New Testament Textual Criticism Past, Present, and Future: Reflections on the Alands' Text of the New Testament

History, theory, and practice are interwoven in most realms of human knowledge, yet students approaching a field often care little about its history; they are more concerned with its application and how the discipline is practiced. This may be illustrated from the physical and biological sciences, where it is common not only for novices but even experts to take an interest only very late—if at all—in the history of science, and more so among physicians, to whom the history of medicine is usually a curiosity at best. Students first grappling with NT textual criticism are not likely to be different—they want to know the “jargon,” the “rules,” and the basic methods that will permit them to practice the art and (as they are more likely to view it) the science of textual criticism. In this particular subfield of NT studies, however, the history and the practice of the discipline cannot easily be separated. After all, the canons of criticism—the so-called “rules” in textual criticism—are anything but objective standards that can be applied in a rigid, mechanical fashion.