Patristic Evidence and the Textual Criticism of the New Testament
Of the three kinds of evidence which are used in ascertaining the text of the New Testament - namely, evidence supplied by Greek manuscripts, by early versions, and by scriptural quotations preserved in the writings of the Church Fathers - it is the last which involves the greatest diffculties and t...
| Published in: | New Testament studies |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Electronic/Print Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
[1972]
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| In: |
New Testament studies
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| IxTheo Classification: | HC New Testament |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (doi) |
| Summary: | Of the three kinds of evidence which are used in ascertaining the text of the New Testament - namely, evidence supplied by Greek manuscripts, by early versions, and by scriptural quotations preserved in the writings of the Church Fathers - it is the last which involves the greatest diffculties and the most problems. There are difficulties, first of all, in obtaining the evidence, not only because of the labour of combing through the very extensive literary remains of the Fathers in search of quotations from the New Testament, but also because satisfactory editions of the works of many of the Fathers have not yet been produced. More than once in earlier centuries an otherwise well-meaning editor accommodated the biblical quotations contained in a given patristic document to the current text of the New Testament against the authority of the manuscripts of the document.1 Part of the problem, more-over, is that exactly the same thing took place prior to the invention of printing. As Hort pointed out, ‘Whenever a transcriber of a patristic treatise was copying a quotation differing from the text to which he was accustomed, he had virtually two originals before him, one present to his eyes, the other to his mind; and if the difference struck him, he was not unlikely to treat the written examplar as having blundered.’2. |
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| ISSN: | 0028-6885 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: New Testament studies
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0028688500023705 |