IS THE BYZANTINE TEXT THE

RESULT OF “A LONG PROCESS OF

DEVELOPMENT AND
STANDARDIZATION”? An
Examination of Klaus Wachtel’s
Text Critical Model
© 2018, by John Tors. All Rights Reserved.

Introduction
[N.B. READ THE ENDNOTES, FOLKS. THEY ARE IMPORTANT!]

Westcott and Hort’s “dethroning” of the Byzantine text as the original text of the
New Testament in favour of the text compiled from a handful of Alexandrian
manuscripts required an explanation of the origin and dominance of the Byzantine
text, which is the form of the text found in about 90-95% of the extant Greek NT
manuscripts. For a long time, that explanation was that the Byzantine text was a
recension (i.e. a deliberately edited and altered version of the original New

Testament) made in the 4th century AD, ascribed to one Lucian of Antioch.[1]
Despite a dearth of actual evidence for such a happening, this remained the party
line of mainstream textual criticism for more than a century.

According to Peter Gurry, Assistant Professor of New Testament at Phoenix

Seminary, however, this view is now passé; he vouchsafes that

I know of no text critic today who would argue that the Byzantine text as we
find it promulgated in the minuscules is the result of a concerted fourth-century
recension … No major textual critic, to my knowledge, holds to Westcott and
Hort’s fourth-century revision view anymore though it may well linger among
those in the wider NT guild.[2]

If Gurry is correct and “major” textual critics has moved on from the long-time
party line, it is well past time that it did so. The claim of a Lucianic recension was
a scam from the beginning, being unsupported by any genuine evidence.[3]

But if this long-time party line is abandoned, what are we to do about the
Byzantine text? According to Gurry,

The most serious work on the Byzantine text’s development has been done by
Klaus Wachtel, especially in his 1995 dissertation.[4]

Gurry seems quite enthused about Wachtel’s model, saying,

I myself have found this view persuasive at least as far as the Catholic Letters
are concerned … it is the most detailed and substantiated view of the Byzantine
text’s origin on offer.

He goes on to aver that

Byzantine prioritists (of whatever stripe) need to address Wachtel’s arguments

not Westcott and Hort’s.

If Gurry’s enthusiasm for Wachtel’s work is merited, it must indeed be considered

carefully. Let us see whether Wachtel has found a new way forward on the
matter of the Byzantine text.

The Wachtel Model

Klaus Wachtel details his model in “The Byzantine Text of the Gospels: Recension
or Process?”, a “paper prepared for the NTTC session 23-327 at SBL 2009” and
delivered there.[5]

He argues that there was no recension done that created the Byzantine text, by
Lucian or anyone else;[6] that does not mean, however, that no “recensional
activity” was involved. According to Wachtel, this recensional activity was a
process, unfolding across centuries; the current Byzantine text

has its headwaters in pre-Byzantine times, in fact in the very first phase of our
manuscript tradition, and it underwent a long process of development and
standardization. The final phase began with the introduction of the minuscule
 script in the 9th century and ended up in a largely uniform text characterized by

readings attested by the majority of all Greek manuscripts from the 13th – 15th
centuries counted by hundreds and thousands.[7]

Wachtel claims that Codex Alexandrinus, a manuscript of the New Testament that

dates to the early 5th century AD and in which the Gospel books are Byzantine
text, clearly must have been edited:

Standardization means editorial activity, and in fact, a text form so similar to

the late majority text as represented by Codex Alexandrinus cannot have
emerged from a linear copying process without conscious editing. It is indeed
likely that the text in Codex Alexandrinus is the result of editorial activity which
may have been carried out in one or, more likely, several steps.[8]

Wachtel concludes that

The Byzantine text as found in the majority of Greek manuscripts from the 13th

to the 15th century is the result of a process starting together with the
manuscript tradition itself. Although this process was advanced by editorial
activity, it was not steered and controlled by a central institution like the

Patriarchate of Constantinople. A marked feature of the process before the 9th

century is movement towards the stage found in late Byzantine manuscripts,
but the development was not homogeneous and consistent.[9]

Wachtel provides several tables of data to back up these claims, the first showing
what he calls “Characteristic later additions to the NT text,” the second showing
“Parallel Pericopes: Comparison of manuscripts with large shares of majority
readings,” and the third showing, “Parallel Pericopes: Proportion of majority
readings (in descending order).” It is this last one that Wachtel describes as
“fresh evidence,”[10] and it is this that Gurry says that “Byzantine prioritists (of
whatever stripe) need to address.”[11]

Analysis: Initial Observations

Whether Wachtel has provided a valid new model of Byzantine text origins
depends, of course, on the evidence he offers, and we shall consider that
presently. Prior to that, however, a couple of observations must be made.

