New York Times Review of Westcott-Hort

Exactly 143 years ago to the day, America's paper of record (aka The New York Times) published a review of a recently published introduction to a Greek New Testament by two Cambridge scholars named Westcott and Hort. It is not signed and my online source (ProQuest) does not give an author, but your best guesses are welcome in the comments.

Appreciating 11Q5: A Comparative Look at the Great Psalms Scroll

11Q5 (11QPsa), known as the Great Psalms Scroll, is on display at the Ronald Reagan Library in Simi Valley, CA. This exhibition has been made available by the Israelite Antiquities Authority and the sponsorship of The Lowell Milken Family Foundation. You can learn more about the exhibition here. I had the opportunity to visit the exhibit on Friday with my family and found it to be an enriching experience.

In this post, I’d like to discuss three (among many!) important features of this manuscript by way of comparing it to the more popular 1QIsaa. For a discussion on the textual nature of the manuscript, see my prior post here.

1) Writing Precision and Formatting
One of the most noticeable differences between 1QIsaa and 11QPsa is the approach to the writing block. A writing block is the rectangular shape created by the top and bottom horizontal lines and the right and left vertical lines (See Tov’s Scribal Practices pp. 82-108). The scribe of 11QPsa writes within the writing block while the scribe of 1QIsaa often transgresses it. Notice that the scribe of 11QPsa only goes beyond the left vertical line twice in col 7.

Compare this column to column 2 of 1QIsaa. Here the scribe transgresses the left vertical line in almost every line.

The lack of concern for the writing block is perhaps most pronounced where the scribe begins a word to the left of the vertical line. Although only one letter of the word remains (due to deterioration of the manuscript), the letter is clearly to the left of the writing block and the beginning of a new word. See an example of that here.

Similarly, sometimes the scribe of 1QIsaa begins a word and realizes he cannot complete it in the remaining space. In these instances, the scribe has recourse to some “less than ideal” procedures. For example, here he begins a word, realizes he cannot finish it, stops, and transcribes the word in its entirety at the start of the next line.



In another situation, the scribe crams the final portion of the word (a pronominal suffix) above the line.



This feature of writing in the writing block reflects to some degree the skill of the scribe. The scribe of 11QPsa was more skilled than the scribe of 1QIsaa, at least regarding the spacing of words.

2) Degree of Scribal Intervention
Both manuscripts display a different level of scribal intervention. 1QIsaa has an instance of scribal intervention every 4 lines while 11QPsa has an intervention every 9 lines. (See again Tov's Scribal Practices, pp. 332-335). Neither statical is very impressive to be sure. 

A brief survey of the columns indicates that the scribe(s) of 1QIsaa intervened in the text much more frequently than the scribe of 11QPsa. Here is a column from each respective manuscript for review.

 

3) The Paleography
The paleography is also different. Although not uncommon among biblical manuscripts, it is exciting to see the divine name written in paleo-Hebrew in 11QPsa rather than the Jewish-Aramaic Square Script.

Next, the script is clearly from different eras. Some features of 1QIsaa include inconsistent use of final letter forms in final position (and even final letter forms in non-final position). The letter forms of 1QIsaa are not consistent in size. The script of 11QPsa, however, uses final/non-final letters and represents the letter size consistency. Here are some specific letters for comparison.

See the different form of the samek. In 1QIsaa, the form is open at the bottom.



See the different size of the ayin. In 1QIsaa, the form is more truncated.

Notice the backyard tick at the top of the zayin in 11Q5. It is more pronounced than in 1QIsaa (usually).

Notice the length of the downward stroke of the yod and the nature of the letter's head. The letter form is longer and more angular in 11QPsa.

There are several fascinating features of 11QPsa. These are just three. I hope this post stimulates more work on this important manuscript and readies visitors for their visit to the Reagan Library Your visit will not disappoint.

An Excellent (Relatively) New Book on Palimpsests

I've been rather quiet over the past few years, due to the arduous (and occasionally enjoyable) task of editing the ECM Revelation, which was finally  published last year. Another little project I've been working on for longer than I care to admit is an edition of the Greek biblical texts in Codex Climaci Rescriptus.

