Sunday 27 April 2008

What Is the Majority Text Type

What is the Majority Text Type?

The question is misleading and needs qualified.

Is it the text reflected in the majority of Coptic manuscripts of the Bible?

Is it the text reflected in the majority of Greek manuscripts dated to the first four hundred years? Or to the first eight hundred years? Or altogether?

Is it the text reflected in the Latin manuscripts New Testament which was favoured by the western Europeans used at the time of Erasmus?

Majority Text advocates and some people aligned with them think that we should use the text type represented in the majority of Greek manuscripts. What they don't want you to know, however, is that their favorite text type does not become the majority until the eighth or ninth century.

Out of the 125 papyri manuscripts (generally dated prior to 4th century), that text which gradually evolved into the Majority Text Type of the late middle ages cannot be found—not even a single representative. The late middle ages Majority Text Type does not seem to have existed until the late fourth century. The earliest manuscript evidence for the late middle ages Majority Text Type are A and C which date to the fifth century, and even these are only 80% toward the evolved state of the late middle ages Majority Text Type.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am unwilling to consider any academic opinion to be entirely unbiased. Most everyone has an axe to grind.

While not a scholar, I have observed many narrow Bible version advocates to be satisfied with the NKJV and it's fine publisher. The simple truth is that anyone may be saved reading any version and grow therein.

As a balance please consider:

http://www.majoritytext.org/aboutmts.htm

Anonymous said...

sorry - the above is from doc303

I can't figure out all this openid/namr/url stuff

doc303