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Gordon D. Fee

By Francisco Lopes
• The two most Used Greek-NT
• UBS – United Bible Society
• NA – Nestle Aland
• Recent revival of Advocacy of TR
– Textus Recetus
 Zane
•
Hodges
Professor of Greek and NT at
Dallas Theological Seminary.
– 1) Unsatisfactory answers to the
rise, comparative uniformity and
dominance of the Byz text.
– 2) Majority text as a “result” of a
normal transmission
– 3) Subjectivity in choosing the
best readings from the earliest
MSS.
 The Majority Text

• About 80 % of the extant MSS

• About 90% of the extant MSS
have suffered some influences
from this text type. Almost any
time the earliest MSS were
corrected, they tended to
conform with this text-type.
• No evidence of this text-type
before AD 350.
• The earliest evidence are seen in
the works of some church
fathers and latter on, on Codices
W (AC 400) and A.
 Zane
• Hodges
His questioned “truism”
• That the nearest MSS to the
autograph would produce the largest
number of descendants.
• He is challenged with the analogy of
the descendants of Abraham, Jacob,
Esau.
• It is not enough to say that Abraham
has more descendants when these
might have suffered influence from
mixture with other lineages and differ
• No historical support only “
merely theoretical probability”.
 Context of Early MSS
Copies
• No trained scribes in scriptoria
• Copies made for pragmatic
reasons.
• The earliest copies taken very
early from their place of origin.
• Proliferation with differences
would continue until factors
converged to stop it.
• Although having a variety of text
forms during AD 150-225, there
is not a single illustration of the
later majority text.
 How does One Account the
Dominance and Uniformity of the
Majority Text?
• Factors converged between 4
th

and 7th Century AD.

• Trained Christian scribes
working in scriptoria.
• (The idea and concept of canon
was not familiar to the scribes of
2nd century AD).
• Copies being made to remain
locally for biblical studies and
not to be taken away.
• This can be seen in the fact that
majority extant Greek MSS were
found in large quantity in
monasteries and university libraries.
• The astonishing influence of
Chrysostom – the most influential
Greek father
• The most important factor – By the
end of the 7th century, the Greek NT
was being transmitted in a very
narrow sector of the church – The
• Greek almost known in the west.
• The rise of the Latin
• The decline of Alexandria and
the rise of Islam still narrowed
Greek speaking Christendom.
 Pickering
• His assertions:
• Textual criticism reaps us of the
certainty as to the original NT
Greek text.
• Criticism against modern
eclecticism with direct intention
of discrediting Westcott-Hort,
believing that doing so, he
discredits modern eclecticism.
• Not satisfied because Westcott-
Hort treated the NT as they
would tread any other book,
ignoring that:
• “Corruption in other books were
merely accidental while with the
new testament it was theological
motivated.”
 Gordon Fee’s Answers
• He wrongly grouped all modern
eclecticism with that of G. D.
Kilpatrick and J. K Elliot. –
internal evidence only.
• This is not the method of
contemporary textual criticism.
• The causes of Corruption:
• The problem of “deliberate
falsification” and “Dogmatic
• Pickering – “Malicious changes”,
done by “persons lacking in
integrity”
• The Different types of corruption
– A) add/omit
– B) Substitutions
– C) Word order
– D) Any combination of the above
– E) Transpositions
– F) Major rewriting of a sentence or
paragraph
• F is always deliberate.
• “If one were to take any five to
ten verses from anywhere in the
NT and collate the available
textual evidence, the vast
majority of variants among the
MSS belong to categories A, B,
and C.
• Fee uses the example of the first five
verses of John 13:
• 27 variation units – 14 add/omit, 10
substitutions, 2 word order, 1
add/omit and substitution
• “One can go anywhere in the NT, and
the profile will be the same. The vast
majority of textual corruptions,
though deliberate, are not malicious,
nor are they theological motivated.”
• Pickering brings quotations from
church fathers to prove that they
took the NT as authoritative and
sacred, so they would not
tamper with its text in copying
it.
• He seeks their support for the
reading of the majority text.
• The Church Father quoted the NT
loosely, having various variants
in just one piece of work.
 Conclusion of this
Section
• Pickering’s proposal simply
eliminates textual criticism
altogether.
• He is criticized of not being
capable of doing textual
criticism. His entire book
contains only one example how
his method works in actual
practice – “God” or “He who” . I
Tim 3:16
• Fee throws down his only one
example.
• 300 MSS reading “God” against
8 MSS reading “He who”
• 98% versus 2% his argument is
that the statistics wins
• We have more than 1000 MSS of
Vulgate not 1 single one
• None of the ancient versions:
Syriac, Coptic, Armenian,
• None of them reads “God”
• Thus the 97% deals only with a
very narrow section of the
Christianity – the Greek Othodox
Church.
• The earliest MS to read “God” is
from the 8th century.
• “He Who” refers to Christ.
• Most of this revival is considered
to be “simply the rhetoric of
misinformed fundamentalism…”
• The most informed attempts:
• Dean Burgeon Society
– Zane Hodges
– W. N. Pickering
By Abel Sitali
 ECLECTIC METHOD

