> Sorry for the longish post re textual criticism on B-Greek, but Clayton's
> question seemed to call for a bit of detail for a response to be useful, and
> perhaps others have had similar questions. And after all, it is in the
> variant readings of the NT manuscript tradition that we find some of the
> more interesting grammatical questions or issues--and not infrequently, in
> the form of some variant readings, clues as to how Greek scribes interpreted
> or rendered a difficult or awkward construction about which we now puzzle.
>
Thanks to Michael Holmes for an excellent response. He has stated more
clearly than I could my reason for asking textual questions on the
b-greek list. I do not see textual criticism as an end in itself but as
a tool for interperting the Greek text. My goal is to read the Greek NT
with understanding. Lexical semantics, NT Greek syntax, textual issues
all play a part in this. Not being a professional scholar I have a hard
time dividing up these topics.
Clay Bartholomew
Three Tree Point