Textal Criticism of sorts...?

[ByTheSpirit]

So thinking about this some lately and a question i have never really thought of is just how reliable are Nestle-Aland and such type Manuscripts compared to the Textus Receptus?

Now my preferred translation comes from the Nestle-Aland series of manuscripts so I have no bias as far as the title of the OP goes. Just wondering...

So I thought I had read at one point that in earlier days of the Church scribes would copy manuscripts and if a mistake were to be made they would bury the copy....

Seems to me that with variants of manuscripts missing text or etc that the Textus Receptus would then be the one manuscript to be found complete as the 6 or so that were used by Erasmus to compile the TR were in agreement.

So in other words, if the Nestle-Aland/UBS/NT/etc are compiled from manuscripts that seemingly have scribal errors in them, how reliable are they really and should they be discarded by Christians as such?

I know the TR in its earliest editions was incomplete as well but understood that later editions were made complete...

Am I wrong in this?

I reallu don't want to start another Textual Criticism debate, I know they get rather heated. I just want to see some opinions on the matter. I literally just thought this and before the thought floated away wanted to present it.

Also I am in no way espousing a KJV only stance, I am merey discussing the texts behind the translations

 

[shakewell]

So thinking about this some lately and a question i have never really thought of is just how reliable are Nestle-Aland and such type Manuscripts compared to the Textus Receptus?

Now my preferred translation comes from the Nestle-Aland series of manuscripts so I have no bias as far as the title of the OP goes. Just wondering...

So I thought I had read at one point that in earlier days of the Church scribes would copy manuscripts and if a mistake were to be made they would bury the copy....

Seems to me that with variants of manuscripts missing text or etc that the Textus Receptus would then be the one manuscript to be found complete as the 6 or so that were used by Erasmus to compile the TR were in agreement.

So in other words, if the Nestle-Aland/UBS/NT/etc are compiled from manuscripts that seemingly have scribal errors in them, how reliable are they really and should they be discarded by Christians as such?

I know the TR in its earliest editions was incomplete as well but understood that later editions were made complete...

Am I wrong in this?

I reallu don't want to start another Textual Criticism debate, I know they get rather heated. I just want to see some opinions on the matter. I literally just thought this and before the thought floated away wanted to present it.

Also I am in no way espousing a KJV only stance, I am merey discussing the texts behind the translations

I'm a little rusty on this subject, but the Nestle-Aland/UBS rely heavily on Siniaticus and Vatacanus. They're among the oldest and most complete extanct Greek New Testaments and therefore claimed to be "the best". The problem is that they have much disagreement with each other and weren't in circulation through the centuries, and for those reasons I think they're the worst.

The Textus Receptus is in better agreement with the majority of extant Greek New Testaments, even though they're not as old. The "majority" texts seem to be the ones that actually got used by people. God intends for His Word to get used (throw away the old copies when they wear out). My trust is in the majority texts and the Textus Receptus is a pretty close representation of them.

 

[Biblicist]

So thinking about this some lately and a question i have never really thought of is just how reliable are Nestle-Aland and such type Manuscripts compared to the Textus Receptus?

Now my preferred translation comes from the Nestle-Aland series of manuscripts so I have no bias as far as the title of the OP goes. Just wondering...

So I thought I had read at one point that in earlier days of the Church scribes would copy manuscripts and if a mistake were to be made they would bury the copy....

Seems to me that with variants of manuscripts missing text or etc that the Textus Receptus would then be the one manuscript to be found complete as the 6 or so that were used by Erasmus to compile the TR were in agreement.

So in other words, if the Nestle-Aland/UBS/NT/etc are compiled from manuscripts that seemingly have scribal errors in them, how reliable are they really and should they be discarded by Christians as such?

I know the TR in its earliest editions was incomplete as well but understood that later editions were made complete...

Am I wrong in this?

I reallu don't want to start another Textual Criticism debate, I know they get rather heated. I just want to see some opinions on the matter. I literally just thought this and before the thought floated away wanted to present it.

