I realize what I am about to write may be considered heresy by some. These are just thoughts rolling around in my head; I've come to no conclusions yet. When I think, I write. And I'm thinking. So I'm writing.

I'm re-reading the first few chapters of Aland & Aland's The Text of the New Testament (amazon.com). I didn't notice it last time I read this -- back when I was first imbibing in things text-critical -- but doggone this thing has an attitude, and the best word I can come up with to describe it is arrogance.

What Eberhard Nestle did was actually quite simple (a radical breakthrough is always simple in retrospect); he compare the texts of Tischedorf and of Westcott-Hort. Where the two differed, he consulted a third edition for a deciding vote. (Aland and Aland, 19)

It's the little parenthetical that doesn't need to be there but is. This sort of thing happens frequently (go ahead, give it a read). The only purpose this parenthetical serves is to puff up the first edition of Nestle as something special when it was just a majority-rules approach resting on the text-critical work that had gone before it. Nothing wrong with that, but here they make it sound like the practice was hugely radical. This is all the more strange for a comment 20 pages later:

Much in Tischendorf's apparatus may simply be ignored. For example, he regularly cites printed editions in support of variants, e.g., in verse 27 (third from last line) for the reading αυτου: ς^e Gb Sz Ln Ti. This means that the Textus Receptus in Elzevir's edition (ς^e) John Jakob Griesbach's editon of 1827 (Gb), Johannes Martin Augustinus Scholz in his edition of 1830-1836 (Sz), Karl Lachmann's edition of 1842-1850 (Ln) and Tischendorf in his edition of 1859 (Ti) read αυτου; such information is quite dated today and of no value. (Aland & Aland, 39)

So I'm confused. Nestle was a genius because he took as standard text where Tischendorf and W&H agreed (he used edition info to establish his text); but the editional information in Tischedorf's apparatus, which was published 20 years before Nestle's first edition, is useless? A&A go on to speak highly of other aspects of T's edition, but why heap scorn on this one? Especially when appendix 3 of NA27 shows differences of editions [including T!] for NA variants? Are they saying their own edition's appendix 3 is useless too, and may summarily be ignored? I just don't get it.

I won't even go into the disdain for the TR and anything associated with it; the examples are numerous and need not be recounted here. OK, one example will suffice:

... while one should beware of The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text by Arthur L. Farstad and Zane C. Hodges (1982) as an anachronism in every respect (A&A, 25).

Now I'm not a fan of Hodges & Farstad's work in that volume (punctuating, formatting and typesetting the Greek as if it was English?), but c'mon. It seems as if it has somehow been tainted by the shadow of the TR and therefore isn't even worth consideration.

One more thing that confuses me is that these first chapters are spent building up to the UBS/NA (but particularly the NA) as being the glory of glories of all Greek editions. They heap some elitist scorn on W&H for their edition, primarily because W&H didn't examine actual manuscripts but relied on critical editions to inform their work (A&A 18). The "non-Western interpolations" are mentioned in derision at least three times, if I recall correctly. Yet the all-glorious Nestle text (the 25th edition), by the counts in this very book, differs from W&H in only 558 places outside of orthorgraphical differences. (NB: just about 8000 verses in the NT, NA27 has 138,020 words. You do the math and figure the percentages). I'm unsure of the differences between NA25 and NA27.

So, NA is the bees-knees. W&H were hacks who could only use critical editions of texts and manuscripts as they stumbled to put together their text. Yet NA is built on top of that foundation and shares it to a very large portion. And NA are the geniuses? Sure, there is a lot of work they've done in the apparatus, and that's groovy. And they do give W&H credit to some (small) degree. But can't they admit that all they've done is re-examine the evidence (comprehensively, systematically) and then ended up changing W&H in a few places?

It's that attitude I can't get past as I read the book this time. Although in a mostly polite way, they treat older pre-WH editions lightly because they largely follow the TR. But NA follows W&H with slight modifications and it's oh-so-better? And NA/UBS *isn't* similar to the TR even though many non-Nestle editions of the past, say, 75 years (Souter, Tasker, Zondervan's Reader's GNT to name a few) are at least as WH-like as NA/UBS? (at least in the Pastorals which, yes, I have examined and compared).

I don't mean to slight the technical achievement behind the NA27 and UBS4 editions. It's awesome. And the work going on with the Editio Critica Maior is mind-boggling. I'm thrilled they're doing the work. But I don't want to slight W&H either. It was -- and still is, to large degree, as the work of NA has proved -- a useful edition. So drop the arrogance and get with it.

Oh, and lastly -- are we really at the point where the status of the Greek of the NT is really only in tweak mode without new major MS discoveries? If so, then I say it is time to begin re-questioning methodology. We can't be that good. Or is 'reasoned eclecticism' really that perfect?

OK, I'm off my soap box. But I might come back, you never know.

Update (2007-04-17): (Responding particularly to Tom Reynolds in the comments). Perhaps I should clarify; I'm not interested in promoting a TR position. I think Maurice Robinson is doing interesting things and that he isn't starting with a KJV-only presupposition (though I could be wrong) but I think the NA/UBS text should be the first consulted (and I'd pick NA if I had to choose between NA and UBS). If you've listened to any of Klaus Wachtel's papers at the SBL the past few years, you've heard him bring up some isolated Byzantine readings as serious possibilities. Not the majority theories per se; just a few readings. But NA/UBS is where we start. It is the best available text.

No, what I was responding to here was the tone in A&A's first few chapters. For all their hullabaloo about the poorness of the TR and the slips of W&H, their text isn't that different from either. They've just spear-headed the detail-work of looking everything up and providing first-hand-accounted evidence (so it's second-hand for you & me) for the readings. They haven't come up with a stupendously fabulous text -- in the vast majority it is the same text everyone else comes up with when they attack the problem (the Byzantine priorists being at greatest variance). Simply examining other Greek NT editions published in the 20th century (like Tasker, Souter, RGNT and some others) shows that everyone is dipping in the same pool; they're simply justifying their readings differently. NA/UBS definitely do the best job of justifying their readings (though I think the data presented in Reuben Swanson's volumes easier to understand and more handy to reference and get an idea of MSS trends and content, not individual variance).

While reading those few chapters, one thing in my head was John Lee's book A History of New Testament Lexicography (amazon.com). Lee conclusively demonstrates that most NT lexicons today (including the hallowed BDAG and BAAR) are essentially translations of translations of translations of 16th century work. Expanded with evidence, yes, but the important parts folks look at -- the glosses and basic definitions -- can be traced directly back in most cases. Are we really that good at lexicography too? Or is it time for another approach to the problem building on what we've learned?

That's what I couldn't help pondering as I read A&A, knowing I'd done collations of the Pastorals against W&H for several 20th century Greek NT editions. And they're all basically the same, apart from Byzantine/TR stuff and what would likely be J.K. Elliott's text based on his Greek Text of the Epistles to Timothy and Titus. The stuff folks actually use is the same, basically, from edition to edition. (I think that's just fine, BTW) And I can't reconcile that knowledge against the arrogance teeming through A&A's intro chapters. Why is their text so much better if it is the same?

I've surely beat this into the ground now. I do think there is room for growth in methodology, though; and I think that growth can come from places other than Muenster.