A Student Asks, "Is Vaticanus Better Than Byzantine?"

A student recently wrote and asked me the following question: 

Dr. Hudgins, Good afternoon! I appreciate the answers about your statements in your introduction. I am reading through your interview and have a question somewhat unrelated to the course. It seems you have spent a great deal of time in textual and manuscriptal criticism. This may be a loaded question, but in your opinion, which is the most reliable manuscript? Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Vaticanus, Majority Text?

Here's my answer. I don't believe there is a single "most reliable" manuscript. Every manuscript has strengths and weaknesses because every manuscript was copied by human scribes. I've looked at hundreds of manuscripts extensively. I personally have not found any two that were identical, if “identical” includes every letter, spelling, movable nu, itacism, word division, abbreviation, nomen sacrum, correction, omission, and addition. The familiar scholarly observation that no two New Testament manuscripts present exactly the same text is sound at this level. 

Here are a couple of articles worth taking a look at. If you Google them, you can access them free online:  

H. A. G. Houghton and A. C. Myshrall, “Three Direct Copies and Other Closely Related Manuscripts of the Pauline Epistles,” Novum Testamentum 65, no. 3 (2023): 381–399.

Andrew J. Patton, “Direct Copying in a Group of Gospel Manuscripts with Catenae,” New Testament Studies 69, no. 4 (2023): 445–461.

GA 1930 is a direct copy of GA 1978. In Galatians they agree at 99.524%, but still differ at seven of 1,471 variation units. The differences include omissions, a sound-related alteration, an added article, and a singular misreading. 

GA 377 is a direct copy of GA 807. In Mark they agree at approximately 99.22%, yet differ at forty-three places. Those differences include additions, duplications, and the omission of Mark 9:45–46 through eyeskip. 

GA 1959 is a direct copy of GA 467. In Galatians they differ at twelve of 1,457 units, and elsewhere the copyist omitted portions of lines in Romans and Hebrews. 

And if you consider my analysis of the Vatican manuscripts and the Gospel according to Matthew (Hudgins, Thomas W. The Greek New Testament of the Complutensian Polyglot: Vatican Manuscripts and the Gospel of Matthew. PhD diss., Complutense University of Madrid, 2016), the divergence between the Complutensian Greek text and the individual Vatican manuscripts ranges from 123 to 465 discrete textual issues. The closest witnesses still differ at striking levels:

• GA 141: 123 issues
• GA 128: 139
• GA 140: 162
• GA 134: 163
• GA 175: 165
• GA 167: 167
• GA 150: 172
• GA 133: 182
• GA 872: 197

Every other manuscript in my study diverged at more than 200 places. Even more tellingly, combining the three closest witnesses— GA 141, 128, and 140—still leaves 78 Complutensian readings unaccounted for. The most favorable combination of two leaves at least 81, and even gathering all seven usable witnesses with fewer than 200 differences would still leave approximately 100 unresolved places. And these are not merely interchangeable spellings. Your collation records variation involving:

• orthography and proper names;
• additions and omissions;
• articles, conjunctions, pronouns, and prepositions;
• lexical substitutions;
• person, number, case, tense, and mood;
• word order, phrase order, and clause order;
• larger expansions and omissions.

I even identified twenty-one Complutensian readings absent from every Vatican manuscript examined.

And in "The Greek Column of the Complutensian New Testament and the Implausibility of Vatican Manuscripts," Fortunatae 31 (2020): 29–44, I compared Erasmus’s printed Greek text with the extant manuscripts known to have been available to him and demonstrated what a genuine source relationship looks like textually. For Matthew 8, you compared Erasmus’s 1516 Novum instrumentum omne with:

• GA 1, Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, AN IV 2
• GA 2, Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, AN IV 1
• GA 817, Basel, Universitätsbibliothek, A III 15

Those three manuscripts account for the whole of Erasmus’s Matthew 8, apart from the absence of τήν in Matt. 8:28, which you interpret as an apparent omission by accident or editorial choice. You concluded that GA 2 served as Erasmus’s principal base text, supplemented at points from GA 817 and, less prominently, GA 1. At Matt. 8:15, for example, Erasmus did not follow the reading of GA 1 and GA 2, αὐτοῖς, but selected GA 817’s αὐτῷ in καὶ διηκόνει αὐτῷ.

I also tested Matthew 22 and found that the same manuscripts account for Erasmus’s text there, apart from Erasmus’s apparent omission of εἰς in Matt. 22:16, probably influenced by its position after βλέπεις. Although Erasmus was demonstrably using these manuscripts, his printed text is not simply identical to any one of them. It is an edited and occasionally conflated text. Even a known source-target relationship produces differences through selection, correction, omission, and possibly accident. And we can assume that this was not a new phenomenon associated with the advent of printed text. It happened throughout the history of transmission. 

Even demonstrable textual dependence does not ordinarily produce complete identity. Erasmus’s Greek text of Matthew 8 and 22 can be reconstructed almost entirely from the Basel manuscripts known to have been used in preparing his edition, especially GA 2, with readings supplied from GA 1 and GA 817. Nevertheless, Erasmus’s printed text is not identical to any single one of those manuscripts. This provides a useful control alongside demonstrable manuscript Abschriften: whether a scribe copies a manuscript or an editor establishes a printed text from manuscripts, variation still enters the resulting text.

So, what's the deal? All that to say what? Well, Codex Vaticanus is an important witness. Sure. But so are Codex Sinaiticus, Codex Alexandrinus, the early papyri, the Byzantine manuscripts, the versions, as are quotations and references from the Church Fathers. Each contributes evidence that must be weighed carefully.

Rather than asking, "Which manuscript is best?" I prefer to ask, "What does the external and internal evidence indicate for this particular textual variant?" Every textual problem deserves its own investigation. Sometimes the evidence points toward a reading found in Vaticanus. Sometimes in Sinaiticus. Sometimes both. Sometimes the Byzantine tradition preserves what appears to be the original reading. The goal is not loyalty to a manuscript, a manuscript family, or a text-type; the goal is to determine, as carefully as possible, the wording most likely written by the biblical author.

This is one reason I encourage students not to think in terms of "Alexandrian good" or "Byzantine good." There is no wholly trustworthy text-type, and therefore we are compelled to evaluate the evidence. All of it. Textual criticism is ultimately an exercise in historical reasoning, not manuscript preference.