First, Wachtel has not, in fact, offered a genuinely new model of Byzantine
origins; he has not examined the evidence from ground up but continues to
accept without apparent question the idea that the Byzantine text does not
represent the original text of the New Testament but is a later, edited version,
which is the quintessence of the old model.

That Wachtel does this is evident in a number of ways. His first table of evidence
is “Characteristic later additions to the NT text,” in which he considered the
inclusion of Mark 16:9-20, John 7:53-8:11, and Luke 22:43-44 to be examples of
passages added to the text by recensional activity. In fact, all three passages are
part of the original NT text,[12] but Wachtel seems to discount that possibility out
of hand.

Furthermore, Wachtel “reconstructs” a non-existent manuscript that he dubs

a
01C , which he dates to the “V-VII” centuries and describes as “one text form
preserved in Codex Sinaiticus, reconstructed from the middle layer of its many
corrections” and avows that

the text resulting from this revision can and should be treated as a stand-alone
witness that deserves as much respect as the codex itself.[13]

He claims that

the diverse layers of correction in Codex Sinaiticus give us a clue as to what

editorial activity looked like in the fifth-seventh centuries.[14]

Yet, this is simply an assumption; it could just as well have been an attempt to
correct a corrupt manuscript back to the original, correct readings.

In addition, Wachtel’s statement we cited earlier that “a text form so similar to

the late majority text as represented by Codex Alexandrinus cannot have emerged
from a linear copying process without conscious editing”[15] is senseless; since
scribes were trying to reproduce the text precisely through the generations, a
great similarity in the text between earlier and much later manuscripts is exactly
what we should see,[16] and it is impossible to discern how Wachtel thinks such a
similarity demonstrates that conscious editing took place. Regardless of how he
came up with that idea, it is nonsense.

In sum, then, it is clear that Wachtel has not offered a new model for the
origin of the Byzantine text. He continues to adhere to the mainstream
party line that the Byzantine text is a later text created by recension. All
he has offered is a new model for how that recension took place.

In fact, all of this is very much like a reverse mirror image of what took place in
the field of evolutionary biology, viz. the proposal of “punctuated equilibrium.”

Darwin posited the evolution took place by gradualism. The evidence he

required to prove this, fossils of genuine transitional forms, was not
there, but he believed it would inevitably be found.
Textual critics posited that the Byzantine text was created by a “point

event,” the Lucianic recension in the 4th century AD.

After more than a century of searching and the discovery of billions of

fossils, it became clear that the evidence Darwinism needed would
never be found.
Despite the best efforts of scholars such as Metzger, it eventually
became clear that the claim of a Lucianic recension could not be
maintained on an evidentiary basis.

In 1972, Stephen J. Gould and Niles Eldredge proposed a new model for
evolution, substituting “point events” for gradualism; most of the
history of the Earth was characterized by stasis (“equilibrium”) in
species, which was “punctuated” by brief periods during which most of
the actual evolution book place. Thus, evolution took place during a
series of “point events.”[17]
In 1995, Klaus Wachtel proposed a new model for the origin of the
Byzantine text, substituting gradualism for a point event; instead of a
one-time recension, the Byzantine text came about by a lengthy process
of recensional activity.
 The punctuated equilibrium model was not supported by actual
evidence; it was a ad hoc proposal to explain the lack of evidence for
the claims of evolutionary biology.
?

So here is the question: Does Wachtel give good and sufficient evidence for his
model? It is to this we now turn our attention.

Analysis: Assessing Wachtel’s Data

Wachtel’s “fresh evidence” is based on an analysis of collations of certain synoptic
pericopes (i.e. brief sections of text each constituting one story or idea) in 154
manuscripts, as done by a research project provisionally known as “Parallel
Pericopes.”[18] He explains this thus:

38 synoptic pericopes in 154 manuscripts were collated in full. The selection

includes all 46 manuscripts differing from the majority text at least at 15% of
the test passages of two Synoptic Gospels. The other end of the scale is
represented by 29 manuscripts differing from the majority text at less than 5%
of the test passages of two Synoptic Gospels. Then there are 75 manuscripts
from between these extremes, differing from the majority text at 15-5% of the
test passages of two Synoptic Gospels.

