Kritik teks

Artikel ini tentang kritik teks secara umum. Untuk kritik teks sebagai metode tafsir Alkitab, lihat Kritik teks (Alkitab).

Kritik teks adalah cabang ilmu penelitian teks, filologi, dan kritik sastra yang mempelajari identifikasi varian teks atau macam-macam versi naskah tulis-tangan maupun buku cetak. Kritik teks menelaah teks dari berbagai zaman, mulai dari karya tulis purba dalam aksara baji yang ditorehkan pada loh lempung sampai dengan versi-versi karya tulis yang tidak diterbitkan dari seorang penulis abad ke-21. Para katib zaman purba yang diupah untuk menyalin dokumen mungkin saja memiliki kemahiran baca-tulis, tetapi banyak yang cuma sekadar menyalin, yakni meniru bentuk-bentuk aksara tanpa paham maknanya. Ini berarti perubahan-perubahan teks lumrah terjadi tanpa disengaja dalam proses penyalinan naskah. Perubahan teks dapat pula terjadi karena disengaja, misalnya tindakan sunting-sensor karya tulis cetak dengan alasan-alasan politik, keagamaan, maupun kebudayaan.

Tujuan kegiatan kritik teks adalah menyajikan pemahaman yang lebih baik mengenai penciptaan dan riwayat transmisi suatu teks maupun varian-variannya. Pemahaman yang lebih baik memungkinkan pembuatan "edisi kritis" berisi teks yang terkelola secara ilmiah. Jika seorang ilmuwan memiliki beberapa versi dari sebuah naskah yang tidak diketahui teks aslinya, maka metode-metode baku kritik teks dapat digunakan untuk merekonstruksi teks aslinya semirip mungkin. Metode-metode yang sama dapat digunakan untuk merekonstruksi versi-versi langsung, atau resensi-resensi, dari riwayat transkripsi sebuah dokumen, bergantung kepada jumlah dan mutu teks yang tersedia.

Di lain pihak, satu teks asli yang diteorikan ada oleh seorang ilmuwan disebut urteks (dalam konteks pendalaman Alkitab), purwarupa, maupun autograf. Meskipun demikian, bukan berarti harus ada satu teks asli untuk setiap kelompok teks. Sebagai contoh, jika sebuah cerita disebarluaskan melalui tradisi lisan dan baru kemudian hari dituangkan ke dalam bentuk tulisan oleh berbagai pihak di berbagai tempat, maka akan ada lebih dari satu teks asli yang mungkin saja sangat berlainan satu sama lain.

Ada banyak pendekatan atau metode yang digunakan dalam kegiatan kritik teks, teristimewa eklektisisme, stematika, dan sunting teks-patokan. Teknik-teknik kuantitatif juga digunakan untuk menentukan keterkaitan di antara saksi-saksi keberadaan sebuah teks, dalam hal ini metode-metode ilmu biologi evolusioner (filogenetika) tampaknya efektif diterapkan pada serentang tradisi.

Sejumlah bidang, misalnya bidang penyuntingan teks keagamaan dan klasik, mengenal istilah "kritik rendah" yang dimaknai sebagai kritik teks, dan istilah "kritik tinggi" yang dimaknai sebagai usaha untuk memastikan jati diri penulis, waktu penulisan, dan tempat penulisan teks asli.

Sejarah

Sebagai salah satu cabang ilmu filologi, kritik teks sudah dipraktikkan selama lebih dari dua ribu tahun. Para kritikus teks terdahulu, khususnya para pustakawan Aleksandria Helenistis pada dua abad terakhir SM, memusatkan perhatiannya pada pelestarian karya-karya tulis Abad Kuno. Sikap semacam ini bertahan sepanjang Abad Pertengahan sampai ke awal zaman modern dan masa reka cipta mesin cetak. Kritik teks merupakan salah satu aspek penting dari kiprah banyak humanis Renaisans, misalnya Desiderius Erasmus, yang menyunting Perjanjian Baru Yunani dan menghasilkan Textus Receptus. Para Ilmuwan di Italia, semisal Petrarca dan Poggio Bracciolini, mengumpulkan dan menyunting banyak naskah Latin, manakala suatu semangat baru untuk menelaah secara kritis digelorakan oleh perhatian terhadap status teks, misalnya analisis Lorenzo Valla terhadap keaslian teks Hibah Konstantinus.

Banyak karya tulis peninggalan Abad Kuno, misalnya Alkitab dan tragedi-tragedi Yunani, sintas dalam jumlah ratusan salinan, dan keterkaitan tiap-tiap salinan dengan teks aslinya mungkin saja tidak jelas. Para ilmuwan teks sudah berabad-abad memperdebatkan sumber mana yang paling dekat dengan teks aslinya, dan dengan demikian memperdebatkan bacaan mana di dalam sumber-sumber tersebut yang tepat. Jika teks-teks seperti lakon-lakon Yunani patut diduga memiliki satu sumber asli, maka persoalan apakah beberapa kitab di dalam Alkitab semisal injil-injil hanya memiliki satu sumber asli, justru menjadi pokok pembahasan. Minat untuk menerapkan kritik teks terhadap Qur'an juga sudah berkembang sesudah naskah San'a ditemukan pada tahun 1972, yang mungkin saja berasal dari rentang waktu abad ke-7 sampai abad ke-8.

Di bidang sastra Inggris, karya-karya tulis William Shakespeare sudah menjadi lahan garapan yang sangat subur bagi kritik teks, baik karena teks-teks tersebut seiring transmisinya mengandung cukup banyak variasi, maupun karena jerih payah dan biaya yang dicurahkan untuk menghasilkan edisi-edisi bermutu tinggi dari karya-karya tulisnya senantiasa secara luas dianggap sepadan dengan hasilnya. Meskipun mula-mula dikembangkan dan disempurnakan untuk kepentingan telaah karya-karya tulis Abad Kuno dan Alkitab, dan secara khusus di bidang sunting teks-patokan Amerika-Inggris untuk kepentingan telaah karya-karya tulis Shakespeare, asas-asas kritik teks telah diterapkan pada banyak karya tulis, mulai dari teks-teks kontemporer sampai dengan dokumen-dokumen tertua yang sudah diketahui. Kritik teks menelaah berbagai macam teks dari rentang waktu sekitar lima ribu tahun, mulai dari zaman Mesopotamia dan Mesir Kuno sampai abad ke-20.

Gagasan dan tujuan dasar

Persoalan mendasar, sebagaimana dikemukakan Paul Maas, adalah sebagai berikut:

Kita tidak punya naskah-naskah autograf (karya tulis-tangan penulis asli) para pujangga Yunani dan Romawi klasik, dan tidak satu pun naskah salinan yang pernah diperbandingkan dengan aslinya. Naskah-naskah yang kita punyai diturunkan dari naskah-naskah asli melalui salinan-salinan langsung yang tidak diketahui jumlahnya, dan oleh karena itu keandalannya patut dipertanyakan. Urusan kritik teks adalah menghasilkan sebuah teks yang semirip mungkin dengan aslinya (constitutio textus).

Maas mengemukakan pula bahwa "naskah hasil pengimlaan yang direvisi penulisnya harus dianggap setara dengan sebuah naskah autograf". Ketiadaan naskah autograf juga merupakan kenyataan yang didapati di dalam banyak peradaban selain Yunani dan Romawi. Dalam situasi semacam ini, yang menjadi tujuan utama adalah identifikasi eksemplar pertama sebelum timbul penyimpangan apa pun dalam tradisi penulisan. Eksemplar tersebut dikenal sebagai purwarupa. "Jika kita berhasil menetapkan teks purwarupanya, maka constitutio-nya (rekonstruksi teks aslinya) lumayan mengalami kemajuan.

