Mark Goodacre provides a link to a story about how Reuben Swanson is passing along his collection of MS facsimiles (microfiche, print editions, etc.) to Kent Clarke, professor of religious studies at Trinity Western University (about an hour from Bellingham ... yippee!).

I've written about Dr. Swanson's work on ricoblog before. His stuff is impressive and helpful; I'm looking forward to seeing Dr. Clarke take up the baton and run with it. And if he needs any help with the Pastoral Epistles ... I'm just an hour away (ha, ha, only half-joking!)

But in reading the story posted on Newswise, I came across the following paragraph. In a Jim-Davila-inspired moment,* I decided I needed to post about it. Here's the paragraph in question:

One notable collation scrutinized by Swanson’s critical edition is Constantine Von Tischendorff’s eighth edition of the Greek New Testament. This book is generally regarded as the most accurate edition of the Greek Bible, and it’s critical editions such as this that most modern English translations—such as the New International Version (NIV)—are based upon.

First, they've misspelled Tischendorf's name. And there's the phrase "... and it's critical editions such as this ..." that needs to be rewritten. But I'll leave issues of spelling and grammar aside and get on with the textual stuff.

I'm willing to be wrong, but I've never heard that Tischendorf's eighth major edition is "generally regarded as the most accurate edition of the Greek Bible". Seems like there's some confusion between Tischendorf's eighth major edition and Codex Sinaiticus.

I'll grant that Sinaiticus is one of the oldest, most complete manuscripts available and that it is relied upon heavily in textual criticism. And one major aspect of Swanson's approach is to use Vaticanus as the primary text in contrast to Sinaiticus. But the claim of "most accurate" seems difficult to substantiate.

Also, the NIV isn't based on Tischendorf's text. I don't know of a single modern translation based on Tischendorf's text. To be fair, the paragraph doesn't explicitly say that, but they sure leave it ambiguous.  The NA/UBS text (which is at least the text most textual scholars agree to use as the basis for translated editions) differs from Tischendorf's in numerous places. I don't have the counts handy or distributable, but yes, I've done the raw comparisons.

I'm guessing that numerous facts are conflated in the paragraph excerpted from the article. I'm guessing they're trying to note the following:

• Tischendorf was a stud. I've said this before, it bears mentioning again.
• Tischendorf found Sinaiticus, and much of his eighth edition was influenced by that great and valuable find.
• Sinaiticus is way old. Fourth century old.
• Sinaiticus contains a complete NT and much of the OT, as well as some other stuff (Barnabas, Hermas, etc.)
• Textual critics love Sinaiticus because of its antiquity and completeness, and because the story of the discovery is so cool. (ok, I added the bit about the cool discovery).
• Tischendorf's Sinaiticus-flavored eighth major edition was eclectic; he considered variant readings where variants existed and went with what made most sense to him according to his method of text criticism.
• Tischendorf's eighth major edition was a massive work and its scholarship is still valuable today.** His representation of the textual variants is still the most complete listing of variants in one place (though Deustche Bibelgesellschaft's Editio Critica Maior may very well displace it, whenever it gets finished).
• Modern translations of the NT are typically based on these eclectic editions of the Greek NT, not on particular manuscripts (e.g. Sinaiticus or Vaticanus).
• Swanson uses Vaticanus (another fourth-century MS) as his primary text and lists variants to Vaticanus aligned beneath the Vaticanus line. This is how Swanson "scrutinizes" Sinaiticus.  

Ok, I'm done. I'm still stoked about that collection only being about an hour away from where I live. Anyone with a TWU library pass want to take me to the library for a visit?

Update (2005-05-19): Thanks to Mark Goodacre for the note and link from NT Gateway Weblog. And thanks to Stephen C. Carlson (Hypotyposeis) for his comment below (despite his busy schedule wrapping up his forthcoming book) and his clarification that Tischendorf is highly regarded due to his critical apparatus, not the text of his edition. Note that I've also made a few edits above and swapped some things around.

Update (2005-05-23): Thanks to Jim Davila for linking from PaleoJudaica. It's always a compliment to have a link from PaleoJudaica.com. I just had no idea I was so quotable. Be sure to check PaleoJudaica for, as Dr. Davila puts it, another example of "cool ancient manuscripts and creative technoligies for reading them".

* Dr. Davila's CARG Biblioblogger abstract notes:

I will also discuss some of the uses to which I and other bibliobloggers have put our blogs, such as commenting on and supplementing media stories in our areas of expertise; noting errors (which frequently are rife) in such stories; reporting on scholarly conferences we've attended; sharing our preliminary thoughts on our research; and sometimes providing advance summaries of scholarly work we are publishing.

** I've written a recent blog post that compares Tischendorf's apparatus to the NA27 apparatus.