Here are some thoughts on the obsession with the “original” text that many scholars and laypeople have when it comes to the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament:
- The validity of a historical claim cannot and should not be equated with the state of preservation of that claim. If someone 2000 years ago wrote down a falsehood and then that falsehood was copied by others 5000 times, this would not make the falsehood true or valid.
- The quality of the copies of that falsehood tell us nothing about the truthfulness of the falsehood. Even if we had exact word for word copies of the falsehood that could be traced back to the autograph or antigraph, that still would not make the falsehood true.
These are some things that should be kept in mind when doing Textual Criticism, not just of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament, but of any text from antiquity.
