Textus Receptus vs. Critical Text

[John the Baptist]

The reliability of any editorial comments in a particular Greek New Testament, would depend on which translation those who compiled in relied on. Liberals lean toward the Alexandrian manuscripts and lump both the Alexandrinus and the Papyri, falsely into that category. The Codex Alenxandrinus is actually considered a Byzantine manuscript, not a Alexandrian manuscript like the codeces Sanaiticus and Vaticanus. After further study I find a consistency among references (with validity) that the early papyri aren't classified in either category, mainly because they are too fragmented. Therefore it would be innacurate to say they agree with any of them, and even more erroneous to claim that they agree with both the Alexandrinus (Byzantine) and the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (Alexandrian), since the Byzantine and Alexandrian manuscript differ greatly.

The reliability in any editorical choices included in a certain edition of the Greek New Testament is based on the copies of Greek manuscripts, which are not translations.

Liberals lean toward the Alexandrian manuscripts and lump both the Alexandrinus and the Papyri, falsely into that category. The Codex Alenxandrinus is actually considered a Byzantine manuscript, not a Alexandrian manuscript like the codeces Sanaiticus and Vaticanus.

"(3) The Alexandrinus Codex (4th to 5th centuries) was the first of all the great uncials to come into the hands of modern scholars. It was obtained in Alexandria and sent as a present to the king of England (1628) by Cyrellus Lucaris, the Patriarch of Constantinople. The Sinaiticus and Vaticanus uncials with many other most important Bible manuscripts - Hebrew, Greek, Coptic and Syriac - came from Alexandria." (The International Standard Biblical Encylopedia) Clearly the Alexandrinus Codex is from Egypt.

After further study I find a consistency among references (with validity) that the early papyri aren't classified in either category, mainly because they are too fragmented. Therefore it would be innacurate to say they agree with any of them, and even more erroneous to claim that they agree with both the Alexandrinus (Byzantine) and the Sinaiticus and Vaticanus (Alexandrian), since the Byzantine and Alexandrian manuscript differ greatly

The many of the papyri manuscripts come form Oxyrhynchus Egypt. Many are considered in there text type to be Alexanderian, others are Western text type none are Byzantine. Yes much of them are fragmented, but they contain a considerable portion of the New Testament. They are not as reliable as other manuscripts, still have much value, In some cases they have proven the falsehood of many liberal acertains about the New Testament, such as p 52 containing a few lines of John 18 is dated 125 or 135 A.D. This refutes the liberal hypothesis that the Gospel of John was written at a much later time. First of all the agreement of phrases or words in the manuscripts is not based on the text type but if the words or phrase are in certain manuscripts as well as others. Sometimes the papyri manuscripts agree in the sense of having the same wording as the Alexanderian or Byzantine text types.

God Bless
John

[ToddR]

Note, critical text advocates mistakenly compare the Byzantyne text with the Alexandrian Text type.  Where this fails is the condition for the accuracy of the Byzantine text type is on the whole considered the "majority" or the constant witness among its thousands of unique manuscripts.  In contrast their is no such context for the Alexandrian text.  Contrary to the accepted standard for deriving an original text by finding the consistency in variant copies that "weed out" or identify unique anomalies as potential errors introduced by the copyist, the critical text does not have any sufficient sample size to do so.  This is exacerbated by the fact that the critical text bias depends mainly upon two codices, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, which have been thoroughly and undisputedly recognized as containing a significantly large number of copyist errors for having such a highly valued witness to the biblical text.  When you consider that over a few consecutive verses, it is easier to find a disagreement between the Vaticanus and the Sinaiticus codices than it is to find agreement, a contrary process is required, one which is highly subjective and eclectic.  Additional comparative studies show that the Vaticanus text aligns itself more with the Byzantine Majority text for a given New Testament book (Galatians for example) with fewer variants found than when doing a similar comparison between the Vaticanus and Sinaiticus.  One should also note that the 5th century manuscript Alexandrinus, from which the Alexandrian text gets its name, contains a significant portion of the New Testament (all of the Gospels) that is found to be of the Byzantine text type.  There are also similar cases in other Alexandrian text witnesses found in early codices (Washingtonians, etc) and even in the earliest Papyri fragments as noted by both Sturtz and Zuntz.  Because of these Alexandrian text issues, the modern eclectic critical text is highly subjective on a biased "choice" of what may or may not be original and that these "rules" may change at any point or simply be different from that of another committee (anything but the Traditionally accepted text, if possible).   There is simply a number of Critical texts and myriad of biblical versions which have imputed themselves with the authority over the Bibles Traditional Text and subjected it to a biased and fabricate text of ones choosing that may have no manuscript witness or as little as only 1, 2 or three Greek manuscript witnesses...  It is therefore a misnomer to say that there is a comparison between the Alexandrian Text to Byzantine text - the Alexandrian texts just don't show an agreement amongst themselves on the whole as much as they do individually with the Universal Byzantine Text (See also Dr. Leslie McFall "Split texts" analysis).

[ToddR]

note spelling error Washingtonians, should be Washingtonianus (tough typing on digital keyboard) :-). 

[ToddR]

One should also question the Critical Text theory that the Traditional text changed over time, and the Alexandrian text did not.  The statement is ludicrous from the standpoint that it is the Alexandrian texts which actually show the greatest amount of variants within their small sample size over the shortest period of time.  A seemingly contradictory statement to their theory is that it is claimed the Traditional Text is still 90%+ equivalent on the whole with the Alexandrian Text.  If the Traditional text evolved, why was the other 90% of the Byzantine text not affected? The answer is that the Byzantine text did not evolve over time, but that an amazing quality is seen in their manuscript witness by an overwhelming clear consistency between all of their manual copies, including both the earliest and latest copies.  Again, even the earliest Alexandrian codices and Papyri also testify in agreement with the consistent Byzantine readings.  For example, see Graham Thomason, The Relationship between Vaticanus & Sinaiticus and the Majority Text in Galatians, 24 October, 2014,     https://www.faraboveall.com/015_Textual/SinVat_Galatians.pdf