A. Classification of Readings and Variants

Ernest Cadman Colwell's seminal articles in the mid-1960s began a process of clarifying several concepts basic to the discipline of New Testament textual criticism, including grouping manuscripts, quantitative measurement of manuscript relationships, the nature of text-types, and classifying textual variants.¹

Ernest Cadman Colwell, “Scribal Habits in Early Papyri: A Study in the Corruption of the Text,” in The Bible in Modern Scholarship (ed. J. Philip Hyatt; Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon, 1965) 370–89; repr. as “Method in Evaluating Scribal Habits: A Study of ⁴⁵,

⁶⁶,

⁷⁵,” in idem, Studies in Methodology in Textual Criticism of the New Testament (New Testament Tools and Studies 9; Leiden: Brill, 1969) 106–24; Ernest C. Colwell and Ernest W. Tune, “Variant Readings: Classification and Use,” Journal of Biblical Literature 83 (1964) 253–61; repr. as “Method in Classifying and Evaluating Variant Readings,” in Colwell, Studies in Methodology, 96–105.

Colwell was led to investigate these matters in his role as chair of the American Executive Committee of the International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP), beginning when he was president of the University of Chicago (1945–1951), then vice president of Emory University (1951–1957) and finally president of the School of Theology at Claremont (1957–1968), with the Project's headquarters moving with him. The IGNTP, however, did not intend to produce a critical text but only a comprehensive apparatus of variants that would facilitate the subsequent construction of a critical text. Decisions were necessary about the kinds of variants to be included in this extensive apparatus, and Colwell, with his collaborator, Ernest W. Tune, first explored the unit of variation, termed by them a “variation-unit,”²

Colwell and Tune then classified variants as either “insignificant” or “significant.” Nonsense readings, dislocated readings (clear, demonstrable scribal errors), and singular readings (found in only one Greek manuscript) were labeled “insignificant” and were to be excluded from the critical apparatus, for they do not aid “in establishing group relationships of manuscripts.”

⁴⁵,

⁶⁶, and

⁷⁵ by Colwell himself,

Naturally, agreement to various aspects of these proposals was not universal, and subsequently the New Testament Textual Criticism Seminar of the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) dedicated an annual session⁷

Variants came to the forefront also with the renewed interest in so-called theologically motivated variants in the New Testament textual tradition, requiring fresh approaches in distinguishing between “intentional” and “unintentional” alterations to the text. These categories overlap with “significant” and “insignificant” variants, for, while intentional changes are inevitably significant or meaningful, some unintentional variants, such as the often unconscious harmonizations to parallel texts or conformity to Septuagintal or liturgical forms, are also readings that make sense.

Although definitions frequently are clarifying and useful in moving discussions forward, they do not in themselves or automatically provide solutions to the issues they address. Yet, in initiating this set of sophisticated, methodical definitions of variants, Colwell was a pioneer, and New Testament textual criticism has been both facilitated and enriched by them and by the further explorations that they have engendered.

B. Concepts of “The Original Text”

It may surprise some that clarifying the nature of variants with precision came only recently in the long history of textual criticism, but certainly it is more surprising to learn that a term and concept at the very heart of the discipline was not subjected to serious scrutiny (that is, seeking clear definition) until a dozen years ago, namely “the original text.” And again the New Testament Textual Criticism Section of SBL provided a venue for this discussion under the theme, “What Do We Mean by ‘Original’ Text?”⁹

Yet, the issue is even more complex. In every reading of every text, it is difficult to be certain what the author intended,¹³

At the same time, the nature and goals of textual criticism are called into question. For instance, if the goal of textual criticism—as traditionally viewed—is to restore the “original” text, which textform (or which “original”) is in view—a predecessor textform, or an interpretive form, or the canonical textform? Or, if the purpose is to recover what the author actually wrote—to cite another traditional formulation—which “author” is in view? This is particularly vexing when multiple variants in a passage reveal various “authorial” presentations of a text, and when their respective levels of priority cannot be sorted out with any assurance. Or, if the goal—as sometimes stated—is merely to remove scribal errors,¹⁴

