Western non-interpolations

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The term Western non-interpolations was coined by Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort and is used for certain short readings in the Greek text of the New Testament .

Westcott and Hort text types

The numerous manuscripts of the New Testament are classified by text critics into several text types of different characters. Westcott and Hort identified the following four basic types:

Westcott and Hort text types
Text type according to WH today's name
Syrian text type Byzantine text type, majority text
Alexandrian text type Alexandrian text type
western text type western text type
neutral text type Alexandrian text type (early form)

The Syrian (Byzantine) text type is predominant in the younger manuscripts, arose after Westcott and Hort from around 300 onwards from a combination of Western and Alexandrian text types, possibly in a review. The Alexandrian text type is characterized by linguistic smoothing. The Western text type was also created in Syria, but before the year 200, and is represented in the Old Latin and Syrian versions. It has unusual additions and extensions. The neutral text according to Westcott and Hort precedes the Alexandrian and Western texts and does not yet contain any distortions.

Affected text passages

The nine passages in Mt 27.49 are widely accepted; Lk 22: 19b-20; 24.3; 24.6; 24.12; 24.36; 24.40; 24.51; 24.52. Other possible passages are Mt 6:15; 9.34; 13.33; 21.44; 23.26; Mk 10.2; 14.39; Luke 5:39; 10.41-42; 12.21; 22.62; 24.9; Jn 4,9, Rom 6,16; 10.21; 16.20; 16: 25-27; 1st Cor. 15.3; 2 Cor 10: 12-13; Tim 5:19.

description

Texts of the Western text type are generally longer and contain additions or paraphrases and other peculiarities in many places, but there are some places that have shorter readings compared to the other text types. Westcott and Hort assumed in most cases that the readings of the Alexandrian type - represented in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus - are more original and therefore based their text output very heavily on this text type. According to one of the basic rules of textual criticism, a shorter reading (lectio brevior) is usually the more original. Westcott and Hort went on to assume that in some places these short western readings are more original if they match the old Latin and old Syrian translations, and called these passages Western non-interpolations . The term already implies the text-critical decision that the longer readings of the Alexandrian and Byzantine text are “interpolations”, i.e. subsequent insertions.

This theory led to Westcott and Hort's 1881 edition of The New Testament in the Original Greek "having overwhelmingly well-attested verses banished from the text into the apparatus." However, the theory could not be sufficiently substantiated on the basis of the papyrus manuscripts found later , which go back even further than the Codices Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. The Westcott and Hort concept of a neutral text type and the theory of Western non-interpolations were abandoned by the Nestle-Aland editorial committee from 1968 . The supposedly neutral text type Westcotts and Horts is now regarded as an early form of the Alexandrian text. The nine passages mentioned above in Mt 27.49; Luke 22: 19b – 20 and Luke 24 are accepted as Western non-interpolations, however, and the longer version is still placed in the footnotes or in brackets in the newer text editions of Nestle-Aland, the other passages are again included in the main text.

The readings go back a long way to about the 2nd century, but they arose after the separation between the Alexandrian text and the Western text. They are either an insertion in the Alexandrian text or an omission in an early Western text. Michael Wade Martin finds the 9 verses in Mt 27.49; Lk 22: 19b – 20 and Luke 24 a pattern that cannot be based on chance: All passages have contact with the Gospel of John, the intrinsic arguments speak both for and against Luke. Parsons and Ehrmann speak of an "orthodox corruption", there is a christological tendency, an anti- docetical corruption (Ehrmann) or an anti-separatist corruption (Martin). For Martin, this unique pattern of changes is proof that only a single writer is responsible for these changes, i.e. that they are not western omissions by different writers that happen to coincide. The insertions in the Alexandrian text are a testimony to the Christological debate of that time. With these insertions, however, no new statements were made or the teaching changed in any way, only the existing statements were clarified more clearly. All of these statements can be found in a similar form elsewhere with consistent content.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Nestle-Aland, Novum Testamentum Graece 26, p. 3 *, note 3.

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