Reconstructing the text of the church : the “canonical text” and the goal of New Testament textual criticism

Amidst recent doubts about the feasibility of achieving New Testament textual criticism’s traditional goal of establishing the “original text” of the New Testament, Brevard Childs proposed that text critics should go about reconstructing the “canonical text” instead. However, concepts of “canon” have generally been limited to discussions of which books were included or excluded from a list of authoritative writings, not necessarily the specific textual readings within those writings. This thesis considers whether there is historical evidence to support the existence of such a “canonical text” of the New Testament, and whether modern text critics and exegetes should prefer this textform to more traditional reconstructions. This study concludes that there is little evidence to support the existence of a lost “canonical text” of the New Testament, and that even if one assumes the existence of such a text, there are good reasons for continuing to prefer more traditional reconstructions.