The Text-Tradition of Luke-Acts

Abstract

"In the field of textual criticism, no text poses so great a problem for the critic as does that of the collection of documents making up the New Testament.l In contrast to the paucity of extant classical manuscripts, there is a great abundance of manuscripts which witness to the text of the New Testament. There are, indeed, more than 4,000 extant Greek manuscripts of portions of the New Testament, 8,000of the Latin Vulgate, and more than 1,000 of other versions.2 Add to this the vast number of biblical quotations found in the Fathers, and we find that the great mass of material, while it gives an unparalleled opportunity for the performance of the critical task, is also the source of enormous difficulties"