Right idea, wrong discipline.

The manuscript known as 1739 is among the most important copies of the New Testament (or, at least, of the Acts, Catholic Epistles, and Pauline Epistles, which are the only books it contains). And it was recognized early on that there were a number of other New Testament manuscripts with texts somewhat similar but not as good. There was (and remains) an urgent need to organize these manuscripts, because the common ancestor of 1739 and all these others would be even more important than 1739 itself.

This is the most methodical attempt at such a study -- which makes it somewhat ironic that it took place in Acts, where 1739 is probably slightly less valuable than in Paul and the Catholics. Still, it was definitely worth doing.

The only real problem is that Thomas Geer didn't really have the mathematical tools to do what he wanted to do. His results are interesting and useful; they definitely prove the existence of Family 1739, and split it into a couple of subgroups. But they don't allow us to create a stemma (family tree) of the family, or clearly define the types of the manuscripts. Even after all his work, there is more to do. It's a useful work -- but all that data, in the hands of an actual statistician, could surely have done much, much more. ( )