The breadth and depth of the situation disclosed by these questions and implications about “original text” and “author,” and hence the extent and complexity of the problems facing New Testament textual critics, are evident in the truism that each copying of a text, each scribal alteration to a manuscript, and each translation of a text produces a new “original.”¹⁷

My proposed definitions for the various textforms that develop in the process of transmission were designed to provoke discussion on a subject that, again, had received little systematic consideration: What do we mean—what can we mean—by “the original text” of the New Testament? To be sure, many handbooks and scholars of textual criticism have long acknowledged, albeit subtilely, that a problem lurks behind the term “original text,” for often the phrase is enclosed within quotation marks, a tacit admission of its polysemy or its elusive (and perhaps also illusive) nature, or elsewhere the term is expanded to “the most likely original text.”

This introduction of ambiguity into the customary, straightforward definition of the goal of New Testament textual criticism alerts us at once to the need for clearer statements and—most importantly—for recognition of complexity in these text-critical issues. In addition, it calls for tolerance and acceptance of this very ambiguity itself. As I have suggested elsewhere, these recent explorations have occasioned the loss of innocence in New Testament textual criticism and have moved the discipline into a new era.¹⁸

A. Seeking the “Original” or the “Earliest Attainable” Text

A typical modern description of the purpose of New Testament textual criticism may be found in the second edition of Léon Vaganay's An Introduction to New Testament Textual Criticism, revised and updated by Christian-Bernard Amphoux:

Some manuals of New Testament textual criticism, however, are more rigid and lack a qualifying phrase. One example is offered by J. Harold Greenlee's Introduction, a fine handbook for a brief volume, where the formulation adheres strictly to the view that:

A quite different example of focus on the original text can be found in the indispensable volume by Kurt and Barbara Aland on The Text of the New Testament. The Alands, perhaps surprisingly, do not engage in defining the goal of textual criticism except by inference, possibly because the purpose of the discipline appears to be obvious and more specifically because their manual is designed to provide “the basic information necessary for using the Greek New Testament and for forming an independent judgment on the many kinds of variant readings characteristic of the New Testament textual tradition.”²³

To my mind, this claim to restrict the scope of textual criticism has its share of difficulties, which have been explored elsewhere,³¹

To summarize, “original text” is understood differently even by those who aim to recover that “original,” but such a goal, however understood, appears to render dispensable all variants not adopted for the “original,” or at least to treat rejected variants merely as evidence for the development of the text and specifically as tracers of the path back to the original, rather than conveying some message or possessing some worth in and of themselves.

Most New Testament textual critics, past and present, however, subscribe to one of two modified formulations of textual criticism's traditional goal, namely, 1) to recover the most likely original text, perhaps more often than not without giving serious consideration as to what they mean by “original,” or 2) to establish the earliest attainable text. These two aims may appear to be closely similar, but in reality—depending upon how “original” is understood—they may differ, and differ quite radically. In the Alands's view, as just described, the two goals converge, for the “authoritative” or “official” original text of the New Testament writings is thought to have been recovered/reconstructed in both the 26th edition of Nestle-Aland's Novum Testamentum Graece (Nestle-Aland²⁶) and the 3d edition of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament (UBSGNT³), which share an identical text, as do the current Nestle-Aland²⁷ and UBSGNT⁴.³⁷

The Institute for New Testament Textual Research, ed., Novum Testamentum Graecum, Editio Critica Maior: IV, Catholic Epistles, Installment 1: James (ed. Barbara Aland, [dagger]Kurt Aland, Gerd Mink, and Klaus Wachtel; 2 parts; Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1997), with two changes from Nestle-Aland²⁷/UBSGNT⁴; Catholic Epistles: The Letters of Peter (2 parts; vol. 4:2; 2000); The First Letter of John (2 parts; vol. 4:3; 2003); The Second and Third Letter of John, The Letter of Jude (2 parts; vol. 4:4; 2005). Whereas previous changes from the text of Nestle-Aland²⁵ were indicated in Nestle-Aland^{26 and 27} by a [dagger]in the apparatus, no such signal was given to the important and proper change in Rom 16:7 when

(“Junias,” male) was altered to

(“Junia,” female) in the 5th corrected printing of Nestle-Aland²⁷ and in the third printing of UBSGNT⁴, both in 1998: see Epp, Junia: The First Woman Apostle (Minneapolis, Minn.: Fortress, 2005) 46–48.

