"How We Got The New Testament" (Stanley Porter)--An Attempted Summary

I will keep adding to this review and editing until I feel that it's enough (satis est).

Stanley E. Porter. How We Got the New Testament: Text, Transmission, Translation (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2013).

This publication by Porter is part of the Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology and produced in cooperation with the Hayward Lectureship. As the title implies, Porter deals with textual, critical, and canonical issues throughout the book with the principal focus being on the New Testament and how it was transmitted to us.

Porter discusses textual criticism, Bart Ehrman, eclecticism, Greek manuscripts, codexes, miniscules, lectionaries and translation issues. Believe it or not, the book is relatively short at 240 pages--in today's world of academia, that is short, but Porter covers quite a bit of ground in these pages and his erudition shines through brilliantly.

I will briefly review some highlights of the publication, but the main question which Porter seeks to address is how did we get the New Testament. Furthermore, what is its origin? While admitting that many have already sought to answer this query, the publication nevertheless strikes out again to shed fresh light on the subject. The terrain is a familiar one for Porter, yet does he offer anything new?

How We Got the New Testament attempts to provide some justification for the book (its responding to critics like the Jesus Seminar, Tom Harpur, and presumably, Bart Ehrman) and Porter supplies the background reasons for his work all while pointing readers to works for further reading that he could not interact with in this publication. He seems at pains to justify the raison d'être of the book and it's possible that he spends more time than necessary anguishing about yet another contribution to the canon and transmission debate of the New Testament, but I'm inclined to let his introductory comments slide. In the midst of his justification, he tries to disambiguate the general thesis of this book, namely, what do we mean by "the New Testament"? Part of the book is spent answering this question and related queries.

Porter starts his discussion in earnest with the story of John Brown from Haddington, Scotland: Brown acquired a Greek New Testament by reading a passage to a professor of Greek, Francis Pringle. The story could have been better connected to what follows, but the book moves from John Brown, his love for the GNT and accomplishments, to A.T. Robertson's view of the Greek New Testament. At this point, Porter begins to answer questions about the content of the GNT and what the goals of textual criticism allegedly are. He insists that "The traditional opinion of the purpose of textual criticism of the Greek New Testament is, ideally, to find the original autograph that the author wrote. Failing that, the purpose is to work back through the manuscript evidence to arrive at the earliest form of the text and then, through principles of textual criticism, to posit or reconstruct what the original text must have been."

The book then proceeds to survey writers or scholars, who explicitly state that the aims of textual criticism are to retrieve and discover the original biblical text: the names range from Erasmus, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort to Eberhard Nestle. The focus in this part of Porter's work is on nineteenth-century scholars; however, not much changes in the twentieth century with Frederic Kenyon, Alexander Souter, Kirsopp Lake, Harold Greenlee, Bruce Metzger, and the Alands. J.K. Elliott and Ian Moir (two contemporary textual critics) are added to this list. Porter then considers recent proposals in the field of textual criticism as he briefly discusses examples of texts that were possibly altered due to theological or social settings. In the midst of this discussion, an interesting quote appears from E.C. Colwell: "Ernest Cadman Colwell went so far as to claim, 'In the manuscripts of the New Testament most variations . . . were made deliberately,' and he believed that it was for doctrinal reasons that most changes were introduced." Porter posits another reason for the changes: they were largely accidental.

Some verses that textual critics like to analyze include John 5:3-4; Acts 8:37; 1 Timothy 3:16 and 1 John 5:7-8 (the Johannine Comma). Porter simply mentions these verses in passing before moving on to Bart Ehrman's The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture. Ehrman attributes various scriptural "corruptions" to four primary theological controversies (anti-adoptionist, anti-separationist, anti-docetic, and anti-patripassionist views), but Porter criticizes his treatment of Luke 3:22 where Ehrman prefers the reading, "You are my son, today I have begotten you." But the lectio appears to be later than the variant, "You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased." Porter concludes that Ehrman's treatment is potentially misleading and apparently inadequate.

On the other hand, regarding 1 John 4:3, Ehrman opts for the reading, "does not confess" rather than "looses/separates." Porter notes that "loose/separate" is certainly not the original reading--it was probably developed as a result of anti-docetic controversies and the reading is late. On the other hand, it seems more difficult to ascertain why this particular change was made. Regardless of why certain alterations were made to the GNT, Porter maintains that 80-90% of the text is "unquestionably established" based on the extant manuscripts: there is no good reason to believe that the GNT as a whole is unstable or fluid.

Porter relates how the GNT came to be published after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the advent of the printing press. Despite some formidable impediments, the first GNT was printed in 1514 CE: this was sixty years after the advent of movable-type printing. This GNT was part of the famed Complutensian Polyglot and because papal approval for the project was required, this GNT was neither distributed nor published until 1522 CE. While the underlying text behind the Polyglot Greek text is less than certain, Porter says it probably utilized Vatican MSS that reflected the Byzantine textual tradition.

How We Got the New Testament continues with the story of Erasmus, the Dutch humanist and translator. We learn that his GNT was riddled with errors, both typographical and in terms of the Greek that Erasmus employed for his GNT: Greek not found in any other MS. He had good intentions since he wanted even the common person to read the Bible, but his edition is full of mistakes.

Porter tells a story I've read elsewhere concerning Erasmus: he was accused of leaving out the Johannine Comma from his GNT, that is, 1 John 5:7-8. Erasmus evidently replied that he found no textual evidence for the famed Trinitarian affirmation and that included Codex Vaticanus (03 B). However, Erasmus promised to include the Comma in his edition of the GNT if just one single MS could be brought forth with the words, "the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear witness in earth.” Likely to Erasmus' dismay, a MS now called Gregory 61 was produced, and it contained the Johannine Comma. The spurious text thus made its way into the Erasmian text and later, the KJV. Yet the Dutch humanist questioned the authenticity of the lectio: Porter thinks he was wise to doubt the reading because it is spurious:

Metzger notes that this passage has been found only in three other manuscripts: Gregory 88 (twelfth century), in which it is written marginally in a seventeenth-century hand; Tischendorf ω 110 (sixteenth-century copy of the Greek text of the Complutensian Polyglot); and Gregory 629 (fourteenth century or later). The so-called Johannine Comma does appear in the Latin treatise Liber apologeticus (fourth century), attributed to Priscillian or Instantius. The Johannine Comma appears for the first time in Latin Vulgate manuscripts around AD 800.

After discussing the Johannine Comma, Porter then reviews developments that occurred after various editions of Erasmus' GNT were published. We then learn about the Textus Receptus, a theologian named John Mill, Johann Bengel, Johann Semler, Johann Griesbach, Karl Lachmann, Constantin Tischendorf, Westcott-Hort and others who played a large role in supplying us with the present GNT.

Porter moves forward in time to the twentieth century as he reviews developments like the International Greek New Testament Project (1948), the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung which introduced the Editio Critica Maior in 1969. Michael Holmes makes an appearance in the discussion, and Porter is less than thrilled with his methodology concerning the SBLGNT. Regarding that project, the book states: "This may not be the best way forward in textual criticism of the Greek New Testament." The prior comments Porter makes about Holmes sting even more.

I will end this summary by noting that Porter explains the difference between the Textus Receptus, the Majority text and the Byzantine text. This discussion eventually leads him to answer the question, which edition of the Greek text should we study?

This summary has only dealt with a portion of Porter's book: I've read the entire work and think it's worthwhile, helpful, and written well like many of his books.