on the mainstream of the textual tradition there.” Pickering speaks of the early Alexandrian witnesses as “polluted” and as coming from a “sewer pipe.” Now if these manuscripts are really that defective, and if this is all Egypt had in the first three or four centuries, then this peculiar doctrine of preservation is in serious jeopardy, for those ancient Egyptian Christians had no access to the pure stream of the majority text. If one defines preservation in terms of the majority text, one ends with a view that speaks poorly of God’s sovereign care of the text in ancient Egypt.

 

[Dmckay]

Continuation 2:
External Evidence
The primary premise in the majority text view is this: “Any reading overwhelmingly attested by the manuscript tradition is more likely to be original than its rival(s).” In other words when the majority of manuscripts agree, that is the original. Majority
text advocates have turned this presumption into a statistical probability. But in historical investigation, statistical probability is almost always worthless. David Hume, in his Essay on Miracles, argued against miracles on the basis of statistical probability. The majority of people Hume had ever known had never been raised from the dead. In fact none of them had. But belief in the resurrection of Christ is not based on statistical probability—there is evidence which, in this case, overturns statistics.
In historical investigation, presumption is only presumption. An ounce of evidence is worth a pound of presumption. The story has been told that in Aristotle’s day Greek philosophers had developed intricate theories as to what constituted the innards of a frog. In fact there was a great deal of consensus on this—one might even say a “majority view.” But it was all presumption—and it was all overturned as soon as someone cut open a frog and looked at the evidence.
In textual criticism there are three categories of external evidence: the Greek manuscripts, the early translations into other languages, and the quotations of the New Testament found in the church fathers’ writings. If the majority text view is right, then one would expect to find this text form (often known as the Byzantine text) in the earliest Greek manuscripts, in the earliest versions, and in the earliest church fathers. Not only would one expect to find it there, but also one would expect it to be in a majority of manuscripts, versions, and fathers.
But that is not what is found. Among extant Greek manuscripts, what is today the majority text did not become a majority until the ninth century. In fact, as far as the extant witnesses reveal, the majority text did not exist in the first four centuries. Not only this, but for the letters of Paul, not even one majority text manuscript exists from before the ninth century. To embrace the majority text for the Pauline Epistles, then, requires an 800-year leap of faith.
When Westcott and Hort developed their theory of textual criticism, only one papyrus manuscript was known to them. Since that time almost 100 have been discovered. More than fifty of these came from before the middle of the fourth century. Yet not one belongs to the majority text. The Westcott-Hort theory, with its many flaws (which all textual critics today acknowledge), was apparently still right on its basic tenet: the Byzantine texttype—or majority text—did not exist in the first three centuries. The evidence can be visualized as follows, with the width of the horizontal bars indicating the relative number of extant manuscripts from each century.

Many hypotheses can be put forth as to why there are no early Byzantine manuscripts. But once again an ounce of evidence is worth a pound of presumption. In historical investigation one must start with the evidence and then make the hypothesis.
This chart does not tell the whole story. The extant Greek manuscripts—the primary witnesses to the text of the New Testament—do not include the Byzantine text in the first four centuries. But what about the early versions and the church fathers? Do they attest to the Byzantine texttype in the early period?
Many of the versions were translated from Greek at an early date. Most scholars believe that the New Testament was translated into Latin in the second century A.D. —two centuries before Jerome produced the Vulgate. Almost one hundred extant Latin manuscripts represent this Old Latin translation—and they all attest to the Western texttype. In other words the Greek manuscripts they translated were not Byzantine. The Coptic version also goes back to an early date, probably the second century —and it was a translation of Alexandrian manuscripts, not Byzantine ones. The earliest forms of the Syriac are also either Western or Alexandrian.
What is the oldest version, then, that is based on the majority text? In a carefully documented study, Metzger points out that the Gothic version is “the oldest representative of the…Antiochian [i.e., Byzantine] type of text.” When was this version produced? At the end of the fourth century.
The significance of these early versions is twofold: (1) None of the versions produced in the first three centuries was based on the Byzantine text. But if the majority text view is right, then each one of these versions was based on polluted Greek manuscripts—a suggestion that does not augur well for God’s providential care of the New Testament text, as that care is understood by the majority text view. But if these versions were based on polluted manuscripts, one would expect them to have come from (and be used in) only one
isolated region. This is not the case; the Coptic, Ethiopic, Latin, and Syriac versions came from all over the Mediterranean region. In none of these locales was the Byzantine text apparently used. This is strong evidence that the Byzantine text simply did not exist in the first three centuries—anywhere. (2) Even if one of these early versions had been based on the majority text, this would only prove that the majority text existed before the fourth century. But it would not prove that it was in the majority before the fourth century.

