Methods of Textual Criticism

In deciding which form of the text is original, most scholars apply an "eclectic" method, which appeals, on a case-by-case basis, to a number of different criteria that are traditionally categorized either as "external" (those based on the likelihood that a reading goes back either to the original author or to an error introduced by a scribe). To be sure there continue to be proponents of the "Majority test," who claim that the form of text found in the majority of surviving witnesses is always, or nearly always, to be preferred (an emphasis almost exclusively on one kind of external evidence); and there are others who maintain that since all of the manuscripts contain mistakes, it is wrong to consider the manuscripts at all when deciding what the authors originally wrote (emphasizing "internal" evidence). The majority of scholars, however, continue to adjudicate the differences among manuscripts by considering the whole range of surviving evidence.