A couple weeks ago, I linked to an interview with Dan Wallace on the basics of textual criticism. So now as an illustration, here’s Wallace with an example of how textual critics work through the internal clues in the text and external clues in the manuscripts (considering their dates, geographical distribution, genealogy, etc.) to determine which wording is likely the original reading. The basic principle is, “choose the reading that best explains the rise of the others.”
The variant in question in this video is a bit of poor grammar found in Revelation 1:4 that appears in some manuscripts. Is it original? The answer Wallace comes to sheds light on the whole book of Revelation:
You can also see how Wallace resolves the tension between the opposing internal and external evidence for the variant in Matthew 27:16-17, or watch the whole series of these videos on “The Basics of New Testament Textual Criticism” from the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts (CSNTM) on iTunes U.
Love it. Thanks for these references.
Posted by: Daron | April 25, 2012 at 07:16 AM
The interesting thing about this sort of coded hint is that it is not translatable. The solution of the NET bible - putting the phrase in quotation marks - only draws attention to the anomaly, but doesn't give the pointer to its resolution as does the original. I guess I need to brush up my Greek.
Posted by: Henry IX | April 25, 2012 at 10:44 AM
I suspect that "From He who is" is another form of saying God is the "I am" and subject of verbs, not the object of verbs. This preserves God's sovereignty. So John is not making a grammatical mistake but actually expressing his belief that God is not to be spoken of as secondary to any verb or preposition. If you leave off the "from" you get "he who is" which is the same as "I am" but spoken of in the third person rather than in the first person.
Posted by: Holly | April 27, 2012 at 05:17 PM