Always trying to keep up with the secondary literature, I was very happy to stumble across a fantastic volume edited by Claudia Rapp and her colleagues at the University of Vienna/Austrian Academy of Sciences entitled New Light on Old Manuscripts: The Sinai Palimpsests and Other Advances in Palimpsest Studies. The good folks at the AAS have an excellent track record in palimpsest research, and they are collaborating with some of the imaging scientists with whom my CCR colleagues and I have had the pleasure of working (most notably Roger Easton and Keith Knox). Anyway, the book is divided into five main sections, namely 'Saint Catherine’s Monastery and Its Palimpsests', 'Palimpsests and Their Contexts', 'Palimpsests and Their Contents', 'Imaging and Processing Methods', 'Management and Display'. The 32 (!) essays in the volume are full of interesting information on all aspects of palimpsest work, and their relevance extends far beyond the Sinai palimpsests. I was particularly pleased to see the chapters on the arcana of image processing, making it more accessible to the more technically ignorant, mono-dimensional philologists such as yours truly. 

And, best of all, the entire book is available via Open Access, so tollite, legite without delay! 

Resolving the Mystery of GA 2776

I’m in the process of working through all the manuscripts in the Liste tagged as containing Pauline content. One of these mss is GA 2766. The Liste describes the contents of this ms as “aprK.” It dates to the 17th century, is located in the Petraki Monastery in Athens, and is described as containing “c.a. 250” leaves.

However, the portion in the manuscript workspace only contains James through Jude, with no text of Acts or Paul or Revelation. So I dug a little deeper. Pinakes listed only one additional source of information about this ms—Μορφωτικὸ Ἵδρυμα Ἐθνικῆς Τραπέζης. Ἱστορικὸ καὶ Παλαιογραφικὸ Ἀρχεῖο. Μικροφωτογραφήσεις χειρογράφων και αρχείων, Γʹ (1981-1983). While the link to online version provided in Pinakes itself did not work, with a little digging, I was able to find a copy, which provided the following information about our ms (unfortunately the original scan was low resolution): 

This clearly describes the ms as a combination of a printed edition and a manuscript. In her dissertation, Dora Panella provides a description of this edition. “In 1532 Bernardus Donatus published in a single volume the Oecumenian catenae on Acts, the Pauline Epistles and the Catholic Letters together with Arethas’ catena on Revelation.”  A little more digging turned up a nice scan. It was then, comparing this edition to the images on the VMR, that I realized that the handwritten portion of this ms was also copied from this very edition. 

To begin with, the mise-en-page of the ms is remarkably similar to the edition. To give one example, the double diplai in the margin of the ms look exactly like those in edition. However, there are two features of the ms that serve as “smoking guns” that confirm it has been copied from a printed edition, even without a detailed comparison of the text itself: 

First, following the printed edition, the ms (at least in the opening of James) does not have any nomina sacra. They are spelled out, exactly as they are in the printed edition. This is extremely unusual in a Greek ms. In the right circumstances this is itself enough to suggest that a ms was copied from a printed edition. But there is more. 

Second, and perhaps even more significantly, the ms uses catchwords at the bottom of each page, exactly as does the printed edition. As is well known, early printed works put the last word or clause of each page in a separate line at the bottom of each page. These catchwords were then repeated on the start of the next page, which enabled printers to keep the sheets in the proper order. The ms has fewer words per page than the printed edition, so the catch words in the edition do not line up. So the ms has added catch words of its own. Just as in the printed edition (and very unlike standard practice for NT mss), these are given in a line by themselves at the bottom of each page and then repeated at the beginning of the next page.

Taken together, these two factors seem to me to be sufficient evidence to conclude that GA 2776 has not been copied from another ms of the Catena, but from the editio princeps and should therefore be removed from the Liste. 

