Today's scholars no longer hold to the Westcott-Hort theory in toto, yet their works always begin with Westcott and Hort's final conclusion - namely that the text represented by the majority (the TR) is of no consequence and that the true text lies mainly in the Vatican and Sinaitic MSS.
The modern critic uses what is known as the "eclectic" method of textual criticism. Eclecticism is an outgrowth of the Westcott-Hort theory of textual criticism. An eclectic editor "follows first one and then another set of witnesses in accord with what is deemed to be the author's style or the exigencies of transcriptional hazards."3 The technique involves subjective judgment, ignores the history of the text, emphasizing fewer and fewer canons of criticism. Most moderns emphasize only two.4 These are that a reading is to be preferred which best (1) suits the context, and (2) explains the origin of all others. Usually eclectics restrict the evidence to only the internal evidence of variant readings.
Today, most of Westcott and Hort's terminology has been replaced with new scholarly yet equally obscure sounding terms such as "Formal equivalence" and "Dynamic equivalence". The work of the modern textual critic/translator is largely composed of a balancing act. On one end is formal equivalence and on the other, dynamic equivalence.
At the formal equivalence end, the word in question is translated exactly according to the Greek lexicon, paying little or no attention to the quality of the sentences that is being produced. The result is nearly a word for word or literal rendition of the Greek into the other language. The problem with this is that various languages contain different sentence structure such that the resultant rendering is often out of context, out of order within the sentence, may be either nonsensical or even misleading, and lacks emotion. It is impossible to actually translate word for word from any language to another and produce an intelligible result. For example, consider a literal translation of the familiar John 3:16 passage - "For so loved the God the world that the his Son the only begotten he gave that every one the believes into him may not perish but may have life eternal". One would hardly call this result "English". Realizing this, a condition has been imposed by the proponents of formal equivalence to the effect that, though they deem a word for word translation of utmost importance, it must not be done so rigidly as to produce nonsense as in our example. This necessitates a counterbalance.
Today, dynamic equivalence is that counterbalance. At the other end of the see-saw, the translator attempts to verbalize the "message" that is being conveyed. From the Greek, he extrapolates or takes out what he thinks the author had in mind. Then, instead of translating or matching the
2 B.B. Warfield, The Westminster Assembly And Its Work, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1931), p. 239. Dr. Hills well critiques Warfield's inconsistent thinking: The King James Version Defended, op. cit., p. 110.
3 Bruce M. Metzger, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 3rd ed., enl., (NY: Oxford University Press, 1992; original prt. 1964), p. 175.
4 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 23. Dr. Pickering's presentation on eclecticism is excellent (see his ch. 2).