In other text-critical manuals, however, when “original” designates the autographs (a term that carries its own ambiguities), then the “earliest attainable text” is something farther removed in time, and a text quite different from the autographs might be envisioned—a text, or better, texts that represent the best that modern text-critical resources and methods can recover. These earliest recoverable texts of passages, books, and sections of what became the New Testament will vary in date due to diverse transmissional factors affecting the various writings, including random preservation, frequency of use in the churches, and other contextual circumstances. But above all the result will surely be a text that, as a whole and in larger sections, never existed in any actual manuscript. This realistic assessment of the transmission process makes the relationship between any presumed autographs and the earliest attainable text highly tentative and, indeed, largely obscure.

On the positive side, however, a search for the earliest attainable text is more realistic and practical than any goal formulated in terms of “the original text.” Employing time honored theories and methods developed over centuries, scholars can document factors that played a role in producing the many later texts. The resultant earliest text, of course, is imperfect but (fortunately) subject to refinement and improvement through new discoveries or methods, hence accommodating the exigencies of the textual transmission process and thereby conforming to reality itself. Yet, identifying the earliest attainable text is significantly different from seeking and finding the text of the autographs, for the latter search envisions a pristine simplicity that cannot be verified, while the former, for many of us, does not necessarily—if at all—encompass a search for an imagined, idealistic “original.” After all, such a pristine document at best is elusive anyway and most likely illusive and mythical—given the difficulty in conceiving of what “the original text” might specify. Obviously, I prefer the goal of the earliest attainable text, although I take serious exception to accepting either of the stated goals (i.e., the most likely original or the earliest attainable text) as a full and adequate aim of the discipline.

B. Variants as Repositories of Narrative

On occasion early Christian writers, such as Origen and Jerome, mention textual variants as present in a “few” or in “some” or “many” manuscripts,³⁹

That much of the story is told by Origen,⁴²

Nothing in textual criticism (or elsewhere in biblical scholarship), of course, is genuinely new, and narrative textual criticism had its distinctive predecessors, notably the mid-twentieth-century “Chicago School” of textual criticism, comprised of work by Donald W. Riddle, Ernest C. Colwell, Merrill M. Parvis, Kenneth W. Clark, and others at or from the University of Chicago, who emphasized that the New Testament textual tradition is a living text, that there are no spurious readings, but that all (meaningful) readings reflect church history—its doctrine and its life.⁵²

For the most part, however, rejected variants have been regarded as of relatively little value in comparison with the critical text itself, but narrative textual criticism considers inadequate any conception of the New Testament text as a single line of running text where the variant readings are not readily apparent or easily accessible. An obvious example is Westcott-Hort's The Text of the New Testament in the Original Greek, which consisted only of their constructed text, but with no apparatus of variants in the volume (although an “Appendix: Notes on Select Readings,”⁵⁶

Several issues in our preceding discussions, such as authorial intent and especially the phenomenon of textual variation, have been pursued in fascinating fashion by textual critics in other literary traditions. First, for example, Bernard Cerquiglini, in Éloge de la variante (1989), assesses the effect of the printing press from 1530 to the early nineteenth century, focusing on the immutable multiple copies and whether this ancient dream actually was fulfilled by the new technology. But, rather than sure and simple copies, the frenetic printing house involves typographers who produce errors, successive drafts that require correctors, constant manipulation of the text, and, with others in control, an author virtually excluded from the process: “Keep the author off the premises.” The dream appears to have failed. Yet, if corrections are permitted at a final stage, the author, as Cerquiglini puts it, “appears to triumph over the machine.”⁶³

Upon reflection, the question remains: Did the period from the invention of printing until the development of the modern copying machine differ much, in the range of textual variants, from the centuries of textual transmission via manuscripts?

