The New Testament in the original Greek - Introduction and Appendix (1882)/Prefatory Remarks
INTRODUCTION
1. This edition is an attempt to present exactly the original words of the New Testament, so far as they can now be determined from surviving documents. Since the testimony delivered by the several documents or witnesses is full of complex variation, the original text cannot be elicited from it without the use of criticism, that is, of a process of distinguishing and setting aside those readings which have originated at some link in the chain of transmission. This Introduction is intended to be a succinct account (i) of the reasons why criticism is still necessary for the text of the New Testament; (ii) of what we hold to be the true grounds and methods of criticism generally; (iii) of the leading facts in the documentary history of the New Testament which appear to us to supply the textual critic with secure guidance; and (iv) of the manner in which we have ourselves endeavoured to embody the results of criticism in the present text.
2. The office of textual criticism, it cannot be too clearly understood at the outset, is always secondary and always negative. It is always secondary, since it comes into play only where the text transmitted by the existing documents appears to be in error, either because they differ from each other in what they read, or for some other sufficient reason. With regard to the great bulk of the words of the New Testament, as of most other ancient writings, there is no variation or other ground of doubt, and therefore no room for textual criticism; and here therefore an editor is merely a transcriber. The same may be said with substantial truth respecting those various readings which have never been received, and in all probability never will be received, into any printed text. The proportion of words virtually accepted on all hands as raised above doubt is very great, not less, on a rough computation, than seven eighths of the whole. The remaining eighth therefore, formed in great part by changes of order and other comparative trivialities, constitutes the whole area of criticism. If the principles followed in the present edition are sound, this area may be very greatly reduced. Recognising to the full the duty of abstinence from peremptory decision in cases where the evidence leaves the judgement in suspense between two or more readings, we find that, setting aside differences of orthography, the words in our opinion still subject to doubt only make up about one sixtieth of the whole New Testament. In this second estimate the proportion of comparatively trivial variations is beyond measure larger than in the former; so that the amount of what can in any sense be called substantial variation is but a small fraction of the whole residuary variation, and can hardly form more than a thousandth part of the entire text. Since there is reason to suspect that an exaggerated impression prevails as to the extent of possible textual corruption in the New Testament, which might seem to be confirmed by language used here and there in the following pages, we desire to make it clearly understood beforehand how much of the New Testament stands in no need of a textual critic's labours.
3. Again, textual criticism is always negative, because its final aim is virtually nothing more than the detection and rejection of error. Its progress consists not in the growing perfection of an ideal in the future, but in approximation towards complete ascertainment of definite facts of the past, that is, towards recovering an exact copy of what was actually written on parchment or papyrus by the author of the book or his emanuensis. Had all intervening transcriptions been perfectly accurate, there could be no error and no variation in existing documents. Where there is variation, there must be error in at least all variants but one; and the primary work of textual criticism is merely to discriminate the erroneous variants from the true.
4. In the case indeed of many ill preserved ancient writings textual criticism has a further and a much more difficult task, that of detecting and removing corruptions affecting the whole of the existing documentary evidence. But in the New Testament the abundance, variety, and comparative excellence of the documents confines this task of pure 'emendation' within so narrow limits that we may leave it out of sight for the present, and confine our attention to that principal operation of textual criticism which is required whenever we have to decide between the conflicting evidence of various documents.