One common misconception of the Bible is viewing it as a single work due to the way it is presented, bound together like chapters of one text. However, the Bible is more than just one book; it is a collection of books. Many popular readers of the Bible might be surprised to hear that the text of their Bibles comes from the work of translators, editors, and scholars who are forced to make many educated guesses as to what to include (and what not to include) inside. Although our Bibles are translations from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek languages in which the sacred books were written, there are thousands of different manuscripts of these books which we have gathered from across the centuries, of which no two are fully identical. Different manuscripts may include similar but different wording in some places, sometimes due to copyist or dictation errors.[1] Some manuscripts include (or lack) additional punctuation, verses, or passages due to additions (or subtractions) made by ancient scribes or editors, or they feature assimilations—"the replacement of the original reading of a passage [with] a reading that comes from another document."[2] Furthermore, there are different 'versions' or ancient translations of the biblical texts (such as "the Aramaic Targums, Greek Septuagint, Latin Vulgate, and Syriac Peshitta")[3] that yield differences in the readings of the texts, depending on the translator and the manuscripts used to create the translation. Today, scholars estimate there are close to 5,000 known New Testament manuscripts from which it is possible to "reconstruct" nearly 500,000 different readings of the text.[4] In general, the goal of textual criticism of the Bible is to analyze the evidence from extant manuscripts and ancient versions in an attempt to reconstruct the autograph—"the original copy of an author's work"[5]—as closely as possible.[6]
Scholars evaluate manuscript evidence in various ways. They use textual similarities to group certain manuscripts into 'text-types' classified by a possible regional "common textual ancestor"[7], and sometimes group them further into 'families' depending on their quality.[8] The term 'codex' refers to a manuscript "mostly in book form . . . and written on parchment."[9] For the Old Testament, Codex Firkovitch is considered one of the best manuscripts because it "is the oldest complete Hebrew manuscript known today" dating from the turn of the first millennium.[10] Other valuable Old Testament manuscripts include those from the Cairo Geniza and those in the Dead Sea Scrolls, since they both follow a different tradition than the more common Masoretic Text in Hebrew.[11] For the New Testament, there are six primary codices (Sinaiticus, Alexandrinus, Vaticanus, Ephraemi, Bezae, and Washington)[12] referenced by scholars today, which "date back to the 4th and 5th centuries AD."[13] Many of these codices also contain the Greek Old Testament as well.[14] Other valuable New Testament manuscripts include portions written on papyri that date back to as early as the 2nd century AD.[15] Later New Testament manuscripts include uncials—"3rd- to 10-cent. codices of the Bible written in majuscule or capital letters on parchment or vellum"[16]—and an even greater number of minuscule codices—"small cursive or 'running' letters . . . [which] predominated after the 10th cent."[17]—that, over the centuries, replaced the use of papyri for copying manuscripts until the development of the printing press.
Interestingly, the history of biblical textual criticism goes all the way back to the days of the early Christian Church. The renowned church father Origen, seeking to offer convincing Christian apologetics against Jewish objections, saw the need to ensure that Christian references to the Old Testament would not be disparaged as mistranslations or falsifications by Jewish critics.[18] This is because certain verses in the Greek Septuagint translation used by the Christians seemed to include messianic references that Jewish critics denied.[19] As a result, Origen "compiled a vast synopsis of the Old Testament versions entitled the Hexapla."[20] The Hexapla included the Hebrew text of the Old Testament, the Greek Septuagint, other Greek translations (such as Theodotion) that were primarily in use in Jewish synagogues, and some additional translations of the Psalms.[21] In comparing these versions, Origen marked out verses in the Septuagint whose authority could be considered doubtful due to their absence or differences in the other Greek translations.[22] One of Origen's contemporaries, a Christian named Julius Africanus, also used textual criticism to show that the story of Susanna contained in some Greek translations of the Book of Daniel is likely a Greek addition to the text that is not in the Jewish original. Africanus pointed out that the story of Susanna includes a pun that only makes sense in Greek, thus indicating that the story itself was likely written originally in Greek.[23] Jerome, in producing the Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible, applied special stroke marks throughout his translation to denote differences among versions. He used stroke marks called 'obeli' to denote verses present in the Greek Septuagint but absent from the Hebrew texts and stroke marks called 'asterisks' to denote verses present in the Hebrew but absent from the Greek Septuagint.[24]