Tujuan akhir yang hendak dicapai kritikus teks adalah menghasilkan sebuah "edisi kritis", berisi teks yang ditetapkan penulis sebagai teks yang paling mendekati perkiraan teks asli, disertai apparatus criticus atau aparatus kritis. Aparatus kritis menyajikan hasil penelitian penulis dalam tiga bagian. Bagian pertama adalah daftar atau penjabaran bukti yang digunakan penyunting (nama naskah-naskah, atau singkatan-singkatannya yang disebut siglum). Bagian kedua adalah analisis penyunting atas bukti-bukti tersebut (kadang-kadang berupa penggolongan sederhana berdasarkan taraf kemiripan). Bagian ketiga adalah keterangan tentang varian-varian dari teks tersebut yang ditolak penulis (sering kali dalam urutan preferensi).

Proses

Folio Papirus 46, berisi teks 2 Korintus 11:33–12:9

Sebelum penemuan mesin cetak, karya-karya sastra diperbanyak melalui penyalinan tulis-tangan, dan ada banyak variasi yang dimunculkan para penyalin. Penemuan mesin cetak membuat profesi katib efektif tidak dibutuhkan lagi. Kendati tidak rentan mengalami perbanyakan variasi seperti yang terjadi selama transmisi tulis-tangan,edisi-edisi cetak tetap saja tidak kebal terhadap kemunculan variasi-variasi dari sebuah autograf. Bukan lagi katib yang keliru menyalin sumber acuannya, melainkan perangkai cetakan huruf atau bengkel cetak yang mungkin saja membaca atau merangkai cetakan huruf dengan cara yang berbeda dari autograf. Karena setiap katib atau percetakan memunculkan kekeliruan-kekeliruan yang berbeda, usaha rekonstruksi teks asli yang sudah hilang sering kali dibantu segelintir bacaan pilihan yang diambil dari banyak sumber. Sebuah teks tersunting yang diturunkan dari berbagai sumber disifatkan eklektis. Kontras dengan pendekatan ini, sejumlah kritikus teks lebih suka mengidentifikasi satu teks terbaik di antara teks-teks yang sintas, alih-alih memadukan bacaan-bacaan dari berbagai sumber.

Bilamana membandingkan dokumen-dokumen atau "saksi-saksi" berlainan dari satu teks asli, perbedaan-perbedaan yang teramati disebut varian bacaan, atau cukup varian atau bacaan saja. Tidak selamanya jelas varian mana yang merupakan karya tulis asli penulis. Proses kritik teks berusaha untuk menjelaskan bagaimana tiap-tiap varian dapat masuk ke dalam teks, baik yang tidak disengaja (penggandaan atau penghapusan) maupun yang disengaja (penyelarasan atau penyensoran), sewaktu para katib atau penyelia mentransmisi teks penulis asli dengan cara menyalinnya. Oleh karena itu tugas kritikus teks adalah memilah varian-varian, mengeleminasi varian yang sepertinya tidak asli, dan dengan demikian menyusun sebuah "teks kritis" atau edisi kritis, yang dimaksudkan menjadi teks yang kira-kira paling mirip dengan aslinya. Pada saat yang sama, teks kritis harus mendokumentasi varian bacaan, supaya keterkaitan saksi-saksi yang ada dengan rekonstruksi teks asli terpampang jelas di mata seorang pembaca edisi kritis. Dalam penyusunan teks kritis, kritikus teks mempertimbangkan bukti "eksternal" (umur, tempat dan waktu penulisan, serta afiliasi tiap saksi) maupun bukti "internal" atau bukti "fisik" (hal-hal yang agaknya sudah dilakukan penulis dan katib atau percetakan).

Hasil perbandingan semua varian yang diketahui dari sebuah teks disebut variorum, yakni hasil kerja kritik teks berisi semua variasi dan emendasi yang ditata bersebelahan satu sama lain sehingga seorang pembaca dapat menelusuri bagaimana keputusan-keputusan tektual diambil dalam mempersiapkan sebuah teks untuk diterbitkan. Alkitab dan karya-karya tulis William Shakespeare kerap dijadikan subjek edisi-edisi variorum, kendati teknik-teknik yang sama telah diterapkan dengan tingkat kekerapan yang lebih rendah atas banyak karya tulis lain, misalnya kumpulan puisi Leaves of Grass karangan Walt Whitman dan kumpulan prosa Edward Fitzgerald.

Eklektisisme

Eklektisisme adalah sebutan untuk praktik mempertimbangkan banyak dan beragam saksi keberadaan teks asli tertentu. Praktik ini dilansasi asas bahwa semakin mandiri riwayat-riwayat transmisi, semakin kecil pula kemungkinan riwayat-riwayat transmisi tersebut menghasilkan kekeliruan-kekeliruan yang sama. Apa yang ditiadakan satu riwayat transmisi, mungkin saja dipertahankan riwayat transmisi lain. Apa yang ditambahkan satu riwayat transmisi, mungkin saja tidak ditambahkan tiwayat transmisi lain. Eklektisisme memungkinkan penarikan kesimpulan-kesimpulan mengenai teks asli berdasarkan bukti ketidaksamaan antar saksi.

Bacaan eklektis juga lazim mengisyaratkan jumlah saksi masing-masing bacaan yang tersedia. Sekalipun sebuah bacaan yang didukung mayoritas saksi kerap lebih diutamakan, tidak selamanya demikian. Sebagai contoh, sebuah edisi kedua dari naskah sandiwara Shakespeare dapat saja memuat tambahan yang menyinggung sebuah kejadian pada selang waktu di antara edisi pertama dan edisi kedua. Meskipun hampir semua naskah salinan selanjutnya mungkin saja memuat tambahan tersebut, para kritikus teks dapat saja merekonstruksi teks asli tanpa tambahan.

Proses semacam ini menghasilkan sebuah teks dengan bacaan-bacaan yang diambil dari banyak saksi. Teks ini bukanlah salinan dari naskah tertentu, dan dapat saja menyimpang dari mayoritas naskah yang ada. Dalam pendekatan yang murni eklektis, tidak satu pun saksi yang diutamakan menurut teori. Justru kritikus membentuk opini-opini tentang saksi-saksi satu demi satu, dengan mengandalkan bukti eksternal maupun internal.

Sejak pertengahan abad ke-19, eklektisme, yang tidak memberi ruang bagi prasangka a priori terhadap satu naskah tunggal, telah menjadi metode yang dominan digunakan dalam penyuntingan teks Yunani Perjanjian Baru (baru-baru ini, United Bible Society edisi ke-5 dan Nestle-Aland edisi ke-28). Meskipun demikian, naskah-naskah tertua, yakni naskah-naskah bercorak-teks Aleksandria, merupakan naskah-naskah yang paling diutamakan, dan naskah kritis bercorak-teks Aleksandria.