Equally provocative are two observations evoked by Cerquiglini's analysis: 1) The notion of “original text” may have arisen only after the printing press offered the (false) hope that now the immutable “true copy” can be preserved. After all, Origen was “able to make both readings [in Heb 2:9] yield edifying truths” and in Matt 18:1, after mentioning two variants, for Origen “it makes no difference which reading is original, and he expresses no opinion on the matter.”⁶⁵

Second, Jerome J. McGann, a scholar of English literature, initiated a major shift in modern literary theory and methods. In A Critique of Modern Textual Criticism (1983), he argues for a “social theory of the texts” and “introduced new problems for the (technical, editorial) issue of authorial intentions.”⁶⁶

C. A Unitary Definition of New Testament Textual Criticism

Two goals of New Testament textual criticism have been sketched above: 1) searching for the earliest attainable text and 2) disclosing, through narrative textual criticism, the theological, liturgical, and ethical contexts of textual variants in the life of the church. Unlike the dilemma posed by Pilate in the Barabbas incident (“Should I release Jesus Barabbas or Jesus called Christ?”), the textual critic is not compelled to choose one goal or the other. In fact, I would insist that the textual critic need not and cannot choose only one, for the discipline actually has a twofold but essentially unitary goal that encompasses both inseparable endeavors, as already intimated above. That single, integrated goal will be formulated momentarily, after clarifying two preliminary issues.

1. The relation of “earliest attainable” to “original” text. It may be objected that the search for the earliest attainable text is a subterfuge for a quest for the original text. Yet, as previously mentioned, “earliest attainable” need not carry the implication that a single, ideal, ethereal “original” may still be reproducible. Nor is the goal of the earliest attainable text a compromise in view of the present transmissional realities, that is, accommodating a lesser goal while still harboring the hope that new discoveries and fresh methods will permit textual critics one day to identify “earliest attainable” with “a single original” text. The earliest attainable text is, to be sure, a moving target. Aided by new manuscripts or patristic witnesses, textual critics have slowly moved it back in date, yet the nature of New Testament textual transmission virtually precludes any ultimate identification of “earliest attainable” with “the original.” The factors are many and varied, but predominant is the basic philological and philosophical barrier of the multivalence in the term “original.” Beyond that, the magnitude of Greek and versional manuscripts and patristic citations that have transmitted the text, as well as the enormous quantity of textual variants that have resulted, militates against a single, simplistic original.

New Testament textual critics for a long time have seen this abundance of witnesses as a fortunate circumstance. We have far richer textual resources than are extant for other ancient documents, and it is assumed, therefore, that the original readings can be found somewhere in that abundance.

⁴⁵,

⁴⁶,

⁶⁶, and

⁷⁵ (where they overlap), show numerous differences from one another and from the grand parchments

and B.

Except for

⁷⁵ and B, which are virtually identical, but this is a very different—and highly important—issue, for

⁷⁵ (early third century) demonstrates that B (Codex Vaticanus, mid-fourth century) does not reflect a third/fourth century recension, i.e., a refined, smoothening version of an older, rougher text, a view held after Westcott-Hort. Rather,

⁷⁵ confirms that the text in B existed already at the outset of the third century, i.e., 125 to 150 years earlier than B. See Gordon D. Fee, “

⁷⁵,

⁶⁶, and Origen: The Myth of Early Textual Recension in Alexandria,” in New Dimensions in New Testament Study (ed. Richard N. Longenecker and Merrill C. Tenney; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan, 1974) 24–28 = Epp and Fee, Studies in the Theory and Method, 251–56.

