Friends, thanks for your comments!
I think Dr. White will hear of this response rather quickly. It's a small virtual world in the arena of consciousness on Apokalypse Field.
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I said I would post some material from Frederik Wisse’s,
The Profile Method..., to give an idea of the status of the Byzantine minuscules, the vast majority of which have been unexamined and suppressed due to editorial bias. Wisse is not a TR / KJV advocate (as can be seen), though it seems safe to say he is a Majority Text advocate, or at least a text critic who seriously desires to know what the overwhelming majority of the Greek MSS actually have to say, especially in light of the failure of text critical efforts based upon the Egyptian MSS. The pages that follow give a telling story of the doings among those academics who have taken to themselves and their naturalistic methodologies our New Testament manuscripts.
There’s a good bit of material here (if it’s long for you to read, it was longer for me to type!), but for those interested in these text critical matters it will be a joy to gather more information on issues that are so important to us. As Wisse reviews Hort’s schema for disallowing the Byzantine (Syrian) text-type, those of you troubled at his method and wondering if there is any validity to it, I would refer you to Robinson and Pierpont’s Introduction noted above and a URL given to it online as an antidote. Bruggen’s and Pickering’s excellent critiques of Hort are good also. Wisse also reviews and critiques Kurt Aland's views on the Byz. I quote as much as I do of Wisse because the book is out of print and rare; though the information is startlingly relevant to our New Testament studies. Please note that I have omitted the footnotes due to time and space constraints.
I quote first from Kevin James’,
The Corruption of the Word: The Failure of Modern New Testament Scholarship (distributed by Micro-Load Press, 1990, ISBN: 0962442003):
Some examples of places where a King James wording seemingly has little support are given in the following chapters. Seemingly, because, while most existing New Testament copies have been roughly categorized into “majority” or “non-majority” groupings, the exact text of thousands of existing manuscripts is unknown except in a handful of places. [Emphasis mine –SMR]
It should be understood that it is impossible to prove which of two or more competing wording variations is the original since the originals have long since disappeared. But it is the height of folly to throw the settled received text of three and one-half centuries into the dustbin to make a revision when the exact contents of thousands of existing copies of mainstream tradition manuscripts is unknown [this last emphasis mine –SMR]. A clear picture of New Testament manuscript transmission history is also lacking. Finally, unless the vigilance of a living God is recognized, attempts at revision of the King James can easily stray from a stated target of supplying God’s people with a “better” New Testament.
Paul said: “Prove all things; hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21.) This should be the guiding principle for the Christian church when dealing with the intricacies of the wording of the original text. (pp. viii, ix)
For those interested in reading this now out-of-print work (perhaps you can get it through Inter-library Loan), he collates and studies a number of Greek manuscripts in the following chapters.
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The Profile Method for Classifying and Evaluating Manuscript Evidence, by Frederik Wisse (Eerdmans 1982) ISBN: 0802819184
Of all the spectacular developments in NT textual criticism since Tischendorf the least advertised has been the phenomenal increase in the number of known minuscules. There must be a reason for this curious situation. It cannot be simply due to the fact that the finds of a considerable number of early papyri have tended to overshadow all other NT textual developments. Certainly the bringing to light of more than 1700 minuscules in less than a century could have shared top rating with the few hundred newly discovered papyri and uncials, most of which are mere fragments, if only lower critics had chosen to do so. The underlying reason is that the ever-swelling mass of minuscules has been a real embarrassment to the textual critic. Every additional minuscule, however high its market price might be, has made the critic’s task more confusing and difficult.
The mass of minuscules creates a dilemma for the textual critic. Either he will try to take all the MS evidence into account without hope of ever finishing his task, or he will ignore the great majority of existing MSS and be accused of basing his results on partial and probably biased evidence. No wonder, therefore, that the role of minuscules in NT textual criticism has become the most frustrating problem facing the scholars in the field.
The problem posed by the minuscules can be divided into two parts. First, the question must be answered whether the minuscules deserve to play a role in the search for the best text of the NT, and consequently, whether they should be represented in a full
apparatus criticus to the Greek NT. In case this first question is answered in the affirmative, it still must be shown that the great quantity of MSS does not make any kind of meaningful and representative use of minuscules impossible or impractical.
In a situation where MS evidence runs into more than 5000 separate items and a time span of more than fourteen centuries, it should be questioned whether all this evidence is relevant for the establishment of the original text. It may well be that the oldest copies in existence are adequate representatives if the MS tradition si that the rest can be ignored. After all, why start more than thirteen centuries after the autographa were written, and wade back through literally thousands of MSS in an immensely complicated process, if at best one can only arrive at a fifth-century text which is already well represented by copies of that time. To find the foundation of a building one does first climb the roof; one starts somewhere below the ground floor.