Bukti eksternal

Bukti eksternal adlah bukti tiap saksi fisik, pertanggalannya, sumbernya, dan keterkaitannya dengan saksi lain yang diketahui. Para kritikus sering kali akan mengutamakan bacaan-bacaan yang didukung saksi-saksi tertua. Karena kekeliruan-kekeliruan cenderung terakumulasi, semestinya naskah-naskah yang lebih tua mengandung lebih sedikit kekeliruan. Bacaan-bacaan yang didukung mayoritas saksi juga lumrah diutamakan, karena lebih kecil kemungkinan bacaan-bacaan tersebut mencerminkan kekeliruan yang tidak disengaja maupun prasangka perorangan. Untuk alasan yang sama, sebagian besar saksi yang berbeda secara geografis lebih diutamakan. Beberapa naskah memperlihatkan bukti bahwa perhatian khusus telah dicurahkan dalam penyusunannya, misalnya pencantuman bacaan-bacaan alternatif pada tepi halaman yang menunjukkan bahwa ada lebih dari satu salinan (eksemplar) terdahulu yang dirujuk dalam penyusunannya. Dengan asumsi faktor-faktor lain tidak berubah, naskah-naskah semacam ini adalah saksi-saksi terbaik. Peran kritikus teks diperlukan bilamana segala kriteria dasar tersebut bertentangan satu sama lain. Misalnya saja, lazimnya akan ada lebih sedikit salinan terdahulu dan lebih banyak salinan terkemudian. Kritikus teks akan mencoba menyeimbangkan segala kriteria tersebut dalam rangka menentukan teks asli.

Ada banyak pertimbangan lain yang lebih canggih. Sebagai contoh, bacaan-bacaan yang menyimpang dari praktik lazim yang sudah diketahui dari seorang katib atau dari kurun waktu tertentu dapat saja dianggap lebih andal, karena agaknya mustahil seorang katib atas inisiatif sendiri menyimpang dari praktik lazim.

Bukti internal

Bukti internal adalah bukti yang berasal dari teks itu sendiri, terlepas dari karakteristik fisik dokumen tersebut. Berbagai pertimbangan dapat digunakan untuk memutuskan bacaan mana yang paling mendekati aslinya. Kadang-kadang berbagai pertimbangan tersebut bisa saja saling bertentangan.

Dua pertimbangan umum memiliki sebutan Latin, yakni lectio brevior (bacaan yang lebih ringkas) dan lectio difficilior (bacaan yang lebih ruwet). Pertimbangan yang pertama, lectio brevior, merupakan hasil pengamatan umum bahwasanya para katib cenderung menambahkan kata-kata untuk memperjelas maksud teks maupun sekadar karena terbiasa melakukannya, lebih sering daripada menghilangkan kata-kata. Pertimbangan yang kedua, lectio difficilior potior (bacaan yang lebih ruwet adalah bacaan yang lebih kuat), mengakui adanya kecenderungan untuk melakukan penyelarasan, yakni menanggulangi berbagai ketidakselarasan yang tampak pada teks. Penerapan asas-asas ini berbuntut pada pemilihan bacaan yang lebih ruwet (yang tidak diselaraskan) sebagai bacaan yang lebih mungkin merupakan bacaan asli. Kasus-kasus semacam ini juga mencakup tindakan para katib untuk menyederhanakan dan mempermulus teks yang tidak sepenuhnya mereka pahami.

Kekeliruan lain yang cenderung dilakukan katib adalah homoioteleuton, artinya "berakhiran sama". Homoioteleuton timbul bilamana ada dua kata/frasa/kalimat diakhiri dengan urutan aksara yang sama. Sesudah menuliskan kata/frasa/kalimat yang pertama, katib langsung meloncat ke yang kata/frasa/kalimat kedua, sehingga menghilangkan semua kata yang tercantum di antara keduanya. Homeoarki adalah sebutan untuk silap-mata yang terjadi bilamana ada dua kalimat memiliki permulaan yang sama.

Kritikus dapat pula menguji karya-karya tulis lain dari penulis yang sama untuk menentukan kata-kata dan konstruksi-konstruksi gramatikal mana saja yang cocok dengan gaya penulisannya. Evaluasi bukti internal juga memberi kritikus informasi yang membantunya mengevaluasi keandalan naskah-naskah satu demi satu. Dengan demikian pertimbangan bukti internal berkaitan dengan pertimbangan bukti eksternal.

Sesudah mempertimbangkan semua faktor yang relevan, kritikus teks mencari bacaan yang paling mampu menjelaskan bagaimana bacaan-bacaan lain terbentuk. Dengan demikian bacaan tersebut adalah bacaan yang paling layak dicalonkan sebagai bacaan asli.

Kanon-kanon kritik teks

Teks Lukas 11:2 di dalam Kodeks Sinai

Berbagai ilmuwan teks telah menetapkan pokok-pokok pedoman atau kanon-kanon kritik teks untuk memandu kritikus saat melakukan penilaian dalam rangka menentukan bacaan terbaik sebuah teks. Salah seorang penetap kanon kritik teks terdahulu adalah Johann Albrecht Bengel (1687–1752), yang menghasilkan salah satu edisi Perjanjian Baru Yunani pada tahun 1734. Di dalam ulasannya, ia menetapkan kaidah Proclivi scriptioni praestat ardua (utamakan bacaan yang lebih ruwet).

Johann Jakob Griesbach (1745–1812) menerbitkan beberapa edisi Perjanjian Baru. Di dalam edisinya yang terbit tahun 1796, ia menetapkan lima belas kaidah kritis. Salah satu di antaranya mirip dengan kaidah Bengel, yaitu Lectio difficilior potior (semakin ruwet bacaan semakin baik pula bacaan itu). Kaidah lainnya adalah Lectio brevior praeferenda (utamakan bacaan yang lebih ringkas), yang didasarkan atas gagasan bahwa para katib lebih cenderung menambah ketimbang menghilangkan isi teks. Kaidah ini tidak dapat diterapkan secara tidak kritis, karena para katib dapat saja menghilangkan isi teks tanpa sengaja.

Brooke Foss Westcott (1825–1901) dan Fenton Hort (1828–1892) menerbitkan sebuah edisi Perjanjian Baru dalam bahasa Yunani pada tahun 1881. Mereka mengemukakan sembilan kaidah kritis. Salah satu di antaranya mirip dengan kaidah Bengel, yaitu "Bacaan yang menampakkan kecenderungan untuk melempengkan keruwetan, kecil kemungkinannya merupakan bacaan yang asli." Mereka mengemukakan pula bahwa "bacaan-bacaan disetujui atau ditolak atas dasar mutu, bukan jumlah, dari saksi-saksi pendukungnya", dan bahwasanya "bacaan yang harus diutamakan adalah bacaan yang paling mampu menjelaskan asal-usul keberadaan bacaan-bacaan lain."

Kendati mula-mula dikembangkan untuk kepentingan kritik teks Alkitab, banyak di antara kaidah-kaidah ini yang dapat secara luas diterapkan atas teks apa saja yang rentan terhadap kekeliruan-kekeliruan transmisi.

Batasan-batasan eklektisisme

Karena sangat bergantung kepada tafsir, bahkan adakalanya bertentangan satu sama lain, kanon-kanon kritik teks dapat saja disalahgunakan untuk membenarkan hasil yang cocok dengan selera estetis atau agenda teologi kritikus. Semenjak abad ke-19, para ilmuwan teks berusaha mencari metode-metode yang lebih tegas untuk menuntun penilaian penyunting. Stematika dan sunting teks-patokan, kendati keduanya bersifat eklektis dari segi mengizinkan penyunting untuk memilih bacaan-bacaan dari beragam sumber, berusaha mengurangi subjektifitas dengan cara menetapkan satu atau segelintir saksi yang diasumsikan layak diutamakan berdasarkan kriteria "objektif". Pengutipan sumber-sumber yang dipakai, dan bacaan-bacaan alternatif, serta penggunaan teks-teks dan gambar-gambar asli membantu sidang pembaca maupun kritikus lain untuk mengetahui seberapa dalam penelitian kritikus, dan untuk memastikan kebenaran karya tulis mereka secara mandiri.

