The Quest for the Original Text of the New Testament

by Philip W. Comfort

If only we could hold the actual words of Luke's descriptive narrative or Paul's outpouring of pastoral pain to the church at Corinth. Now we can. A continuing quest to recover the New Testament text... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801025664
• ISBN13: 9780801025662
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Baker Publishing Group (MI)
• Length: 200 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.5" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Both extremes hate it, it must be good!

Wow, you get extrema comments coming from the far left of the Bart Ehrman kind of side who can't recover ANY historical text at all; and the far right who has his KJV (maybe only the English) from the TR created from a late handful of MSS by a Roman Catholic trying to prove his Latin is better than Jerome's Vulgate, that says a lot to me. Because both are in agreement to reject Philip Comfort's book, it must be a really good book! When it is hated by the extremes of both sides of error, I think that says a lot as to how good the book is. In fact, though I don't have this one yet, I have many/most of his books, and have greatly enjoyed all of them. I am very sure I would like this one as well. Philip Comfort has had the respect and endorsement of many scholars in this area of study: Metzger, Allan, Bruce, Fee, Wallace, White, etc. I have read his books and thoroughly enjoy them.

A Good Overview of the Textual Issue

It is a sad commentary that people who worship their King James Bible often lose all contact with spiritual reality. Along comes Dr. Comfort, a high church Anglican and conservative, to expound the Westcott and Hort theory. The W-H theory has its flaws, which all true scholars acknowledge. Hort never applied the genealogical method to the manuscripts, mostly because it is impossible to know how many generations of manuscripts are between manuscript A and B. Cogent criticism and modifications have been endorsed by Colwell, Aland, Fee, and Epp, in addition to Kirsopp Lake. Yet none of these holds to Textus Receptus priority and for good reason. The Textus Receptus itself was never seen on the planet until a Roman Catholic (remember the reviewer who spoke of 'papists' - he seems to not know that Erasmus was a Catholic, which certainly calls his conclusions into question) named Desiderius Erasmus strung it together from somewhere between five and eleven manuscripts. ALL of those manuscripts were LATE - the eleventh century or later - and in most cases he had only one manuscript per section of the New Testament. Comfort points all this out and so much more in great detail. If you wish to know to the history of the Christian bible, you cannot go wrong by including this book. I would also recommend Comfort's "Essential Guide To Bible Versions" and the "Studies and Documents" series by the Lake foundation.

favors the theory of a 4th century recension

This is a scolarly presentation of the viewpoint that a recension took place in the fourth century produced by Lucian of Antioch which incorporated hundreds (if not thousands) of textual changes in the New Testament. It is the author's opinion that the Majority Text, or Textus Receptus, is made up basically of 5th through 14th century copies of this recension, and therefore the text does not represent the original wording of the Greek New Testament. The author argues that the concept that the church loses the original Word of God and then recovers it falls in line with the biblical concept of recovery.This thesis is, of course, contrary to that of the proponents of the Majority Text, who believe that God has always preserved a true rendering of his Word throughout the entire church age. Majority Text proponents feel that there is either not enough evidence to support the idea of a fourth century recension, or they feel that thousands of manuscripts should not be summarily dismissed as evidence simply on the grounds that some (or many) believe there was a fourth century recension.The author argues for the superiority of the Alexandrian text over the Lucian text and feels that those older (Alexandrian) manuscripts be given more weight than the erroneous, though more numerous, majority Text manuscripts. The author's viewpoint is well argued and although a knowledge of Greek would be definitely advantageous to a study of this book, its main points can be easily understood even with no language background. Recommended reading.