In his "review" of Jason BeDuhn's Truth in Translation, Dr. Trevor Allin criticizes BeDuhn and the NWTC for using the Westcott-Hort Greek text rather than employing the Nestle-Aland/Nestle Greek text. In order to substantiate his objections, he quotes Phillip Comfort, who does mention the limitations of using the WH text, but his comments do not prove that the NWTC made the wrong decision to utilize WH. I will first quote Comfort, then I will include a link that explains why the NWTC chose to use the WH Greek text. It's not as nefarious as Allin makes it sound, and Comfort actually speaks highly of WH while recognizing its limitations.
"In my opinion, the text produced by Westcott and Hort (The New Testament in the Original Greek) is still to this day, even with so many more manuscript discoveries, a very close reproduction of the primitive text of the New Testament. Of course, I think they gave too much weight to Codex Vaticanus alone, and this needs to be tempered. This criticism aside, the Westcott and Hort text is extremely reliable. I came to this conclusion after doing my own textual studies. In many instances where I would disagree with the wording in the Nestle/UBS text in favor of a particular variant reading, I would later check with the Westcott and Hort text and realize that they had often come to the same decision. This revealed to me that I was working on the same methodological basis as they. Of course, the manuscript discoveries of the past one hundred years have changed things, but it is remarkable how often they have affirmed the decisions of Westcott and Hort. Since their era, hundreds of other manuscripts have been discovered, especially the New Testament papyri. Had Westcott and Hort been alive today, they would have been pleased to see that several of the early papyri affirm their view that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are reliable witnesses of a very primitive form of the Greek New Testament text. They would have undoubtedly altered some of their textual choices based on the evidence of the papyri. For example, the testimony of 75 (with and B) in several Lukan passages clearly indicates that Westcott and Hort were wrong to have excluded several passages in Luke 22–24 based on their theory of 'Western noninterpolations.' "
Comfort, Phillip. Encountering the Manuscripts (Kindle Locations 2841-2851). B&H Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
Compare https://wol.jw.org/en/wol/d/r1/lp-e/1970927
Guess whose Greek text that Nestle's was partly based on?
Sporadic theological and historical musings by Edgar Foster (Ph.D. in Theology and Religious Studies and one of Jehovah's Witnesses).
Interesting, I also wondered why they based it on the WT and not newer editions.
ReplyDeleteHi Roman, in addition to what I posted, I found other info that shows how monumental the achievements of Westcott and Hort were. There is a book by Stanley Porter and another author about textual criticism. I mined numerous quotes from that work that show the importance of WH. Eve today, textual critics say that most of their findings turned out to be correct.
ReplyDeletehadnt noticed this till now (silly me)
ReplyDelete(Thank you for doing this Edgar it is much appreciated & very helpful)