Stematika

Selayang pandang

Skema turunan naskah karya tulis Pseudo-Apuleius Herbarius yang disusun Henry E. Sigerist (1927)

Stematika atau stematologi adalah pendekatan yang tegas terhadap kritik teks. Karl Lachmann (1793–1851) greatly contributed to making this method famous, even though he did not invent it. The method takes its name from the word stemma. The Ancient Greek word στέμματα and its loanword in classical Latin stemmata may refer to "family trees". This specific meaning shows the relationships of the surviving witnesses (the first known example of such a stemma, albeit with the name, dates from 1827). The family tree is also referred to as a cladogram. The method works from the principle that "community of error implies community of origin." That is, if two witnesses have a number of errors in common, it may be presumed that they were derived from a common intermediate source, called a hyparchetype. Relations between the lost intermediates are determined by the same process, placing all extant manuscripts in a family tree or stemma codicum descended from a single archetype. The process of constructing the stemma is called recension, or the Latin recensio.

Having completed the stemma, the critic proceeds to the next step, called selection or selectio, where the text of the archetype is determined by examining variants from the closest hyparchetypes to the archetype and selecting the best ones. If one reading occurs more often than another at the same level of the tree, then the dominant reading is selected. If two competing readings occur equally often, then the editor uses judgment to select the correct reading.

After selectio, the text may still contain errors, since there may be passages where no source preserves the correct reading. The step of examination, or examinatio is applied to find corruptions. Where the editor concludes that the text is corrupt, it is corrected by a process called "emendation", or emendatio (also sometimes called divinatio). Emendations not supported by any known source are sometimes called conjectural emendations.

The process of selectio resembles eclectic textual criticism, but applied to a restricted set of hypothetical hyparchetypes. The steps of examinatio and emendatio resemble copy-text editing. In fact, the other techniques can be seen as special cases of stemmatics in which a rigorous family history of the text cannot be determined but only approximated. If it seems that one manuscript is by far the best text, then copy text editing is appropriate, and if it seems that a group of manuscripts are good, then eclecticism on that group would be proper.

The Hodges–Farstad edition of the Greek New Testament attempts to use stemmatics for some portions.

Phylogenetics

Canterbury Tales, Woodcut 1484

Phylogenetics is a technique borrowed from biology, where it was originally named phylogenetic systematics by Willi Hennig. In biology, the technique is used to determine the evolutionary relationships between different species. In its application in textual criticism, the text of a number of different witnesses may be entered into a computer, which records all the differences between them, or derived from an existing apparatus. The manuscripts are then grouped according to their shared characteristics. The difference between phylogenetics and more traditional forms of statistical analysis is that, rather than simply arranging the manuscripts into rough groupings according to their overall similarity, phylogenetics assumes that they are part of a branching family tree and uses that assumption to derive relationships between them. This makes it more like an automated approach to stemmatics. However, where there is a difference, the computer does not attempt to decide which reading is closer to the original text, and so does not indicate which branch of the tree is the "root"—which manuscript tradition is closest to the original. Other types of evidence must be used for that purpose.

Phylogenetics faces the same difficulty as textual criticism: the appearance of characteristics in descendants of an ancestor other than by direct copying (or miscopying) of the ancestor, for example where a scribe combines readings from two or more different manuscripts ("contamination"). The same phenomenon is widely present among living organisms, as instances of horizontal gene transfer (or lateral gene transfer) and genetic recombination, particularly among bacteria. Further exploration of the applicability of the different methods for coping with these problems across both living organisms and textual traditions is a promising area of study.

Software developed for use in biology has been applied successfully to textual criticism; for example, it is being used by the Canterbury Tales Project to determine the relationship between the 84 surviving manuscripts and four early printed editions of The Canterbury Tales. Shaw's edition of Dante's Commedia uses phylogenetic and traditional methods alongside each other in a comprehensive exploration of relations among seven early witnesses to Dante's text.

Limitations and criticism

The stemmatic method assumes that each witness is derived from one, and only one, predecessor. If a scribe refers to more than one source when creating his copy, then the new copy will not clearly fall into a single branch of the family tree. In the stemmatic method, a manuscript that is derived from more than one source is said to be contaminated.

The method also assumes that scribes only make new errors—they do not attempt to correct the errors of their predecessors. When a text has been improved by the scribe, it is said to be sophisticated, but "sophistication" impairs the method by obscuring a document's relationship to other witnesses, and making it more difficult to place the manuscript correctly in the stemma.

The stemmatic method requires the textual critic to group manuscripts by commonality of error. It is required, therefore, that the critic can distinguish erroneous readings from correct ones. This assumption has often come under attack. W. W. Greg noted, "That if a scribe makes a mistake he will inevitably produce nonsense is the tacit and wholly unwarranted assumption."

Franz Anton Knittel defended the traditional point of view in theology and was against the modern textual criticism. He defended an authenticity of the Pericopa Adulterae (John 7:53–8:11), Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7), and Testimonium Flavianum. According to him Erasmus in his Novum Instrumentum omne did not incorporate the Comma from Codex Montfortianus, because of grammar differences, but used Complutensian Polyglotta. According to him the Comma was known for Tertullian.

The stemmatic method's final step is emendatio, also sometimes referred to as "conjectural emendation". But in fact, the critic employs conjecture at every step of the process. Some of the method's rules that are designed to reduce the exercise of editorial judgment do not necessarily produce the correct result. For example, where there are more than two witnesses at the same level of the tree, normally the critic will select the dominant reading. However, it may be no more than fortuitous that more witnesses have survived that present a particular reading. A plausible reading that occurs less often may, nevertheless, be the correct one.

Lastly, the stemmatic method assumes that every extant witness is derived, however remotely, from a single source. It does not account for the possibility that the original author may have revised his work, and that the text could have existed at different times in more than one authoritative version.

Best-text editing

The critic Joseph Bédier (1864–1938), who had worked with stemmatics, launched an attack on that method in 1928. He surveyed editions of medieval French texts that were produced with the stemmatic method, and found that textual critics tended overwhelmingly to produce bifid trees, divided into just two branches. He concluded that this outcome was unlikely to have occurred by chance, and that therefore, the method was tending to produce bipartite stemmas regardless of the actual history of the witnesses. He suspected that editors tended to favor trees with two branches, as this would maximize the opportunities for editorial judgment (as there would be no third branch to "break the tie" whenever the witnesses disagreed). He also noted that, for many works, more than one reasonable stemma could be postulated, suggesting that the method was not as rigorous or as scientific as its proponents had claimed.

Bédier's doubts about the stemmatic method led him to consider whether it could be dropped altogether. As an alternative to stemmatics, Bédier proposed a Best-text editing method, in which a single textual witness, judged to be of a 'good' textual state by the editor, is emended as lightly as possible for manifest transmission mistakes, but left otherwise unchanged. This makes a Best-text edition essentially a documentary edition. For an example one may refer to Eugene Vinaver's edition of the Winchester Manuscript of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur

Copy-text editing

A page from Codex Vaticanus Graecus 1209 shows a medieval scribe (the marginal note between columns one and two) criticizing a predecessor for changing the text: "Fool and knave, leave the old reading, don't change it!"

When copy-text editing, the scholar fixes errors in a base text, often with the help of other witnesses. Often, the base text is selected from the oldest manuscript of the text, but in the early days of printing, the copy text was often a manuscript that was at hand.

Using the copy-text method, the critic examines the base text and makes corrections (called emendations) in places where the base text appears wrong to the critic. This can be done by looking for places in the base text that do not make sense or by looking at the text of other witnesses for a superior reading. Close-call decisions are usually resolved in favor of the copy-text.

