Verses With Zero-Support in the Modern Critical Text

A significant objection to the reconstructed modern Critical Text of the Greek New Testament has been posed by Dr. Maurice A. Robinson for over two decades now, and it has yet to be satisfactorily answered. Robinson is a retired professor from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary who spent over fifty years in New Testament textual criticism and is a well-known advocate for the position referred to as ‘Byzantine Priority’.

Robinson’s objection arose from his close examination of the text and notes of the Nestle-Aland 27th edition (referred to as NA27). He found numerous sequences, involving one or more verses in the modern Critical Text which have ‘zero-support’ overall in any extant manuscripts of the Greek New Testament, in ancient versions, or in Biblical quotations in the early Church Fathers. 

This is because it uses a method called ‘reasoned eclecticism’ which involves making judgments about differing readings (variants) based on its analysis of available manuscripts and application of the empirical methods of modern textual criticism. 

As a result, Robinson contended in a 2009 article that this method has, in various places, produced a ‘test-tube’ text which exists only in the ‘laboratory’ of textual critics without any historical evidence that such verses, as they appear in NA27, ever actually existed…