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It seems you're using "text" as that which is written on a piece of paper instead of that which is the form of the text. I'm using "text" in the latter sense. The point I am making is that modern textual critics hypothesise corruption into the text form, that is, the loss of the original NT text by the second century, and subsequently aver the task of the text critic is one of recovery. And when they do this, they can only confidently lay claim to having recovered a particular text form which they regard to be the earliest, and that this text form dates back to the fourth century, with occasional attestations from the third and second centuries.
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I'm not quite following your distinction between something written and something which is the "form" of the text, and how that affects my argument. Could you help me out a bit, brother?
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I do not reject outright the Alexandrian texts. Where these agree with the traditional text they serve as a confirming witness. There are points where variant readings can be exegetical, and serve to show us how original Greek speakers of a later era interpreted the NT text.
Nothing prevents us from saying newly discovered MSS are currently received by the church. That is a sad reality. But the fact is, the readings and especially the omissions in those MSS were once rejected by the reformed church.
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On what basis do you say that the Alexandrian texts were rejected by the Reformed church? The manuscripts Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, for instance, were not discovered or known until the 19th century. Furthermore, you seem to be disenfranchising the Alexandrian church. Were they not part of the church? Did they not receive those texts when they were written? Is the Reformation the only part of church history that matters with regard to textual criticism? I was thinking about why it is that the Alexandrian text-form has so few manuscripts. Then it hit me: Alexandria was over-run by Islam in the Middle Ages. That's probably why these texts have not come out into the open before now. It is still a theory right now. However, that Alexandria was over-run by Islam is not theory. And I can easily believe that Islamic groups would not be very favorable to retaining NT manuscripts. If the Reformation had much of any Alexandrian texts to reject, they were so few that the balance of weight would still favor the Byzantine text-form at the time. But the Reformers never had an opportunity to reject the more full-orbed Alexandrian tradition that we have now. To say otherwise seems anachronistic to me.
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Geographical diversity is merely an offshoot of the genealogical principle. Given the current theory of priority as to which influenced what, it remains a subjective criteria. If on genealogical principles the critic maintains the Byzantine text form is mostly a conflation of readings, the presence of a variant from that tradition is not really taken seriously.
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I simply cannot go with this. The country of origin is fairly well-known for many if not most manuscripts. So there is definitely an element there that is not subjective in the slightest. The connection with genealogical principle can be granted. However, the genealogical principle by no means exhausts the geographical principle.