The first published, printed edition of the Greek New Testament was produced by this method. Erasmus, the editor, selected a manuscript from the local Dominican monastery in Basle and corrected its obvious errors by consulting other local manuscripts. The Westcott and Hort text, which was the basis for the Revised Version of the English bible, also used the copy-text method, using the Codex Vaticanus as the base manuscript.

McKerrow's concept of copy-text

The bibliographer Ronald B. McKerrow introduced the term copy-text in his 1904 edition of the works of Thomas Nashe, defining it as "the text used in each particular case as the basis of mine." McKerrow was aware of the limitations of the stemmatic method, and believed it was more prudent to choose one particular text that was thought to be particularly reliable, and then to emend it only where the text was obviously corrupt. The French critic Joseph Bédier likewise became disenchanted with the stemmatic method, and concluded that the editor should choose the best available text, and emend it as little as possible.

In McKerrow's method as originally introduced, the copy-text was not necessarily the earliest text. In some cases, McKerrow would choose a later witness, noting that "if an editor has reason to suppose that a certain text embodies later corrections than any other, and at the same time has no ground for disbelieving that these corrections, or some of them at least, are the work of the author, he has no choice but to make that text the basis of his reprint."

By 1939, in his Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare, McKerrow had changed his mind about this approach, as he feared that a later edition—even if it contained authorial corrections—would "deviate more widely than the earliest print from the author's original manuscript." He therefore concluded that the correct procedure would be "produced by using the earliest "good" print as copy-text and inserting into it, from the first edition which contains them, such corrections as appear to us to be derived from the author." But, fearing the arbitrary exercise of editorial judgment, McKerrow stated that, having concluded that a later edition had substantive revisions attributable to the author, "we must accept all the alterations of that edition, saving any which seem obvious blunders or misprints."

W. W. Greg's rationale of copy-text

Anglo-American textual criticism in the last half of the 20th century came to be dominated by a landmark 1950 essay by Sir Walter W. Greg, "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Greg proposed:

[A] distinction between the significant, or as I shall call them 'substantive', readings of the text, those namely that affect the author's meaning or the essence of his expression, and others, such in general as spelling, punctuation, word-division, and the like, affecting mainly its formal presentation, which may be regarded as the accidents, or as I shall call them 'accidentals', of the text.

Greg observed that compositors at printing shops tended to follow the "substantive" readings of their copy faithfully, except when they deviated unintentionally; but that "as regards accidentals they will normally follow their own habits or inclination, though they may, for various reasons and to varying degrees, be influenced by their copy."

He concluded:

The true theory is, I contend, that the copy-text should govern (generally) in the matter of accidentals, but that the choice between substantive readings belongs to the general theory of textual criticism and lies altogether beyond the narrow principle of the copy-text. Thus it may happen that in a critical edition the text rightly chosen as copy may not by any means be the one that supplies most substantive readings in cases of variation. The failure to make this distinction and to apply this principle has naturally led to too close and too general a reliance upon the text chosen as basis for an edition, and there has arisen what may be called the tyranny of the copy-text, a tyranny that has, in my opinion, vitiated much of the best editorial work of the past generation.

Greg's view, in short, was that the "copy-text can be allowed no over-riding or even preponderant authority so far as substantive readings are concerned." The choice between reasonable competing readings, he said:

[W]ill be determined partly by the opinion the editor may form respecting the nature of the copy from which each substantive edition was printed, which is a matter of external authority; partly by the intrinsic authority of the several texts as judged by the relative frequency of manifest errors therein; and partly by the editor's judgment of the intrinsic claims of individual readings to originality—in other words their intrinsic merit, so long as by 'merit' we mean the likelihood of their being what the author wrote rather than their appeal to the individual taste of the editor.

Although Greg argued that an editor should be free to use his judgment to choose between competing substantive readings, he suggested that an editor should defer to the copy-text when "the claims of two readings ... appear to be exactly balanced. ... In such a case, while there can be no logical reason for giving preference to the copy-text, in practice, if there is no reason for altering its reading, the obvious thing seems to be to let it stand." The "exactly balanced" variants are said to be indifferent.

Editors who follow Greg's rationale produce eclectic editions, in that the authority for the "accidentals" is derived from one particular source (usually the earliest one) that the editor considers to be authoritative, but the authority for the "substantives" is determined in each individual case according to the editor's judgment. The resulting text, except for the accidentals, is constructed without relying predominantly on any one witness.

Greg–Bowers–Tanselle

W. W. Greg did not live long enough to apply his rationale of copy-text to any actual editions of works. His rationale was adopted and significantly expanded by Fredson Bowers (1905–1991). Starting in the 1970s, G. Thomas Tanselle vigorously took up the method's defense and added significant contributions of his own. Greg's rationale as practiced by Bowers and Tanselle has come to be known as the "Greg–Bowers" or the "Greg–Bowers–Tanselle" method.

Application to works of all periods

William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream (First Folio)

In his 1964 essay, "Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors", Bowers said that "the theory of copy-text proposed by Sir Walter Greg rules supreme". Bowers's assertion of "supremacy" was in contrast to Greg's more modest claim that "My desire is rather to provoke discussion than to lay down the law".

Whereas Greg had limited his illustrative examples to English Renaissance drama, where his expertise lay, Bowers argued that the rationale was "the most workable editorial principle yet contrived to produce a critical text that is authoritative in the maximum of its details whether the author be Shakespeare, Dryden, Fielding, Nathaniel Hawthorne, or Stephen Crane. The principle is sound without regard for the literary period." For works where an author's manuscript survived—a case Greg had not considered—Bowers concluded that the manuscript should generally serve as copy-text. Citing the example of Nathaniel Hawthorne, he noted:

When an author's manuscript is preserved, this has paramount authority, of course. Yet the fallacy is still maintained that since the first edition was proofread by the author, it must represent his final intentions and hence should be chosen as copy-text. Practical experience shows the contrary. When one collates the manuscript of The House of the Seven Gables against the first printed edition, one finds an average of ten to fifteen differences per page between the manuscript and the print, many of them consistent alterations from the manuscript system of punctuation, capitalization, spelling, and word-division. It would be ridiculous to argue that Hawthorne made approximately three to four thousand small changes in proof, and then wrote the manuscript of The Blithedale Romance according to the same system as the manuscript of the Seven Gables, a system that he had rejected in proof.

Following Greg, the editor would then replace any of the manuscript readings with substantives from printed editions that could be reliably attributed to the author: "Obviously, an editor cannot simply reprint the manuscript, and he must substitute for its readings any words that he believes Hawthorne changed in proof."

Uninfluenced final authorial intention

McKerrow had articulated textual criticism's goal in terms of "our ideal of an author's fair copy of his work in its final state". Bowers asserted that editions founded on Greg's method would "represent the nearest approximation in every respect of the author's final intentions." Bowers stated similarly that the editor's task is to "approximate as nearly as possible an inferential authorial fair copy." Tanselle notes that, "Textual criticism ... has generally been undertaken with a view to reconstructing, as accurately as possible, the text finally intended by the author".

Bowers and Tanselle argue for rejecting textual variants that an author inserted at the suggestion of others. Bowers said that his edition of Stephen Crane's first novel, Maggie, presented "the author's final and uninfluenced artistic intentions." In his writings, Tanselle refers to "unconstrained authorial intention" or "an author's uninfluenced intentions." This marks a departure from Greg, who had merely suggested that the editor inquire whether a later reading "is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former", not implying any further inquiry as to why the author had made the change.

