Herman C. Hoskier

Herman Charles Hoskier (1864–1938), was a biblical scholar, British textual critic, and son of a merchant banker, Herman Hoskier (1832–1904).

As a textual critic of the New Testament, Hoskier generally but not entirely supported the text-type known as the Byzantine text-type against the Alexandrian text-type: the "text-types" are groups of different New Testament manuscripts which share specific or generally related readings, which then differ from each other group, and thus the conflicting readings can separate out the groups. These are then used to determine the original text as published; there are three main groups with names: Alexandrian, Western, and Byzantine. In one of his most famous publications, Codex B and It Allies, he compared the text of the two leading witnesses to the "Alexandrian Text Type", Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus. With this publication he showed how many significant disagreements these supposedly "best witnesses" of the Alexandrian text have. Hoskier attempted to demonstrate that Vaticanus presents a text which has been conformed to the Coptic versions. He also compared the text of Minuscule 700 with the Textus Receptus, where he noted 2724 differences between the two.

Hoskier collated every known Greek manuscript of the Apocalypse up to the year 1918, which took him 30 years to complete. The result of this work was published in 1929 (Concerning the Text of the Apocalypse). Hoskier shows parallels between Papyrus 46 and the Ethiopic Version in the Pauline epistles.

Works