FYI, what I listed about the MSS that Erasmus used is from AT Robertson's Greek Word Picture - I assumed those MSS #s are correct, though I know that there have been more than one MS numbering system in use.
Anyway, we do know that after Erasmus' first 2 editions of his Greek text (TR) he was given a MSS which contained the Johannine Comma (probably 61, as you say) - which is an early 16th century MSS which dates after his first release in 1516. We do not KNOW that it was "made to order," but more than one scholar has said so, including Wallace, Robertson and Metzger, that I know of.
We are fairly certain that miniscule 61 was created AFTER Erasmus' first two editions of his Greek manuscript came out... and that is mighty suspicious. (Carbon dating is very reliable for dates that recent.) Personally, I think any MSS later than the 10th century is of little value. Erasmus had three in the 12th century, and two in the 15th century. m1 was dated in the 12th century (which contained most of the NT except Revelation); m2 was dated in the 15th century (gospels alone); m2ap (gospels alone) in the 13th century; m4ap in the 15th century (Acts & epistles); and m1r in the 12th century (most of Revelation).
Scrivener says that Erasmus used m1 and m4ap rarely, so if true then in the gospels, Acts and the epistles Erasmus relied heavily upon either m2 (the gospels) or m2ap (Acts and the epistles) - 1 MSS only for each portions of the entire NT. And he only had one MSS for Revelation, which was not complete (1r). Later, after his 1st two editions went to press, he was given 61 - dated after those editions, so I do not know about you, but I do not trust that MSS at all.
Now people have debated about the MSS that Erasmus used, but we do know that none of the MSS that Erasmus had to work with were very old.
Now for what it's worth, m1 may be Caesarian, but most textual critics only recognize the Byzantine, Alexandrian and some the Western as well. Regardless, the Caesarian is certainly
not of the Alexandrian text form. But this doesn't really matter. Erasmus had no Alexandrian texts to use because only a handful had been discovered at that time, and Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, the two oldest and considered by far the best, were not available. Erasmus endeavored to make the best composite MSS he could - with the tools at his disposal. I am not trying to criticize Erasmus, though many say that he was under tremendous financial pressure to get his Greek MS compiled first. (It would be a financial windfall for whoever did it first, and that probably affected the quality of his work.) Erasmus was a top-notch scholar. My point is simply that he did not have the MSS available at the time that we do now.
Faith alone said:
Before the 12 century or so the Alexandrian texts are in the majority. (IOW the Alexandrian texts are in the majority of the older and hence more reliable texts.)
TCassidy said:
Well, 600 years before the 12th century! The Alexandrian textform was eclipsed by the Byzantine textform by 600 AD.
??? I'm not sure what you are saying. The further back you do, the more extreme percentage-wise the critical texts are in the majority. There are about 217 MSS and MSS fragments of the papyri and uncials from the 6th century and earlier. Miniscules did not come on the scene until the 9th century, and were not dominant until the 11th century. That is why I said that I do not give much stock to anything before the 10th century... actually, mainly the 9th century and earlier. Now 364 of all Greek MSS are from the 9th century and earlier, and if we include the 10th century, that number rises to 536.
Now of those over 500 Greek MSS, how many are Byzantine? The oldest Byzantine MSS come from around the 7th century, though a few papyri fragments were found as early as the 5th century. There are over 200 MSS before the 7th century and earlier, and only a handful are of the Byzantine family.
Faith alone said:
And Erasmus only had 6 MSS for his 1st version of the TR. He was given a MS (34 - which can be found today in Trinity College, Dublin - it dates to the 16th century - it appears to have been manufactured for him) which contained the famous Johannine Comma (1 John 5:7, 8) and which was his 7th MS.
TCassidy said:
Uh, MS34 is a 10th century Byzantine Codex. You must be thinking of MS61, a 16th century Codex containing all the NT all of which is Byzantine except Revelation which follows the Alexandrian readings except for the comma.
Well, I was quoting Robertson, who referred to 34, which is a 10th century miniscule. I believe that different numbering systems are used. If we follow Kurt Aland's it would be miniscule 61, as you say, which is the MS given to Erasmus which contained the JC. It is interesting that this MS is Byzantine in nature, except for Revelation. (Though Revelation is often hard to categorize as to family.)
Faith alone said:
But 7 MSS does not represent a very good concensus of MSS for the majority text, and can hardly be called a "majority." We have over 5300 Greek NT MSS today.
TCassidy said:
I think you may have missed the point. The MSS available to Erasmus were representative of the Byzantine textform as a whole and thus his TR represents a critical, slightly eclectic, example of the Byzantine textform.
No, I did not miss that point at all. I have no problem with acknowledging that Erasmus' work represented the Byzantine textual family. Was it a very good representative of that family, which is comprised of over 3000 MSS? No, it is not. There are over 1800 differences between the majority text of Hodges/Farstad and the TR. (I believe Pickering counted something like 1836 differences. I have also heard that there are over 1500 differences... don't remember the source for that one.) That was my point, which apparently I did not make very clear.
My point is that Erasmus could not have compiled a very good representative of the MT with only 6 or 7 MSS to work with - none of which was one of the even relatively old Byzantine MSS.
Now, I don't know if we are side-tracking this thread, which was supposed to focus on the NKJV.
Also, I personally am a fan of the NKJV, so I do not like being found on the side of those criticizing it. The NKJV and the KJV both used Beza's revision of Erasmus 3rd edition of his Greek test, which later came to be referred to as
textus receptus. I do think the NKJV would have been much better served to have been based on the majority text MSS available in the early 1980s when it was in committee. Personally, I would love to see a popular English NT out there based on the majority text alone. The WEB is one such MT Bible (a MT revision of the ASV-1901), but it is not in print (though I have a couple hard-copy editions of it from Michael Johnson which came out in 2000). I don't think that he is printing them, anymore. (You can get a copy of the NT Proverbs and Psalms or just the NT.) You can find it at
www.ebible.org
When I made that post to which you responded I was merely agreeing that we should not place the TR up on a pedistle when it was developed from such a poor representative of the MT.
I have no issue of those who are fans of the majority text. I am concerned that many place the TR above the majority text family, in general. That makes no sense.
BTW,
the NKJV did not follow the Majority text. I knew Art Farstad and Zane Hodges. (Hodges well, Farstad only in passing) I once asked Farstad at a Grace Evangelical Society conference in the Dallas/Fort Worth area why they did not follow the majority text in the NKJV (he was the editor) since he and Hodges had developed their first edition of their
The Greek NT According to the MT already. He said that the concensus of those working on the NKJV was that it would be better received if it was based on the TR, but there was much heated discussion on that point.
Also, FYI Farstad had been working on his Logos21 new translation which was based solely on the majority text. He did not have many resoruces at hand, so though he started in 1985 or so, it still was not finished past the rough draft stage in 98 (NT). But when the NIVI came out and there was a very strong reaction to it, the SBC commissioned him to start from his Logos21 and develop a Bible which would fit somewhere between the NIV and the NASB in terms of formal equivalency and readability.
Unfortunately Farstad went to be with the Lord in 1998... they converted the NT into a critical text translation - also unfortunately. The name of that Bible? The Holman Christian Standard Bible. Farstad spent all those years working on a new majority text NT, and it was converted to the CT. Too bad. (Not that I think that the MT family is superior to the Ct family, but I would like to see at least one Bible whose NT was based on the majority text... the NKJV is based on the TR - close, but no cigar.)
FA
