As previously mentioned, Hort and others since him weighed the witnesses based on internal evidence, habitually utilizing "intrinsic" and "transcriptional" probability as their guides. That is, they chose the readings which they deemed best fit the context and best explained the origin of the other reading (of 2 or more possibilities) which had resulted from successive stages of copying. However, these two often cancel each other and, besides, they are far too subjective such that the word "weigh" becomes meaningless and the concept a mockery.

It has been documented on page 1 that "the worst corruptions to which the New Testament text has ever been subjected originated within a hundred years after it was composed."1 Burgon adds "Therefore antiquity alone affords no security that the manuscript in our hands is not infected with the corruption which sprang up largely in the first and second centuries. That witnesses are to be weighed - not counted - may be said to embody much fundamental fallacy. It assumes that the witnesses we possess are capable of being weighed and that every critic is competent to weigh them, neither of which proposition is true".2

However, the true text of the New Testament can be found easily and with certainty - as we shall demonstrate.

HOW TO EVALUATE THE CREDIBILITY OF A WITNESS3

How do we evaluate the credibility of a witness in every day life? By observing his actions, what he says and how he says it, listening to the opinions of his neighbors and associates and by observing the same things in his associates. Check out his associates. In other words, does he run with a bad crowd? If it can be demonstrated that he is a habitual liar, morally depraved or that his critical faculties are impaired, then his testimony should be received with skepticism.

Now let us weigh, for example, P-66 as a witness to the true text of the New Testament. He is old, but in John's Gospel he has over nine hundred clear errors concerning the text. He has lied to us over 900 times! Moreover, Pickering contends that neither P-66 nor P-75 knew Greek.4 Is he thus a credible witness? No! Someone protests - but he is "old". True enough, but he is an old liar!

As we have seen P-45, according to Colwell, made numerous deliberate changes in the text. Is he not morally impaired? He has repeatedly lied to us. Can we still trust him?

Between them, Vaticanus B and Sinaiticus A have lied over 3,000 times in just the Gospels alone! According to Hoskier, when compared with the true reading of the Textus Receptus, between them there are 656 differences in Matthew, 567 in Mark, 791 in Luke and 1,022 in John - a total of 3,036.5 Now A is a bigger liar than B. Everyone agrees to that. If A is, let us say, a two to one bigger liar than B, then a thousand of those lies belong to Vaticanus B and 2,000 to Sinaiticus A. Are B and A reliable witnesses?

If we cannot determine objectively that a particular witness is lying, his credibility suffers if he keeps dubious company. Examples of "bad" company are the "five old Uncials" (A, A, B, C, D) which often read differently from the Textus Receptus but also disagree among themselves.6

1 Scrivener, A Plain Introduction, op. cit., Vol II, p. 264.

2 Burgon, The Traditional Text, op. cit., pp. 40, 43.

3 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., pp. 125-127. Freely "stolen" from Pickering as he is very incisive here.

4 Ibid., p. 126.

5 Hoskier, Codex B and its Allies, op. cit., Vol. II, p. 1.

6 Burgon, The Revision Revised, op. cit., pp. 16-18, 30-31; Burgon, The Traditional Text, op. cit., p. 84.

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