January 30th, 2025

119. The Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM)

What is the Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) and what impact will it have on the EHV?

The Coherence Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) was developed by Gerd Mink. It is a new approach to the Greek text of the New Testament in an attempt to discover the initial text (autograph) of the New Testament (“it is a hypothesis about the text from which the manuscript transmission started”). This CBGM method uses computer tools to compare and analyze manuscript readings. This has already resulted in some changes to scholarly Greek New Testament texts. This new method is rather difficult and technical to understand and explain. We do not consider ourselves experts in CBGM.

Here is an attempt to provide a one-sentence explanation of CBGM. “The CBGM is a new set of computer-based tools for studying a new set of text-critical evidence based on a new principle for relating texts.” If this does not clarify the issue for you, you can find plenty of attempts to promote or rebut CBGM by searching Coherence Based Genealogical Method. Look at both pro and con articles.

We do not expect that this new approach to evaluating New Testament witnesses will change the way we evaluate the evidence for the EHV. We are confident in the method that we have used (see Appendix 1 in the EHV Study Bible). We plan to continue to look at each reading in terms of evaluating which are the earliest and most widespread witnesses that support it.

Some of the resources mentioned in the following article demonstrate the depth and care that was taken in evaluating the text for the EHV in specific passages:

There are different principles and applications involved in the new CBGM. The following article/interview indicates that the CBGM might have its own biases built in, and it offers some reasons to question the new results:

It should be noted that the textual goal of the EHV is not to recreate the autographs. We do not think that there is sufficient manuscript evidence nor that anyone has sufficient skill to recreate the autographs. Our goal is to objectively report the textual evidence that the copyists have transmitted to the church and to determine which of the reported variants have the best support in Greek manuscripts that are early in date and widely distributed geographically.

Addendum: Should we be concerned that we do not possess any of the autographs, that is, the first copies of the New Testament, written by the apostles or their scribes? Appendix 1 of the EHV Study Bible explains why this is not a practical problem.

There are hundreds of handwritten manuscripts of the books that make up the Hebrew and Greek Bibles. There are many small differences of spelling and wording between these handwritten copies. Copyists are not inspired or inerrant, and it is possible, maybe even certain, that the printed versions of the EHV will also contain some typos/variants/errors that escape detection despite careful checking.

Most of the variants in the handwritten manuscripts fall into the same category as simple typos—they do not raise any question about the meaning of the text. Correcting them is as easy as correcting obvious typos in an English manuscript. Many of variants are simply different spellings of the same word. But occasionally manuscripts have copying differences that add or omit some words, or even whole verses, from the text. It is this type of variant that a textual apparatus (a list of textual variants) must deal with.

It is the divinely intended meaning that is the essence of the Word of God. In a limited number of cases, the church has passed on texts that have alternate readings. Did the apostle write Jesus or the Lord Jesus? Regardless of which of these is original, the message is the same. The same is true of all of the variants.

Rather than undermining confidence in the message of Scripture, a proper use of textual criticism increases confidence in the message of Scripture, because it demonstrates that there is no doctrine of Scripture that is seriously challenged or changed by the existence of textual variants.

Another place to read about textual variants is in The Bible: God's Inspired, Inerrant Word by Brian Keller in The People’s Bible Teaching series. For the Old Testament read Textual Criticism of the Old Testament by John Brug.