If this is a reasonable description of the situation in the early church, can even the earliest forms of the text be identified? Is the goal of the earliest attainable text realistic? That has been answered in the affirmative for the vast majority of variation-units, although not for those with entangled multiple readings. Taken variation-unit by variation-unit, the earliest reading in each case normally can be identified by seeking the reading that best explains the rise of all the others (a method named the “local-genealogical method” by Kurt Aland⁷⁵

Unfortunately, perhaps only four second-century manuscripts of the New Testament are extant;⁷⁸

⁵²,

⁹⁰,

¹⁰⁴, and perhaps

⁹⁸. In addition, four papyri date around 200:

³²,

⁴⁶,

⁶⁴⁺⁶⁷, and

⁶⁶.

2. Bias in a baseline text. We have already asserted that the arrangement of these standard critical editions—text at the top with variants in footnotes—is slanted, usually by design, in favor of the baseline text, not only when the text is described as the earliest attainable text, but especially when it is affirmed to be the “most likely original.” Not only are the rejected variants far less visible than their counterparts in the privileged text, but they have been consigned by their very location to an inferior role. In other words, our present critical editions—in spite of their enormous value to all biblical scholars (We could not work without them!)—actually tend to detract from rather than to enhance the enrichment that comes from an array of variants, thereby obscuring significant concerns of the churches in various periods. This is in no way to diminish the excellent critical editions available to us, for they are the mature result of generations of meticulous labor and judicious judgment, and we are immensely grateful—on a daily basis—to those who have produced them. Yet their traditional arrangement (text on top, variants as footnotes), exemplified already in John Mill's edition of 1707, has persisted, and there appear to be many users of the earlier and current editions who simply accept the text in the upper portion of the pages with little attention to the lower portion—the netherworld. As a result, many readers are not confronted by the important variant readings, and, if numerous variants have a story to tell—as they do—their relegation to the footnote style apparatus mutes their voices and suppresses their narratives. Can this bias be overcome or at least diminished?

3. Formulating a single, integrated goal. It is this lack of visibility, this lack of encounter with the rejected variants that occasions my discontent with maintaining two separable goals for New Testament textual criticism, namely, 1) constructing a baseline text consisting of the earliest attainable text and 2) searching, often as an afterthought, among the cast off, second class readings for what they might tell us about life, belief, and worship in early Christianity. This twofold goal is, of course, a distinct improvement over the traditional, singular goal of recovering the “original” text. Yet the broader goal, stated as twofold, really is singular: to study the transmission of the text, being alert—at the same time—both to the earliest attainable form but also to the narratives that the variant readings disclose and to what they reveal about Christians and their communities as time went along. The desired goal is integrated and unitary, for decisions about readings that are prior to others can rarely be made without assessing each reading to determine its sense, its significance, and its story in the context of its variation-unit. In the final analysis, exegesis is the arbiter in a text-critical decision.

Textual critics for this reason resist requests to provide exegetes with a cut-and-dried, running handlist of textual decisions, for it is the exegetes themselves who should consummate those judgments. Differing exegesis often will dictate different verdicts. Regrettably, the critical text at the top of the page, at least for many users of the Greek New Testament, represents an authoritative result that can be taken over and used without further consideration. After all, it is said, such a text is the product of experts (usually a highly competent committee) who, it is presumed, have considered all the alternatives. Yet every scholarly commentary and numerous books and articles on the New Testament that take seriously the critical apparatus assert that the standard critical text, here and there, requires correction, inevitably based on how best the various readings fit their immediate and larger contexts. These suggestions for correction are strong witnesses to the reality that a baseline text can never be definitive and that by itself—without offering direct encounter with its variants—cannot be an adequate goal of the discipline.

If an edition of the text were arranged so that significant variants would confront every user, readers who are seriously interacting with the New Testament text would be far better informed about the genuine nature of that text. Not only would they better understand how the text has been transmitted to us through numerous manuscripts containing multiple variations, but they would be enriched by the various interpretations within the Christian communities that the variants disclose. The contexts of the variants would cast light on and enliven church history.

