Customer Reviews

Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism: Revised Edition

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If there are so many copies of manuscripts of the original autographs of the bible, and if these don't always agree with one another, how do we know which ones are correct? This is what J. Harold Greenlee answers in his concise primer on textual criticism.

Greenlee gives an excellent defintion of textual criticism in his book. It is "the study of copies of any written work of which the autograph (the original) is unknown, with the purpose of ascertaining the original text."

The book gives understandable information on the early materials used for writing such as leaves, potsherds, papyrus, vellum, and paper and on styles of handwriting. Greenlee explains the sources of the New Testament text which are Greek manuscripts, versions, and the Patristic quotations. He also gives a valuable lesson on the differnt types of variants within the text.

I highly recommend this book for those who are wanting to know more about the background of the bible and how all the pieces fit together in the process of trying to get to an original text.

Great chart in this book for analyzing the textual aparatus in the UBS. Other than that, Greenlee is clear and concise. Recommended.

This is a good intermediate work on textual criticism. The first section of the book on paleography is very strong. There are some interesting etymological insights behind the different elements that make up the various materials for copying and preservation of texts. The explanations for codices and their development over time was also helpful. Figure 4 on page 23 is excellent for communicating the changes over time of forms of transmission of the text. The coverage of the various uncials and miniscules versions was very extensive adding a lot of helpful explanation. The development of text types and a history of the development of critical apparatus' brings one up to speed on much of the history of textual criticism. The treatment of each critical apparatus' notation methods was a bit tedious and hard to follow. Its hard to imagine really getting that section without tracking along with the apparatus under discussion to truly apprehend it. A major criticism I have with the book is that it frequently quotes Greek passages as examples with no English translation. This is no problem for the strong Greek student but I think it makes the work inaccessible in some areas for those who are not as up to speed in their Greek. Overall I thought it did a pretty good job of treating the various types of Scribal errors and gave some good practical examples. I think David Alan Black's short work is much more concise compared to this book in this area but you will get the same information here. Overall, a good intermediate work in my opinion.

I used this book as an introduction to Greek New Testament textual criticism. I found the chart very helpful and with it I was able to practice what the book instructed. I understand that Greenlee's work has been critiqued since he does not necessarily deal with the more difficult text-critical passages/issues. However, I think this is so because his purpose is not a critical introduction to textual criticism but a basic how-to manual with some background information. With this understood I think that this book is a good spring-board into the discussion along with Metzger's companion to the UBS and the usual Aland, Metzger and Black. In sum, for a tradition that is so rich and deep this book fulfills the introductory goals set forth by the writer.