Inconsistency: Testing the Canons Against Themselves
The canons of textual criticism often point in different directions. Bahnsen’s inconsistency test asks whether critics apply stable rules or change the weight of the rules as the…
Open record →Category: By What Standard Is This the Text?
4 published records in this controlled archive.
Arbitrariness: The Unproved Decisions Behind the Text
Modern textual criticism possesses evidence, learning, and elaborate tools. The prior question is whether its selection and weighting of that evidence escape mere opinion, relativism, unargued bias, and…
Open record →The Critical-Text Case, Stated at Its Strongest
Before testing modern textual criticism for arbitrariness, its historical claims, evidential appeals, editorial methods, and principal modern forms must be stated as their strongest advocates state them.
Open record →The Standard James White Said Did Not Exist
A question at the end of the Riddle-White debate exposed the prior problem modern textual criticism cannot evade: by what ultimate standard are manuscripts, canons, and critics themselves…
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