Overview

This book is a companion volume to Scribes, Motives, and Manuscripts. In this volume Alan Mugridge provides an assessment of two major studies which claim that scribes of New Testament manuscripts changed the text in their copies from what they found in those they were using as models, either to further their own theological convictions and hinder opposing views from finding support in those manuscripts, or to respond to criticism of Christ and Christians in wider society. In both cases, the thesis examined is that copyists did not just reproduce the manuscripts given to them but changed their copies to say what they wanted them to say. These theories are tested by an examination of the manuscripts with their textual variants, arguing that the variant readings can usually be explained as the result of scribal carelessness or simple piety. The idea that copyists deliberately changed the text in their manuscripts is found to have little basis. Mugridge concludes that the text of the New Testament has not been affected nearly as much as some contend, because variant readings are generally errors that can be isolated and the original text established with some confidence.

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9781498291224

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Reviews

""Asserting that New Testament scribes altered the text to support their own viewpoints or to counter criticisms of Christianity is, most likely, accurate. However, if this did happen, it occurred in far fewer instances than some influential authors suggest. Alan Mugridge's book is the 'other side of the story' that must be heard for a more modest and balanced--but also more realistic--approach to textual variation in New Testament textual criticism."" --Juan Chapa, professor of New Testament, University of Navarra

Author Information

Alan Mugridge has been lecturing in New Testament and Greek at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Sydney, Australia, for more than thirty years, after teaching for four years at St Philip's Theological College, Kongwa, Tanzania. He is the author of several articles based on papers given at the triennial International Papyrology Congress, as well as publishing Copying Early Christian Texts (2016) and Scribes, Motives, and Manuscripts (2024).

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