The fact of deliberate numerous alterations in the early years of the New Testament's existence introduces an unpredictable variable which:

(1) the rules of internal evidence (transcriptional and intrinsic probabilities) simply cannot handle, and

(2) nullifies the genealogical (family tree) method as a tool to recover the original (Hort knew that such would be the case; hence his dishonest statement that there was no deliberate altering).1

The genealogical method rests on being able to identify unintentional error as the clue to common ancestry. Agreement between manuscripts of this kind is rarely a coincidence. Furthermore, it is now known that Westcott and Hort never applied the genealogical method to the New Testament manuscripts!2 The charts which they offered did not exhibit actual manuscripts. They were hypothetical and imaginary ones - as they thought things should have been.3 Hort did not actually demonstrate the existence of his historical facts. The charts existed only in the minds of Hort and Westcott.

Other noted scholars have attested that the genealogical method not only has never been applied to the N.T., they have added that it cannot be applied. For example, Zuntz said it was "inapplicable",4 Aland that it "cannot be applied to the NT",5 and Colwell concurred emphatically in stating "that it cannot be so applied".6 Yet incredulously we read that with this method Westcott and Hort "slew the Textus Receptus"7 in the minds of the critics.

However, as Pickering summed the matter, since the method has not actually been used, the Textus Receptus must be alive and well!8 Hort claimed he used this weapon and spoke of the results of having applied this method with such confidence that he won the day.9 Amazingly, the fabrication was accepted as FACT, so much so that - despite all that has been written to expose Hort's dishonesty in this matter - since his day the genealogical method continues dominating the handbooks as being the canonical method of "restoring" the original text of the N.T. Present day scholars continue to go about their work and talk as though the genealogical method not only can be, but has actually been applied to the New Testaments manuscripts and base their efforts on the supposed results.10

1 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 43. This seventh chapter leans most heavily upon insights gleaned from Dr. Pickering's fourth chapter as well as personal correspondence and telephone conversations. Born in Brazil of missionary parents, Dr. Pickering has well over twenty years of extensive work in linguistics. He is currently associated with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the country of his birth. He received his Th.M. in Greek Exegesis from Dallas Theological Seminary and M.A. and Ph.D. in Linguistics from the University of Toronto.

2 M.M. Parvis, The Interpreter's Dictionary of the Bible, 4 Vols., (New York: Abingdon Press, 1962), Vol. IV, p. 611 (N.T. Text).

3 E.C. Colwell, "Genealogical Method", op. cit., pp. 111-112. The late Ernest Cadman Colwell was widely acknowledged as the "dean" of N.T. textual criticism in North America during the 1950s and 1960s. For many years he was associated with the University of Chicago as Professor and President.

Like Parvis, Colwell concluded that W-H never applied the genealogical method to the N.T. mss & that Hort's intent was to "depose" the TR and not to establish a line of descent - that Hort's main points were subjective and deliberately contrived to achieve that end ("Hort Redivivus", Studies, op. cit., pp. 158-159). 4 Gunther Zuntz, The Text of the Epistles, (London: Oxford University Press, 1953), p. 155.

5 Kurt Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri for Progress in New Testament Research", The Bible in Modern Scholarship, ed. J.P. Hyatt, (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1965), p. 341.

6 Colwell, "External Evidence", op. cit., p. 4.

7 Colwell, "Genealogical Method", op. cit., p. 124.

8 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 47.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid.

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