Scribal Habits in Greek New Testament Manuscripts 99 Objections One objection, at the most fundamental level, is that singular readings themselves are problematic. Thus, Barbara Aland, investigating scribal habits of early papyri by noting divergences from the Nestle-Aland text, criticized Colwell’s and Royse’s studies on the grounds that focus- ing exclusively on singular readings “considers only a limited part of the papyrus and leaves all the rest of the material out of view”24. This is true, of course, and other approaches may shed light upon the habits of individual scribes. Further, one can appreciate the difficulty of trying to draw conclusions about scribal habits from individual fragmentary papyri, as Aland was trying to do, using the few singular readings that present themselves in such documents. However, Aland’s alternative method of comparing readings against NA27 is unsuitable for studying scribal habits in general terms. Not only did the editors of NA27/UBS4 prefer a shorter text (Metzger says so in the Textual Commentary), but the editors also followed closely the read- ings of certain manuscripts which heavily tend to omit. It is impossible to regard NA27 as an impartial standard by which we may evaluate the validity of lectio brevior potior when the editing of the text was so heavily inclined towards shorter readings. Also, while Aland’s method gains additional readings with which to characterize individual scribes, the trade-off is that it opens the gates to readings which do not have as high a likelihood of being scribal errors as singular readings are. Singular readings offer a more objective basis and a higher standard for identify- ing scribal errors. A second common objection is that studies questioning lectio brevior potior have not taken into account more nuanced versions of the canon. Thus, in response to Royse’s 1981 study which showed that in six early major papyri, scribes made 337 omissions and 130 additions (a ratio of 72:28), Moisés Silva made a study of the scribal habits of