18 Facts About Textual criticism

Textual criticism is a branch of textual scholarship, philology, and of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification of textual variants, or different versions, of either manuscripts or of printed books.

Textual criticism has been practiced for over two thousand years, as one of the philological arts.

Textual criticism was an important aspect of the work of many Renaissance humanists, such as Desiderius Erasmus, who edited the Greek New Testament, creating the Textus Receptus.

Textual criticism scholars have debated for centuries which sources are most closely derived from the original, hence which readings in those sources are correct.

The business of textual criticism is to produce a text as close as possible to the original.

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Textual criticism defended an authenticity of the Pericopa Adulterae, Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7), and Testimonium Flavianum.

Textual criticism surveyed editions of medieval French texts that were produced with the stemmatic method, and found that textual critics tended overwhelmingly to produce bifid trees, divided into just two branches.

Textual criticism concluded that this outcome was unlikely to have occurred by chance, and that therefore, the method was tending to produce bipartite stemmas regardless of the actual history of the witnesses.

Textual criticism suspected that editors tended to favor trees with two branches, as this would maximize the opportunities for editorial judgment.

Textual criticism noted that, for many works, more than one reasonable stemma could be postulated, suggesting that the method was not as rigorous or as scientific as its proponents had claimed.

Textual criticism therefore concluded that the correct procedure would be "produced by using the earliest 'good' print as copy-text and inserting into it, from the first edition which contains them, such corrections as appear to us to be derived from the author".

Textual criticism's rationale was adopted and significantly expanded by Fredson Bowers.

Textual criticism closely examined the Printer's Manuscript for differences in types of ink or pencil, in order to determine when and by whom they were made.

Textual criticism collated the various editions of the Book of Mormon down to the present to see what sorts of changes have been made through time.

Textual criticism of the Quran is a beginning area of study, as Muslims have historically disapproved of higher criticism being applied to the Quran.

Textual criticism suggested that some of the parchments were palimpsests which had been reused.

Textual criticism originated in the classical era and its development in modern times began with classics scholars, in an effort to determine the original content of texts like Plato's Republic.

Digital textual criticism is a relatively new branch of textual criticism working with digital tools to establish a critical edition.