Living text or exquisite corpse?

David Parker's recent attempt to bring the fields of textual criticism and biblical theology closer together includes the surprising claim that New Testament text critics are not (and should not be) interested in reconstructing the 'original text' of the Bible. Parker supports this claim with two arguments, one having to do with the logical dimensions of the issue, and the other dealing with the theological dimensions. The present article attempts to show that both these arguments are questionable.