The argument, obvious and tantalizing on the surface, forms the background for all those who consider it just to ignore all, or almost all, minuscules. Yet they must first prove that the MS tradition after, let us say, the ninth century, does not add any pertinent information for the recovery of the original text of the NT. Whether one holds that this proof necessitates a complete study of the more than 2700 known minuscules depends on one’s viewpoint. Naturally the opponents of the use of minuscules do not consider this time-consuming process to be necessary at all.
There is basically only one argument which can circumvent the task of studying all the late minuscules to make sure they are indeed of no value for textual criticism. This argument is that among the early uncials there are MSS which stand in a relatively uncorrupted tradition, and which show all other text-types of that period to be secondary and corrupted. Only if this argument can be proved, and if it is clear from some sampling that late minuscules fall predominantly in the tradition of one of the corrupted texts, can we safely omit a full study of these MSS.
The first and best representative of this position is Fenton John Anthony Hort (without wishing to deny or ignore the contribution made by Westcott we will simply refer to “Hort”). His view stands out from that of many who share his attitude toward minuscules in that he knew what was at stake and was willing to face the consequences. With some danger of caricaturing, we shall attempt to summarize his evaluation of the mass of minuscules in four points. It should be borne in mind that Hort knew of the existence of fewer than one thousand cursives, and that only 150 of these were available to him in complete collation, though he sampled some more in a few selected passages.
a) An analysis of the text of the major uncials, the NT quotations of the Fathers, and the early versions shows that there were three text-types in existence during the fifth century A.D.: the Neutral or Alexandrian text, the Western text, and the Syrian text [also known as the Antiochan, Byzantine, Traditional, Koine, Ecclesiastical, etc –SMR]. Patristic attestation shows the Syrian text to be the latest of the three, though it eventually won out and became the text found in the great majority of the minuscules.
b) A study of conflate readings – he used four from Mark and four from Luke – conclusively proves that the Syrian text is a recension which made use of the Western and Neutral texts. Hort knows of no case where a Neutral reading is a conflation a Western and Syrian reading, or where a Western reading is a conflation of Neutral and Syrian readings. Thus Hort has internal evidence proving not only that the Syrian text is posterior to the Western and Neutral texts, but also that it is secondary in nature.
The conflate readings imply a further point about the work of the editors of the Syrian text, for [Hort says] “it is morally impossible that their use of documents of either or both classes should have been confined to those places in which conflation enables us to detect it in actual operation.” Hort at this point is still forced to leave open the possibility that the Syrian text had a source, or sources, beyond the Neutral and Western texts that was both ancient and good.
c) As elsewhere, Hort closes this remaining loophole by means of both transcriptional and intrinsic evidence. Transcriptional evidence indicates that no Syrian readings existed before A.D. 250. This means that even if the Syrian recension had sources beyond the Western and Neutral texts, these sources did not go back farther than the middle of the third century, and thus were later than the two non-Syrian text-types.
It was left up to the intrinsic evidence to give the final death blow. Readings peculiar to the Syrian MSS proved to be smooth, they never offend, are free from surprises and seemingly transparent. Therefore, taking the negative side of the
lectio difficilior principle, Hort can conclude that the internal evidence of Syrian readings is “entirely unfavorable to the hypothesis that they may have been copied from other equally ancient and perhaps purer texts [than the Western and Neutral] now otherwise lost.”
d) Thus the die was cast against the minuscules. We again quote Hort: “Since the Syrian text is only a modified eclectic combination of earlier texts independently attested, existing documents descended from it can attest nothing but itself.” And one page later: “All distinctively Syrian readings must be at once rejected.” Still, Hort laments the fact that so few minuscules have been studied, but his sorrow does not go deep. True, some “valuable texts may lie hidden among them,” but “nothing can well be less probable than the discovery of cursive evidence sufficiently important to affect present conclusions in more than a handful of passages, much less to alter present interpretations of the relations between the existing documents.”
Only after these carefully reasoned and convincing steps did Hort limit himself to the early uncials and especially the “Neutrals” among them. It speaks for Hort’s power of persuasion and influence that, though scholars today would question almost every point of his argument, yet the result still stands. After a few halfhearted attempts for supremacy by the Western text, Codex Vaticanus and it allies have become the new “Textus Receptus.”