The results of these collations are now stored in a database ready for
evaluation. In this table I ordered the manuscripts according to their proportion
of majority readings in our parallel periscopes.[19]

In his table, Wachtel lists the “running number of entries, … GA number, … [and]
Percentages and absolute numbers of majority readings relating to the number of
relevant variant passages covered by the respective witness.”[20] The following
is a reproduction of the first ten entries in Wachtel’s table:

RN GA Number Majority Readings

1 1341 98.9% (1359/1374)
2 18 98.8% (1362/1378)
3 3 98.8% (1362/1378)
 4 35 98.8% (1361/1378)
5 1296 98.8% (1361/1378)
6 1339 98.6% (1359/1378)
7 1110 98.4% (1355/1377)
8 031 98.4% (1322/1344)
9 1328 98.3% (1346/1369)
10 150 98.2% (1351/1376)

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #30-41:

RN GA Number Majority Readings

30 1336 94.9% (1303/1371)
31 233 94.9% (1300/1370)
32 1346 94.8% (1298/1369)
33 1338 94.8% (1246/1315)
34 2372 94.7% (1279/1350)
35 791 94.7% (1300/1373)
36 2546 94.7% (1280/1351)
37 041 94.6% (1235/1306)
38 1230 94.5% (1300/1375)
39 033 94.4% (992/1051)
40 174 94.2% (1288/1368)
41 1602 94.0% (1287/1369)

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #60-70:

RN GA Number Majority Readings

60 1604 92.8% (1271/1370)
61 2737 92.7% (1278/1378)
62 31 92.6% (802/866)
 63 16 92.6% (1274/1376)
64 851 92.6% (1258/1359)
65 131 92.5% (1273/1376)
66 02 92.4% (878/950)
67 735 92.4% (697/754)
68 1692 92.2% (1270/1377)
69 1457 92.2% (1271/1378)
70 372 92.1% (1269/1378)

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #80-90:

RN GA Number Majority Readings

80 022 91.4% (636/696)
81 61 91.4% (1259/1377)
82 1273 91.3% (1248/1367)
83 1579 91.3% (1252/1371)
84 191 91.2% (1255/1376)
85 042 91.2% (885/970)
86 118 91.2% (1130/1239)
87 222 91.2% (1183/1297)
88 2786 91.2% (1222/1340)
89 829 91.1% (1038/1140)
90 2726 91.0% (1254/1378)

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #148-153:

RN GA Number Majority Readings

148 792 82.4% (1120/1360)
149 038 82.2% (1106/1345)
150 01Ca 82.0% (1127/1375)

151 019 81.5% (1057/1297)

152 03 81.1% (1117/1377)
153 579 80.7% (1038/1286)
Now, what does Wachtel do with this data? He focuses on five manuscripts:

Codex 02 (Codex Alexandrinus, 5 th century); Codices 022 and 042 (Codex

Purpureus et Petropolitanus and Codex Purpureus Rossanensis, 6th century);[21]

01C a (5 th -7 th century);[22] Codex 041 (9 th century), and Codex 18 (14 th

century).[23] (These are highlighted in our excerpts from Wachtel’s table).

Wachtel highlights the fact that with Codex 18, from the 14th century,

we have reached the Byzantine text in its purest form, although you see that it
does not represent the majority text at a 100%.[24]

Its agreement with the majority text is actually 98.8%. Codex 041, from the 9th
century, agrees with the majority text in 94.6% of the cases, and Codex

Alexandrinus, from the 5th century, in 92.4% of the cases. For Codices 022 and

042, from the 6th century, Wachtel does not in his explanation list the amount of
agreement they show with the majority text. (From his table, it is 91.4% and
91.2% respectively, which calls into question Wachtel’s treatment of these as one

manuscript textually.) Finally, his invented manuscript, 01Ca from the 5th-7th
century, shows an agreement with the majority text of 82%.[25]

This, then, is the basis for Wachtel’s claim that the Byzantine text is a secondary
text that came about though a long period of recensional activity. We are bound
to ask how. How does this data support Wachtel’s claim?

