THE PURPOSE AND THE ARRANGEMENT OF THIS BOOK

By ‘textual criticism’ is meant any methodical and objective study which aims to retrieve the original form of a text or at least the form closest to the original. Even in a modern book there are nearly always printing errors despite careful checking by the author and proof-readers, so it is not surprising that early writings, copied as they were many times over the centuries, should have frequently undergone alteration. And indeed, from time to time in the old manuscripts of a work different forms of the text can be observed. These different forms are known as ‘variants’; they may also be referred to as divergent or erroneous readings.

The goal of textual criticism as applied to the New Testament is thus a very specific one, namely to select from among the many variants transmitted by the manuscript tradition the one which most likely represents the primitive reading. It is only when the contents of the whole text have been established that the other disciplines can operate: literary criticism, to decide the origin of each book and to locate the sources used by the author; historical criticism, to assess the value of the books as historical documents; exegesis, to define the exact meaning of the text.