1This is a faithful saying: someone who seeks to be an overseer desires a good work. 2The overseer therefore must be without reproach, the husband of one wife, temperate, sensible, modest, hospitable, good at teaching; 3not a drinker, not violent, not greedy for money, but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous; 4one who rules his own house well, having children in subjection with all reverence; 5(for how could someone who doesn’t know how to rule his own house take care of God’s assembly?) 6not a new convert, lest being puffed up he fall into the same condemnation as the devil. 7Moreover he must have good testimony from those who are outside, to avoid falling into reproach and the snare of the devil.
8Servants, in the same way, must be reverent, not double-tongued, not addicted to much wine, not greedy for money, 9holding the mystery of the faith in a pure conscience. 10Let them also first be tested; then let them serve if they are blameless. 11Their wives in the same way must be reverent, not slanderers, temperate, and faithful in all things. 12Let servants be husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own houses well. 13For those who have served well gain for themselves a good standing and great boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus.
14These things I write to you, hoping to come to you shortly, 15but if I wait long, that you may know how men ought to behave themselves in God’s house, which is the assembly of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. 16Without controversy, the mystery of godliness is great:
God was revealed in the flesh,
justified in the spirit,
seen by angels,
preached among the nations,
believed on in the world,
and received up in glory.
New Testament textual criticism is the discipline in which the wording of the original text is determined. It is needed because the originals have turned to dust long ago and no two manuscripts are exactly alike. The word “criticism” in this context is not a subjective term, as if these scholars are personally critical. Rather, it means research.
New Testament textual critics examine two kinds of evidence when making decisions about the authenticity of a given text. External evidence is the hard data—manuscripts, ancient translations (or versions), and writings by church fathers (the bishops, priests, and scholars of the ancient church). All of this is compared to see if it can be determined which variants came from which and especially when each arose. Internal evidence is the soft data—what the author would be likely to have written and how the ancient scribes (or copyists) would be likely to have corrupted the text. The author’s writings are examined for their theology, coherence, style, and context. The scribe’s writings are examined via the manuscripts. No two manuscripts are exactly alike, so it is logical to assume that scribes along the way corrupted the text. Most of the corruptions are unintentional, involving spelling errors, transposition of words and letters, omissions, additions, errors due to hearing or sight or fatigue. But sometimes scribes also made intentional changes, often assuming that the manuscript they were copying had mistakes. So, even though internal evidence is an examination of the soft data, it cannot be ignored.
Textual criticism cannot be done by counting manuscripts. It is the weight of the manuscripts, not their number that is important. One axiom is always kept front and center when looking at external and internal evidence:
Choose the reading that best explains the rise of the other(s).
The more that external and internal evidence point to the same wording as authentic, the greater the certainty scholars can have. Among the hundreds of thousands of textual variants in the manuscripts, less than one percent of them are in any serious doubt. Yet no cardinal doctrine of the Christian faith is jeopardized by any of them.