Tanselle discusses the example of Herman Melville's Typee. After the novel's initial publication, Melville's publisher asked him to soften the novel's criticisms of missionaries in the South Seas. Although Melville pronounced the changes an improvement, Tanselle rejected them in his edition, concluding that "there is no evidence, internal or external, to suggest that they are the kinds of changes Melville would have made without pressure from someone else."

Bowers confronted a similar problem in his edition of Maggie. Crane originally printed the novel privately in 1893. To secure commercial publication in 1896, Crane agreed to remove profanity, but he also made stylistic revisions. Bowers's approach was to preserve the stylistic and literary changes of 1896, but to revert to the 1893 readings where he believed that Crane was fulfilling the publisher's intention rather than his own. There were, however, intermediate cases that could reasonably have been attributed to either intention, and some of Bowers's choices came under fire—both as to his judgment, and as to the wisdom of conflating readings from the two different versions of Maggie.

Hans Zeller argued that it is impossible to tease apart the changes Crane made for literary reasons and those made at the publisher's insistence:

Firstly, in anticipation of the character of the expected censorship, Crane could be led to undertake alterations which also had literary value in the context of the new version. Secondly, because of the systematic character of the work, purely censorial alterations sparked off further alterations, determined at this stage by literary considerations. Again in consequence of the systemic character of the work, the contamination of the two historical versions in the edited text gives rise to a third version. Though the editor may indeed give a rational account of his decision at each point on the basis of the documents, nevertheless to aim to produce the ideal text which Crane would have produced in 1896 if the publisher had left him complete freedom is to my mind just as unhistorical as the question of how the first World War or the history of the United States would have developed if Germany had not caused the USA to enter the war in 1917 by unlimited submarine combat. The nonspecific form of censorship described above is one of the historical conditions under which Crane wrote the second version of Maggie and made it function. From the text which arose in this way it is not possible to subtract these forces and influences, in order to obtain a text of the author's own. Indeed I regard the "uninfluenced artistic intentions" of the author as something which exists only in terms of aesthetic abstraction. Between influences on the author and influences on the text are all manner of transitions.

Bowers and Tanselle recognize that texts often exist in more than one authoritative version. Tanselle argues that:

[T]wo types of revision must be distinguished: that which aims at altering the purpose, direction, or character of a work, thus attempting to make a different sort of work out of it; and that which aims at intensifying, refining, or improving the work as then conceived (whether or not it succeeds in doing so), thus altering the work in degree but not in kind. If one may think of a work in terms of a spatial metaphor, the first might be labeled "vertical revision," because it moves the work to a different plane, and the second "horizontal revision," because it involves alterations within the same plane. Both produce local changes in active intention; but revisions of the first type appear to be in fulfillment of an altered programmatic intention or to reflect an altered active intention in the work as a whole, whereas those of the second do not.

He suggests that where a revision is "horizontal" (i.e., aimed at improving the work as originally conceived), then the editor should adopt the author's later version. But where a revision is "vertical" (i.e., fundamentally altering the work's intention as a whole), then the revision should be treated as a new work, and edited separately on its own terms.

Format for apparatus

Bowers was also influential in defining the form of critical apparatus that should accompany a scholarly edition. In addition to the content of the apparatus, Bowers led a movement to relegate editorial matter to appendices, leaving the critically established text "in the clear", that is, free of any signs of editorial intervention. Tanselle explained the rationale for this approach:

In the first place, an editor's primary responsibility is to establish a text; whether his goal is to reconstruct that form of the text which represents the author's final intention or some other form of the text, his essential task is to produce a reliable text according to some set of principles. Relegating all editorial matter to an appendix and allowing the text to stand by itself serves to emphasize the primacy of the text and permits the reader to confront the literary work without the distraction of editorial comment and to read the work with ease. A second advantage of a clear text is that it is easier to quote from or to reprint. Although no device can insure accuracy of quotation, the insertion of symbols (or even footnote numbers) into a text places additional difficulties in the way of the quoter. Furthermore, most quotations appear in contexts where symbols are inappropriate; thus when it is necessary to quote from a text which has not been kept clear of apparatus, the burden of producing a clear text of the passage is placed on the quoter. Even footnotes at the bottom of the text pages are open to the same objection, when the question of a photographic reprint arises.

Some critics believe that a clear-text edition gives the edited text too great a prominence, relegating textual variants to appendices that are difficult to use, and suggesting a greater sense of certainty about the established text than it deserves. As Shillingsburg notes, "English scholarly editions have tended to use notes at the foot of the text page, indicating, tacitly, a greater modesty about the "established" text and drawing attention more forcibly to at least some of the alternative forms of the text".

The MLA's CEAA and CSE

In 1963, the Modern Language Association of America (MLA) established the Center for Editions of American Authors (CEAA). The CEAA's Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures, first published in 1967, adopted the Greg–Bowers rationale in full. A CEAA examiner would inspect each edition, and only those meeting the requirements would receive a seal denoting "An Approved Text."

Between 1966 and 1975, the Center allocated more than $1.5 million in funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to various scholarly editing projects, which were required to follow the guidelines (including the structure of editorial apparatus) as Bowers had defined them. According to Davis, the funds coordinated by the CEAA over the same period were more than $6 million, counting funding from universities, university presses, and other bodies.

The Center for Scholarly Editions (CSE) replaced the CEAA in 1976. The change of name indicated the shift to a broader agenda than just American authors. The Center also ceased its role in the allocation of funds. The Center's latest guidelines (2003) no longer prescribe a particular editorial procedure. -->

Penerapan pada dokumen keagamaan

Semua teks dapat menjadi subjek penelitian dan kritisisme sistematik di mana dokumen aslinya tidak dapat diverifikasi atau tidak tersedia. Para penganut agama sering kali enggan untuk melakukan penelitian kritik teks yang mendalam terhadap kitab-kitab sucinya karena mereka meyakini kitab-kitab itu sebagai ilham ilahi. Sebaliknya para lawan atau kelompok berpolemik condong untuk mencari-cari kesalahan dalam suatu teks keagamaan dengan cara apapun. Akibatnya, kritik teks yang sah sering ditentang baik oleh penganut kepercayaan itu maupun oleh para skeptik.

Alkitab Ibrani

Artikel utama: Kritik teks (Alkitab) § Alkitab Ibrani/Perjanjian Lama

Naskah Alkitab Ibrani dengan Targum dari abad ke-11

Satu halaman memuat Kitab Ulangan dari Aleppo Codex.

Kritisisme tekstual Alkitab Ibrani membandingkan versi naskah Alkitab dari berbagai sumber (tarikh berdasarkan naskah tertua yang terlestarikan dari setiap keluarga/famili tekstual)

Sebagaimana dalam naskah-naskah Perjanjian Baru, munculnya perubahan, korupsi dan penghapusan, terutama dalam teks-teks Masoret, disebabkan oleh para juru tulis (soferim; scribes) kuno yang tidak menangani kesalahan penyalinan secermat di waktu-waktu kemudian.

Ada tiga edisi baru terpisah untuk Alkitab Ibrani yang sekarang dalam pengembangan: Biblia Hebraica Quinta, Hebrew University Bible, dan Oxford Hebrew Bible. Biblia Hebraica Quinta adalah edisi diplomatik berdasarkan Leningrad Codex. Hebrew University Bible juga diplomatik, tetapi berdasarkan Aleppo Codex. Oxford Hebrew Bible adalah edisi eklektis.

