the bulk of later manuscripts and by the early papyri.1 Sturz lists a further 170 additional Byzantine readings which also read differently from the A-B text but are supported by Western manuscripts. These are also supported in the ancient papyri. This support may seem minimal, but nothing can diminish the fact that the total number of papyri citations favor the so-called "late" Byzantine readings against their rivals in the two lists by two to one.2 Sturz demonstrates papyri support for a total of 839 readings which in varying degrees would be classified as Byzantine. This forever dismantles Hort's theory that the Byzantine text was created as an official compromise text during the 4th-century by combining readings from earlier text-types.
Hills declared that the Chester Beatty readings vindicate "distinctive Syrian readings" twenty-six times in the Gospels, eight times in the Book of Acts, and thirty-one times in Paul's Epistles.3 Hills goes on to state that Papyrus Bodmer II (Papyri 66) confirms 13% of the so-called "late" Syrian readings (18 out of 138).4 To properly appreciate this one must consider the fact that only about thirty percent of the New Testament has any papyri support, and much of that thirty percent has only one papyrus.5 Thus this is seen as a major confirmation to the antiquity of the text of the Traditional Text in direct contradiction to the theory previously outlined in which the Syrian readings were said by Westcott and Hort to be fourth and fifth century. May we not reasonably project that subsequent discoveries of papyri will give similar support to readings now only extant in Byzantine text?
A most telling fact concerning the papyri is that several of them have texts of Revelation (P-47 for example). How does the destructive critic explain the fact that Vaticanus (written c.350) does not include the Book of Revelation whereas the 1611 Authorized Version (written nearly 1260 years later) contains this book? Can one reasonably explain how Erasmus' "late" manuscripts contained an entire book missing in the "pure, neutral Vatican" text? How did Erasmus know that the book of Revelation should be in the canon when the "oldest and best" manuscript did not contain it?
ECCLESIASTIC REVISION?
Remember Westcott and Hort proposed that Lucian had been the leader of an official ecclesiastical revision carried out by editors which had taken place in two stages between 250 and 350 A.D. This recension supposedly was for the purpose of producing an official compromise text "to resolve the problems arising in the various provinces over the existence of competing textual families" (Alexandrian, Western, and Neutral - see p. 1). The theory concluded that the Syrian (Byzantine) text was a composite of these pre-existing texts resulting in readings that "elevated" Jesus (which is what the Syrian/Textus Receptus readings do) as compared with the others. Thus, the theory accused the Christians of deliberately altering the true text of the New Testament for the purpose of making Jesus appear more God-like, more divine.
1 Harry A. Sturz, The Byzantine Text-Type And New Testament Textual Criticism (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1984), pp. 61-62, 145-159. For many years Chairman of the Greek Department (contra the dust cover of his book) at Biola University, Dr. Sturz studied New Testament textual criticism with E.C. Colwell. This work is a slightly revised version of his doctoral dissertation at Grace Theological Seminary. Dr. Sturz passed away 26 April, 1989. Dr. Theodore P. Letis, who was literally tutored privately at the feet of Hills, states in a 7-20-88 critique of Sturz's book that Hills was the first text critic to use the papyri to vindicate Burgon's argument that the Byzantine text reached back well before the 4th-century. Letis relates that while a doctoral student under E.C. Colwell at the University of Chicago in 1942, Hills proposed a dissertation topic which - had it been accepted - would have accomplished that which Sturz set out to do 25 years earlier. The proposal was refused, hence Hills wrote his dissertation on another topic.
2 Moorman, When The KJV Departs From The "Majority" Text, op. cit., p. 2.
3 John William Burgon, The Last Twelve Verses of the Gospel According to S. Mark, (Ann Arbor, MI: The Sovereign Grace Book Club, 1959), p. 50. This is a reprint of Burgon's 1871 work containing an Introduction by Dr. Edward F. Hills from pages 17-72.
4 Ibid., p. 54.
5 Pickering, The Identity of the New Testament Text, op. cit., p. 77.
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