More on Textual Criticism

My idea of writing a commentary based a single text-type has prompted some interesting responses. Peter Williams, over at Evangelical Textual Criticism has an interesting response to my post. He seems moderately in favour of the idea and notes that for a long time most commentaries were based on a single text-type (e.g. Lightfoot etc.) In the comments section below, Stephen Carlson notes that the approach I’m putting forward sounds like a “copy-text” approach and modern TC is pretty much based on copy-text of Codex Vaticanus at any rate!

Is it possible to:

1. Focus on a single text (like Lightfoot did) and then examine the text in and of itself, paying attention to details of textual transmission, corruption, restoration, wirkungsgeschicte, scribal activity, and of course exegesis of the text.

2. Still keep on an eye on what Paul may have originally written using the standard canons of TC.

Maybe we can start a new commentary series called:

The Lightfoot Textual Commentaries: Textual Tradition, Reception-History, and Exegesis

I got dibs of p52 (Rylands)! See it here