Alkitab Ibrani sebagai Perjanjian Lama

Dalam melihat Alkitab Ibrani sebagai Perjanjian Lama, hampir semua varian tekstual tidak bernilai penting dan tidak mempengaruhi doktrin kepercayaan. Professor Douglas Stuart menyatakan: "Secara jujur dapat dikatakan bahwa ayat-ayat, pasal-pasal, dan kitab-kitab dalam Alkitab akan terbaca umumnya sama, dan memberikan kesan yang sama kepada para pembaca, meskipun orang memasukkan semua bacaan alternatif yang ada ke dalam teks yang menjadi dasar terjemahan [bahasa Inggris] saat ini."

Perjanjian Baru

Teks kuno Perjanjian Baru meliputi lebih dari 5.800 naskah bahasa Yunani manuscripts, 10.000 naskah bahasa Latin dan 9.300 naskah dalam bahasa-bahasa kuno lain (termasuk bahasa Suryani, bahasa Slavia, bahasa Etiopia dan bahasa Armenia). Naskah-naskah itu memuat sekitar 300.000 varian tekstual, sebagian besar meliputi pertukaran urutan kata dan perbedaan penulisan yang trivial. Jadi selama lebih dari 250 tahun dilakukan kritis teks mendalam, para sarjana Perjanjian Baru dapat menyatakan tidak ada varian tekstual yang mempengaruhi doktrin apapun. Profesor D. A. Carson menyatakan: "tidak ada dari apa yang kita percayai secara doktrinal benar, dan tidak ada dari apa yang diperintahkan kepada kita untuk dilakukan, yang diubah oleh varian-varian itu. Ini benar untuk tradisi tekstual manapun. Penafsiran perikop-perikop individual dapat saja dipertanyakan; tetapi tidak pernah ada doktrin yang terdampak."

Software

Sejumlah program dan standar komputer sudah ada untuk mendukung para penyunting edisi-edisi kritis. Ini termasuk:

• Text Encoding Initiative. The Guidelines of the TEI provide much detailed analysis of the procedures of critical editing, including recommendations about how to mark up a computer file containing a text with critical apparatus. See especially the following chapters of the Guidelines: 10. Manuscript Description, 11. Representation of Primary Sources, and 12. Critical Apparatus.
• Juxta is an open-source tool for comparing and collating multiple witnesses to a single textual work. It was designed to aid scholars and editors examine the history of a text from manuscript to print versions. Juxta provides collation for multiple versions of texts that are marked up in plain text or TEI/XML format.
• The EDMAC macro package for Plain TeX is a set of macros originally developed by John Lavagnino and Dominik Wujastyk for typesetting critical editions. "EDMAC" stands for "EDition" "MACros." EDMAC is in maintenance mode.
• The ledmac package is a development of EDMAC by Peter R. Wilson for typesetting critical editions with LaTeX. ledmac is in maintenance mode.
• The eledmac package is a further development of ledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that adds more sophisticated features and solves more advanced problems. eledmac was forked from ledmac when it became clear that it needed to develop in ways that would compromise backward-compatibility. eledmac is maintenance mode.
• The reledmac package is a further development of eledmac by Maïeul Rouquette that rewrittes many part of the code in order to allow more robust developments in the future. In 2015, it is in active development.
• ednotes, written by Christian Tapp and Uwe Lück is another package for typesetting critical editions using LaTeX.
• Classical Text Editor Diarsipkan 2014-05-26 di Wayback Machine. is a word-processor for critical editions, commentaries and parallel texts written by Stefan Hagel. CTE is designed for use on the Windows operating system, but has been successfully run on Linux and OS/X using Wine. CTE can export files in TEI format. CTE is currently (2014) in active development.
• Critical Edition Typesetter by Bernt Karasch is a system for typesetting critical editions starting from input into a word-processor, and ending up with typesetting with TeX and EDMAC. Development opf CET seems to have stopped in 2004.

Lihat pula

Topik

• Comma Johanneum
• Daftar ayat Alkitab yang tidak disertakan dalam terjemahan Alkitab bahasa Inggris modern
• Dean Burgon Society
• Diplomatics
• Hermeneutika
• Kaozheng (Chinese textual criticism)
• Kategori Naskah Perjanjian Baru
• Markus 16
• Naskah Alkitab
• Paleografi
• Pericope Adulteræ
• Teori Tablet mengenai tarikh Kitab Kejadian.
• Kesarjanaan tekstual
• Textus Receptus
• Yohanes 21

Edisi kritis

Kitab Mormon

• Book of Mormon Critical Text – FARMS 2nd edition

Alkitab Ibrani dan Perjanjian Lama

• Complutensian polyglot (berdasarkan naskah-naskah yang sekarang hilang)
• Septuaginta – Rahlfs' 2nd edition
• Gottingen Septuagint (Vetus Testamentum Graecum: Auctoritate Academiae Scientiarum Gottingensis editum): dalam proses
• Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia – 4th edition
• Hebrew Bible: A Critical Edition – produk yang berkelanjutan, didesain untuk berbeda dari Biblia Hebraica dengan menghasilkan suatu teks eklektik

Perjanjian Baru

• Editio octava critica maior – Tischendorf edition
• The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text – Hodges & Farstad edition
• The New Testament in the Original Greek – Westcott & Hort edition
• Novum Testamentum Graece Nestle-Aland 28th edition (NA28)
• United Bible Society's Greek New Testament UBS 4th edition (UBS4)
• Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine – Merk edition
• Editio Critica Maior – German Bible Society edition

Critical Translations

• The Comprehensive New Testament – standardized Nestle-Aland 27 edition
• The Dead Sea Scrolls Bible – dengan peta tektual kepada varian-varian Teks Masoret, Dead Sea Scrolls, and Septuaginta
• New English Translation of the Septuagint, suatu terjemahan kritis dari bagian-bagian yang lengkap dari "Göttingen Septuagint", sisanya dari "Rahlf's manual edition"

Daftar

• Daftar Minuscule Perjanjian Baru
• Daftar Papirus Perjanjian Baru
• Daftar Uncial Perjanjian Baru
• Daftar Naskah Perjanjian Baru Bahasa Koptik
• Daftar Naskah Perjanjian Baru Bahasa Latin
• Daftar Naskah Perjanjian Baru Bahasa Suryani
• Varian tekstual dalam Perjanjian Baru