Now, remember that according to Wachtel’s model, the Byzantine text “has its
headwaters in pre-Byzantine times … it underwent a long process of development
and standardization … and [it] ended up in a largely uniform text characterized by

readings attested by the majority of all Greek manuscripts from the 13th – 15th
centuries”[26] How does Wachtel’s data show that? The answer is that it does
not. If Wachtel’s model is correct, we should see an inverse correlation
between the age of the manuscripts and their agreement with the majority
text; in other words, as we move forward in time, the manuscripts should
be showing increasing agreement with the majority text.

Yet even in the very limited selection of data Wachtel made from what was
available to him, we do not see that! Out of only five data points, the 5 th-

century 02 shows greater agreement with the majority text than does the 6 th-

century 022/042 and the 5-7th-century reconstructed 01Ca.[27] So how can this
possibly prove, or even support, Wachtel’s model? It cannot. It does not. How
anyone became convinced of Wachtel’s model is a riddle for the ages.

What it does show is a complete ignorance of proper data handling. Let us look at
the data in the light of such proper methods and see what we see.

First, let us return to Wachtel’s table of data and ask what it shows. The astute
will realize that all it shows is the ability of a person to arrange manuscripts in
descending order of agreement with the majority text. Other than that trivial
fact, nothing can be gleaned from the data as it stands. Wachtel has
omitted the crucial fact, which is the dates of the manuscripts in the
table. To show the sort of increasing “standardization” of the Byzantine text
through time that his model calls for, that data is sine qua non, and it is a wonder
that neither Wachtel nor his examiners nor those enthused with his model caught
that.

Let us present those tables again, but this time let us add the dates of the
manuscripts:

RN GA Number Majority Readings Century

1 1341 98.9% (1359/1374) 12/13
2 18 98.8% (1362/1378) 14
3 3 98.8% (1362/1378) 12
4 35 98.8% (1361/1378) 11
5 1296 98.8% (1361/1378) 13
6 1339 98.6% (1359/1378) 13
7 1110 98.4% (1355/1377) 14
 8 031 98.4% (1322/1344) 9
9 1328 98.3% (1346/1369) 14
10 150 98.2% (1351/1376) 11

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #30-41:

RN GA Number Majority Readings Century

30 1336 94.9% (1303/1371) 14
31 233 94.9% (1300/1370) 13
32 1346 94.8% (1298/1369) 10/11
33 1338 94.8% (1246/1315) 12
34 2372 94.7% (1279/1350) 13
35 791 94.7% (1300/1373) 12
36 2546 94.7% (1280/1351) 12
37 041 94.6% (1235/1306) 9
38 1230 94.5% (1300/1375) 12
39 033 94.4% (992/1051) 9/10
40 174 94.2% (1288/1368) 11
41 1602 94.0% (1287/1369) 14

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #60-70:

RN GA Number Majority Readings Century

60 1604 92.8% (1271/1370) 13
61 2737 92.7% (1278/1378) 16
62 31 92.6% (802/866) 13
63 16 92.6% (1274/1376) 14
64 851 92.6% (1258/1359) 12-14
65 131 92.5% (1273/1376) 12
66 02 92.4% (878/950) 5
 67 735 92.4% (697/754) 15
68 1692 92.2% (1270/1377) 12
69 1457 92.2% (1271/1378) 12/13
70 372 92.1% (1269/1378) 16

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #80-90:

RN GA Number Majority Readings Century

80 022 91.4% (636/696) 6
81 61 91.4% (1259/1377) 16
82 1273 91.3% (1248/1367) 12
83 1579 91.3% (1252/1371) 11
84 191 91.2% (1255/1376) 12
85 042 91.2% (885/970) 6
86 118 91.2% (1130/1239) 13
87 222 91.2% (1183/1297) 14
88 2786 91.2% (1222/1340) 14
89 829 91.1% (1038/1140) 12
90 2726 91.0% (1254/1378) 13

The following is a table for Wachtel’s entries #148-153:

RN GA Number Majority Readings Century

148 792 82.4% (1120/1360) 13
149 038 82.2% (1106/1345) 9

150 01Ca 82.0% (1127/1375) 5-7

151 019 81.5% (1057/1297) 8

152 03 81.1% (1117/1377) 4
153 579 80.7% (1038/1286) 13
What we see here is fascinating; there is no correlation between the dates of
the manuscripts and their agreement with the majority text. The results
are all over the map. In the first group, with the highest agreement, we see

manuscripts ranging from the 9th century to the 14th century. In the third group,

with lower agreement, we see 16th-century manuscripts. The 5th-century 02 has a

greater agreement with the majority text than does the 15th-century Codex 735 or

the 16th-century Codex 372. And 02, as well as the 6th-century 022, have greater

agreement with the majority text than does the 16th-century Codex 61. Even a
cursory examination of the evidence shows that Wachtel’s model cannot
possibly be correct. This certainly lends support to my inclination to think that
people who want to do textual criticism really do need to be trained in how to do
scientific data handling.