 

[Dmckay]

Continuation 3:
Early patristic writers are especially valuable in textual criticism because it can be determined when and where they lived. Many of them lived much earlier than the date of any Greek manuscripts now extant for a particular book. Some lived in the first or early second century. If it could be determined what kind of text they used when they quoted from the New Testament, such information would naturally be highly valuable. But textual critics do not usually give much weight to the church fathers. There are several reasons for this, some of which are as follows. First, when a church father quotes from the New Testament, it is not always possible to tell if he is quoting from memory or if he has a manuscript in front of him. Second, he rarely tells which book he is quoting from. He might say, “as it is written,” or “just as Paul says,” or “our Lord said.” Third, none of the original documents of any church fathers remains. Almost all the copies of these early patristic writers come from the Middle Ages. In other words textual criticism must be done on the church fathers in order to see how they attest to the New Testament text.
This last problem is significant because the Byzantine text was the majority text after the ninth century. And virtually all the copies of the fathers come from the ninth century or later. When a scribe was copying the New Testament text quoted by a church father, he would naturally conform that text to the one with which he
was familiar. This fact has been recognized for the past 80 years. In 1912, Frederic G. Kenyon, a British textual critic, wrote, “Without any prejudice against the received text [i.e., the Byzantine text], it must be recognized that, where two alternatives are open, the one which diverges from the received text is more likely to be the one originally used by the Father in question.”
This introduction to patristic use of Scripture is necessary to underscore the following two points. (1) Older studies, which were based on late copies of the church fathers and on uncritical editions, are not helpful in determining what the church fathers said. And it is precisely these older studies that the majority text advocates appeal to. (2) So far as this writer is aware, in the last 80 years every
critical study has concluded that the majority text was never the text used by the church fathers in the first three centuries. Fee, who is recognized as one of the leading patristic authorities today, wrote:
Over the past eight years I have been collecting the Greek patristic evidence for Luke and John for the International Greek New Testament Project. In all of this material I have found one invariable: a good critical edition of a father’s text, or the discovery of early MSS, always moves the father’s text of the NT away from the TR and closer to the text of our modern critical editions.
In other words when a critical study is made of a church father’s text or when early copies of a church father’s writings are discovered, the majority text is found wanting. The early fathers had a text that keeps looking more like modern critical editions and less like the majority text.
In summing up the evidence from the early church fathers, in none of the critical studies made in the last 80 years was the majority text found to be the text used by the church fathers in the first three centuries. Though some of these early Fathers had
isolated Byzantine readings, the earliest church father to use the Byzantine text was the heretic Asterius, a fourth-century writer.
All the external evidence suggests that there is no proof that the Byzantine text was in existence in the first three centuries. It is not found in the extant Greek manuscripts, nor in the early versions, nor in the early church fathers. And this is a threefold cord not easily broken. To be sure, isolated Byzantine readings have been found, but not the Byzantine texttype. Though some Byzantine readings existed early, the texttype apparently did not.
Another comment is in order regarding external evidence. On several occasions church fathers do more than quote the text. They also discuss textual variants. Holmes points out the value of this for the present discussion.
Final proof that the manuscripts known today do not accurately represent the state of affairs in earlier centuries comes from patristic references to variants once widely known but found today in only a few or even no witnesses. The “longer ending” of Mark, 16:9–20 {Mark 16}, today is found in a large majority of Greek manuscripts; yet according to Jerome, it “is met with in only a few copies of the Gospel—almost all the codices of Greece being without this passage.” Similarly, at Matthew 5:22 he notes that “most of the ancient copies” do not contain the qualification “without cause”…which, however, is found in the great majority today.
Metzger discusses several references in Jerome, Origen, and other early writers where a variant found in the majority of manuscripts in their day is now found in a minority of manuscripts, as well as the other way around. “In other words, variants once apparently in the minority are today dominant, and vice versa; some once dominant have even disappeared. This fact alone rules out any attempt to settle textual questions by statistical means.”

