MAURICE A. ROBINSON began studying Greek in 1965, and NT textual criticism in 1966. His original training followed the perspective of reasoned eclecticism, which he continued to study and practice for nearly a decade.

Specialized study in the field of textual criticism took place from 1971-77 under Kenneth W. Clark, then emeritus of Duke University. During this time he received the degrees of Master of Divinity (1973) and Master of Theology (1975) from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina. In 1982, he was awarded the Ph.D. in NT textual criticism by Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Ft. Worth, Texas, with his dissertation entitled Scribal Habits among Manuscripts of the Apocalypse.

As a result of his studies under Clark, he was slowly led to shift his position from reasoned eclecticism to Byzantine-priority, and in 1976 joined with William Pierpont in the quest to establish an accurate Byzantine text and viable underlying theory. Since that time, he has presented many papers and articles dealing with NT textual criticism at various venues.

Robinson is currently Senior Professor of New Testament and Greek at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina.

WILLIAM G. PIERPONT began studying the Greek New Testament in 1932, and was trained in the Westcott-Hort theory and method at Friends University, Wichita, Kansas. The closer examination of the manuscripts and theoretical perspectives underlying that approach led him into a life-long study of NT textual criticism that in the mid-1960s resulted in his support and defense of the Byzantine Textform.

Pierpont worked for over 40 years as a research engineer at Beech Aircraft in Wichita. Even while employed at Beech, Pierpont was able not only to conduct an intensive study of Greek NT textual criticism, but also to acquire a reading and speaking knowledge of more than two dozen world languages, including Polish and Mandarin Chinese. Following his retirement, Pierpont devoted the remainder of his life to text-critical and related investigative work.