Featured A Fact Sheet on the Greek NT

We had a great discussion on Monday in Greek 102 about textual criticism. Right now the students are taking a vocab test, but at the beginning of the next hour I'm going to continue the discussion on textual criticism to get them a little educated. So, I have put together what I am calling a fact sheet for this purpose. I did check some sources, but most of it is just from my own memory.

I'm going to go through it here point by point. Imagine yourself to be a first year Greek student, and either ask about specific points or for clarification. If you are conversant with textual criticism, please feel free to correct me, and we'll go from there. I can use the corrections and clarifications when I do it again next year. So, here we go.

A Fact Sheet on the Greek New Testament
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1. Textual criticism is the scholarly task of examining manuscripts (mss), handwritten copies of an ancient document, to determine the form of the original manuscript (ms). In the case of the Greek New Testament (NT), such textual criticism has been done ever since a scholar named Desiderius Erasmus did so in the 16th century. We have over 6,000 mss of the Greek NT, showing God’s wonderful preservation of the text, but making the task difficult.

 

Good point. Thanks.

 

Good points. I'll change this for next year.

 

Here is my revised #1:

1. Textual criticism is the scholarly task of examining manuscripts (mss), handwritten copies of an ancient document, to determine the form of the original manuscript (ms). In the case of the Greek New Testament (NT), the modern efforts at textual criticism began with a scholar named Desiderius Erasmus in the 16th century. We have over 6,000 mss of the Greek NT, which are in complete agreement almost 90% of the time, showing God’s wonderful preservation of the text. This makes the task difficult at points, but scholars from various points of view agree on the basic text.

 

Thanks for the input, but see my #2 below, in which I state that Erasmus produced the first printed Greek NT.

 

Here is my #2:L

2. Erasmus (1466-1536) was a humanist scholar from the Netherlands, ordained as a Catholic priest. (Thus, we would not hire him to teach here, though to be fair, he did have a positive influence on the Reformation while remaining a Catholic.) He did Christianity a great service when he edited the very first printed Greek NT from just eight mss of the Greek NT, with the oldest one being from about AD 1,000. It was first printed in 1516. At that time, it was the only available printed Greek NT. Eventually five editions were published.

 

I've heard that before, but please fill me in. What's the difference?

 

But there are Christian humanists today, too, right?

 

Thank you. That helps.

 

3. The first two editions of the Greek NT edited by Erasmus did not include the famous Trinity passage in 1 John 5:7. This verse was not in any Greek mss until the 16th century, but was in a ms of the Latin Bible from the 4th century. For his third edition he reportedly translated the verse from the Latin Vulgate Bible.