|
The Byzantine text-type (also called Majority Text, Traditional Text, Ecclesiastical Text, Constantinopolitan Text, Antiocheian Text, or Syrian Text) is one of several text-types used in textual criticism to describe the textual character of Greek New Testament manuscripts. It is the form found in the largest number of surviving manuscripts, though not in the oldest. The New Testament text of the Greek Orthodox Church, the Constantinople Patriarchate edition of 1904, is based on this text-type. While considerably varying, it also underlies the Textus Receptus Greek text used for most Reformation-era translations of the New Testament into vernacular languages. Modern translations mainly use Eclectic editions that conform more often to the Alexandrian text-type. The Byzantine text is also found in a few modern Greek Orthodox editions, as the Byzantine textual tradition has continued in the Eastern Orthodox Church into the present time. The text used by the Greek Orthodox Church is supported by late minuscule manuscripts. It is commonly accepted as standard Byzantine text. The Byzantine textform is often marked with the abbreviations or Byz. == Manuscripts of the Byzantine text == For some time following the fourth century different types of text were current in the East, but at the end the Byzantine text "almost wholly displaced the rest."〔Brooke Foss Westcott, Fenton John Anthony Hort. ''The New Testament in the Original Greek'', 1925. p. 552〕 The Byzantine text-type has by far the largest number of surviving manuscripts, many of them written in the newer minuscule (lower case) style and in Polytonic orthography handwriting, which had been invented in the 3rd century BC by Aristophanes of Byzantium but which took many centuries to catch on outside scholarly circles. For example, of 522 complete or nearly complete manuscripts of the General Epistles collated by the Institute for New Testament Textual Research in Münster, Germany, 372 of them attest the Byzantine reading in at least 90% of 98 test places. Amongst the earliest surviving manuscripts, the position is reversed. There are six manuscripts earlier than the 9th century which conform to the Byzantine text-type; of which the 5th century Codex Alexandrinus, (the oldest), is Byzantine only in the Gospels with the rest of the New Testament being Alexandrian. By comparison, the Alexandrian text-type is witnessed by nine surviving uncials earlier than the ninth century (including the Codex Alexandrinus outside the Gospels); and is also usually considered to be demonstrated in three earlier papyri. Modern critical editions of the New Testament tend to conform most often to Alexandrian witnesses — especially Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus. The earliest Church Father to witness to a Byzantine text-type in substantial New Testament quotations is John Chrysostom (c. 349 — 407); although the fragmentary surviving works of Asterius the Sophist († 341) have also been considered to conform to the Byzantine text,〔Gordon D. Fee, "The Use of Greek Patristic Citations in New Testament Textual Criticism: The State of the Question," pp. 344-359 in ''Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism'' (ed. Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee; Studies & Documents 45; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 358.〕 and the incomplete surviving translation of Wulfila (d. 383) into Gothic is often thought to derive from the Byzantine text type or an intermediary between the Byzantine and Western text types.〔Bennett, William, 1980, ''An Introduction to the Gothic Language'', pp. 24-25.〕 Chrysostom and Asterius used text only in 75% agreed with the standard Byzantine text. The second earliest translation to witness to a Greek base conforming generally to the Byzantine text in the Gospels is the Syriac Peshitta (though it has many Alexandrian and Western readings); usually dated to the beginning of the 5th century; although in respect of several much contested readings, such as Mark 1:2 and John 1:18, the Peshitta rather supports the Alexandrian witnesses. Dating from the fourth century, and hence possibly earlier than the Peshitta, is the Ethiopic version of the Gospels; best represented by the surviving fifth and sixth century manuscripts of the Garima Gospels and classified by Rochus Zuurmond as "early Byzantine". Zuurmond notes that, especially in the Gospel of John, the form of the early Byzantine text found in the Ethiopic Gospels is quite different from the later Greek Majority Text, and agrees in a number of places with Papyrus 66.〔"One would say that the Ethiopian ''Versio Antiqua'' is basically a Byzantine text, with some Western elements and some remnents of the early Egyptian text. For lack of a better term one could coin this "early Byzantine". 〕 The form of the Byzantine text found in the earliest witnesses is not a monolithic whole, and sometimes differs from a Byzantine sub-group of manuscripts that proliferated after the 11th century. Amongst the bulk of later manuscripts however, it is generally possible to demonstrate a clear Byzantine majority reading for each variant; and a Greek New Testament text based on these majority readings — "The Majority Text" — has been produced by Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad, although this text does not correspond to any one particular manuscript. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Byzantine text-type」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
|