A prominent contemporary textual critic, Professor Kurt Aland, has also taken a generally negative view of the minuscules. His position is sufficiently different from Hort’s to deserve separate treatment. Unfortunately, we have no comprehensive introduction, like that of Westcott and Hort, from Aland’s hand. Conclusions will have to be drawn from scattered remarks in a number of articles.
An a priori rejection of the mass of minuscules would have been an impossible task for Aland. He and the INTF [Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung in Münster, Germany –SMR] took on the difficult and important task of publishing an up-to-date list of all extant papyri, uncials, minuscules, and lectionaries of the Greek NT. Hence, one could hardly expect him to pass by the majority of MSS without at least a preliminary study.
Yet Aland’s interest in the minuscules is not for their own sake. He is no longer satisfied with Hort’s judgment that the discovery of important cursive evidence is most improbable. He wants to find the few hypothetical nuggets which Hort did not think were worth the effort. Aland wants to be able to say that he has searched the minuscules exhaustively for anything of value. This search, of course, presupposed that the minuscules as such are of little value. Only the exceptional MSS warrant the concerted effort.
Thus with Aland no less than with Hort a value judgment is at work. Minuscules have to pass a test before they are considered worthy of inclusion in a textual apparatus. All MSS which are generally Byzantine will fail. Aland sees the Byzantine text as a unit which, in spite of all its internal differences and developments, should be treated as one. This text-type is for him already well enough represented by some of the late uncials. He believes that the character and readings of the Byzantine text are so well established that its members can be represented under a siglum M (Majority Text). In order to separate the sheep from the goats Aland proposes a list of readings which will readily identify a minuscule as being Byzantine or non-Byzantine.
In many ways Aland’s attitude toward the minuscules is a step forward from Hort. Greater certainty is necessary than Hort’s “probabilities” to eliminate the possibility that new evidence will invalidate conclusions drawn from a selection or sampling of MSS. Aland is trying to provide this certainty. The question remains, however, whether Aland is still too restrictive. Aland believes that von Soden tried to do too much in dealing with the whole history of the text. Yet this criticism does not focus on von Soden’s inaccuracies and questionable results. Rather, Aland implies that a large part of von Soden’s effort was unnecessary. The Byzantine text, and particularly the Byzantine minuscules, can be left out of consideration. They are of no use in establishing the original text of the NT. But this is a conclusion to be drawn from evidence, not to form the basis for the selection of evidence.
The point of contention is not whether the Byzantine text, whatever that exactly may be, is of greater or equal value than the great Egyptian uncials. The real question is whether the time has come to speak about the value of the Byzantine MSS at all. Except in von Soden’s inaccurate and unused pages, the minuscules have never been allowed to speak. Once heard, they may be found wanting, but at least their case will have been presented, and then for good and necessary reasons they will be content to grace libraries and rare book collections. Textual critics deserve to have all the evidence before them, evidence which has not been prejudged.
It is an ironic fact that today basic MS evidence of the NT is less available to the textual critic than it was fifty years ago. Editions of great uncials have long been out of print. Tischendorf’s
editio octava maior has never had serious competition, let alone a complement. Though the casual user of a critical text of the Greek NT has been well provided for, the expert and serious student is at the mercy of the highly selective and incomplete
apparatus critici. This situation could only be defended if the task of establishing the best possible NT test had been accomplished, and if the history of the transmission of that text was clear. But it is not.
The much-needed new and unbiased look at all of the evidence available demands the use of a good representation of the minuscules. To condemn the great majority of them by means of a single siglum will not suffice. The situation up to the ninth century is too uncertain. The fact that among the early uncials and papyri there is only one clearly defined group has made any objective judgment impossible. The well-trained choir of the “Neutral” group, recently strengthened by P75, has drowned out all the solos. The long overdue dethronement of the Textus Receptus (TR) by Hort and others suffered from overkill of the only group of MSS that could have put up a fight. Since that time lower criticism seems to have become the study of what to do when Codex Vaticanus and P75 disagree....
All these considerations are secondary to the overriding need for complete and unbiased evidence. There has never been such evidence. The bulk of the minuscules may well be of little value for textual criticism, but how can one be sure before studying them? No one has ever presented a conclusive argument against the use of the Byzantine text. Certainly Hort’s case against the late minuscules no longer convinces, and Aland is begging the question. Therefore, until there is proof to the contrary, minuscules ought to play a meaningful role in the lower criticism of the Greek NT. (pp. 1–6)
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End Wisse