Question for those who use Bible versions translated from the Critical/Eclectic Text

[MichaelNZ]

I have a question for those of you who use English versions based on the Critical/Eclectic Text (ESV, NASB, NIV, HCSB etc).

Why do you believe Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus to be accurate Biblical manuscripts, when they not only disagree with the Majority Text in many places, but also disagree with each other in many places?

 

[Alex the Less]

what do you mean?

I have a question for those of you who use English versions based on the Critical/Eclectic Text (ESV, NASB, NIV, HCSB etc).

Why do you believe Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus to be accurate Biblical manuscripts, when they not only disagree with the Majority Text in many places, but also disagree with each other in many places?

You use the term "accurate" for sources in eclectic viewpoint. They are part of the comparative whole, not necessarily accurate in themselves. The whole point of eclecticism as an approach is none as solely accurate.

 

[Doulos McKenzie]

I hope you understand that they are not the sole text that critical text advocates use. The CT has many more sources than CS and CV.

 

[MichaelNZ]

I hope you understand that they are not the sole text that critical text advocates use. The CT has many more sources than CS and CV.

I understand that a number of papyri, such as P66 and P75 have been discovered in the last century and that the CT advocates take these into consideration as well. However, as I understand it, Sinaiticus and Vaticanus were the only non-Byzantine manuscripts that B.F. Westcott and F.J.A Hort had access to, and they gave greater weight to them than to the Byzantine manuscripts when creating their Greek New Testament. The theory that 'older is better' has been brought over into the modern critical scholarship that gives us the Nestle-Aland and UBS texts. I don't know about the Nestle-Aland, but the UBS Greek NT came about from five liberals voting on each reading - if all five agreed, it was given an A rating, and so on.

So, to those who use Critical Text translations such as the ESV, why do you trust what scholars (some liberal) say was the original text, rather than what the majority of Greek manuscripts say?