Beyond The Bible, Episode 5

Text Criticism

Viewing Time | 13 minutes

Overview

Brand new, freshly baked BTB video coming your way! If you’ve ever wanted to know how scholars sort through the thousands of Bible manuscripts that we have in order to achieve the most accurate translations of the Bible, this is definitely a video you’ll want to check out! Check it out above.

This video is about the area of study called Text Criticism. Text criticism looks at old manuscripts (such as the Bible) and compares them to one another, seeking to discover the transmission history of the document being examined, as well as attempt to recover the original text/s as best as possible. We examine some Old Testament examples of textual transmission errors, then talk about why this area of academic study is important. Other items of note include: a quick discussion about the Masoretic Text (MT), the book “Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible” by P. Kyle McCarter, Jr., and the topic of the reliability of the Biblical manuscript transmission process compared to other ancient works.