A. Conceiving a Variant-Conscious Edition

My not-so-modest proposal, then, is for a variant-conscious edition of the Greek New Testament, one in which significant variants directly confront the reader. Variants would be, as the saying goes, “in your face!” How might this be implemented? Simply stated, the baseline text (at the top of the page) also would carry, below each line, the major, meaningful variants in each variation-unit. An apparatus, in the customary form, would provide the attestation for the variants displayed and also would include minor variants.

The International Greek New Testament Project (IGNTP), in its first phase (1948–1987), provides an inspiration although not a model. The purpose of that project was “to make accessible the materials that will enable scholars to reconstruct the earliest text of the New Testament and to understand its textual history”⁸¹

A second inspiration comes from another edition that does not construct or present a critical text of the New Testament, but rather offers an effective means of displaying a rather substantial number of variant readings, namely, Reuben J. Swanson's New Testament Greek Manuscripts: Variant Readings Arranged in Horizontal Lines against Codex Vaticanus.⁸³

A third inspiration, leading us closer to a model format for a variant-conscious edition, comes from two valuable editions of the Old Latin biblical text that employ a horizontal display of variants from a baseline text. One is the older, four volume Itala. Das Neue Testament in altlateinischer Überlieferung (of the four gospels, 1954–1972) and the other is the ongoing Vetus Latina. Die Reste der altlateinischen Bibel (1956–).⁸⁵

The Vetus Latina offers a format with a conventional apparatus indicating manuscript, versional, and patristic attestation for the variants in the running text at the head of each page. It approaches a model for our edition, however, because it displays, in parallel, horizontal fashion, the major variants to the Old Latin text. Yet, a distinctive feature does not lend itself to our proposed edition, namely, the display of the running Latin text in four separate “text types,” plus the Vulgate, each on separate, horizontal lines. Such a division into textforms, while appropriate for this Latin edition of the New Testament, is inappropriate for the Greek text and its array of versional and patristic support. The major reason is that the issue of text types in New Testament textual criticism is highly complex and still debated, and it is essential, rather, to present the textual variations without invoking one theory or another.

Finally, a paper presented in 1974 by Gordon D. Fee, published only in 1993 in our co-authored volume of collected essays,⁸⁶

B. Formatting a Variant-Conscious Edition

A variant-conscious edition, then, would display significant variants in a single running text that, at each variation-unit, places the selected variant readings in horizontal comparison, one below another, and then reverts to a running text until the next variation-unit is reached. A separate apparatus would provide the attestation for various readings displayed in the running text. Textual variation, of course, is not as simple as stacking short variants at intervals, for often readings are highly complex, extending at times over whole phrases and clauses, and involving differing sequences. On occasion variation-units consist of entire sentences or sections that are additional or absent. Displaying these would be a challenge and may require that some complicated variants be displayed only in an apparatus. An additional challenge is how to make visual those variants that are found only in versions or in non-Greek patristic writers.

The point of the edition, however, would be twofold: 1) to move scholars away from thinking of the text as a single line of “correct” or assured text, or (worse) as the complete or exclusive text of the New Testament, and 2) to allow readers to grasp visually the several possibilities in a variation unit so as to gain insight into the underlying narratives—to hear the differing voices that the several readings present. In this way, variants are confronted directly and they alert the user, for example, to christological notions that did not triumph in early Christianity (so Ehrman), to ethical and worship issues that were matters of debate and of edification (so Parker), and to an array of varying perceptions, interpretations, and viewpoints preserved or presented by scribes. In all of this, the discipline of New Testament textual criticism would show itself to be proactive, as it should be, in making a full range of important textual readings not only accessible—as they certainly are in current and prospective critical editions—but also much more obvious, and even confrontational, to all who need to consider them in their interpretive work. Viewing variants in their church-historical context to gain insight into the life, thought, and worship of the Christian communities has already demonstrated its wide appeal, not only due to its very nature, but also because it fits the contemporary willingness to view language, literature, culture, and thought contextually. New Testament textual criticism, in offering a variant-conscious edition of the Greek text, would continue to embrace this approach much to its benefit and that of the constituencies it serves.