As a final check, I used Nico Lamme’s TEI collation of Tommy Wasserman’s Jude transcriptions to check to see if GA 2776 had any distinctive readings in Jude that it might share with the printed edition. Since there is a possibility that there are other mss  that have been copied from a printed edition, I set the search (using Nico’s handy find variation script), for all places where GA 2776 has a reading that is found in five or fewer additional witnesses. This search produced three results: 

In Jude 10_4–8 (note that the locations are derived from Lamme’s collation and in some cases differ from Wasserman’s printed edition), there is a singular transposition of δε and μεν that seems to have been corrected by the copyist in scribendo. This is a simple error that doesn’t provide evidence one way or the other.

In Jude 10_20, Wasserman’s transcription has GA 2776 reading φυσικ<d>ο</d>ς with a handful of other mss (this variation is not present in Wasserman’s printed apparatus, but is in his original transcription). In my judgment, the transcription here should probably be φυσικ<d>ω</d>ς. (The scribe copies “ο” with a heavy dot on the top, while the letter is clearly open. However, the center rise of the ω appears to be absent, justifying marking the letter as dubious.) In any case, even if the letter was ο, this sort of variation is rarely genealogically significant. 

In Jude 23_22–24, Wasserman has 2776 joining 1066 1642 in omitting τον before απο. However, an examination of the ms at this place shows that the scribe has written what looks very like his style of τ on top of the α in απο. While it is far from clear, this could possibly be taken as another in scribendo correction. 

While this textual data provides no additional reasons to support the paratextual information provided above, it also provides no challenge to removing GA 2776 from the Liste. 

The Top Ten Essential Books in NT Textual Criticism—According to AI

AI destroying the joy of human creativity, 
as drawn by AI

Tommy's list of top ten essential works in NT textual criticism has had a very good run on this website. It remains our most read blog post ever. It could probably use a minor update given that it's more than a decade old, but it's still useful. Until then, I thought I would see what AI says are the top ten books in our field. I asked two AI platforms, Google Gemini and Microsoft's Copilot. I have no real insight into how either of these work or what the LLMs are behind them. But here are there answers.

Copilot

Here are ten essential books in New Testament Textual Criticism that are highly recommended for anyone interested in the field:

1. The Text of the New Testament by Kurt and Barbara Aland - A comprehensive guide to the text of the New Testament.
2. The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research edited by Bart D. Ehrman, Michael W. Holmes, and Bruce M. Metzger - An overview of the current state of research in New Testament textual criticism.
3. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture by Bart D. Ehrman - Examines how early Christological controversies affected the text of the New Testament.
4. Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism by Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee - Focuses on the theory and methodology of textual criticism.
5. The Text of the New Testament by Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman - Discusses the transmission, corruption, and restoration of the New Testament text.
6. An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts by D. C. Parker - A technical guide to New Testament manuscripts.
7. The Living Text of the Gospels by D. C. Parker - Explores the text of the Gospels in detail.
8. Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek by B. F. Westcott and F. J. A. Hort - A classic work laying the foundation for textual criticism.
9. The Story of the New Testament Text: Movers, Materials, Motives, Methods, and Models by Robert F. Hull - Covers the history and development of the New Testament text.
10. Textual Scholarship and the Making of the New Testament by David C. Parker - Discusses the procedures and challenges of New Testament textual scholarship.

These books provide a solid foundation for understanding the principles and practices of New Testament textual criticism. Do any of these titles catch your interest?

Gemini

Here are ten essential books in New Testament Textual Criticism, presented in no particular order:

1. The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration by Bruce M. Metzger: A classic and comprehensive overview of the field.
2. Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman: A popular and accessible introduction to textual variants.
3. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament by Bruce M. Metzger: A detailed reference work examining variant readings for each verse of the Greek New Testament.
4. The Text of the New Testament: An Introduction to the Critical Editions and to the Theory and Practice of Modern Textual Criticism by Kurt and Barbara Aland: A foundational work on the principles and methods of textual criticism.
5. A Student's Guide to Textual Criticism of the Bible: Its History, Methods and Results by Paul D. Wegner: A user-friendly guide for students.
6. New Testament Textual Criticism: A Concise Guide by David Alan Black: A brief and accessible introduction.
7. Studies in the Theory and Method of New Testament Textual Criticism by Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee: A more advanced work exploring critical methodologies.
8. The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament by Bart D. Ehrman: A controversial but influential work examining the impact of theological biases on the transmission of the text.
9. The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis edited by Bart D. Ehrman, Michael W. Holmes, and Bruce M. Metzger: A collection of essays by leading scholars.
10. A History of the Synoptic Problem by David L. Dungan: While focused on the Synoptic Gospels, this work delves into the complexities of textual transmission within the Gospels.