Scholarly Old Testament criticism began in the 19th century with Paul de Lagarde, who asserted that "all OT manuscripts are deviations or copies" of a single autograph of the Masoretic Text.[25] In the 20th century, William Albright and Frank Cross developed the broader theory of regionally-based "text types."[26] Finally, the contemporary scholars Emanuel Tov and Eugene Ulrich support theories of a multiplicity of 'original' texts for the biblical works rather than a single original autograph.[27] These varying theories lead to different productions of the Hebrew Bible today. The Biblia Hebraica editions seek to provide a 'diplomatic text' that resembles as closely as possible the Masoretic Text as contained in Codex Firkovitch.[28] The Biblia Hebraica Quinta (BHQ) is the most current edition under development. The difficulties with diplomatic editions is that they necessarily preserve the limitations of the Vorlage,[29] or the Hebrew text used by the translators. Therefore, other scholars who subscribe to the later theories often prefer an eclectic text, in which the editors synthesize their own reading of a text based on their judgments of manuscript evidence and the variant readings contained therein.[30]
In 1516, Erasmus published a version of the Greek New Testament known as the textus receptus. This version was widely used for a long time although the “edition was based on inadequate and faulty manuscripts.”[31] It was from this edition that other scholars after Erasmus would do textual criticism. Decades later, "Richard Simon (1638-1712) addressed the problem of identifying the original form of the New Testament by comparing variant manuscripts."[32] Around the same time, John Mill published a critical edition of this textus receptus which listed the variant readings from different manuscripts.[33] This critical edition challenged the faith of a man named Johann Albrecht Bengel who then studied the different variant manuscripts in order to restore his faith in the divine inspiration of the New Testament. Bengel was one of the first to create family groupings of manuscripts, which also gave him insight into the development of variant readings from earlier ones.[34]
Johann Jakob Wettstein (1693-1754) desired to revise the textus receptus with what he considered the more authentic manuscripts, and later published his Greek New Testament.[35] Between 1774-1775, Johann Jakob Griesbach contributed a new edition of the Greek New Testament that was different from the textus receptus, divided the manuscripts into three major groups (Alexandrian, Western, and Constantinopolitan).[36] He also established guidelines for critical study for scripture: critical study should establish "which manuscripts provide the most valuable witness to a text and ...examination of internal evidence such as style and context."[37] After Griesbach, Karl Lachmann published his own critical editions of the textus receptus, first in 1831 and second between 1842 and 1850.[38] Constantin von Tischendorf (1815-1874) discovered in a pile of kindling the Codex Sinaiticus at the monastery of St. Catherine on Mt. Sinai; this codex was later provided one of the most reliable versions (along with the Codex Vaticanus) of the Greek New Testament.[39] B. F. Wescott and F. J. A. Hort's work concluded that Erasmus' textus receptus was unreliable.[40] This is because the pair revised Griesbach's families of manuscripts, and conlcluded that their so-called Syrian family of manuscripts (from which Erasmus based his textus receptus) was unreliable.[41]
