3/1/2024 0 Comments New testament original text![]() MS that was itself twenty copies removed from the original. MS might have been copied from a 7th-cent. MS that was only a few copies removed from the original, whereas an 8th-cent. ![]() This is an over-simplification, because in actual fact a MS of the 11th cent., for example, might have been copied directly from a 4th-cent. will usually have more copies between it and the original than a MS from an earlier cent. Thus the more copies that intervene between a given MS and the original, the more differences there will generally be between that MS and the original form of the text. ![]() When his MS was copied, then, most of his variants would be carried over into the next MS along with any additional errors and changes that the next scribe might make. In making a copy of a book by hand, an ancient scribe-and a modern scribe as well-would almost certainly introduce errors and changes of various sorts into his copy, accidentally or, at times, intentionally. Textual criticism is a basic discipline, a prerequisite to all further NT studies, for the determination of the text to be used must precede the interpretation of the text. Whereas the NT is the largest and most significant area of this study, textual criticism is necessary for virtually every piece of ancient lit., since in only the rarest instances has the autograph of an ancient writing been preserved to modern times. This process of studying copies of a work whose original is unknown, for the purpose of determining the form of the original text, is called textual criticism. Rather, a comparison of MSS must be made and principles established for determining as nearly as possible the exact form of the original text. ![]() This means, technically speaking, that it is not possible to determine the exact original wording of the NT from any given MS. The originals (autographs) of the NT books were doubtless lost at a very early date. This period of handcopying of MSS includes three-fourths of the time from the completion of the NT to the present and the vast number of copies made of parts or all of the NT during these early centuries means that multiplied thousands of textual variants were introduced into these MSS. It is now possible to print any number of identical copies of a work but in ancient times, when each individual copy had to be made separately by hand, the only certainty was that no two copies of a book of any length would be identical. in ancient times was a very different matter from that of the period since the invention of printing from movable type. Since classical scholars assume the general reliability of these secular works even where the time interval is great and where only a few MSS are available, it is clear that with far greater assurance the student of the NT may assume that the presently-available NT text reliably represents what the authors originally wrote.Īt the same time, the multiplication of any piece of lit. In contrast, two of the most important existing MSS of the NT were written less than 300 years after the NT was completed, and an appreciable amount of the NT is extant on papyrus MSS written from one to two centuries after the Biblical authors wrote. A time interval of several hundred years is not uncommon, ranging downward to a mere three hundred years, as in the case of Virgil. The oldest known MSS of the works of some ancient authors date from a thousand years or more after the death of the author. In another respect, too, the MS tradition of the NT is distinctly superior to that of other ancient lit. MSS in which the text is arranged in lectionary form for daily readings, as well as 8,000 MSS in Lat., and 2,000 or more in other ancient VSS. are preserved-ranging from fragments of a few verses to the entire NT-plus some 2,000 additional Gr. Of the NT, on the other hand, nearly 3,000 handwritten copies in Gr. A few hundred MSS of the works of some authors, including Euripides and Cicero, are known. Other writings have survived in a few or a few dozen copies. The writings of some ancient authors (e.g., part of the Annals of Tacitus) are represented by only one MS from ancient times. been preserved in quantity even comparable to the number of extant MSS of the NT in Gr. Nor has any ancient writing or body of lit. has affected the Western world so profoundly as has the Bible, and in particular the NT. TEXT AND MANUSCRIPTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
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