Pickering’s approach becomes the critical one. He asserts two points: many Majority readings are early, and early Fathers do support the Majority text. For this second point he relies entirely on the labours of Miller and Burgon, who collected a huge file of patristic citations of the New Testament.26...
What is one to make of the contention that the 8:2 MS ratio of extant MSS in favour of the Majority text swings probability overwhelmingly in favour of it being original, and that the Majority text is found in early witnesses and Fathers?
The latter point, it appears, simply will not stand. With regard to the Fathers, Fee, who is among the most active and significant researchers in the area of patristic citations,
has demonstrated quite clearly that Pickering is simply wrong; his list of nearly thirty Fathers who allegedly ‘recognize’ Majority readings has no basis in fact. No early Father witnesses to the Majority text; the only one prior to Chrysostom known to have used it was the heretical Asterius the Sophist (d. 341).
Pickering’s claim to the contrary overlooks completely the researches of the last eight decades. Further, in citing Burgon and Miller he is only repeating their errors. Miller,
e.g., claimed that seven Fathers supported the Majority reading in
Matthew 9:13; Fee’s check, however, showed that only one of the seven actually did so.27 In sum,
Pickering’s whole point is without foundation.
Pickering and the others are correct, on the other hand,
in saying that Majority readings are early, but they still fail to make their point, since they have confused readings with text-type. Many Majority readings are ancient readings; this has been known, though inadequately recognized, at least since the discovery of p 45 and p 46 over forty years ago.28
But while individual readings are early, the Majority text as an identifiable grouping of readings is not. That is, one must distinguish between the earliest appearance of scattered readings and the earliest appearance of an identifiable pattern of readings. The distinctive grouping of variants that identifies a text as ‘Alexandrian’ can be found in the second century, as can that which marks the so-called ‘Western’ text-type.
But while Majority readings can also be found in the second century, the Majority text cannot; the characteristically Byzantine pattern of variants occurs only at a later time.
The ‘Majority Text Debate’: New Form of an Old Issue
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/themelios/article/the-majority-text-debate-new-form-of-an-old-issue/
By Michael W. Holmes
