Which version Is The Bible? Page 99

P⁴⁶ according to Gunter Zuntz, is neat and copied by a professional, but it abounds in scribal blunders, omissions and additions.¹

P⁴⁷ is not the best text the Book of Revelation states Kurt Aland: "... the oldest manuscript does not necessarily have the best text. P-47 is, for example by far the oldest of the manuscripts containing the full or almost full text of the Apocalypse, but it is certainly not the best."²

The point being demonstrated here is that the oldest is not necessarily the best. These are all second and third century papyri, which are 100 to 200 years older than Vaticanus B or Sinaiticus A and much later than the material used by Erasmus. Age alone cannot insure accuracy as we would still not know how old the "parent" mss was when it "gave birth" to its offspring. For example, an eighth century document may have been copied from a sixth century parent mss, whereas a fourteenth century mss could have been the offspring of a second century manuscript.

The critics Kirsopp Lake, R.P. Blake, and Silva New found mostly "orphans" among the manuscripts which they collated.³ That is, the scribes of the New Testament usually destroyed their old copies after recopying them resulting in almost no ancient "parents" surviving unto the present. Not only are nearly all of the extant manuscripts thus orphans, they found almost no siblings. Each manuscript was an only child without brothers or sisters.

The significance of this can hardly be overstated. This means that the authors were independent witnesses; that hardly any were copied from others - thus, no collusion or wholesale fraud exists!⁴ There was no ecclesiastical committee forcing people to copy them; therefore they deserve to be counted as independent witnesses. Furthermore, as Pickering observed, the findings of these three critics attests to another consideration: "the age of a manuscript must not be confused with the age of the text it exhibits."⁵

TO WEIGH THE WITNESSES OR TO JUST COUNT THEM?

One may reply, "Should not witnesses be weighed rather than merely counted?" The problem with that statement is it infers that weighing and counting are mutually exclusive.⁶ We should do both. In a courtroom with ten witnesses testifying, if nine say they saw the event take place and the man is guilty whereas only one says he is not, what would be the result? The voice of the nine would carry the day. Nevertheless, witnesses should be weighed also, for it is possible that all nine could be persons of ill repute and the one of impeccable character.

Actually, all text critics "count" manuscripts. The great majority of the N.T. is absolutely completely established because there are no variants. That is, not only the majority but in all of the manuscripts nearly every word reads the same. Hence, even its detractors follow the "majority text" most of the time. Furthermore, modern editors such as von Soden, Harry Sturz and Weymouth say when two of the major families (or in Weymouth's case, two or more printed editions) agree against one of the other families (or editions) the majority (or two in agreement) should be followed.⁷

1 Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, op. cit., pp. 18, 212.

2 Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri", op. cit., p. 333.

3 Kirsopp Lake, R. P. Blake and Silva New, "The Caesarean Text of the Gospel of Mark", op. cit., p. 349.

4 Burgon, The Traditional Text, op. cit., pp. 46-47.

5 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 124.

6 Ibid., pp. 124-125.

7 The material in this paragraph is taken from a 1988 correspondence to the author by Dr. Theodore P. Letis.

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