The Eclectic approach is a method

by which scholars attempt to
recover the most likely original text
of the NT. With regard to the criteria
for determining the originality
of textual readings,
Two approaches have been
categorized:

A. Use of the critical canons in

antiquity; and

B. Use of critical canons in

Modern times.
Epp and Fee do acknowledge
that the term “Eclectic,” as
applied in NT textual criticism,
not only is comparatively recent
in its
use but also varied in its
meaning and emphasis. Its
earliest occurrence is said
to have been in L. Vaganay’s
text-critical manual of 1934 –
where it was particularly
employed to describe the
 Different definitions to ‘Eclectic’ or
‘Eclecticism.’

Kilpatrick used it to refer to a method

that emphasized stylistic rather than
documentary considerations. Others
have considered it to be a method that
addresses external evidences; and yet
still others have considered it as
addressing internal evidences.
 J. J. Griesbach
1. The more unusual (rare words) is
preferred to that without anything
unusual.
• Expressions less emphatic
(rhetorically) are closer to the
genuine, than those polished
• Readings that at first glance convey a false
meaning is preferable, which upon thorough
examination, is found true.
• Readings having the odor of a gloss or interpretation
may be rejected
• Readings introduced from the Latin version
into the Greek books are disapproved.
 Karl Lachmann
1. Nothing is better attested than that on which
all authorities agree
• If some of the authorities are silent or
defective, the weight of evidence is somewhat
lessened.
3. When the witnesses are of different regions, their
agreement is of more importance than when those of
some particular locality differ from the rest, either
from negligence or from set purpose.
• When witnesses of different widely separated
regions disagree, the testimony must be considered
to be doubtfully balanced.
5. When readings are in one form in one region and in
another form in another region, with great uniformity,
they are quite uncertain.
 C. V. Tischendorf

He categorized canons into internal and

external:

• Readings wholly peculiar to one or another

{ancient} witness are suspect, as are
readings in a class of documents,
that appear to have originated from critical,
scholarly correction.
•Excluded are readings no matter what their attestation,
that clearly have originated from a copyist.
•Witnesses with passages parallel to the OT, NT and
especially the synoptic gospels, when they attest
disagreements, are preferable to witnesses that show
agreement, for the ancients paid attention to the parallels.
 Westcott and Hort

1. Older MSS or groups are to be preferred.

(The shorter the interval between the time
of the autograph and the end of the period
of transmission in question, the stronger
the presumption that earlier date implies
greater purity of text
• Readings are approved or rejected by reason
of the quality, and not the number, of their
supporting witnesses.
• The reading is to be preferred that best
conforms to the usual style of the author and
to the author’s material in other passages.
4. The reading is to be preferred that most fitly
explains the existence of the others.
 Summary of this Section

E. J. Epp entitled this section of

the book with this question and
perhaps it is important to revisit
it in conclusion. Epp observes
that every eclectic method is at
best a temporary ‘solution’ to
our basic problems in NT textual
criticism, and if such a method
really is a solution at all, it is of
the most tentative kind.
 Summary of this Section

