In other words, the Byzantine mss are all orphans,1 and as such are independent witnesses. By "orphans" we mean that, as with the Old Testament, the originals and old copies were burned or buried and thus committed to the earth for decay (as with a body) after they were copied.2 That is why we do not have any originals today. As they have neither brothers, sisters nor surviving parents, the term "orphan" is therefore applicable to the extant mss. As orphans, they are independent witnesses to the true text of the New Testament.3
In addition, papyri with very distinctive readings existed side by side in the same "ecclesiastical" province.4 This further argues that no text types existed as proposed by the W-H Theory. So, as genealogy has not and cannot be applied to the problem, it would seem the individual witnesses must be counted after all. We agree with Westcott and Hort that they should also be weighed and this matter will be discussed presently.
Much is made over the fact that Erasmus used "late manuscripts", but this fails to recognize that all of our Old Testament manuscripts are "late". The oldest are dated around 900 A.D., and yet conservative Bible believers do not question their authenticity or that the text contained therein is not God breathed.5 Then why not trust the late mss of the New Testament which Erasmus used? It does not matter that they were late. The real issue is, were they actual copies of the original autographs or copies of copies of the originals (called "apographa").
Regarding conflation - as Dean Burgon adeptly pointed out - why, if the Traditional Text were created by 4th-century Antiochian editors whose regular practice had been to conflate (combine) Western and Alexandrian readings, could Westcott and Hort after nearly thirty years of searching throughout the Gospels find only eight supposed instances to offer as proof of their thesis?6 Why could they find only eight verses out of nearly eight thousand? Only a few more have been offered since by their followers.7
Wilhelm Bousset, a noted liberal German critic, agreed with Westcott and Hort on only one of the eight.8 He totally disagreed with them on five and was not sure about the other two. This German critic's final conclusion was that Westcott and Hort's principal proof, the eight examples, turned out to be the irrefutable proof that what they proposed was not correct. Like Burgon, Bousset astutely pointed out that if conflation had been the customary practice of the early church, Westcott and Hort should have found hundreds of examples to bolster and confirm their conflate theory. Besides - as Pickering asked in 1977 - if the "Syrian" text is the result of conflating (combining) Western and Alexandrian readings, where did the material come from which is only found in the Syrian readings?9
2 Ibid., p. 349.
3 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 54.
4 Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri", op. cit., pp. 334-337.
5 As a matter of fact, the O.T. Masoretic Text has undergone much undue critical attack in the past and many evangelicals did begin to compromise and doubt its purity. The Dead Sea Scrolls discovery upheld the MT and ended the controversy.
6 John Burgon, The Revision Revised, (London: John Murray, 1883), pp. 258-265, also see his footnotes.
7 Hills, The King James Version Defended, op. cit., pp. 175-176.
8 Wilhelm Bousset, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Vol. 11 (1894), pp. 97-101.
9 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 54.
