Coherence-Based Genealogical Method

Links to information about the Coherence-Based Genealogical Method approach in textual criticism, or CBGM for short. Perhaps, ultimately, this new method will increase rather than decrease the modern text critics’ degree of uncertainty about the text. “Along with the changes to the text just mentioned, there has also been a slight increase in the ECM editors’ uncertainty about the text...” -- Wasserman & Gurry

Evangelical Textual Criticism 

• The CBGM in One (!) Sentence -- “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.”

Gerd Mink

• Coherence-Based Genealogical Method -- “Elements of a genealogical hypothesis are not the manuscripts but the states of the text that they convey and that may be far older than the respective manuscript.”

Jeff Riddle

• Word Magazine # 73: Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) -- “The CBGM method was developed by Gerd Mink and other scholars at the Institute for New Testament Research at the University of Muenster, Germany.”
• WM 200: QR Article: The Coherence-Based Genealogical Method: The Newest ‘New’ Method -- “Coherence-Based Genealogical Method (CBGM) is a methodology based on computerised mathematical modelling, and as such any critical assessment of it needs to be somewhat technical.”

Peter Van Kleeck, Jr.

• Understanding the CBGM: An Introduction (Part 1) -- “...at a minimum it is important to know what our opposing interlocutors are doing and thinking in the field to which our mutual discussion pertains.”
• Understanding the CBGM: An Introduction (Part 2) -- “...more changes have come to the critical text which makes the text as a thing more uncertain.”
• Understanding the CBGM: The Method (Part 1) -- “Gerd Mink is the pioneer and inventor of the CBGM...Mink took it a step further and sought to group the various texts within the manuscript with the various texts of other manuscripts via coherence.”
• Understanding the CBGM: Coherence -- “In sum, subjective human interpretation with the assistance of computer tools makes the decision about which is an ancestor, and which is a descendent when comparing two witnesses/texts.”

Taylor DeSoto

• Is the CBGM God’s Gift to the Church? -- “It is important to keep in mind, that the CBGM is not simply a pure computer system. It requires user input and editorial judgement.”