Textual Criticism and an Aramaic pun in 2 Peter 2:15 (my article in the latest issue of TC)

 I am grateful that the latest issue of TC: Journal of Biblical Textual Criticism has just published my article "Lectio Difficilior Potior and An Aramaic Pun: Beor vs. Bosor in 2 Peter 2:15 as a Test Case for How a Classic Rule Might Be Refined." The article can be accessed here.

The abstract is as follows:

Lectio difficilior potior (“prefer the more difficult reading”), while still in use in recent scholarship, has been criticized for being overly subjective and of relatively little value as a canon of internal criteria. These criticisms have not been adequately addressed. Yet 2 Pet 2:15 provides a fertile testing ground for the refinement of this rule absent text-critical bias. Since every single current edition of the Greek New Testament,and almost all commentators, agree with Βοσόρ due to overwhelming external support, the rule is not needed to prove the superior reading of Βοσόρ. Rather, the near-universal agreement on the reading gives us an opportunity to develop a methodology for determining whether or not Βοσόρ is the lectio difficilior compared to Βεώρ, a methodology that would hopefully be free from bias. This methodology, which draws from Brooke Foss Westcott and Fenton John Anthony Hort’s distinction between “real and apparent excellence,” could then assist in rehabilitating lectio difficilior potior as a helpful, if secondary, principle in textual matters.