The Alexandrine Bible

By happenstance the 2010 Blackwell Companion to the New Testament has got loose. I am reading its fifth chapter, Michael Holmes' summary "Reconstructing the Text". I assume the last decade hasn't seen much revision(ism) against that Status Quaestionis. UPDATE 5/3: There's WaltzMN, too.

We learn here that the "Alexandrine" text, which is best held by the Constantius-era codices Sinaiticus "ℵ" (except the Gospels) and especially Vaticanus "B" and I'd add Washington "W", is indeed a standard edition. The tradition is also ancient: P⁴⁶ is already (mostly) Alexandrine, and (I'll argue) later codices like "A" even in Alexandria are subject to change. All scholars agree that, before "A", the Alexandrians are responsible for its first edition and for its standardisation, Origen being a noted player. By contrast that "Western Text" which got out into the Old Latin, the Old Syriac, the Bezae, [UPDATE 4/7/23 the Claromontanus], and even into generally-Alexandrine NTs is wild and messy.

The King-James-only set believe that God's Word is had through the "Byzantine" recension, certainly the most prevalent through the Middle Ages, and which Gospels usurped even the Alexandrine in "A". Jerome and the Peshitta understood that the "Western" text in Latin and Syriac, respectively, was a loser and that Christians needed a standard. Jerome for his part went with the Byzantine Gospels. Wiki tells me that the Vulgate bearing his name has revised the rest of the New Testament through the Alexandrine tradition, which they impute to Pelagian circles - which Jerome hated.

I find of interest that "ℵ" and "W" although Alexandrine have (forms of) the Western Gospels. The Gospels seem pulled or pushed: pushed to the Constantinopolitan standard ("A", Vulgate), or pulled to the Western (non-)standard. I'm going with that local churches were used to the pre-standard readings, which we observe as "Western", and tried to keep them. No Origenism for them! So when a standard was imposed, it was the Theodosian Empire's.

Holmes says that the "Byzantine" text was Antiochene first - elsewhere John Chrysostom is cited. Chalcedon will represent an Antiochene victory... later. I do not find "theotokos" in Jerome's argument about Our Lady. I scent Theodosius I in this adoption of Antioch over Alexandria: Blessed Mary Ever-Virgin, Mother of Our Lord the Son of God.

P⁴⁶, as a standard, hints that the very act of bundling these Epistles was part of that standard, even if Antioch would later revise that standard and Constantinople impose this revision.