of riches with regard to sources of information about the New Testament text. Unlike many classical texts, which have been preserved in only a few late copies or, in extreme cases, only a single, now-destroyed copy, there exist today thousands of copies of the New Testament in several ancient languages. In addition, almost all of the Greek New Testament can be reconstructed on the basis of quotations by ancient writers. For ease of reference scholars have grouped these sources under three headings: Greek manuscripts, ancient versions, and patristic citations.
Greek Manuscripts
The Greek manuscripts are categorized, somewhat arbitrar-
ily, on the basis of either writing material, style, or format. First
are the papyri, manuscripts of the Greek New Testament written on papyrus, an ancient paper-like writing material. These MSS, which include some of the oldest surviving cop- are designated by a Gothic followed by a superscript
Arabic numeral (e.g., Today the remains of about ninety- six papyrus MSS are known, most of which are extremely
104 I Michael W. Holmes
fragmentary. Some of the better preserved and more important witnesses in this category include p45 (third century; substantial parts of Gospels and Acts), (ca. 200; Pauline epistles),
(ca. 200; large parts of centuries; parts of
1-2 Peter, Jude), and (early third century; over half of Luke and
Continuous-text Greek MSS written on material other than papyrus (usually parchment, though after the twelfth century increasingly on paper) are subdivided on the basis of writing style. Uncial MSS (MSS written in a formal literary style of unconnected capital letters) initially were designated by letters of the alphabet; when these proved insufficient, the Greek and then Hebrew alphabets were used. Because of the confusion engendered, numbers prefixed with a zero (e.g., 01, 02) were eventually assigned to these MSS. Today only the most famous of the uncials continue to be known by their original letters; these include codices mid-fourth century), early fifth century), early fourth Bezae (D/05; fifth century), Washingtonianus
(W/032; centuries), and (0/038; ninth
century). Today about 263 uncial MSS are
Minuscule MSS were written in a smaller cursive style that was developed in the eighth or ninth As this style was faster and more space-efficient than the uncial, it enabled books to be produced more cheaply. Minuscule MSS are identified by a simple Arabic numeral; the list now runs through at least Some of the more significant minuscules include groups or "families" headed by 1 and 13 (symbols: and and 28, 33, 81, 323, 565, 614, 700, 892, 1241, 1424, 1739, and 2495.
are books containing selections from Scripture for use in worship and other services. These comprise the final category of Greek witnesses, and are identified by an Arabic number preceded by a script ell (e.g., Over twenty-two hundred MSS are known to exist today.
In all, something over five thousand witnesses to the Greek New Testament are extant today. Many (if not most) of these, it should be noted, are fragmentary or incomplete. Only three uncials and C/04) and fifty-six minuscules contain the New Testament; another two uncials and 147 minuscules lack only As for content, the Gospels are found in 2,328 MSS, the Acts and Catholic letters in 655, the Pauline letters in 779, and Revelation in 287. With regard to
Textual Criticism I 105
date, over sixty-five percent are from the eleventh through fourteenth centuries, while less than two and a half percent
(125 total) are from the first five Ancient Versions
As Christianity spread into regions and social strata where
Greek was not understood, there arose the need for translations of the New Testament. By about 180 the process of translating the New Testament into Latin, Syriac, and Coptic was underway. The Latin eventually developed into at least two major forms, the Old Latin or and the Vulgate (of which over 8000 MSS are known), while the Syriac and Coptic exist in a number of versions and dialects. Later translations include Armenian, Georgian, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic; in several instances these translations were the first literary work in that particular language, and occasionally, as in the case of the Gothic, an alphabet first had to be
Because the roots of some of these early versions antedate the vast majority of the Greek MSS, they are valuable historical witnesses to the transmission of the New Testament text, particularly regarding the form of the text in various regions or provinces. Limitations, however, in the ability of these lan- guages to represent aspects of Greek grammar and syntax Latin has no definite article) restrict their value at some
Patristic Citations
Early Christian writers frequently quoted the New Testa- ment in their writings and sermons, often at length, and many wrote commentaries on it. Together these constitute another important source of information about the New Testament text. "Indeed, so extensive are these citations that if all other sources for our knowledge of the text of the New Testament were destroyed, they would be sufficient alone for the reconstruction of practically the entire New Their particular value lies in the help they provide in dating and localizing variant readings and text-types. Like the versions, however, their value is sometimes limited, in this case by a tendency to cite from memory or adapt a quotation to its context. Thus it can be difficult to determine whether a reading represents a genuine Greek variant or merely the author's adaptation of the
106 I Michael W. Holmes
Nevertheless, these citations represent an important additional source of information.
The sheer volume of the information available to the New Testament textual critic makes it practically certain that the original text has been preserved somewhere among the surviv-
ing Thus only very rarely is it necessary to consider the possibility of textual emendation (the proposal of a reading
not found in any extant witness). This is in sharp contrast to the
textual criticism of the Old classical, and patristic texts where textual emendation is routinely necessary.
CLASSIFICATION AND GENEALOGICAL