Answering a Question I Get All the Time: The Places to Start in Studying New Testament Textual Criticism

This is a good list by Ward. I would personally add to it with these titles:

- As I advocate a Majority Text view I think Harry Sturz’s The Byzantine Text-type and NT Textual Criticism; Frederick Scrivener’s excellent Plain Introduction to NT Textual Criticism; and Dean Burgon’s Revision Revised are important to know. I just don’t see modern textual critics engaging their arguments. Scrivener and Burgon are obviously old, but their work is pertinent, and in particular their more theological approach is, I think, better than the far more positivist eclectic method. I disagree with Ward about the combative nature of Burgon, not because it isn’t there, but because I do not believe one should try to adopt a scientific indifference to the text of the NT (as if it were possible).

- The work edited by D. A. Black called Rethinking NT Textual Criticism includes fine essays from the different approaches.

- The recent volume by Tommy Wasserman & Peter Gurry entitled A New Approach to Textual Criticism.

- I feel blessed to own a rare copy of Bruce Metzger’s Chapters in the History of NT Textual Criticism, a great book.