Brother Andy, if you are not good with Greek, as in having years of being taught and having taught it, as Brother TC has, you'd best in dropping this discussion.
No, he has a legitimate argument. Those favoring the CT have arguments they see as compelling while those who argue in favor of the BT have arguments they consider compelling. I was educated in and used, exclusively, the CT up until I started actually researching the issues involved. At that time I came to the conclusion that the BT is the better text to represent the autographs.
the reading that has slight textual support,
The CT is the text with only slight textual support, as I pointed out by listing the manuscript evidence.
the reading "YOU" which is the original,
Do you have the autograph for 2 Peter?
adopted by the greater majority of English, Greek
English, yes. The "version of the month club" has produced around 200 English translations. Not all of them even remotely accurate. But the greatest majority of the Greek texts is clearly in favor of the Byzantine reading.
And translations are not the best way to determine the probability of a reading. That smacks of Ruckmanism, "The English corrects the Greek."
I weigh the evidence by using the rational rules of textual criticism.
1. Number. "A theoretical presumption indeed remains that a majority of extant documents is more likely to represent a majority of ancestral documents at each stage of transmission than vice versa." (B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek: With Notes on Selected Readings)
2. Antiquity - The age of the actual manuscript. This is not a conclusive text for a 14th century mss may be an accurate copy of a 3rd century mss, whereas a 6th century mss may be a poor copy of a 3rd century mss.
3. Consent - The number of other witnesses. Normal practice is to accept the word of the majority of witnessess against the different readings of a few, especially when those few do not agree with each other.
4. Variety - The universality of evidence. Manuscripts supporting a certain reading should come from a variety of geographical locations and be attested to by a variety of other mss, lectionaries, versions, and Patristics.
5. Respectability - The reliability of the witness. Manuscripts which habitually contain errors are poor witnesses.
6. Continuity - The unbroken tradition of a witness. Have the readings/mss in question been widely accepted by churches over a wide spectrum of time? And what text does the Greek speaking church used from antiquity until this very day? Who is more likely to understand the issues of the transmission of the Greek text? A native Greek speaker or a person who learned the language later in life but still reads, writes, speaks, and thinks in his own native language?
7. Context - The evidence of the whole passage. The nature of the text surrounding a questioned reading can cast much light on the issue. If the reading is surrounded by obvious errors, it is much less likely to be a true reading.
8. Reasonableness - The internal credibility of the text. If a text contains grammatical absurdities, or obvious geographical, scientific, or biblical errors, the reading is not likely to be reliable.
9. Geography. The area of origin of the manuscript. Did the manuscript originate in a geographic location to which books of the New Testament were addressed? A geographic location where the autographs may have existed for as much as several hundred years to which early copies could be compared with and corrected from.