Pustaka

• Aland, Kurt, Aland, Barbara (1987). The Text of the New Testament. Brill. ISBN 90-04-08367-7. Pemeliharaan CS1: Banyak nama: authors list (link)
• Aland, Barbara (1994). New Testament Textual Criticism, Exegesis and Church History. Peeters Publishers. ISBN 90-390-0105-7. 
• Bentham, George, Gosse, Edmund. The Variorum and Definitive Edition of the Poetical and Prose Writings of Edward Fitzgerald, (1902), Doubleday, Page and Co.
• Bowers, Fredson (1964). "Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors". Studies in Bibliography. 17: 223–228. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Bowers, Fredson (1972). "Multiple Authority: New Problems and Concepts of Copy-Text". Library, Fifth Series. XXVII (2): 81–115. 
• Bradley, Sculley, Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, (1980), NYU Press, ISBN 0-8147-9444-0
• Comfort, Philip Wesley (2005). Encountering the Manuscripts: An Introduction to New Testament Paleography & Textual Criticism. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8054-3145-4. 
• Davis, Tom (1977). "The CEAA and Modern Textual Editing". Library, Fifth Series. XXXII (32): 61–74. 
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why. Harper Collins. ISBN 978-0-06-073817-4. 
• Ehrman, Bart D. (2006). Whose Word Is It?. Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-9129-4. 
• Gaskell, Philip (1978). From Writer to Reader: Studies in Editorial Method. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-818171-X. 
• Greetham, D. C. (1999). Theories of the text. Oxford [Oxfordshire]: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-811993-3. 
• Greg, W. W. (1950). "The Rationale of Copy-Text". Studies in Bibliography. 3: 19–36. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Habib, Rafey (2005). A history of literary criticism: from Plato to the present. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Pub. ISBN 0-631-23200-1. 
• Hartin, Patrick J., Petzer J. H., Manning, Bruce. Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament. (1991), BRILL, ISBN 90-04-09401-6
• Jarvis, Simon, Scholars and Gentlemen: Shakespearian Textual Criticism and Representations of Scholarly Labour, 1725–1765, Oxford University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-19-818295-3
• Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes, An Introduction to the New Testament (1980), p. 14, BRILL, ISBN 90-04-06263-7
• Maas, Paul (1958). Textual Criticism:. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-814318-4. 
• McCarter, Peter Kyle Jr (1986). Textual criticism: recovering the text of the Hebrew Bible. Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-0471-7. 
• McGann, Jerome J. (1992). A critique of modern textual criticism. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia. ISBN 0-8139-1418-3. 
• McKerrow, R. B. (1939). Prolegomena for the Oxford Shakespeare. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 
• Montgomery, William Rhadamanthus; Wells, Stanley W.; Taylor, Gary; Jowett, John (1997). William Shakespeare: A Textual Companion. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0-393-31667-X. 
• Parker, D.C. (2008). An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-71989-5. 
• von Reenen, Pieter; Margot van Mulken, ed. (1996). Studies in Stemmatology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 
• Rosemann, Philipp (1999). Understanding scholastic thought with Foucault. New York: St. Martin's Press. hlm. 73. ISBN 0-312-21713-7. 
• Schuh, Randall T. (2000). Biological systematics: principles and applications. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell University Press. ISBN 0-8014-3675-3. 
• Shillingsburg, Peter (1989). "An Inquiry into the Social Status of Texts and Modes of Textual Criticism". Studies in Bibliography. 42: 55–78. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-07. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1972). "Some Principles for Editorial Apparatus". Studies in Bibliography. 25: 41–88. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1975). "Greg's Theory of Copy-Text and the Editing of American Literature". Studies in Bibliography. 28: 167–230. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1976). "The Editorial Problem of Final Authorial Intention". Studies in Bibliography. 29: 167–211. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1981). "Recent Editorial Discussion and the Central Questions of Editing". Studies in Bibliography. 34: 23–65. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2007-09-07. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1986). "Historicism and Critical Editing". Studies in Bibliography. 39: 1–46. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-04. 
• Tanselle, G. Thomas (1995). "The Varieties of Scholarly Editing". Dalam D. C. Greetham. Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research. New York: The Modern Language Association of America. 
• Tenney, Merrill C. (1985). Dunnett, Walter M., ed. New Testament survey. Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans Pub. Co. ISBN 0-8028-3611-9. 
• Tov, Emanuel (2001). Textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Minneapolis: Fortress. ISBN 90-232-3715-3. 
• Van Mulken, Margot ; Van Reenen, Pieter Th van. (1996). Studies in Stemmatology. John Benjamins Publishing Co. ISBN 90-272-2153-7. Pemeliharaan CS1: Banyak nama: authors list (link)
• Vincent, Marvin Richardson (1899). A History of the Textual Criticism of the New Testament. Macmillan. Original from Harvard University. ISBN 0-8370-5641-1. 
• Wegner, Paul (2006). A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible. InterVarsity Press. ISBN 0-8308-2731-5. 
• Wilson, N. R. p.; Reynolds, L. (1974). Scribes and scholars: a guide to the transmission of Greek and Latin literature. Oxford: Clarendon Press. hlm. 186. ISBN 0-19-814371-0. 
• Zeller, Hans (1975). "A New Approach to the Critical Constitution of Literary Texts". Studies in Bibliography. 28: 231–264. Diarsipkan dari versi asli tanggal 2013-09-12. Diakses tanggal 2006-06-07. 

Pustaka tambahan

• Dabney, Robert L. (1871). "The Doctrinal Various Readings of the New Testament Greek", Southern Presbyterian Review, April 1871, p. 350-390.
• Epp, Eldon J., The Eclectic Method in New Testament Textual Criticism: Solution or Symptom?, The Harvard Theological Review, Vol. 69, No. 3/4 (July–October 1976), pp. 211–257
• Hagen, Kenneth, The Bible in the Churches: How Various Christians Interpret the Scriptures, Marquette Studies in Theology, Vol 4; Marquette University Press, 1998, ISBN 0-87462-628-5
• Hodges, Zane C. and Farstad, Arthur L. The Greek New Testament According to the Majority Text with Apparatus, Thomas Nelson; 2nd ed edition (January 1, 1985), ISBN 0-8407-4963-5
• Housman, A. E. (1922). "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism". Proceedings of the Classical Association. 18: 67–84. Diakses tanggal 2008-03-08. 
• Love, Harold (1993). "section III". Scribal Publication in Seventeenth-Century England. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-811219-X. 
• Kittel, F. A. (1785). Neue Kritiken über den berühmten Sprych: Drey sind, die da zeugen in Himmel, der Vater, das Wort, und der heilge Geist, und diese drein sind eins. Eine synodalische Vorlesung. Braunschweig, Deutschland: John. Chr. Meyer.
• Komoszewski, Sawyer and Wallace, (2006), Reinventing Jesus, Kregel Publications, 2006, ISBN 978-0-8254-2982-8
• Metzger & Bart Ehrman, (2005), The Text of the New Testament, OUP, ISBN 978-0-19-516122-9
• Schiffman, Lawrence H., Reclaiming the Dead Sea Scrolls: The History of Judaism, the Background of Christianity, the Lost Library of Qumran; Jewish Publication Society, 1st ed. 1994, ISBN 0-8276-0530-7
• Soulen, Richard N. and Soulen, R. Kendall, Handbook of Biblical Criticism; Westminster John Knox Press; 3 edition (October 2001), ISBN 0-664-22314-1

Pranala luar

Umum

• An example of cladistics applied to textual criticism
• Stemma and Stemmatics
• Stemmatics and Information Theory Diarsipkan 2010-01-11 di Wayback Machine.
• Computer-assisted stemmatology challenge & benchmark data-sets
• Searching for the Better Text: How errors crept into the Bible and what can be done to correct them Diarsipkan 2012-07-01 di Wayback Machine. Biblical Archaeology Review
• The European Society for Textual Scholarship. Diarsipkan 2013-12-07 di Wayback Machine.
• Society for Textual Scholarship.
• Walter Burley, Commentarium in Aristotelis De Anima L.III Critical Edition by Mario Tonelotto : an example of critical edition from 4 different manuscripts (transcription from medieval paleography).

Alkitab

• Manuscript Comparator — allows two or more New Testament manuscript editions to be compared in side-by-side and unified views (similar to diff output)
• A detailed discussion of the textual variants in the Gospels Diarsipkan 2008-06-08 di Wayback Machine. (covering about 1200 variants on 2000 pages)
• A complete list of all New Testament Papyri Diarsipkan 2014-03-12 di Wayback Machine. with link to images
• An Electronic Edition of The Gospel According to John in the Byzantine Tradition
• New Testament Manuscripts (listing of the manuscript evidence for more than 11000 variants in the New Testament)
• Library of latest modern books of biblical studies and biblical criticism
• An Online Textual Commentary of the Greek New Testament - transcription of more than 60 ancient manuscripts of the New Testament with a textual commentary and an exhaustive critical apparatus.
•  Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Lower Criticism". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.