C. Sample Section of a Variant-Conscious Edition: The Ascension Accounts

The following sample utilizes the three passages in the New Testament where—in one stream of the textual tradition—a physical transfer from earth to heaven of the resurrected Christ is depicted, while the variants furnish a largely different narrative of the event. The apparatus has been constructed (and somewhat modified) by use of Nestle-Aland²⁷, UBSGNT⁴, Swanson's Luke and Acts,

The Ascension narratives. These three passages on the Ascension are the only texts in the New Testament to describe a literal, physical transfer from earth to heaven of the risen Christ—at least that is the story in one textual stream, namely the B-text (or Alexandrian, or Westcott-Hort's “Neutral”). The other tradition, the D-text (or “Western” text) varies in several places and—although not with absolutely rigorous consistency—tells a different story. In Luke 24:51 it is not said that the risen Christ “went away from them and was taken up into heaven,” but only that he “went away from them.” In Acts 1:2 there is no “day when he was taken up,” but only a reference to the “day when he chose the disciples through the Holy Spirit and commanded them to preach the gospel.” In Acts 1:9 the risen Christ is not “taken up and a cloud took him from their sight,” but “a cloud came upon him and he was taken away/removed from their sight”—not “taken up.” Finally, in Acts 1:11, although the absence of a literal ascension is not carried through consistently, yet at a crucial point, where the B-text speaks of “This Jesus who was taken up from you into heaven,” the D-text has simply, “This Jesus who was taken from you,” without saying “into heaven,” although the latter phrase is still retained twice elsewhere in the passage. Rigorous consistency, however, is not to be expected in cases like this, for the pressure on scribes to conform any alternate version of the event came from two strong forces: first, from the strongly attested and gradually triumphing B-text, and, second, from the almost universal ecclesiastical or Byzantine text—both of which reflect the prevailing view of a physical ascension (as in the Nicene Creed). These textual traditions, therefore, would have been the standard to which scribes would correct any aberrant text that they might be copying. Hence, if a substantial consistency of viewpoint—here in three separated passages—is discovered in one recognizable stream of textual tradition, then that phenomenon speaks loudly for a persistent—even though not perfectly preserved—theological conviction in that tradition. It may be concluded, then, that the D-text of Luke-Acts, in an earlier stage than we can reconstruct fully, did not hold to a literal, physical transfer of the risen Christ from earth to heaven, and this is a notable story narrated for us by a set of striking textual variants.⁹³

Normally, and in most portions of the New Testament, our example now would be complete. The ascension narratives in Luke-Acts, however, illustrate a further dimension of a variant-conscious edition where the baseline seeks to represent the earliest attainable text, and this example was chosen deliberately to bring the issue into focus. Few textual critics will object to printing the Nestle-Aland/UBSGNT text as the baseline for the vast majority of the New Testament, because that text represents the B-text or Alexandrian text, which in broad terms and by most textual critics is recognized as the earliest attainable text. Yet, in Acts and in portions of the gospels, especially the last chapters of Luke, the Nestle-Aland/UBSGNT text may be an inappropriate baseline due to the long-standing and yet unresolved debate as to whether the earliest reachable text is the B-text or the D-text (the so-called “Western” text). Westcott-Hort, more than a hundred years ago, argued that there were two textual streams that were contemporary competitors in the second century, and even suggested that most early Christians may have read portions of the emerging New Testament in the “Western” form. In the final analysis, however, Westcott-Hort opted for the B-text as the “better” or “best” text, based on their view of the “Western” text as seriously corrupted. Much discussion followed and controversy still abounds, including current champions of D-text priority as a whole⁹⁴

This debate, of course, cannot be reviewed or pursued here, although it is not unfair, I think, to suggest that Kurt and Barbara Aland—leading scholars in determining the joint text of Nestle-Aland/UBSGNT—have discouraged moving the current critical text toward the D-text, for they have maintained that no text-types existed prior to the fourth century and have declined to recognize the D-text as an early text-type.