Originally Posted by greenbaggins

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.