Note: This is not an exhaustive list, and the "best" books will depend on your individual needs and level of expertise.

I hope this helps!

What I take away from this exercise is that, in this case at least, AI is little more than repackaged search engine. Both results are basically just Tommy's post with maybe some rearrangement or rewording. For example, I suspect Gemini's description of Ehrman's Orthodox Corruption as "controversial" is coming straight from Tommy's post. The same can be said of Copilot's description of Westcott and Hort's introduction. Some of the descriptions are obviously just the book's subtitles. So, kudos to the authors for picking descriptive subtitles, but not exactly a win for AI. 

Only Gemini gives any sources but, alas, only one of them makes much sense. They are a random blog post on Isaiah, a Catalan Wikipedia entry on the Hebrew Gospel hypothesis, and a German theology faculty booklist. None of them are Tommy's blog post, which appears to be the main source. Positively, these lists are pretty good (thanks to Tommy!) and all the books listed are real books.

I did ask ChatGPT as well and its answers were similar except that it oddly included Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament and Ehrman's edition of the Apostolic Fathers (which it recognizes was not directly about NTTC). Finally, one point of praise goes to ChatGPT for this introductory line which is spot on: "New Testament textual criticism (NTTC) is a fascinating and complex field."

1QIsaa and Shifting Categories

Sean McDowell and I recently had a conversation about 1QIsaa. You can access the conversation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=90_Mpiz1ons&t=333s

I repeat some of my points here along with some pictures! I hope you enjoy. 

1QIsaa is the most popular Dead Sea Scroll. It was one of the initial six (or seven) manuscripts discovered (see Weston Fields’ Full History for a helpful overview of the discovery), and it is a copy of the book of Isaiah: a very important OT book. Additionally, the text is ancient. Although many antiquity dealers and scholars initially assessed it as medieval or a modern forgery, paleographic and radiocarbon dating have vindicated the impression of Mar Samuel (a Syriac Archbishop who purchased it from the Bedouin), the keen analysis of Eleazar Sukenik, and the conclusions of Brownlee, Burrows, and Trever at ASOR (now the Albright Institute of Archaeology). The scroll is ancient. The paleography is, more precisely, Hasmonean. Features of this script include non-uniform letter size, inconsistent use of final letters, and the often non-ligatured consonant combination of nun-yod/vav (see the end of this article for pictures illustrating some of these features).

Many of us are aware that this text’s fame has recently been revived because of Wes Huff’s thrilling and helpful interview with Joe Rogan. Unfortunately, that conversation has stirred some controversy regarding the description “word-for-word”. I aim to provide some background information on this discussion, hoping it will bring greater clarity to this important topic.

Past Assessment of 1QIsaa: Wes Huff’s point that 1QIsaa’s alignment with the MT shocked those who initially studied it is true. Kutscher makes this point on page 2 (see also footnote 6) of his monumental work The Language and Linguistic Background of the Isaiah Scroll (1QIsaa). These first scholars were not ignorant to the textual variants preserved in this text. They understood the text’s divergent linguistic profile and were also fully aware of the large-scale differences. Yet, the general assessment of the first generation of scholars who analyzed this text was that this text is a popular edition of a proto-Masoretic text.

Present Assessment of 1QIsaa: Although those initial scholars emphasized the text’s alignment with the medieval MT, modern scholars tend to emphasize the text’s differences. This change in attitudes is not the result of a new discovery or the realization of new textual variants. Rather, the change coincides with a shift in OT textual criticism away from analyzing the “quality” of the variant to stressing the “quantity” of the variants. In short, the grouping of OT manuscripts has become much more precise over the last thirty years.

