Thank You. All from the Lord Terry, after I came to him. Before that....40 years of ...well nevermind.
First I want to say that the term Textus Receptus has come to mean the body of texts that enjoy vast agreement with each other (99%). They are mainly in cursives. It was never meant to mean one specific master Greek text... even if taken from the footnote of one. This is in contra-distinction to the Unicals (1% Alexandrian-Style) (all capital letters), which some say differ nearly 10,000 times with about 3300 of them notable differences not only with the TR but with each other.
The argument you put forth about how most ot the majority texts are dated after AD 700 and therefore could have all come from one master corrupt copy is irrelevant to our discussion for reasons I'll soon enough show. However, the inventors of that theory was none other than our bible correctors Westcott and Hort.
This was a very important fabrication of theirs because they needed to diminish the authority of the majority texts and bolster the authority of A and B texts (Vaticanus and Sinaiticus).
Since this is where this argument of yours really originated, I will quote John Burgeon who was a superior contemporary scholar with Westcott and Hort who severly criticized their textual theories as well as this particular argument called "Recension".
13. The False So-Called "Syrian Text Recension" of 250 and 350 A.D. Refuted. Westcott and Hort wrote: "The Syrian Text [our Textus Receptus] must in fact be the result of a `Recension,' . . . performed deliberately by Editors, and not merely by Scribes." (Introduction, p. 133). Dean Burgon answered them as follows: "But why `must' it? Instead of `must in fact,' we are disposed to read `may--in fiction.' The learned Critic can but mean that, on comparing the Text of Fathers of the IVth century with the Text of cod. B, it becomes to himself self-evident that one of the two has been fabricated. Granted. Then,--Why should not the solitary Codex be the offending party? . . . why (we ask) should codex B be upheld `contra mundum'?" [Against the whole world] [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, pp. 272-73]. It is Codex "B" (the Vatican manuscript) versus the text of the Church Fathers of the 4th century. Both can't be right. One of the two must be fabricated. Can you guess which one Dean Burgon believes to be "fabricated"?
14. The False Alleged "Syrian Text Recension of 250 and 350 A.D. Only A Guess. Dean Burgon wrote: "Apart however from the gross intrinsic improbability of the supposed Recension,--the utter absence of one particle of evidence, traditional or otherwise, that it ever did take place, must be laid to be fatal to the hypothesis that it did. It is simply incredible that an incident of such magnitude and interest would leave no trace of itself in history. As a conjecture--(and it only professes to be a conjecture)--Dr. Hort's notion of how the Text of the Fathers of the IIIrd, IVth, and Vth centuries,--which, as he truly remarks, is in the main identical with our own Received Text,--came into being, must be unconditionally abandoned." [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, pp. 293-94]. A "recension" of the Greek New Testament Text would mean that this text was fabricated by editors. The editor would throw out all the other contrary texts, and come up with just one text. There is not a scrap of history that tells anything about this event. This is a false theory, but they had to account for the fact that the Textus Receptus-type manuscripts have over 99% of the manuscript evidence behind it. Westcott and Hort had to say that someone made an editorial recension or revision of the New Testament. They then said that all of the Textus Receptus-type manuscripts were carbon copies of that original recension or revision. This is their false, flawed, and unhistorical hypothesis to account for 99% of the evidence.
15. The Importance of Refuting the False "Recension Theory" of Westcott and Hort. Dean Burgon wrote: "We have been so full on the subject of this imaginary `Antiochian' or `Syrian text,' not (the reader may be sure) without sufficient reason. Scant satisfaction truly is there in scattering to the winds an airy tissue which its ingenious authors have been industriously weaving for 30 years; But it is clear that with this hypothesis of a `Syrian' text,--the immediate source and actual prototype of the commonly received Text of the N.T.,--stands or falls their entire Textual theory. Reject it, and the entire fabric is observed to collapse, and subside into a shapeless ruin. And with it, of necessity, goes the `New Greek Text,'--and therefore the `New English Version' of our Revisionists, which in the main has been founded on it." [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, p. 294]. Westcott and Hort's whole house of cards will fall if their hypothesis falls. It does fall because there is no historical record that shows that anybody ever destroyed the many thousands of New Testament documents and edited the text down to just one document, a recension. This is absolutely false to history and cannot be proven to be true by any facts. The theory falls, the text falls, the English translation falls!