How should this data be analyzed? Instead of cherry-picking five data points out
of the 154 available, they should all be used. The manuscripts should be grouped
by century, the average percent agreement with the majority text calculated for
each century, and then the percent agreement plotted against century. This way,
the trend with respect to time will be clearly visible and the results unequivocal.
So let us do that.

Here are the results:

AGREEMENT # OF DATA
CENTURY
WITH MT POINTS

5th 92.4% 1

6th 92.5% 4

7th 91.6% 1

8th 90.7% 4

9th 92.6% 16

9/10th 90.0% 2

10th 93.8% 6

10/11th 94.8% 1
 11th 92.9% 14

11/12
th
89.6% 1

12th 91.0% 30

12/13th 93.1% 5

12-14th 92.6% 1

13
th
89.3% 26

13/14th 93.4% 2

14th 92.5% 19

15th 90.1% 10

16th 92.0% 4
The results are plotted below:

As is crystal clear,
there is no upward trend in agreement with the majority text as the
centuries pass. There is no greater agreement with the majority text in the 16th

century than in the 5th century. (The agreement in the 6 th century is actually

slightly higher than in the 15th!) The agreement is essentially unchanged

throughout the centuries; there is no “standardization” whatsoever.

Below, these results are shown greatly magnified:

 Again, we see that there is
no upward trend; the agreement from one century to the next may go up or down,
though the change is not large. The average agreement is 91.9%, with deviation
from this average of between +3.1% and -2.9%.

If we eliminate the centuries for which have only one or two data points, the
following results:

Here, too, we see an

essentially unchanging relationship in the percentage agreement with the
majority text with respect to time. The average agreement remains 91.9%, but
the deviation from this average is even smaller: +2.1% and -2.8%.

The data, then is clear and unequivocal; there was no “a long process of
development and standardization” that resulted in the final form of the
Byzantine text. On the contrary, the text has been stable and unchanging as far
back as we can trace it in the historical record, which is the exact opposite of
what Wachtel posited. Wachtel’s model is completely wrong; there can be no
doubt about it.

Conclusion
Now that mainstream textual critics have faced the fact that their long-touted
Lucianic recension is bogus, they require a new model to explain the origin of the
Byzantine text. One could, of course, accept the reality of the majority text
model[28], but since they are unwilling to do that, they require a new model, but
there is no abundance of such.

A new one has finally surfaced, propounded by Klaus Wachtel, which proposes
that the Byzantine text is the end result of a lengthy process of development via
recensional activity. As we have seen, this has caught the eye of Peter Gurry,
Assistant Professor of New Testament at Phoenix Seminary, who avers that

it is the most detailed and substantiated view of the Byzantine text’s origin on
offer” and that it “is now cited as such in both the major introductions to the
field (Metzger-Ehrman’s, and Parker’s).[29]

Gurry insists that

Byzantine prioritists (of whatever stripe) need to address Wachtel’s arguments

not Westcott and Hort’s.[30]

Such enthusiasm is sadly misplaced. We have examined in detail the actual

evidence offered by Wachtel in support of his model, and we have found it does no
such thing. On the contrary, the evidence clearly disproves Wachtel’s model
and shows instead that the Byzantine text has been stable and
unchanging as far back as it can be traced in the historical record. No
initial recension and no “long process of development and standardization”;
mainstream textual criticism is left without a leg on which to stand.

Endnotes
[1] It was not considered certain that Lucian had been responsible, but the
Byzantine text was said certainly to have originated as such a late recension..
[2] Gurry, Peter. “Where did the Byzantine text come from?” Posted on May 11,
2018, at Evangelical Textual Criticism. Available at
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2018/05/where-did-byzantine-text-
come-from.html.

[3] Perhaps the most detailed attempt to marshal evidence for the putative
Lucianic recension was mounted by Bruce Metzger, in “Lucian and the Lucianic
Recension of the Greek Bible” in New Testament Studies 8 (1961-62), pp.
183-203. For a systematic refutation of his of his arguments, see my master’s
dissertation (Ontario Theological Seminary, 1996), pp. 45-49.

