I’ve posted a question that originates with Thomas Hudgins over on the Energion Discussion blog. Here are my comments to go with that post. The question has quite a number of implications. For example, if your listeners do not normally look at the textual notes in their Bible translation, they might not be aware of…
I’ve been watching one discussion and participating in another that converge in this post. The first discussion is via blogs, David Alan Black (extracted to The Jesus Paradigm for a permanent link) and Thomas Hudgins both posting significant numbers of entries recently regarding textual criticism. The second is one I’ve had personally, and it regards…
There’s a very brief summary on The Good Book blog, For and Against: The Majority Text Approach to Textual Criticism. I agree that the Byzantine needs to be given more consideration, though I support an eclectic approach.
This article by Daniel B. Wallace includes some nice material about how the groundwork for textual criticism is done.
So why do I want to talk about an insignificant variant? The answer is simple. In many cases the reliability of Biblical texts is stated simply in terms of the number of variants that exist in the manuscripts. This number is quite high, but most of these variants are not significant. They may involve identical…
The JPS Tanakh of Isaiah 49:7 reads, in part: Thus said the LORD, The Redeemer of Israel, his Holy One, b-To the despised one, To the abhorred nations,-b . . . Note b reads: Meaning of Heb. uncertain. Emendation yields “Whose being is despised / Whose body is detested”; cf. 51.23. I noticed this first…
This is not a seriously doubtful textual issue, but I wanted to make a brief summary and comment on it, because it can help illustrate the interaction between internal and external evidence in a case where the two point in the same direction. For a very brief outline of textual criticism, see Textual Criticism-Briefly. In…
This is the conclusion of my multi-part series responding to Bart Ehrman’s book, Misquoting Jesus. Here are links to the earlier portions of this series: Part I Part Ia Part II Part III Part IV Part V Part VI Part VII In chapter 7, The Social Worlds of the Text, Ehrman discusses how the social…
. . . in which, of course, I respond to chapter 6. I will post a directory to the whole series of responses, with the final entry, but in the meantime you will get the series by choosing category “Textual Criticism” in the right sidebar. There are other entries in that category, but all the…
. . . in which, quite logically, I discuss chapter 5. 🙂 In Chapter 5, originals that matter, Ehrman first introduces the basics of textual criticism and tells us how textual decisions are made. This good overview, as he notes, will not prepare you to make textual decisions for yourself, but it will let you…
