Greek NT motives

Dave Washburn dwashbur at nyx.net
Fri Feb 23 15:00:39 EST 2001


Hi,
> This may fit into the area of history and philosophy.  However,  Why 
> suddenly in 1800's to early 1900, German and English scholars, Tischendoft, 
> Tegells,  Wescott and Hort, and Finally Nestle to overthrow the Textus 
> Receptus? It seems from (Metzger / Aland) Text of NT scholars were content 
> on the Textus Receptus for 400yrs.

It was all they had.  The great manuscript discoveries mostly didn't 
happen until the 19th century.  

> For example, the Renesiance (as well as the Holy Spirit) prompted men, like 
> Erasmus, to return the orginal languages. therefore what were the views of 
> the times social, philosophical, theological, which caused such a 
> motivation.  Metzger's  and Aland's Text of NT do not detail in this area.  
> Someone told me that during this time there was a great influence to prove 
> objectively and historically religous texts.

Yes, but that wasn't the motivation behind the TR.  The purpose 
was to get the text into people's hands.  Erasmus did what he 
could with what he had, and he had a handful of late mss.  He had 
a friend check Vaticanus for 1 John 5:7 because it was missing 
from the ms. of 1 John that he had, and when he learned that it 
was also missing from Vaticanus, he left that verse out of his first 
edition.  It wasn't until much later that some church officials 
finagled him into including it in a subsequent edition.  From there it 
found its way into the TR.  That's just one famous example of the 
process.  With the manuscript discoveries of the 1800's the 
situation changed, and it became clear that the TR didn't reflect the 
oldest possible reconstructable text.  That's where WH, 
Tischendorf and the others came on the scene.  It's a matter of 
doing the best we can with what's available.  Erasmus did, and so 
do we.  In the process, some parts of the TR have to be judged 
faulty.  It's the nature of discovery.

> According to Aland (p. 20), the Nestle 13th ed. became the Final standard in 
> 1927.  Was this because, "Greek ed. gave the reader a distinct impression 
> that the text had been established on the Basis of manuscripts"--Aland (3rd 
> paragraph)

Yes.  Ditto for subsequent editions, though these days the editors 
spell out the eclectic methodology in much more detail, giving us 
all the chance to evaluate both the text and the method by which it 
was arrived at.

I don't know if textual criticism is fair game on this list (I've only 
been here a few days) but if you're interested in the topic there's a 
list devoted to it.  If you drop a message to tc-list at rosetta.atla-
certr.org you should get details for subscribing.

Dave Washburn
http://www.nyx.net/~dwashbur
"No study of probabilities inside a given frame can ever
tell us how probable it is that the frame itself can be
violated."  C. S. Lewis



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