The Identity of the New Testament Text IV by Wilbur N. Pickering PhD

by Wilbur N. Pickering

There are over 5,000 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, over half of which are continuous text copies, the rest being lectionaries. They range in size from a scrap with parts of two verses to complete New Testaments. They range in date from the second century to the sixteenth. They come from all over the Mediterranean world. They contain several hundred thousand variant readings (differences in the text). The vast majority of these are misspellings or other obvious errors due to carelessness or ignorance on the part of the copyists—such are not proper variant readings and may be ignored. However, many thousands of variants remain which need to be evaluated as we seek to identify the precise original wording of the Text. How best to go about such a project? This book seeks to provide an answer.

Genres: History

Paperback Bunko

First published October 14, 2014

Reviews

[Matthew Brubacher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wilbur Pickering calls himself a textual scholar rather than a textual critic. The difference? He says that textual criticism assumes that the original wording of the book has been lost and must be recovered. Pickering does not believe that the original wording of the Greek New Testament has been lost, but that it can be found in the 5,000+ manuscripts that have survived to this day. So he calls himself a textual scholar in the field of manuscripts lift, rather than in textual criticism.

I think his book is a valuable resource that every serious student of the Bible should read. It makes a strong case that we cannot start with manuscripts that wildly disagree with each other and expect to reproduce the original text by eclecticism. Aleph and B (Sinaiticus and Vaticanus) and a few other ancient manuscripts cannot even be traced back to a common origin since they disagree with each other so often (over 3,000 times in the Gospels alone), and Pickering quotes scholars that would not agree with his conclusions to that effect. Pickering makes a strong case that the transmission of the New Testament text was mostly normal; the autographs were recognized as Scripture early on and were copied until they were worn. The more careful the copies, the more likely the person was to guard them like his own life and recopy them when they began to wear out.

Pickering's book gives valuable information about early papyri that most books like this do not cover. The papyri were discovered after Burgon and Scrivener wrote, and many beginner level books do not cover them individually. However, Pickering takes a closer look at them and concludes that the scribes that copied some of the early papyri did not know the Greek books they were copying! One copied syllable by syllable, which resulted in a lot of nonsense. It looks like older is not better in the case of the papyri and uncial MSS; I, for one, would wear out a Bible that was carefully copied and put away one that was terribly copied (only to be found 2,000 years later).

The one weakness in Pickering's book is that he pushes a group of similar Greek manuscripts known as Family 35. I have no problem with the family in general; it is the largest and possibly the most accurately copied group of manuscripts within the 99% of manuscripts that are very closely alike. They are invaluable in text-critical work, and Pickering did us a service by collating many of them. However, there are occasional times when this group disagrees with the Byzantine majority text as a whole. The differences are minor, but Pickering believes that Family 35 is correct in these instances. At this point, I find it hard to believe that the original wording of the NT could have been lost in 70 or 80% of the MSS at these places and preserved in only 20 or 30%. Because of the presence of this hypothesis in the last chapter and a couple appendices without clear distinction from what other majority text scholars think, I can only give a 4-star review.

Speaking of appendices, though, those in this book are a must-read. Pickering gives lists of alleged discrepancies in the Bible, such as between Gospels, and explains then in the frame of biblical inerrancy. Check out his thoughts on "faith as a grain of mustard seed" on page 240. He also points out that when we go with Bible translations that follow the critical or eclectic text, we can no longer defend biblical inerrancy since the "harder reading" is sometimes impossible.

In summary, I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in textual criticism, although it's good to be familiar with the basic terms before beginning this book. I have given it the highest rating I have ever given a book on this subject, and although I am not persuaded about his belief that God preserved the original GNT in one family of MSS (f35) especially, the book is well worth reading for its defense of the Byzantine text in general. And he has kindly made his Greek text and critical apparatus freely available online (and in book form, as well as an English translation), so you can do all the research you want to after you're through with the book!

[Phillip G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a much needed corrective to modern textual criticism. Wilbur Pickering unashamedly admits his presuppositions, roots his presuppositions in the Scripture, and uses them to evaluate the evidence. This is so important since there is no such thing as a brute uninterpreted "fact." Nor do men interpret the "facts" unprejudiced by their presuppositions. Just as evolutionists and creationists look at the same "facts" (bones, stones, sediments, etc) and come up with different conclusions, those who look at the "facts" of manuscript variations will come to different conclusions. Sadly, some evangelical textual critics do not realize they have adopted presuppositions hostile to the Scripture. I think that the "facts" of textual transmission are clear - God has preserved every word of the New Testament Greek in every age and in every part of the Mediterranean world. If we allow the Bible to inform our research, the evidence will be clear. This is not a TR defense. Nor is another eclectic approach. Man does not determine the text. Given the Biblical presuppositions, God has given us enough evidence that we can recognize what He has preserved. Obviously there is a lot more to this book than that, but I believe it sets the book apart from other naively "neutral" majority text books. I thoroughly enjoyed this book.

[Richard Bacon · Rating 3 out of 5]

The main difficulty I have with this book is the way in which it has been implemented in Kindle. The footnotes were originally intended to be at the foot of the same page to which they referred - an industry standard. But the Kindle implementation has made it difficult to see much more than the fact that the footnotes are interspersed with Pickering's text.

While this book may come with great recommendations by people who understand the issues with which Pickering writes, I would add that if I were buying this book today I would certainly buy a bound version rather than the e-version I bought.

[Micah Douglas · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book, by far the most thorough book I've read on the topic of the Greek NT text. I highly recommend this book to any who want to understand NT textual criticism, its history and its implications.

[Vagabond of Letters, DLitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

Astounding, and seemingly irrefutable. The best theological work self-published since Meredith Kline's early work, this is an underrated and underappreciates but nevertheless seminal work in the field of textual criticism of the Greek NT. Popular theories refuted, but, in a first, a positive identification of the original text of the Greek Testament is put forth, along with its transmission and diagnostic readings to clearly define its text-type - also a first, this book raises textual criticism to the level of a mostly-objective science instead of a solely subjective art. For each method or conclusion or canon refuted or demolished, another is asserted and cogently argued. I know of no other man nor method with the audacity to attempt to recover the original text of the Greek Testament, but Pickering, never too modest, has done it. To repeat, this is a seminal work, and like the work of Dembski and Behe in design in the created order, it will be recognized as the work of genius which set all of the science on a new and tenable path when the current, crumbling paradigm finally shifts after collapsing under its own weight.

A superlative five stars.