The Flaws of the Genealogical Method in Modern Text-Criticism of the NT

 

- F.J.A. Hort and most NT critics after them have applied what has been known as the “genealogical method” when it comes to the text of the New Testament.

- Hort defines this method as follows: “The proper method of Genealogy consists....in the more or less complete recovery of the texts of successive ancestors by analysis and comparison of the varying texts of their respective descendants, each ancestral text so recovered being in its turn used, in conjunction with other similar texts, for the recovery of the text of a yet earlier common ancestor.” (Westcott and Hort, The New Testament in the Original Greek: Introduction and Appendix [NY: Harper and Brothers, 1882], pg. 57)

- “As the justification of their rejection of the majority, Westcott and Hort found the possibilities of genealogical method invaluable. Suppose that there are only ten copies of a document and that nine are all copied from one; then the majority can be safely rejected. Or suppose that the nine are copied from a lost manuscript and that this lost manuscript and the other one were both copied from the original; then the vote of the majority would not outweigh that of the minority. These are the arguments with which Westcott and Hort opened their discussion of genealogical methods.” (E.C. Colwell, “Genealogical Method: Its Achievements and Its Limitations”)

- The problem is that many of the components in the genealogical graphs which often see from Westcott-Hort, and many other modern NT critics, are just imaginary, hypothetical manuscripts.

- “That Westcott and Hort did not apply this method to the manuscripts of the New Testament is obvious. Where are the charts which start with the majority of late manuscripts and climb back through diminishing generations of ancestors to the Neutral and Western texts? The answer is that they are nowhere. Look again at the first diagram, and you will see that a, b, c, etc. are not actual manuscripts of the New Testament, but hypothetical manuscripts. The demonstrations or illustrations of the genealogical method as applied to New Testament manuscripts by the followers of Hort, the "Horticuli" as Lake called them, likewise use hypothetical manuscripts, not actual codices. Note, for example, the diagrams and discussions in Kenyon' most popular work on textual criticism, including the most recent edition. All the manuscripts referred to are imaginary manuscripts, and the later of these charts was printed sixty years after Hort.” (EC Colwell)

- Another problem is mixture:

“The second limitation upon the application of the genealogical method to the manuscripts of the New Testament springs from the almost universal presence of mixture in these manuscripts. . . . The genealogical diagram printed above (p. 110) from Westcott and Hort shows what happens when there is no mixture. When there is mixture, and Westcott and Hort state that it is common, in fact almost universal in some degree, then the genealogical method as applied to manuscripts is useless. Without mixture a family tree is an ordinary tree-trunk with its branches—standing on the branches with the single trunk—the original text—at the top. The higher up—or the further back—you go from the mass of late manuscripts, the fewer ancestors you have! With mixture you reverse this in any series of generations. The number of possible combinations defies computation, let alone the drawing of diagrams”  (E.C. Colwell)

Text-Types and Recensions

- “The major mistake is made in thinking of the "old text-types" as frozen blocks, even after admitting that no one manuscript is a perfect witness to any text-type. If no one MS is a perfect witness to any type, then all witnesses are mixed in ancestry (or individually corrupted, and thus parents of mixture).” (E.C. Colwell)

- “The point is, although different manuscripts exhibit varying affinities, share certain peculiarities, they each differ substantially from all the others (especially the earlier ones) and therefore should not be lumped together. There is no such thing as the testimony of a "Western" or "Alexandrian" text-type (as an entity)—there is only the testimony of individual MSS, Fathers, Versions (or MSS of versions).” (Pickering)

- The following chart demonstrates this point with a few examples from manuscripts/uncials generally considered to belong to the “Alexandrian text-type”:

- Another huge problem is the way in which manuscripts are classified to one “text-type” or the other. For example, Gordon Fee did a study of P66 in which he plots the percentage of agreement between P66 and the TR, P75, א, B, A, C, D, and W respectively, chapter by chapter, through the first fourteen chapters of the Gospel of John. The agreements are erratic and go all over the place, showing a range of variation around 30%. Why should these texts be lumped together? Showing peculiar agreements between manuscripts is not enough to classify them as one “text-type”, the numerous disagreements must also be taken into account.