Description
The main characteristic of the Western text is a love of paraphrase: "Words and even clauses are changed, omitted, and inserted with surprising freedom, wherever it seemed that the meaning could be brought out with greater force and definiteness." One possible source of glossing is the desire to harmonise and to complete: "More peculiar to the Western text is the readiness to adopt alterations or additions from sources extraneous to the books which ultimately became canonical." This text often presents longer variants of text, but in few places, including the end of the Gospel of Luke, it has shorter variants, named Western non-interpolations.
Only one Greek Uncial manuscript is considered to transmit a Western text for the four Gospels and the Book of Acts – the fifth century Codex Bezae; while the sixth century Codex Claromontanus is considered to transmit a Western text for the letters of Saint Paul, and is followed in this by two ninth century Uncials: F and G. Many "Western" readings are also found in the Old Syriac translations of the Gospels, the Sinaitic and the Curetonian, though opinions vary as to whether these versions can be considered witnesses to the Western text-type. A number of fragmentary early papyri from Egypt also have Western readings, 29, 38, 48; and in addition, Codex Sinaiticus is considered to be Western in the first eight chapters of John. The term "Western" is a bit of a misnomer because members of the Western text-type have been found in the Christian East, including Syria.
Read more about this topic: Western Text-type
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