Since the term ‘eclectic’ refers to

the choice of appropriate criteria
from among many, that in
itself discloses the fact that the
method (eclecticism) does not have
an all conclusive solution. This
therefore means that the eclectic
method is not a solution but a
symptom – which provides us with
detailed indications of the
difficulties in NT textual criticism,
 Summary of this Section

thereby assisting us both in

clarifying the difficulties and in
exploring appropriate
solutions.
Just as symptoms are helpful in
enabling physicians to
establish the right diagnosis
and cure for disease, so does
the eclectic method enable the
textual critic to arrive at
appropriate solutions of
The Claremont
Profile Method
For Grouping NT
Minuscule
Manuscripts

By Azael D. Pittí
The Claremont Profile Method

The Claremont Profile

Method (CPM) stands as the
first attempt in the history of
New Testament Textual
Criticism at a complete,
comprehensive, and
repeatable classification of
manuscripts. The CPM was
created in the 1960s for the
The Claremont Profile Method

The IGNTP was preparing a

critical apparatus of Luke,
and needed a method to
determine which
manuscripts should be
included. The result was
the CPM, which eventually
was used to classify some
 The reasons for the
creation of the CPM are
given by Eldon Jay Epp
The textual critics have for generations
en confronted by the burdensome mass o
Minuscule Manuscripts and yet with one
table exception, they have failed or been
unable to prosecute a broad-scale
methodological effort direct toward the
ting and classification of this massive an
intractable complex” p. 211
266
Manuscript Uncial
Minuscule Manuscript
Hermann von Soden was
the first Scholar in classify
the Minuscule Manuscripts
between 1902 and 1910.

He classified more than

1260 minuscules of the
Gospels out of nearly 1350
known to him, 45% of
All minuscules identified
today.
In order to improve the old
method
of Von Soden, in the late
1960’s two
young graduate students at
Claremont:
Paul McReynolds and
Frederick Wisse
developed the Claremont
 The Procedure
3.A section of text (typically one
chapter of a Biblical book) is selected
as a sample base.
4. A group of manuscripts (preferably
a large group) is collated over this
sample, and their variant readings
recorded.
5.The Textus Receptus is used as a
collation base.
6.Readings are recorded as agreeing
or disagreeing with the Textus
Receptus. (It will be noted that this
From this collation set a series of
"profiles" emerge. Each manuscript
casts a profile -- an image of its
agreements and disagreements with
the Textus Receptus. The result is
something like a binary stream of
data, for example agree-agree-
disagree-agree-disagree etc.

This can be represented physically in

several ways (this is one of the senses
in which the word "profile" applies).
One is to represent agreements by
spaces and disagreements by crosses;
We could put agreements in the left
column and disagreements in the
right:
A
A
D
A
D
In any case, we have a "shape" of a
manuscript. Where enough
manuscripts have similar shapes, we
label this a "group profile."
Manuscripts which have this
CPM
Model
Having defined our profiles, we can
simply compare any new manuscripts
with the extant group profiles and
quickly analyze the manuscript.

This was the procedure followed by

Wisse and his colleague Paul R.
McReynolds for Luke. Starting with
several hundred manuscripts already
on file, they created group profiles and
then set in to classify the manuscripts
of Luke.
anks to the study of McReynolds and Wis
ew method had born (1966) which appea
mising indeed, for if it could be validate
uld mean that any given Manuscript coul
examined in a relatively small number of o
determined and systematically selected
ces and its resulting textual profile could
almost instantly identified with that of a
ablished group.
broader terms, finally, it would appear
t the Claremont Profile Method for
uping NT Minuscule MSS may well mark
turning point in the study of this class
Greek witnesses and the NT texts, for its
ers, as has nothing previously, a consiste
thod for classifying minuscules,
addition, recognizes the all-important
thodological principle that both agreeme
agreem
d disagreements between MSS, as well a
tween groups must be fully taken into
count and measured.
In 1977, Dr. W. Larry Richards
wrote the article
“A Critique of a New Testament
Text-Critical-
Methodology, the Claremont
Profile Method”

At that time, the Claremont

Profile Method
had not been tested.
 His conclusion was:

3.The CPM is a superior method

for classifying Byzantine MSS into
groups

2. From the result of studies in 1

John, it would be much safer to
proceed with the
Formation of groups and
their profiles by
First forming tentative
groups through
quantitative analysis, rather