Also I am in no way espousing a KJV only stance, I am merey discussing the texts behind the translations

The problem with the old text of Erasmus, as to its unreliability, is that it was produced in haste, where Erasmus was forced to run around parts of Europe to try and find enough manuscripts so that he could assemble a complete copy of the Greek New Testament and this had to be undertaken under the heavy demands of his publishers deadline; not much has changed over the years.

For its day and the fact that it was produced in haste, which Erasmus himself regretted, I suppose that it was a half reasonable attempt but Erasmus was certainly stymied by the lack of Greek manuscripts that were available to him where his Greek eclectic text ended up becoming not so much an accurate refection of the original Greek text but merely with something that was its shadow. The poor state of the Greek manuscripts of his time has been shown by how he could not find a single Greek manuscript that had the last six verses of Revelations.

 

[DW_in_AR]

So in other words, if the Nestle-Aland/UBS/NT/etc are compiled from manuscripts that seemingly have scribal errors in them, how reliable are they really and should they be discarded by Christians as such?

All editions are compiled from manuscripts that seemingly have scribal errors (and corrections). Compared to the TR, the NA/UBS family has the benefit of an additional 500 years of manuscript discoveries and collation.* This allows for much better error correction than was possible 500 years ago.

Even if you prefer a Byzantine text, we have much better editions than the TR. Check out Robinson and Pierpont's New Testament in the Original Greek; in their lengthy defense of the Byzantine textform, they dismiss the TR as the "faulty" result of Erasums' and Ximenes' "uncritical selection of a small number of late manuscripts." They count 1800 differences between the TR and the Byzantine text, some of them significant. They are rueful that the faulty TR was falsely associated with the Byzantine text, which boosted the respectability of the critical text. The TR is an interesting event in Biblical history, being the first printed Greek edition, but it does not have any special textual value.

* To add context, the NA27 list of Greek manuscripts runs to 31 pages. There's an additional six pages of Latin manuscripts. They also used ancient version (Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Armenian, Gothic, Old Church Slavonic) to help establish the text.

 

[ByTheSpirit]

Weren't manuscripts that have scribal errors buried in the sand or otherwise done away with? Or was that Hebrew Texts?

I feel like I have heard that somewhere that scribes if they made a mistake would simply bury their manuscript because they couldn't destroy God's name or something

 

[Biblicist]

Weren't manuscripts that have scribal errors buried in the sand or otherwise done away with? Or was that Hebrew Texts?

I feel like I have heard that somewhere that scribes if they made a mistake would simply bury their manuscript because they couldn't destroy God's name or something

It helps to remember that as any copy of the Greek text is performed by frail human hands, this means that there will probably always be an error or two inserted. DW_in_AR has raised some good points.

What many (or most) avid KJV advocates will often fail to mention is that we are well aware that when Erasmus was given the task by his publisher to produce a Greek New Testament that such a text did not readily exist within the Western Church, which is why poor Erasmus had to quickly run around to find enough Manuscripts to compile a working Greek NT. Unfortunately for Erasmus he could not find a single complete copy of the Book of Revelation which is why he had to make up the last six verses from the Latin text.

As well, I am not sure if this is something that many KJV advocates try and pull intentionally, but quite often I have noticed those who support the so called "Majority" text as being support for the KJV, which is actually a complete misrepresentation of the truth, as the KJV was based on the poor Greek text that Erasmus produced, though he did try and do the right thing but he did not have the Greek resources at hand to do the job as well as he had wished.

 

[Apex]

I recommend this book:

Wegner, Paul D. A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods & Results. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

 

[Biblicist]

I recommend this book:

Wegner, Paul D. A Student’s Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods & Results. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

From the Google Books entry listing it seems to be a really superb book.
A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible

 

[Apex]

From the Google Books entry listing it seems to be a really superb book.
A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible

I've read it through two times now. It is by far one of the best introductions into Textual Criticism. I own a handful of other books on this topic, but this is the one I always recommend.