Hey everyone.
So I've been working furiously on a revision of my book on textual criticism.
A volume that's been in print for 30 years probably could use an update, don't ya think? Which reminds me of the 6 things Chief Justice John Roberts wanted the graduates to remember when he spoke at their commencement ceremony:
1) From time to time I hope you'll be treated unfairly so that you'll come to know the value of justice.
2) I hope you will suffer betrayal because that will teach you the importance of loyalty.
3) I hope you will be lonely from time to time so that you will never take your friends for granted.
4) When you lose, as you will occasionally, I hope every now and then your opponents will gloat over your failure. It is a way for you to understand the importance of sportsmanship.
5) I hope you will be ignored so that you will learn the importance of listening.
6) I hope you will have just enough pain for you to understand compassion.
So I've been doing a lot of listening. Among other things, I've been watching tons of Youtubes on the subject -- not only those by scholars but also those by Bible-believing pastors and lay people who love the subject of textual criticism. Dwayne Green (whom I mentioned yesterday) and Stephen Hackett are two of the best.
Anyhow, in a recent interview with Dwayne Green, Drs. Maurice Robinson and Peter Gurry were asked, "Are text types still useful?" In his response, Dr. Gurry made it clear that the Sturzian approach to text types "is exactly what you should never do with text types, because that requires text types to be independent entities." Since they are not independent entities, he argued, you simply can't count "two against one."
Similarly, in a print interview that Dr. Robinson did at the Evangelical Textual Criticism website in 2015, he wrote:
What should not be done with the texttype concept, however, is to utilize a "majority of texttypes" approach as some solution presumed to determine the autograph (cf. Sturz in this regard) -- such becomes merely another form of "nose-counting" and should be rejected solely on those grounds.
I had to chuckle when I read that statement by Dr. Robinson since "nose-counting" is precisely the accusation many opponents of his Byzantine Priority position have leveled against him!
Robinson merely counts manuscripts.
Sturz merely counts text types.
Both statements are, at best, caricatures.
Anybody who has read Maurice Robinson knows full well that he insists that a theory of textual transmission is essential not only to his view but to any text-critical endeavor. Based on his own reconstruction of that textual transmission through scribal history, he argues (convincingly to some, unconvincingly to others) that the Byzantine text is the only universal Greek text of the New Testament that ever existed. Reasoned Eclecticism, on the other hand, ends up preferring "a regionally localized minority texttype, only sporadically transmitted in history in contrast to the vast majority of Greek MSS consistently perpetuated over the centuries in the primary Greek-speaking region of the Eastern Mediterranean world (modern southern Italy, Greece, and Turkey)" (source).
Similarly, the Sturzian method is equally committed to recovering a transmissional history of the New Testament text. Did you know that? Dr. Sturz summarized his conclusions in a chart found on page 131 of his book The Byzantine Text-Type & New Testament Textual Criticism.
Clearly, this is no mere case of "nose-counting." It represents as much of a commitment to reasoned transmissionalism as does the Robinson-Pierpont approach. Put simply, researchers can no longer ignore the fact that Sturz himself considered his views as ultimately deriving from transmissional and historical considerations. If the extant documentary evidence for any reading enjoys wide geographical support from the second century onward, an assumption of preference for the more universal reading is a logical concomitant. As Bruce Metzger indicated on page 209 of the third edition of his book The Text of the New Testament, external evidence involves three major considerations (bold added):
1) The date of the witness.
2) The geographical distribution of the witnesses that agree in supporting a variant.
3) The genealogical relationship of texts and families of witnesses.
In short, if Sturz is correct, then there is no reason why all three of the traditional "text types" should not be considered to have at least second-century roots, especially if one agrees with E.C. Colwell and G. D. Kilpatrick that virtually ALL significant readings were in existence before the end of the second century. This is precisely why at the time of his death Harry Sturz was engaged in the editing of a Greek New Testament (The Second Century Greek New Testament) in which he was employing the two-against-one method that Drs. Robinson and Gurry so adamantly reject.
Of course, I realize that the usefulness of the term "text type" is being questioned by many today. That's why Pastor Green brought up the subject in his interview. For what it's worth, my own view about the term "text type" is summarized perfectly in a statement Dr. Robinson made in the above-mentioned interview at the ETC blog. When asked, "The current editors of the Nestle text have argued that our NT witnesses cannot be meaningfully grouped into text-types (Western, Alexandrian, etc.). Assuming you disagree with this assessment, how do you distinguish one text-type as over against another?" Dr. Robinson replied:
Contrary to the prevailing concepts currently expressed, I see no reason to abandon the basic texttype designations as providing a convenient grouping terminology for MSS that associate more closely with each other than with those that associate within other grouping situations. This does not mean that I view the concept as representing "recensions" per se -- a term that implies a formal revision process at some particular place and time; rather, I view texttypes in John G. Griffith's sense of "near-neighbor clusters," that is, MSS that by their agreement in a reasonable pattern of readings are recognized as somewhat but not entirely related to one another.
Sturz himself could have written that statement. Dr. Robinson adds:
I have no real difficulty in recognizing as texttypes either an "Alexandrian" (or "Egyptian," or whatever term might be preferred), a "Western" (even with limited Greek support, but bolstered by various Old Latin and Syrian sources), and even a "Caesarean" type of text, based upon a particular pattern of readings reflected in its respective clusterings.
These words, as I said, were written in 2015. Later, in a book published in 2023 after the 2022 Clearview Apologetics Conference (which Abidan Shah and I co-edited), Dr. Robinson wrote (p. 57):
The Sturzian method is further obviated by the current observation that the theory of texttypes associated with geographical location has generally been rejected, replaced by acknowledged textual "clusters" sharing certain patterns of readings to varying degree (even if still termed by the older names), putative geographic location no longer maintaining a central role.
As a Sturzian, I have no objections to continuing to refer to the text types by their "older names." But "clusters" works as well. I do hope, therefore, that those of us who believe that we are much closer to the words of God in the NKJV than in the ESV will pause before rejecting the traditional nomenclature.
Sheesh! This post is way too long! More on text types in the revision of my New Testament Textual Criticism. I am open to changing my mind on the subject. But until I'm convinced otherwise, I think I'll continue to advocate an approach that suggests that if a reading appears in the majority of centers of growth in the early church it should probably be considered more likely to be original than its counterparts.
Have a wonderful day!