Included in a set of papers given at a NT textual criticism conference held in Birmingham (UK) is an essay by Tommy Wasserman that merits attention of all interested in the question of what the earliest manuscript evidence tells us about the textual transmission of the Gospels in the second century: “Was There an Alexandrian Recension of the Living Text?,” in Liturgy and the Living Text of the New Testament, ed. Hugh Houghton (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2018), 1-22.
Noting recent challenges by Brent Nongbri to the previously-accepted dates for P66 and P75 (two more substantially preserved papyri of the Gospels), Wasserman focuses on the data of P4, P64, P67, whose dates (ca. 175-250) remain commonly accepted.[1] These papyri show a very carefully copied text, with very few harmonizations or other indications of a “loose” handling.[2] Moreover, there is an impressive agreement with the text of Codex…
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