Let us briefly consider some examples of textual problems that are addressed by textual criticism. In the Old Testament, we have the case of 1 Samuel 13:1, in which the Hebrew Masoretic Text seems to indicate that King Saul became king of Israel at the age of one-year old and that he only reigned for two years. Translators have had to decide whether to represent the text literally or instead to indicate in some way that the text was likely corrupted over time.[42] Similarly, in the Greek Septuagint version of the book of Deuteronomy, a man's name is given once as 'Deuel' and later as 'Reuel.' Textual criticism scholars guess that the translators who created the Septuagint may have accidentally mistaken the Hebrew letter ד ('d') for the Hebrew letter ר ('r') in reading the Vorlage.[43] In Psalm 100:3, some Hebrew manuscripts feature different readings ("It is he who made us, and not we" [NETS] vs. "He made us and we are His" [JPS Tanak]), thus leading scholars to think that some ancient scribes misheard the text during dictation.[44] In the New Testament, most of the textual criticism cases involve certain phrases, verses, and small passages which appear in some manuscripts and not others. Based on their assessment of the quality of the various manuscripts, scholars must make judgment calls about whether or not to include the outstanding verses.[45] A key passage in this regard includes the passage about the woman caught in adultery (John 8:1-11); although not found in the earliest manuscripts, the passage is still often included in modern Bible translations because of its popularity.[46] The principle developed by Johann Bengel that "the more difficult reading is to be preferred to the easier" also influences New Testament textual criticism.[47] For example, scholars believe that later manuscripts of Luke 2 substitute the word 'Joseph' for the word 'father' found in earlier manuscripts because scribes adjusted the text to minimize doctrinal or theological confusion about Jesus' parentage.[48]
It is essential to recognize that before the invention of printing in the 15th century, all books, including the Bible, were copied by hand. Although those who were in charge of copying, sought to keep the text accurate, the number of textual variants increased with the number of manuscripts. In classical biblical authors and most recent texts, when looking for the original manuscripts, there are not be found since most of them no longer exist. What has been used by scholars in place of the original manuscripts are surviving manuscripts of which is a duplicate of a first manuscript. The premise of textual criticism has traditionally been to discover the actual text that the author wrote, so far as this is probable. There have been several variations when it comes to manuscripts. Changes happen when there are some omissions or damage, difficulties with the language or fashion of writing. Textual criticism works on detecting those mistakes, to try to reconstruct what no longer exists.
Bibliography
“Biblia Hebraica Quinta.” Academic-bible.com: The Scholarly Bible Portal of the German Bible Society. Sttugart. Accessed at https://www.academic-bible.com/en/home/current-projects/biblia-hebraica-quinta-bhq/.
Chadwick, Henry. The Early Church: The Story of Emergent Christianity from the Apostolic Age to the Dividing of the Ways Between the Greek East and the Latin West. London: Penguin Books, 1993.
Soulen, Richard N. and Soulen, R. Kendall. Handbook of Biblical Criticism: Fourth Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2011.
[1] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 4-5.
[2] Richard N. Soulen and R. Kendall Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press: 2011), 16.
[3] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 2.
[4] Peter J. Gurry, cited in 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 3.
[5] Soulen and Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 18.
[6] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 2
[7] Soulen and Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 5.
[8] Ibid., 65-66.
[9] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 3.
[10] 'Codex Firkovitch' on Moodle.
[11] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 2.
[12] Ibid., 8.
[13] Ibid.
[14] 'Codex Vaticanus' on Moodle, 2.
[15] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 3.
[16] Soulen and Soulen, Handbook of Biblical Criticism, 227.
[17] Ibid., 127.
[18] Henry Chadwick, The Early Church (London: Penguin Books Ltd: 1993), 101.
[19] 'Messanic reading in LXX' on Moodle.
[20] Chadwick, The Early Church, 102.
[21] Ibid., 102.
[22] Ibid., 102.
[23] Ibid., 103.
[24] 'Asterisks and Obeli' on Moodle.
[25] 'Text crit history and goals' on Moodle, 1.
[26] Ibid.
[27] Ibid.
[28] "Biblia Hebraica Quinta," academic-bible.com: The Scholarly Bible Portal of the German Bible Society, Sttugart. Accessed at https://www.academic-bible.com/en/home/current-projects/biblia-hebraica-quinta-bhq/.
[29] Soulen and Soulen, Handbook, 229.
[30] 'B D Compared' on Moodle.
[32] Ibid.
[34] Ibid.
[35] Ibid.
[36] Ibid.
[37] Ibid.
[38] Ibid.
[39] Ibid., 2.
[40] Ibid., 2.
[41] Ibid., 2.
[42] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 2.
[43] Ibid., 4.
[44] Ibid., 5.
[45] Ibid., 5.
[46] Ibid., 6.
[47] 'Textual Criticism of the New Testament', 1.
[48] 'Textual Criticism' on Moodle, 6.
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