Subject: Critical Text vs. Received Text |
Bible Note: Nolan, Actually, the Critical and the Majority are almost identical in Revelation, it's the Received Text that has so many variations. (I think the reason is that the fella that put the text together only had 6 Greek texts and all of them were missing portions of Revelation, so he translated the Latin Vulgate BACK to Greek.) Actually, the Majority Text is 'critically' appraised just like the Critical Text, but the two oldest manuscripts, which are the basis for the CT, are not given extra weight.(At least this is my understanding, I'm often wrong on these issues and my memory is not always reliabe! Darkness to Light is quite thorough on this issue, but you will have to ignore some of the reformed theology talk!) The Majority Text does give older manuscripts more weight, but not as disproprtiantly as the Critical. I would simply like a NASB Bible with all the variants between the CT and MT compared, in the back of the Bible or in the margin, like the NKJV. Unfortunately, the NKJV uses the RT and shows variants between the RT and MT and CT, so you end up looking in the margins more than you do in the text! (slight exaggeration:-) I also noticed that a new translation , the Holman Christian Standard Bible lables all varients but it doesn't tell you which is a varient from the MT verses a variant from the RT, HCSB uses the CT for the text. I don't trust the RT if the MT does not agree with it, see I Jn 5:7b in a KJV or NKJV, "For there are three that bear witness (in heaven: the Father, the Word, and the Holy Spirit; and these three are one.)" The brackets show what amount of this verse is in neither the MT nor the CT! This addition is only in a handful of manuscripts, and I do believe there was some tampering with the holy Scripture but it was late (after 1000AD?) shortly before the printing press. These variants are clearly weeded out by the Majority Text. One other note, an honest consideration of the book of Hebrews forces one to admit that the writer was using the LXX for quotations rather than the Hebrew Old Testament. And, some of the quotations used are not found in the Hebrew OT, so if GOD decided that the LXX was good enough for quotations in the NT, any of these three mss will lead us to the truth! GOD bless! |