The Webster dictionary defines
the noun, “textual criticism” as, "the study of a literary work that aims
to establish the original text.” [1]
This works as a starting definition, but may oversimplify the discipline if we were
to stop there. NT Textual Historians Bart
Ehrman and Michael Holmes describe textual criticism(also called lower criticism), for the New Testament, involves “…a complicated set
of disciplines, many of them in rapid transition.”[2] They go on to lay out that many sub areas of
NT textual criticism involves:
…Greek manuscripts
(…papyri, the majuscules, the minuscules, and the lectionaries), the early
versions (Diatessaron, Syriac, Latin, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Georgian),
patristic citations (Greek, Latin, and Syriac), studies of scribal habits,
approaches to manuscript classification, the use of computers for textual
criticism, recent apparatuses and critical editions, methods for evaluating
variant readings (the Majority text theory, thoroughgoing eclecticism, and
reasoned eclecticism), and the use of textual data for early Christian social
history…[3]
A Greek Papyrus
1000 Bible Images. Stuttgart, Germany: German Bible Society, 2009.
With all these sub areas and more that are considered to try
get to what the autographs (the Greek is αὐτόγραφος, which means “written in one’s own
hand”)[4]
actually said is a complicated manner.
However, textual
criticism has been going on possibly since the time of Origen (about 250 A.D.)[5] so there has been time to develop mostly coherent methods to navigate through the complexity outlined above.
Textual
criticism has great value for this is the science to
getting to as close as we can get to the revealed word of God (2 Tim
3:16, 2
Peter 1:21, Matthew 4:4) for us, with the guidance of the Holy
Spirit, to translate, exegete, interpret, and apply to our lives as best
as we can.
Without textual criticism, we have gibberish.