Today's Problems with the Critical Text of the

In the preface of an edition of the Creek New Testament we read the editor's assurance: "You now have the text which is accepted by aIl." This well-known statement may be recog­ nized at once as belongmg not to arecent critical edition but to one printed three centuries ago, the Elzevir of 1633. That phrase y:elded the term textus receptus, used ever since of the Creek New Testament text employed in West­ ern Europe for several centuries. In the first Elzevir edition ( 1624) the term used was textus acceptus. The awkward term "Received Text" is a poor translation and might better be replaced by the term "Accepted Text." The Elzevir brothers have repeatedly been charged with making a presumptuous and erroneous claim, but it must be acknowledged that they wrote only the truth. Comparison of the printed editions beginning with and for three centuries thereafter reveals that scores of editors continued to produce the same text with but slight alteration. Further­ more, it is often overlooked that even prior to the printed editions thousands of manuscript copies had been reproduc­ ing the same basic text throughout the Byzantine centuries. The editors were truly correct in describing their product as a textus receptus, since it was then all but universal among publishers and scholars. It is weIl known among us that the Era of the Received Text lasted until mid-nineteenth century. The threat to the long established textus receptus began to cast a long shadow even as the Elzevirs coined their term, but the text in common use did not easily yield up its ac- [158] THE CRITICAL TEXT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT 121 customed prestige. The contest was long and often bitter before the text accepted by all was supplanted by what we call today the critical text. The Oxford Press ended its long series of printings of the traditional Textus Receptus only sixty years ago. We of the twentieth century are the first in 1500 years of Christian history , i.e., since the fifth century, to possess the critical text which is in general use today. Indeed we are inclined to feel highly gratified that we have recovered this text, through discovery and scholarly processes. It is a com­ mon opinion that we now possess the true text, trustworthy for interpretation. This opinion is illustrated in a new book by Fred L. Fisher entitled Row to Interpret the New Testa­ ment: ". . . the text that is now accepted is open to question in very few places . . . of minor signmcance." 1

This recapitulation from the history of criticism brings us to the first of today's problems to be noted here. It is this: that the Westcott-Hort text has become today our textus receptus. We have been freed from the one only to become captivated by the other. The persistence of the Byzantine text has been repeated in our own rigid adherence to West­ cott-Hort. The psychological chains so recently broken from our fathers have again been forged upon US, even more strongly. Whereas our textual fathers, such as and Richard Bentley, actively debated the character of the text in their day, our generation of theologians finds easy con­ tenbnent with our current textus receptus. Even the textual specialist finds it difficult to break the habit of evaluating every witness by the norm of this cur­ rent textus receptus. His mind may have rejected the Westcott-Hort term "neutral," but his technical procedure still reHects the general acceptance of the text. A basic prob­ lem today is the technical and psychological factor that the Westcott-Hort text has become our textus receptus. Perhaps someone will remonstrate that there have been many critical texts produced since 1881, which is true. Some-

1 Cf. J. R. Harris, Foor Lectures on the Western Text (London: C. J. Clay and Sons, 1894), who wamed against the "cult" of Westcott-Hort.