The Identity of the New Testament Text IV

There are over 5,000 known Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, over half of which are continuous text copies, the rest being lectionaries. They range in size from a scrap with parts of two verses to complete New Testaments. They range in date from the second century to the sixteenth. They come from all over the Mediterranean world. They contain several hundred thousand variant readings (differences in the text). The vast majority of these are misspellings or other obvious errors due to carelessness or ignorance on the part of the copyists—such are not proper variant readings and may be ignored. However, many thousands of variants remain which need to be evaluated as we seek to identify the precise original wording of the Text. How best to go about such a project? This book seeks to provide an answer.

For some time Dr. Pickering has felt that among the many hundreds of Greek manuscripts known to exist today, surely God would have preserved the original wording. After years of searching and comparing Greek NT manuscripts, he has concluded that God used a certain line of transmission to preserve that wording. That line is by far the largest and most cohesive of all manuscript groups, or families. It is distinguished from all other groups by the high level of care with which it was copied (Dr. Pickering holds copies of perfect manuscripts for 22 of the 27 books). It is both ancient and independent, and is the only one that has a demonstrable archetypal form in all 27 books. That archetypal form has been empirically, objectively identified by a wide comparison of family representatives, and it is indeed error free. As he expected, that error-free text is not seriously different from some of the other "good" Greek texts. Nevertheless he has done an English translation based on it.