A Genealogical History of the Greek Text of the New Testament Volume 1 A Genealogical History of the Greek Text of the Gospel of Matthew By James D. Price Copyright © (2013) James D. Price, all rights reserved. ii Table of Contents Table of Contents ................................................................................................................... iiiii List of Figures .......................................................................................................................... ix List of Tables and Charts ......................................................................................................... xi Preface.................................................................................................................................... xiii Acknowledgments................................................................................................................... xv CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................. 1 The Work of Textual Scholars .............................................................................................. 2 The Methods of Textual Scholars ......................................................................................... 5 Configuring a Genetic Code for Manuscripts ....................................................................... 8 CHAPTER 2: A GENEALOGICAL THEORY OF TEXTUAL CRITICISM ...................... 13 The Genealogical Principle ................................................................................................. 14 The Problem of Mixture...................................................................................................... 16 Other Genealogical Methods .............................................................................................. 19 Set Theory ....................................................................................................................... 20 Numerical Taxonomy ..................................................................................................... 20 The Eric Poole Method ................................................................................................... 20 The Zarri Method ............................................................................................................ 22 Dearing’s Textual Analysis............................................................................................. 23 Claremont Profile Method .............................................................................................. 24 Coherence-Based Genealogical Method ......................................................................... 25 Phylogenetic Systematics................................................................................................ 26 The Present Genealogical Theory ....................................................................................... 27 External Evidence ........................................................................................................... 28 Internal Evidence ............................................................................................................ 28 The Nature of the Problem .................................................................................................. 29 Assumptions of the Theory ................................................................................................. 35 The Text of Each Book ................................................................................................... 35 Is Independent ................................................................................................................. 35 Each Manuscript Bears Witness ..................................................................................... 36 To a Set of Variants ........................................................................................................ 36 One Variant is Original ................................................................................................... 36 iii External Evidence is Dominant ...................................................................................... 37 Only Primary Witnesses Should ..................................................................................... 37 Be Used in Computations ............................................................................................... 37 Commonness of Variant Readings.................................................................................. 38 Defines Genealogical Relationships ............................................................................... 38 The Original Language Dominates ................................................................................. 40 An Exemplar May Replace the ....................................................................................... 40 Witness of Its Descendants ............................................................................................. 40 Graph Theory .................................................................................................................. 41 General Solution ................................................................................................................. 41 Available Data ................................................................................................................ 42 Reconstruction Procedure ............................................................................................... 42 Iteration ........................................................................................................................... 45 Resultant Tree-Diagram .................................................................................................. 45 Maximum Statistical Probability .................................................................................... 45 Restraints on the Theory ..................................................................................................... 46 Manuscript Distribution .................................................................................................. 47 Variant Distribution ........................................................................................................ 48 Number Distribution ....................................................................................................... 48 Manuscript Completeness ............................................................................................... 49 Special Considerations ........................................................................................................ 49 Directionality .................................................................................................................. 49 Incomplete Manuscripts .................................................................................................. 50 Recensions ...................................................................................................................... 50 Resolving Mixture .............................................................................................................. 51 Aunt Mixture ................................................................................................................... 51 Cousin Mixture ............................................................................................................... 52 Tests and Verification ......................................................................................................... 54 Alleged Limitations of the Genealogical Method ............................................................... 56 Order of Merit ................................................................................................................. 56 Likeness and Difference ................................................................................................. 56 Goodness and Badness .................................................................................................... 57 CHAPTER 3: TESTING THE THEORY AND ITS IMPLEMENTATION ......................... 58 iv Fundamental Weaknesses ................................................................................................... 58 Creating Test Problems ....................................................................................................... 59 Non-Uniform Propagation of Branches .............................................................................. 60 Non-Uniform Branches ................................................................................................... 61 Mixture ............................................................................................................................ 61 Recensions ...................................................................................................................... 62 Non-Uniform Number of Variants.................................................................................. 62 Working with Test Problems .............................................................................................. 62 Working with Actual Texts ................................................................................................. 63 CHAPTER 4: EXPANDING AND UNPACKING THE NA-27 DATABASE .................... 64 Different Data Formats ......................................................................................................