Monthly Archives: August 2022

The Date of Codex Sinaiticus

While standard reference works give a date of ‘ca. 360 C.E.’ vel sim. for Codex Sinaiticus, this overly precise mid–fourth century date is more a matter of habit rather than the result of reasoned argumentation based on reliable evidence.

The Date of Codex Sinaiticus by Brent Nongbri (https://academic.oup.com/jts/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jts/flac083/6652265?searchresult=1&login=false)

Textual Criticism: Internal Evidence

Internal Evidence of Readings is of two kinds, which cannot be too sharply distinguished from each other; appealing respectively to Intrinsic Probability, having reference to the author, and what may be called Transcriptional Probability, having reference to the copyists. In appealing to the first, we ask what an author is likely to have written: in appealing to the second, we ask what copyists are likely to have made him seem to write. Both of these kinds of evidence are alike in the strictest sense internal, since they are alike derived exclusively from comparison of the testimony delivered, no account being taken of any relative antecedent credibility of the actual witnesses.

B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek with Notes on Selected Readings, 20.

Textual Criticism

Again, textual criticism is always negative, because its final aim is virtually nothing more than the detection and rejection of error. . . . and the primary work of textual criticism is merely to discriminate the erroneous variants from the true.

B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort, Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek with Notes on Select Readings, 3.

Visible / Invisible Church Distinction

They [regarding visible/invisible church distinction] are not properly two churches, but one church, contemplated in two different aspects — an internal and an external. They do not occupy different spheres, but the same sphere. The visible church includes or contains the invisible, though, in its present imperfect condition, it has also mixed up with it some inferior elements, — some chaff, which will one day be separated from the wheat.

William Cunningham, Historical Theology, Vol. 1, 16.

Important Questions

The two most important questions that can call forth men’s interest, or exercise their faculties, are these two: first, Has God given to men a supernatural revelation of His will? and secondly, If so, what is the substance of the information which this revelation conveys to us? All subjects of investigation are subordinate to these.

William Cunningham, Historical Theology, Vol. 1, 4.