Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901)

If you're the sort who prefers Shakespeare to modern drama, this book may be for you.

New Testament textual criticism is the term used for comparing ancient copies of the New Testament and using them to determine the original text which stood behind all those corrupted copies. (And, yes, they're corrupt; there are thousands of them, and they don't agree.)

Textual criticism has existed since the beginning of printing, and even earlier, but it wasn't until the nineteenth century that it became serious and scholars started to look at the earliest manuscripts. Finally, at the end of the nineteenth century, Westcott and Hort sat down and created a theory to explain what they found in the manuscripts -- and used that theory to edit the New Testament.

This is the book that explains their theory, which classified manuscripts as "Neutral," "Alexandrian," "Western," and "Syrian." And although most moderns don't quite accept this theory (they call the "Syrian" text "Byzantine," and combine the "Neutral" and "Alexandrian" texts), the texts they edit are still very much like Westcott and Hort.

A lot about this book is difficult. New Testament scholars now use different symbols for the manuscripts, which must be translated. Hort's examples usually are not real world; they're mostly hypothetical. And the style is rather stiff. But if you don't understand Westcott and Hort, you aren't a modern New Testament textual critic. This book changed everything.… (meer)