16. Westcott and Hort's Admission that the Textus Receptus Is the Greek Text Found Abundantly in the "Fourth Century." Many Westcott and Hort supporters claim that the text of our Textus Receptus kind of manuscripts is of a more recent date than "B" and "Aleph." Westcott and Hort admitted: "The fundamental text of the late extant Greek MSS generally is, beyond all question, identical with (what Dr. Hort chooses to call) the dominant Antiochian or Graeco-Syrian text of the second half of the IVth century . . . The Antiochian (and other) Fathers, and the bulk of extant MSS, written from about three or four, to ten or eleven centuries later, must have had, in the greater number of extant variations, a common original either contemporary with, or older than, our oldest extant MSS." [Westcott & Hort, Introduction to the Greek N.T., p. 92. quoted by Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, p. 295]. Westcott and Hort admitted forthrightly that the Textus Receptus text is a 4th century text. They explained this fact by its being the result of a rescension/revision made in 250 A.D. and again in 350 A.D. Again, Westcott and Hort did not attempt to prove this, nor could they. It is merely a false hypothesis.
17. Dean Burgon Agrees Wholeheartedly with Westcott and Hort's Admission that the Textus Receptus Was the Dominant Text of the Fourth Century A.D., But for Different Reasons. Dean Burgon wrote: "So far then, happily, we are entirely agreed. The only question is--How is this resemblance to be accounted for? Not, we answer,--not, certainly, by putting forward so violent and improbable--as irrational a conjecture as that, first, about A.D. 250,--and then again about A.D. 350,--an authoritative standard Text was fabricated at Antioch; of which all other known MSS. (except a very little handful) are nothing else but transcripts; but rather, by loyally recognizing, in the practical identity of the Text exhibited by 99 out of 100 of our extant MSS, the probable general fidelity of those many manuscripts to the inspired exemplars themselves from which remotely they are confessedly descended." "And surely, if it be allowable to assume (with Dr. Hort) that for 1532 years, (viz. from A.D. 350 to A.D. 1882) the Antiochian standard has been faithfully retained and transmitted,--it will be impossible to assign any valid reason why the inspired Original itself, the Apostolic standard, should not have been as faithfully transmitted and retained from the Apostolic age to the Antiochian (i.e. say, from A.D. 90 to A.D. 250-350)--i.e. throughout an interval of less than 250 years, or one-sixth of the period." [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, pp. 295-96]. Dean Burgon is saying clearly that God has preserved His Words.
18. More Explanation of the False "Recension" Theory of the Greek New Testament. Dean Burgon wrote: "Drs. Westcott and Hort assume that this `Antiochian text'--found in the later cursives and the Fathers of the latter half of the IVth century--must be an artificial, an arbitrarily invented standard; a text fabricated between A.D. 250 and A.D. 350. And if they may but be so fortunate as to persuade the world to adopt their hypothesis, then all will be easy; for they will have reduced the supposed `consent of Fathers' to the reproduction of one and the same single `primary documentary witness': . . ." "Upset the hypothesis on the other hand, and all is reversed in a moment. Every attesting Father is perceived to be a dated MS. and an independent authority; and the combined evidence of several of these becomes simply unmanageable. In like manner, `the approximate consent of the cursives' . . . is perceived to be equivalent not to `A PRIMARY DOCUMENTARY WITNESS,'--not to `ONE ANTIOCHIAN ORIGINAL,'--but to be tantamount to the articulate speech of many witnesses of high character, coming to us from every quarter of primitive Christendom." [Dean John W. Burgon, Revision Revised, pp. 296-97].
So, I really couldn't have refuted this idea of recension any better myself.
http://www.logosresourcepages.org/Versions/received.htm
The link above shows manuscripts in the TR tradition that date back to 125 Ad and a complete one dated 150 AD....which really does render much of this argument moot.
Dean Burgeon wrote a 600 page expose (Revision Revised) on the theories of Wescott and Hort that were never answered by them and have never been answered by any scholar to this very day.
Here's a tract based on that book from which the above pastings were taken:
http://www.deanburgonsociety.org/CriticalTexts/dbs2695.htm
