TsonMariytho
Puritan Board Freshman
a unique, biblically informed starting point which maintains that the church possesses God's word and is not in the awkward position of having to discover God's word. It is undoubtedly true that some mss. and fathers might appeal to a different textual tradition at times, but this does not negate the fact that the "TR" has been the accessible text of the Christian church throughout the ages.
I think when you say "TR" above you mean "Byzantine" text type. While I have no doubt that you already know the following, I'll belabor the point anyway, since I think your usage above was not quite correct...
The TR is a printing tradition begun by Erasmus, who assembled an eclectic body of manuscripts (and as somebody pointed out, a bit of personal Latin-to-Greek translation work to fill in the holes). The TR did not exist as a single book until Erasmus undertook this.
The Byzantine text-type, on the other hand, is a somewhat loose label placed upon textual readings that scholars believe should be classified together over against other readings with a different label. :^)
The above is another way of saying that you never find a manuscript of the Bible that has all the Byzantine readings together, or all the Alexandrian readings together, etc. You find admixture. This is why Byzantine-priority advocates like Dr. Robinson create their own critical texts with "Byzantine-only" readings.
Back to the TR... while many of the TR's readings are described by scholars as Byzantine, many others of the TR's readings are distinctly not. There is no reason I'm aware of to believe that the TR's unique, non-Byzantine readings have been the ones always in use by the church, which is why, for example, Dr. Robinson culled these out of his edition.
Just to reiterate, this is in response to your statement that: "the 'TR' has been the accessible text of the Christian church throughout the ages". Both Byzantine priority advocates and CT advocates would dispute that. The TR is its own unique animal (no disrespect intended).
-----Added 12/7/2008 at 07:28:05 EST-----
The second choice, the paragraph you didn't quote, applies to those whom I'd describe as more thoughtful and informed TR advocates -- who must admit in the end a difference of degree with the critical method.
This is the point which needs to be corrected. It is a difference of kind. That which passes for textual criticism today is bent on discovering the text of Scripture, and to date are only confident they have approximated to the NT text. The believing criticism of the TR advocates works from the principle that they possess the text of Scripture, the word of God as originally delivered to the NT church and preserved through all ages.
I think we're going in circles now. When you say we "possess" the text of scripture, are you claiming that we know word for word, letter for letter, the content of the autographs? If so, point me to an Amazon link, because I would spend a very large percentage of my yearly income to acquire such a volume.
If not, then why do you refuse to imagine that somebody else's choice of variants can be just as acceptable as your own?