Steven Avery
Administrator
https://www.facebook.com/groups/NTTextualCriticism/posts/7704420642978202/
Can we have confidence despite the many variances of NT manuscripts?
“Bentley, at once the profoundest and the most daring of English critics: "The real text of the sacred writers does not now (since the originals have been so long lost) lie in any MS. or edition, but is dispersed in them all. 'Tis competently exact indeed in the worst MS. now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them; choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings." And again: "Make your 30,000 [variations] as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity, but that every feature of it will still be the same." Thus hath God's Providence kept from harm the treasure of His written word, so far as is needful for the quiet assurance of His church and people.”-
A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament for the Use of Biblical Students by
Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener
Can we have confidence despite the many variances of NT manuscripts?
“Bentley, at once the profoundest and the most daring of English critics: "The real text of the sacred writers does not now (since the originals have been so long lost) lie in any MS. or edition, but is dispersed in them all. 'Tis competently exact indeed in the worst MS. now extant; nor is one article of faith or moral precept either perverted or lost in them; choose as awkwardly as you will, choose the worst by design, out of the whole lump of readings." And again: "Make your 30,000 [variations] as many more, if numbers of copies can ever reach that sum all the better to a knowing and a serious reader, who is thereby more richly furnished to select what he sees genuine. But even put them into the hands of a knave or a fool, and yet with the most sinistrous and absurd choice, he shall not extinguish the light of any one chapter, nor so disguise Christianity, but that every feature of it will still be the same." Thus hath God's Providence kept from harm the treasure of His written word, so far as is needful for the quiet assurance of His church and people.”-
A Plain Introduction to the Criticism of the New Testament for the Use of Biblical Students by
Frederick Henry Ambrose Scrivener