[4] Gurry, op.cit. Dr. Klaus Wachtel is currently Research Assistant at the
Institute for New Testament Text Research at the University of Munster. (See
https://biography.omicsonline.org/germany/university-of-munster/dr-klaus-wachtel
-8943.)

[5] Gurry, op.cit. In his post, Gurry helpfully provides a link to this paper by
Wachtel.

[6] Wachtel also seems to move away from the concept of text-type (classing
manuscripts into one of three or four groups based on the specific variant
readings found in it) entirely, saying that “The term ‘text-type’, however, still
carries along relics of the old division of the New Testament manuscript tradition
into three or four ‘recensions’ If we take the whole evidence into account, a
picture emerges that is far more complex … we have to focus on individual
manuscripts and explore their relationships with other manuscripts. Assigning
them to text-types has become obsolete.” (footnote 7). If so, that is a good move;
Dr. Kurt Aland point out as far back as 1965 that the concept is unsustainable
(Aland, Kurt. “The Significance of the Papyri for Progress in New Testament
Research,” The Bible in Modern Scholarship. Ed. J.Philip Hyatt. New York:
Abingdon Press, 1965, pp. 325-346.

[7] Wachtel, Klaus. “The Byzantine Text of the Gospels: Recension or Process?”
Paper prepared for the NTTC session 23-327 at SBL 2009, p. 1. By “manuscript
tradition,” he means the entire history of the written New Tesament from its
inception.

[8] ibid., p.2

[9] ibid., pp.7-8

[10] ibid., p.4

[11] Gurry, op.cit

[12] Regarding Mark 16:9-20, see my discussion in Tors, John. “Creation

Ministries International and The Three-Headed Monster: Why the Monster Wins”
at
https://truthinmydays.com/creation-ministries-international-and-the-three-headed-
monster-why-the-monster-wins/. For more details, see Lunn, Nicholas P. The
Original Ending of Mark: A New Case for the Authenticity of Mark 16:9-20.
Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2014. Regarding John 7:53-8:11, see Tors,
John. “A Call for Serious Evangelical Apologetics: The Authenticity of John
7:53-8:11 as a Case Study” at
https://truthinmydays.com/a-call-for-serious-evangelical-apologetics-the-authentici
ty-of-john-753-811-as-a-case-study/. Luke 22:43-44 is missing from only 1.3% of
extant manuscripts (which happen to be Alexandrian), and this is easily explained
by accidental omission, which was the most common error that scribes
committed. The earliest evidence we have (citations in Justin Martyr and
Irenaeus) include the passage.

[13] Wachtel, op.cit., p. 3

[14] ibid.

[15] ibid., p. 2

[16] By and large, of course. The occasional careless scribe could make a mess of
things and give rise to a small minority of corrupted manuscripts (which is what
we see). Even this would be mitigated to an extent by subsequent cross-
correction.

[17] These brief periods were in the order of tens of thousands of years, but this
must be considered “point events” in the context of “deep time” (i.e. the supposed
4.6 billion-year history of the Earth).

[18] Wachtel, op.cit., p. 4

[19] ibid.
[20] ibid., p. 5. The “GA number” is the Gregory-Aland number, a standard
cataloguing system for NT manuscripts.

[21] According to Wachtel, these two manuscripts “are so similar that thy may
very well be copied from the same exemplar. Being so closely related, they are
treated like one text” in his analysis (ibid., p. 2)

[22] As pointed out before, this is not an actual manuscript, but a reconstruction

built out of the “middle layer” of corrections to the 4th-century Codex Sinaiticus
(ibid., p. 3)

[23] ibid., pp. 2-3

[24] ibid., p. 5

[25] ibid., pp. 5-6

[26] ibid., p. 1

[27] Wachtel also spends some effort to pair his chosen manuscripts and show
how often each agrees with the majority text reading where the other does not,
discussing this in ibid. pp. 5-6 and shows the data in a table. But here, too, there
is no increasing standardization with respect to time.

[28] According to the majority text model, the reading found in the majority of
manuscripts at any point of variation is considered the original. For an
explanation, see “The Tenth Bite” in Tors, John. “A Primer on New Testament
Textual Criticism (In Manageable, Bite-Sized Chunks”
at https://truthinmydays.com/a-primer-on-new-testament-textual-criticism-in-mana
geable-bite-sized-chunks/.

[29] Gurry, op.cit.

[30] ibid.