What sort of time commitment could one expect from a campus ministry’s small group? I’ll admit that, because I’m an alum of a small Christian college, I’ve got almost zero experience with campus ministries of various sorts.

Of course, a good study Bible is the best tool, and I’d recommend equally the New Oxford Annotated (my trusty Bible when I minored in Bible as an undergrad) and the Harper Collins Study Bible (my seminary Bible and the one I assign to my freshmen when I teach Bible). Both of those Bibles are study texts in the tradition of the 1611 KJV, and the scholars they assemble are top-notch. Folks who think that most of the academic world is “liberal” call these Bibles “liberal,” but I tend to define that category more narrowly, so I’d call them ecumenical the way that the KJV is ecumenical.

I’ve heard good things from conservative people about the ESV Study Bible, but since I have not looked at it myself, I won’t at this moment vouch for it. I’m all for good conservative scholarship, but I do insist on good as well as conservative.

But back to books: on textual criticism in general, I have looked at Vincent Taylor’s The Text of the New Testament: A Short Introduction, and it’s a nice gateway with a chapter on the Mark 16 question. With regards to Paul in particular your best bet would be some good scholarly commentaries on the disputed books themselves. I’ve not done as much with Paul as I have with the gospels and the Hebrew Bible, so a bit of browsing in the LCC range of BS 2700 and following is about the best I can recommend.

I’ll admit that my own familiarity with text criticism has grown rusty over the last six years, so I’m not anywhere near qualified to weigh in on the Patton vs. Snapp vs. Vladimir debate.

The Greek NT text is more than 99% pure (restored to its original state as from the pen of the author).

Vladimir

NG: “The point of P&P is to bring laypeople into those conversations, and I think this article does so nicely.”

But along the way he misinforms those trusting laypeople. His statements about Mark 16:9-20 are way off. That’s not so nice.

NG: “I welcome you to link to (or to write) another, brief introduction to the contours of textual criticism”

Try the “Development of the NT Text” presentation which is
in the list of text-critical resources at
http://www.curtisvillechristian.org/BasicTC.html
and “NTTC: Goals & Guidelines” at
http://www.curtisvillechristian.org/TCGoals.html .

There’s also a link there to the online Encyclopedia of NTTC.

And at http://www.archive.org you can download lots of NTTC materials, including Philip Schaff’s 1882 Introduction to the American Edition of Westcott & Hort’s Greek NT, and Eberhard Nestle’s 1904 Intro to NTTC (in English).

K. C. Hanson also provides some nice resources, which can probably be tracked down via a Google search for “K. C. Hanson Papyri Manuscripts.”

Yours in Christ,

James Snapp, Jr.

I do wonder if this sort of thing becomes more of a concern as one puts more distance between oneself and high school youth group. After all, Sunday morning service where I attend (and where Michael has seen me preach) uses music from my own high school youth group days along with stuff that’s more recent CCM vintage far more often than it does my own preference, the older hymns (as in from Luther’s and Wesley’s eras). I might be overstating the case if in fact big people church is becoming more and more like youth group.