Concept and History

Manuscript finds such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Cairo Genizah manuscripts, the discoveries at Nag Hammadi, and many more have radically changed our knowledge of the textual history of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. These new insights have led to several noticeable paradigm shifts in the field of textual criticism. Textual witnesses are no longer regarded as quarries for textual variants but are studied as texts and traditions in their own rig…