Here’s something that two otherwise competing methods of New Testament textual criticism agree on, at least according to their two main proponents. Both reasoned eclecticism and the Byzantine priority position have in common that external evidence should be considered prior to internal evidence.
Here’s Mike Holmes:
This is not unlike a suggestion made—to bring thoroughgoing eclecticism into the discussion—by J. K. Elliott. He says,
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Here’s Mike Holmes:
To put the matter more briefly and abstractly, it is by means of external evidence that we identify the oldest surviving reading(s), which we then further evaluate by means of internal considerations.Here’s Maurice Robinson:
In this system, final judgment on readings requires the strong application of internal evidence after an initial evaluation of the external data has been made.I would be interested to know if Mike thinks this priority is fundamental to reasoned eclecticism. I wouldn’t think so since a consideration of transcriptional probabilities may influence the weight one gives to a manuscript’s text, a weight which subsequently informs which readings deserve further evaluation on internal grounds. There is, obviously, a circularity here, but a “fruitful” one as some have described it rather than a viscous one.
This is not unlike a suggestion made—to bring thoroughgoing eclecticism into the discussion—by J. K. Elliott. He says,
To be really thorough I suggest that we do our textual criticism eclectically without bowing to preconceived theories about the alleged superiority of certain witnesses. Then, having done our work, I suggest that we review the behavior of individual witnesses—in effect, rate them. Those that fall below a certain level of accuracy would in the future be regarded with some suspicion.Oddly, he then says that “I cannot claim that that is an overriding interest or concern of thoroughgoing eclecticism” which seems to undermine his suggestion.
Sources
- Michael W. Holmes, “The Case for Reasoned Eclecticism,” in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. David Alan Black (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), p. 78.
- Maurice A. Robinson, “Appendix: The Case for Byzantine Priority,” in The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, ed. Maurice A. Robinson and William G. Pierpont (Southborough, MA: Chilton, 2005), p. 545.
- J. K. Elliott, “The Case for Thoroughgoing Eclecticism,” in Rethinking New Testament Textual Criticism, ed. David Alan Black (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002), p. 123.