Reading between the Lines: 1 Peter 4:16, MS 424, and Some Methodological Blind Spots in the CBGM

The reading of 1 Pet 4:16 was recently changed in NA²⁸ on the basis of analyses relying on the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) of textual criticism. This article argues against the change, in the process identifying important omissions in the CBGM that have caused it to skew evaluations of this variation unit and indicating two key corresponding ways to develop the method: first, by accounting for corrected readings in manuscripts through the incorporation of reconstructed witnesses into the CBGM’s assessments and into its underlying computer database; and, second, by methodologically accounting for distinctions between the relative qualities of witnesses between individual books and possibly even between sections of a single book. Lacking these developments, the final results of the CBGM will likely include further distortions such as those found in the case of 1 Pet 4:16.