Ploutos
Puritan Board Graduate
In another thread I've been "blogging" a lot of unedited thoughts as I attempt my first cover-to-cover read-through of an exegetical commentary. The author of that commentary (on Matthew) goes into considerable detail on his translational choices, and one concept that comes up quite frequently is that of "assimilation". He doesn't explicitly state this, but there are many instances where he seems to rank a particular variant as less likely to be original if it seems to have been subject to later editing to bring the syntax or meaning in line with parallel passages in the other Synoptics.
With my VERY limited knowledge of issues of text criticism, I have tended to give more weight toward the TR and toward the Byzantine family of texts, with the guiding principle that one incredibly ancient text does not necessarily outweigh a hundred more recent texts that may have been based on a now-lost ancient text that was deemed to be more authoritative/reliable for copying. This idea of assimilation (which I would guess, off the cuff, does not come up anywhere else besides the Synoptics in NT text criticism) has given me a bit of pause though. The repeated point made by the commentator in question is that where there are variants, it seems less likely that the copyist would omit a phrase or intentionally change something as opposed to harmonizing the text with Mark or Luke.
The commentator seems to be driven by a desire to prioritize internal consistency of Matthew's writing style, which I respect, but also by a preference for reading a shorter variant as more likely to be original (a tenant of textual criticism I've never been sure I agree with). That said, this idea of assimilation also carries with it the somewhat uncomfortable insinuation that later copyists would willingly tamper with the manuscripts - or, perhaps, the even stranger insinuation that they would do so unconsciously. On the other hand, if the "harmonized" manuscripts reflected more closely harmonized originals, this could explain why those texts were chosen for copying, while the more ancient manuscripts in fact represent a rejected or less-faithful text tradition (sloppy editing? latent Marcionism? beta version of Apple's speech-to-text?).
While it's with a bit of trepidation that I open yet another text criticism thread, it would be valuable to me to get input on this topic. It's been very thought-provoking to engage not just with the text of Matthew at such depth but also with broader concepts that spill over into how I read and interpret other parts of Scripture.
With my VERY limited knowledge of issues of text criticism, I have tended to give more weight toward the TR and toward the Byzantine family of texts, with the guiding principle that one incredibly ancient text does not necessarily outweigh a hundred more recent texts that may have been based on a now-lost ancient text that was deemed to be more authoritative/reliable for copying. This idea of assimilation (which I would guess, off the cuff, does not come up anywhere else besides the Synoptics in NT text criticism) has given me a bit of pause though. The repeated point made by the commentator in question is that where there are variants, it seems less likely that the copyist would omit a phrase or intentionally change something as opposed to harmonizing the text with Mark or Luke.
The commentator seems to be driven by a desire to prioritize internal consistency of Matthew's writing style, which I respect, but also by a preference for reading a shorter variant as more likely to be original (a tenant of textual criticism I've never been sure I agree with). That said, this idea of assimilation also carries with it the somewhat uncomfortable insinuation that later copyists would willingly tamper with the manuscripts - or, perhaps, the even stranger insinuation that they would do so unconsciously. On the other hand, if the "harmonized" manuscripts reflected more closely harmonized originals, this could explain why those texts were chosen for copying, while the more ancient manuscripts in fact represent a rejected or less-faithful text tradition (sloppy editing? latent Marcionism? beta version of Apple's speech-to-text?).
While it's with a bit of trepidation that I open yet another text criticism thread, it would be valuable to me to get input on this topic. It's been very thought-provoking to engage not just with the text of Matthew at such depth but also with broader concepts that spill over into how I read and interpret other parts of Scripture.
