Secondary Witnesses?

Rodney J. Decker rdecker at bbc.edu
Tue Sep 12 12:01:23 EDT 2000


At 10:34 AM 9/12/00 -0700, you wrote:
> > 1:7.... " What is meant by "secondary witnesses," and to what documents
>is he
> > referring?  Are any of these witnesses Greek manuscripts?
>
>Oh, probably nothing more than what he considers are not the
>primary witnesses, the primary witnesses being the reading
>of the oldest and/or shortest and/or those which best explain
>the readings of the others, especially when supported by
>differing textual families.

Prob. better to note that the only witnesses that support the interpolation 
from Eph. 1:7 (DIA TOU hAIMATOS AUTOU) are a few late minuscules, some 
lectionaries, and some versional and patristic evidence. (Versions and 
patristic evidence are always secondary; lectionaries might also be 
considered such even though they are in Greek.)

The minuscules that include this interpolation are 424, 614, 630, 1505, 
1912, 2200, 2464. A half dozen out of about 5,000 would, I think, be 
considered secondary regardless of one's textual position--except for the 
fact that it shows up in the TR! (I.e., both critical text and majority 
text scholars would call it secondary.)

I don't know when or from where this entered the TR tradition; none of the 
MSS listed above are among the 7 that Erasmus used for his first edition, 
though I have no immediate access to one of his editions to know if it was 
added later. It is *NOT* in the Complutensian Polyglot (I just checked my 
copy of that edition). But I don't have time to run across campus to check 
other editions from the "TR tradition."



****************************************************
Rodney J. Decker, Th.D.       Baptist Bible Seminary
Assoc. Prof./NT  PO Box 800, Clarks Summit, PA 18411
rdecker at bbc.edu      http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/
The *Resources for NT Study* site is accessible at:
http://faculty.bbc.edu/rdecker/rd_rsrc.htm
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