Slide 19 of 22
Notes:
Use information from "Witnesses in the Textual Apparatus" about dating and the "Text-Types and Witnesses" chart from the Textual Criticism handout to evaluate the evidence that has been laid out in the previous step. The chart gives geographic (left margin) and portion of NT (top margin) information. Generally, top of chart is earlier and better, bottom later and of lesser weight. Weighting also depends not on quantity but quality and distribution. One or two early (good) manuscripts can outweigh a host of later (poorer) manuscripts that simply reproduce the same late reading. A reading that seems to be present throughout the tradition (appears in all geographic distributions) may be stronger than one that appears in only one area.
- Note relative date of manuscript witnesses: early or late? (a more definitive listing of manuscripts with their dates is included in the Appendix of the Nestle-Aland text.
- Check geographic distribution of witnesses: any clusters? early or late?
- Note genealogical relationships: predominantly Alexandrian, Western, or Byzantine?
- Evaluate overall relative quality of witnesses on basis of 1 - 3.
In our practice example in the two slides above from Mark 1:40, note that all the alternatives except the second, include the "bowing down". Thus the decision is basically whether or not the reference to "bowing down" belongs in the text or not. The reading to omit is not strong and seems perhaps a corruption by harmonization with Matthew. Of the other alternatives the strongest manuscript support seems to belong that incorporated into the text. The expanded reading with aujtovn added is grammatically cumbersome and supported largely by later tradition.
