Recently many of these distinctly Byzantine readings have been clearly documented in papyrus fragments of the early 2nd and 3rd centuries by several different researchers. (*) Harry Sturz has exhaustively listed distinctive Papyrus Byzantine readings in each of these four different categories: 21
1. Byzantine Alignments Opposed by Western, Alexandrian, and Westcott/Hort
2. Byzantine-Western Alignments Opposed by Alexandrian and Westcott/Hort
3. Byzantine-Alexandrian Alignments Followed by Westcott/Hort BUT Opposed by Western
4. Byzantine with Varying Support from Western/Alexandrian BUT Opposed by Westcott/Hort
Papyrus comparisons have urged at least a few textual scholars to remark that the wholesale disregard for all Byzantine or Antiochian readings is no longer wise, as Bruce Metzger, "The lesson to be drawn from such evidence, however, is that the general neglect of the Antiochian readings which has been so common among many textual critics is quite unjustified." 22 Although not conclusive, this is also a serious challenge to the Difficult-Short theory. Sturz further makes the reasonable conclusion, "With so many distinctively Byzantine readings attested by early papyri, doubt is now cast over the 'lateness' of other Antiochian readings." 23 In other words, since all Byzantine readings were thought to be late simply because of their length, polish, and late paper but now that some have clearly been shown to be early, is it wise to continue assuming that length, textual polish, and paper automatically suggests lateness? This re-evaluation of the Byzantine text has forced many scholars to reject Westcott & Hort's major position. Kurt Aland, perhaps the most qualified manuscript expert, writes in Significance for the Papyri: "It is impossible to fit the papyri, from the time prior to the fourth century, into these two text-types [Alexandrian and Byzantine]...The increase of the documentary evidence and the entirely new areas of research which were opened to us on the discovery of the papyri, mean the end of Westcott and Hort's conception." 24
* Citations
(21) Harry Sturz - The Byzantine Text-Type & New Testament Textual Criticism, New York: Thomas Nelson Publishers (four separate chapters), pp. 145-227
(22) Bruce Metzger, Lucian and the Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible, New Testament Studies, 8 (April, 1962), pp. 38-39.
(23) Sturz, Ibid.,, pp. 64-65.
(24) Kurt Aland, The Significance of the Papyri for Progress in New Testament Research: The Bible in Modern Scholarship, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1965, pp. 334-337.