Following a lively exchange between Ulrich Schmid and Maurice Robinson relating to the UBS/IGNTP edition of the Byzantine text of John, Ulrich asked the following question:
I would be genuinely interested in discussing the point that is repeatedly raised against so-called eclectic editions, namely that they produce a text that "never existed in the manuscript tradition" (see, e.g., The New Testament in the Original Greek. Byzantine Textform 2005, v, footnote). To what level of detail is this a charge that can be taken seriously? How should an edition be constructed that does not fall under this verdict? How can we ever know that any reconstructed text "never existed in the manuscript tradition"?