CX

So I've been preoccupied lately with statistics on the MSS attestation of various texts and decided to cross reference the witness list in NA27 with some charts in the back of the Alands' "The Text of The New Testament" looking specifically at attestation for the gospels. Let me say upfront that my fascination is wholly an academic one and I make no judgement as to how these facts affect the perceived reliability of the texts in question. Anyway with out further ado:

Matthew - 15/28 chapters (~54%) unattested prior to the 4th century - no complete chapter attested prior to the 4th century

Mark - 8/16 chapters (50%) unattested prior to the 4th century - no complete chapter attested prior to the 4th century

Luke - 3/24 chapters (1/8) unattested prior to the 4th century - 8/24 chapters (1/3) fully attested prior to the 4th century

John - no chapters unattested prior to the 4th century (P66 dates to ca 200) - 12/21 (~57%) fully attested prior to the 4th century.

(note: These statistics are based on Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 27th edition and Kurt & Barbara Aland's "The Text of the New Testament" 2nd Revised & Enlarged Paperback edition. The former was published in 1993 and the latter in 1995 and may be slightly outdated. In addition, these statistics refer only to MSS evidence and do not consider patristic citations which may or may not be valuable)

not a theist

Check your PM's.

Yuri Kuchinsky

Thanks for posting this additional info, CX!

What is to be noted here is that almost every early Papyrus MS that we have dates to the 3c. (p52 and p66 for Jn are really special cases. Interestingly enough, they both only happen to preserve almost the same short bit from the Passion of Jesus -- thus the question is raised whether or not these fragments had ever really been parts of our canonical John.)

All these are 3c Egyptian MSS. So how can we go beyond the 3c, and how can we ever get out of Egypt, to other parts of the Xian world? Is there a way? See below.

Quote:

(note: These statistics are based on Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece 27th edition and Kurt & Barbara Aland's "The Text of the New Testament" 2nd Revised & Enlarged Paperback edition. The former was published in 1993 and the latter in 1995 and may be slightly outdated. In addition, these statistics refer only to MSS evidence and do not consider patristic citations which may or may not be valuable)

And here, unfortunately, I see a serious problem with this last sentence of yours. Are the patristic citations valuable? What a strange question...

Not only they are extremely valuable -- in fact they are _our only way_ to get further back than the 3c. The patristic citations are the key! (And I can provide many cites here for many respected scholars saying so.)

The patristic citations have been studied extensively (some more than the others), and what do they indicate? They indicate that Western text was the earliest. No ifs and buts about it.

Indeed, when two or more very early fathers from different parts of the world happen to cite the same gospel text -- that also happens to be very different from the Alexandrian text -- we should have a pretty good idea that what they are citing is the more original pre-Alexandrian text...

Here's some further info,

Western Text is the earliest!
http://www.trends.ca/~yuku/bbl/w-etxt.htm

Best regards,

Yuri.

CX

I've wondered that myself. Could these early MSS preserve Dom Crossan's "Cross Gospel"? Perhaps.


My qualification was based solely on the fact that I have not studied extensively the patristic citations.