CSNTM Text & Manuscript Conference

The rise of the printing press made it possible to transmit biblical texts with a previously unattainable level of consistency.  But it also sometimes raised fears that even small differences could affect theology.  Since both Protestants and Catholics relied on Erasmus’ edition of the Greek New Testament, textual criticism played at best a marginal role in sixteenth-century polemics, although Catholic appeals to the Vulgate limited to some degree Catholic fears about textual variation. As the Reformation debates progressed, Catholic apologists sometimes thought that the uncertainties of the Greek manuscript tradition could be used to undermine Protestant convictions about sola scriptura. Yet the replacement of Erasmus’ textus receptus with Westcott-Hort seems to have had no substantial impact on theology in either Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant circles; and the Nestle-Aland series, of which the ECM is the latest iteration, has sometimes been executed in conjunction with Catholic and Orthodox scholars.  This paper will argue that the ECM, like Westcott-Hort and the earlier editions of Nestle-Aland, is significant for philology rather than theology.