Therefore, it is time to have a “text-critical banquet” of five “must-reads” to celebrate the thriving research of New Testament manuscripts and to have a closer look at the basics, specialties and implications of Textual Criticism. From studying the text and history of individual codices of varying languages to critically editing the New Testament to investigating the transmission and interpretation of the biblical text over centuries – the tasks of textual critics are manifold. At the same time the discipline is as broad as it ever has been. Yet the discipline has undergone dramatic changes over the last couple of decades: new digital technology, new methodologies, new findings, and a re-discovered awareness of manuscripts as artefacts have brought new possibilities and new challenges. As such it has sometimes been discredited as dusty and inaccessible for newcomers to the field, as it requires philological skills and an eye for details. New Testament Textual Criticism, which is the study of manuscripts and their texts, is the oldest critical method for studying the Bible. 92.Must-reads offers food for thought and recommends further reading in the guise of non-exhaustive lists with brief comments on books on a specific topic. Walton, Chronological And Background Charts of the Old Testament, (Zondervan, 1994), pg. “Most common manuscript errors” from Gleason Archer’s Survey of Old Testament Introduction, pg. Marginalia - Words mistakenly inserted from the margin. Vowel point variations- Misreading a weak vowel as an actual consonant or, a discrepancy in added vowel points giving a change in word meaning. Vowel misreading- Misreading vowel letters as consonants. Homoeoarkton- Omission of an intervening passage from the beginning of two similar sentences.Īccidental omission- Loss of a single word or letter. Homoeoteleuton- Omission of an intervening passage due to having a similar ending (such as between two sentences). Misreading similar letters- Confusion of one letter for another of similar shape. Homophony- Substitution of one homonym for another.

(Psalm 49:11)įusion- Combining all or part of two words into a single word.įission- Division of a single word into two words. Metathesis- Transposing of letters or words.

(Judges 20:13 'sons' is missing)ĭittography- Writing twice what should have been written once. Haplography- Singular entry of a letter which should have been written twice. 382.Įrrors in the copying of text have been studied and classified to understand better how and where these human errors happened. Geisler and Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible, Moody, 1986, pg. Furthermore that word is also found in that verse in the LXX and 1Q Isa.' Ten letters are a matter of spelling, four are stylistic changes, and the other three compose the word for 'light' (add in v.11), which does not affect the meaning greatly. More specifically, of the 166 Hebrew words in Isaiah 53 only seventeen Hebrew letters in 1Q Isb differ from the Masoretic Text.

To be specific, the Isaiah scroll (1Q Isa) from Qumran led the Revised Standard Version translators to make only thirteen changes from the Masoretic text eight of those were known from ancient versions, and few of them were significant. The result of comparative studies reveals that this is a word-for-word identity in more than 95 percent of the cases, and the 5 percent variation consists mostly of slips of the pen and spelling. 'With the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, scholars have Hebrew manuscripts one thousand years earlier than the great Masoretic Text manuscripts, enabling them to check on the fidelity of the Hebrew text.

Old testament textual criticism