Westcott and Hort certainly were not interested in giving the majority the opportunity to speak. They wove their theory around only a few MSS, and of these they had but second hand knowledge. They collated no manuscripts themselves, but rather applied themselves to the study of collations and apparatuses made by other scholars.1 As a result, their knowledge of the documents was second-hand and partial. Hort knew of the existence of fewer than 1,000 cursives, and only c.150 of these were available to him in complete collation.2
Since Hort, around 1,800 cursives have been found. Again, apart from a cursory glance to see if there might be some readings supportive of the A-B category of text, they have been merely cataloged and ignored. Attention instead has centered on the comparatively few papyri fragments and what to do when they disagree with A and B. Indeed, Kurt Aland has admitted "... the main problem in N.T. textual criticism lies in the fact that little more than their actual existence is known of most of the manuscripts ..."3 However, minuscules must pass a "test" before Aland and other textual critics consider them worthy of inclusion in a textual apparatus. All MSS/mss which are generally Byzantine will fail.4
The issue of the presence of grammatical smoothness has even been used as an argument against the TR and Byzantine mss in general. The critics maintain that the TR and its supporting mss, reading in as flowing a style as they do, "reflect editorial revision designed to improve the flow and syntax." Textual criticism has long implied that the rougher the grammar, the more likely a variant reading is to be the original.5 But why must the Holy Spirit be accused of using rough grammar? Did not the Divine Author in inspiring the words and sentences of Scripture know how to use proper Greek? Are we to understand that His knowledge has since "evolved?"
For the critic, the nineteenth century was the age of the uncials; the mid-twentieth century was the age of the papyri, but now he is entering the age of the minuscules.6 However, when one reads that many more cursives are being cited in the latest Nestle-Aland Greek N.T., he should not be deceived into believing that a significant shift away from the Alexandrian text has taken place.
What the present "age of the minuscules" really means to the editors of the critical text is that they hope to find a little more support for the A/B/Alexandrian family of text. As a matter of fact, they did not find much support during their "age of the uncials." Further, despite initial promise, the "age of the papyri" has become something of an embarrassment for their cause. Thus insofar as finding anything that would even remotely strengthen their case for the A-B text from the manuscripts, this "age of the minuscules" is their last hope. So despite any appearance to the contrary or talk of being eclectic – Aleph, B, and their few allies still dictate the modern critical text. The feeling still prevails that no purpose would be served in giving the majority a greater voice. For the text critics, these old uncials are more than adequate representatives of the MS tradition to the extent that the rest can be ignored. After all, they challenge us, "why start more than thirteen centuries after the autographs were written, and wade back through literally thousands of MSS in an immensely complicated and expensive process, if at best one can only arrive at a fifth-century
2 Frederik Wisse, The Profile Method for Classifying and Evaluating Manuscript Evidence, (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1982), p. 2.
3 Kurt Aland, "The Significance of the Papyri", op. cit., p. 330.
4 Wisse, The Profile Method for Classifying and Evaluating Manuscript Evidence, op. cit., p. 4.
5 Moorman, When The KJV Departs From The "Majority" Text, op. cit., p. 20.
6 Ibid., p. 5; here Moorman cites from the Nestle-Aland 26th edition, pp. 47-48.
