Robinson and Pierpont 2005

I picked up some bargains on the bookstalls at the Evangelical Theological Society in Philadelphia today. Wipf & Stock are doing a particularly good range, e.g. Crum's Coptic Dictionary for 81 USD. One thing I picked up from a bookstall whose name I've forgotten was M.A. Robinson and W.G. Pierpont's The New Testament in the Original Greek: Byzantine Textform, 2005. It differs slightly from previous editions and has more textual information. Books are given in the order: Gospels, Acts, Catholic Epistles, Paulines (with Hebrews after 2 Thessalonians), Revelation. 'The Case for Byzantine Priority' is relegated to an appendix. A second version of the pericope adulterae is given in a slightly different form of print from the rest (italic and smaller). The front pages are fun, esp. the non-copyright notice 'All rights to this text are released to everyone'. I might report more on this once I've checked it over more carefully.

Before the preface is an extensive quotation from Tregelles, Account of the Printed Text, 186, which I quote for edification:

'Let it never be forgotten, that just as it is the place of a Christian to look to God in prayer for his guidance and blessing in all his undertakings, so may he especially do this as to labours connected with the text of Scripture. The object sought in such prayer is not that the critic may be rendered infallible, or that he may discriminate genuine readings by miracle, but that he may be guided rightly and wisely to act on the evidence which the providence of God has preserved, and that he may ever bear in mind what Scripture is, even the testimony of the Holy Ghost to the grace of God in the gift of Christ, and that thus he may be kept from rashness and temerity in giving forth its text. As God in his providence has preserved Holy Scripture to us, so can He sic vouchsafe the needed wisdom to judge of its text simply on grounds of evidence...'

The strong appeal to preservation by Tregelles is interesting, particularly the way preservation is related to evidence.