Although it is
popularly claimed that there are enough patristic citations to recreate the NT
text, such is far from the truth . . . Gordon Fee lists three major problems in
utilizing patristic evidence from the Greek fathers. The first concerns their
citation habits; the second deals with the transmission of the text, where he
cautions that even though the critical editions are helpful, “they must themselves
be used critically by those seeking to recover those texts” (Fee, “use of the
Greek Fathers,” 194). The third is the need to understand the intricacies of
patristic studies. He elsewhere classifies three evidences of the patristic text
of the NT: citations, adaptations, and allusions (Fee, “Text of John,” 169-70).
Carroll Osburn, in his article “Methodology in Identifying Patristic Citations
in NT Textual Criticism,” incorporates Fee’s guidelines to propose more
acceptable criteria for assessing the patristic citations. Under the sub-heading
“Accurate Citation with Partial Omission,” he chides Ehrman for claiming an “orthodox
omission” of θεος at 1 Corinthians 10:5 by Irenaeus. Since the supposed omission is at
the end of the quote, “It cannot be used as textual evidence” (Osburn, “Methodology
in Identifying, Patristic Citations” 326). He concludes:
Even when
discriminate use is made of a critically edited patristic text, simple verbal
precision in a patristic quotation is sometimes insufficient basis [sic] for
including it in determining the reading of a Father’s biblical exemplar, or for
including it in the apparatus of the Greek NT. Each citation should be read in
its patristic context in order to determine more precisely how the text is
actually used and in what way it probably reflects a text known to the Father.
(Osburn, “Methodology in Identifying, Patristic Citations” 342-43).
Barbara Aland rightly
differentiates between the accuracy of the fathers in quoting the text and the
accuracy of the scribes in copying the text. The former were far more lenient
but the latter were far stricter (Aland, “Die Rezeption,” 30). Robinson also
offers similar important guidelines in evaluating patristic citations:
First, the supposed “text
of a Father” is based upon a gratuitous assumption: namely, that a Father in
any single locale or at any particular time used one and only one manuscript.
In fact, a Father may have switched manuscripts daily in some cases . . . most
manuscripts available to him in that region would reflect the local text of the
area; but what if now and then another manuscript from a different region came
his way? It becomes no surprise to find that some Fathers possess a text that
is “mixed” in a significant degree . . . Second, Fathers often paraphrase,
quote faultily from memory, or deliberately after a quotation to make a point .
. . The goal of the Fathers was theological rather than primarily text-critical.”
(Robinson and Pierpont, New Testament in the Original Greek (1991), xxxiii).
After discussing all
the qualifications to keep in mind when evaluating patristic evidence, Amy
Donaldson remarks, “Once the caveats described in this chapter are taken into
account, the actual concrete data is much more limited than the list of
references to variants” (Donaldson, “Explicit References,” 44), and again, “to
use these citations for reinforcement of the MS evidence or to argue for text
types, one must proceed with great care” (Donaldson, “Explicit References,”
44). (Abidan Paul Shah, Changing the Goalpost of New Testament Textual
Criticism [Eugene, Oreg: Wipf and Stock, 2020], 148, 150-51)
Further Reading
Refuting Christina Darlington's Claim the Bible has Been Preserved with 99.5% Accuracy
Modern (Evangelical Protestant) New Testament Scholarship vs. Christina Darlington
