Jeidsath wrote:"...if you aren't reading it under the direction of a religious community."
It could be argued that if one had the original wording of the text, that it still wouldn't be fully understood without the aid of the Holy Spirit.
Either way... F35...
Jeidsath wrote:However, I am interested in hearing more about Family 35 (Kr). What are its general characteristics, unique readings, manuscript history, etc.?
Family 35 is an interesting grouping, as I've mentioned earlier it is the second largest grouping of NT manuscripts (latest count puts it around 300). It contains the M7 PA profile (Von soden) and Hoskier's "C" text for the Apocalypse (for the most part). F35 is characterized by non Eusebian Marginalia and has a distinct usage of Aspiration. For example, Abraam in f35 MSS is typically Habraam. It appears that if aspiration occurs mid-word in a foreign transliteration, it was pushed to the beginning so as not to lose the phoneme as the "h" sound can only appear at the start of a Greek word. We begin to see F35 MSS from the XI century up until and after the invention of the press, Dr. Pickering argues that it can be traced further in his book "Identity of the New Testament Text IV". These manuscripts are typically found in various monasteries from the Mt. Athos region. F35 produces somewhere around 5000 variants from NU and about 1500 from RP.
Its most striking characteristic is that each manuscript is textually very close to each other, so much so, that a number of books match perfectly with the f35 archetype. There are perfect representatives from 22 of the 27 books of the NT, information about that is included in the volume.