 

[Dmckay]

Finale:
Internal Evidence
Most textual critics are persuaded that the external evidence of the first three centuries is conclusive against the majority text. But it would be a gross misrepresentation of the facts to say that all these witnesses of the early period agree with each other all the time. It is well recognized that the Byzantine manuscripts—from the ninth or tenth century on at least—are far more uniform than the early Alexandrian or Western manuscripts. Several factors account for this, but it is ancillary to the present discussion. The question at the moment is this: When the earliest manuscripts disagree with one another, how should the text critic decide which ones are right?
This is where internal evidence enters the picture. Internal evidence has to do with determining which variant is original on the basis of known scribal habits and the author’s style. The aim is to choose the reading that best explains the rise of the others.
At first this process may sound subjective. Yet people do it every day—every time they read a newspaper. For example if someone were to look at the Win-Loss column for the Los Angeles Lakers and see 38 losses and only 12 wins, he would know that the typesetter switched the numbers. If he saw an article by Harold Hoehner in which A.D. 30 was mentioned as the crucifixion date, the reader could be sure that this was a printing mistake. Not all internal evidence is subjective, then—or else proofreaders would have no jobs.
The central element in the procedures used by Westcott and Hort …was the internal evidence of documents. Their high appraisal of the [Alexandrian] tradition in preference to “Western” or Byzantine readings rests essentially on internal evidence of readings…it is upon this basis that most contemporary critics, even while rejecting [Westcott and Hort’s] historical reconstructions, continue to follow them in viewing the Majority text as secondary.
In other words Westcott and Hort—without the knowledge of the early papyri discovered since their time—felt that the majority text was inferior because of internal evidence. (The papyri have simply confirmed their views.) “Majority text advocates, however, object quite strenuously to the use of the canons of internal evidence. These canons, they argue, are only very broad generalizations about scribal tendencies which are sometimes wrong and in any case frequently cancel each other out.”
There is some truth to this point; in fact even Fee, an ardent opponent of the majority text, has argued likewise. But the fact that internal evidence can be subjective does not mean that it is all equally subjective. “Reasoned eclecticism” maintains today that several canons of internal evidence are “objectively verifiable,” or virtually so. And where they are, the majority text (as well as the Western text) almost always has an inferior reading, while the Alexandrian manuscripts almost always have a superior reading.
One may consult, for example, Metzger’s A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament to see some of the rationale for accepting one reading over another. Some of the internal criteria are quite subjective—but not all are. One should note especially the places in which Metzger defends the ‘A’ rating of the UBS text.
One other comment is needed here. It seems that the majority text advocates appeal so much to external evidence because they want certainty about the original wording in every place. But even in the Byzantine text, there are hundreds of splits where no clear majority emerges. One scholar recently found 52 variants within the majority text in the space of two verses. In such cases how are majority text advocates to decide what is original? If internal
evidence is totally subjective, then in those places the majority text view has no solution, and no certainty. Perhaps this is why Pickering recently said, “Not only are we presently unable to specify the precise wording of the original text, but it will require considerable time and effort before we can be in a position to do so.”
To sum up, though internal evidence is subjective, it is not all equally subjective. And it is precisely where internal evidence is “objectively verifiable” (or virtually so) that most scholars today maintain that the majority text contains a secondary reading. Furthermore in the quest for certainty the majority text theory is in many respects worse off than reasoned eclecticism.
Once again the reader should be reminded of a point made earlier. Though textual criticism cannot yet produce certainty about the exact wording of the original, this uncertainty affects only about two percent of the text. And in that two percent support always exists for what the original said—never is one left with mere conjecture. In other words it is not that only 90 percent of the original text exists in the extant Greek manuscripts—rather, 110 percent exists. Textual criticism is not involved in reinventing the original; it is involved in discarding the spurious, in burning the dross to get to the gold.
Conclusion
Is the majority text identical with the original text? The present writer does not think so. There are no doctrinal reasons that compel him to believe that it is, and when all the evidence is weighed—both external and internal—it is quite compelling against such a view. Does this mean that the majority text is worthless? Not at all. For one thing, it agrees with the critical text 98 percent of the time. For another, several isolated Byzantine readings are early, and where they have good internal credentials, reasoned eclectics adopt them as original. But this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a wholesale adoption of the majority text. And that is precisely the issue taken up in this article.