When the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered, the local text theory of Albright was the dominant theory regarding the transmission of the OT text. This theory grouped manuscripts, all manuscripts into three broad categories. We could refer to these groups as text-types. The Dead Sea Scrolls were born into this framework, so initial scholars sought to take each text and put it into one of these three categories. Most non-textual critics may be unaware that textual critics have largely abandoned the local text theory now. Scholars have replaced the local text theory of Albright and Cross with a variety of frameworks that do not restrict a text into one of three categories based on its alignment to MT, SP, and LXX. Emanuel Tov’s framework is the most popular alternative to the local text theory (but there are others). Tov postulates four broad categories: proto-MT (and semi-MT), pre-Samaritan, texts close to the Vorlage of the LXX, and non-aligned texts. Three of these categories align closely with the categories of the local text theory. The non-aligned category is the additional category. In one sense, this category has freed scholars from grouping texts, including 1QIsaa, into one of the three categories of the local text theory.

This present confusion is, at least in part, the result of this shift in methodology.

Analysis of the Methodological Shift: Categorizing manuscripts has become more “quantitative” than “qualitative”. Whereas Leitfehler (i.e., indicative errors) used to be the rule in grouping manuscripts (that is a “qualitative” approach), now the entire text is considered including unique readings and minor differences of orthography and morphology (this is a “quantitative” approach). This latter approach to textual criticism has its benefits. For example, it clearly demonstrates that scribes of the Second Temple period possessed the freedom to update a text’s orthography, morphology, grammar, and syntax. Moreover, it helps scholars see that many of the Dead Sea Scrolls do not align with Codex Leningrad to the extent that the medieval manuscripts. These are two important benefits of the new methodology.

However, the modern approach to classifying texts can also be confusing as we are witnessing firsthand today. The main drawback of this new method is it does not depict or describe the “significance” of the variants. In other words, the new method does not weigh variants, but counts them. Although this has its benefits as just mentioned, it also skews the opinions of both non-specialists and the specialists. How significant are these variants? The new methodology largely cannot answer this question. Thus, we have confusion abounding. So, how should we understand the differences between 1QIsaa and the MT?

For a deep dive into this question, variants must be weighted, not merely counted. You can see my dissertation where I do both. Donald Parry’s book Exploring the Isaiah Scroll and Their Textual Variants is another fantastic resource that assesses the significance of the variants. In have grouped the variants into three categories:

1) Some variants (thousands!) merely represent a “facilitating” approach to copying. At times, the text’s spelling, morphology, grammar, and syntax have been updated to fit contemporary usage.

2) Many variants (about 900) between 1QIsaa and the MT represent a change in meaning. Most of these changes, however, are the result of common scribal tendencies. These variants include unintentional changes (i.e., scribal errors) and intentional ones that often result in an interpreted or harmonized text. When comparing the texts, the texts are not synonymous, but common sense often reveals that the two readings are genealogically connected. One derived from the other.

3) Finally, the text preserves about 30 variants that do not result in a synonymous form (the first set of variants) nor is there an immediate scribal explanation that accounts for their genesis (the second set of variants). This final fact should not alarm us. Copying an ancient manuscript is a difficult task. While we have the luxury of powerful tools such as word processors and internet search engines, ancient scribes did not. Before becoming too critical of the scribe of 1QIsaa, we should imagine the difficulty of his task. I’d rather write a text today in the comfort of my office on my powerful computer than in an ancient room with parchment and a reed pen.

Our present confusion, then, is in part the result of a shift in methodologies. As Wes Huff stated, it is also the result of a mistake on his part. 1QIsaa should not be described as “word-for-word” identical to Codex Leningrad. At the same time, we should not exaggerate the differences as Kutscher states 50 years ago.

I hope this provides some background on why conflicting categories for 1QIsaa have emerged while providing a more balanced assessment of 1QIsaa’s textual character.

For those who enjoy pictures, here are some pictures illustrating some of the above phenomena of the manuscript. See http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah for the digital image of the manuscript from which I took these pictures.

Notice the peculiar use of a final mem in non-final position and the inconsistent height of the letters in the image above. The kaph extends here closer to the baseline than the shin. (http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah).

See above the more common occurrence of a non-final mem appearing in final position.

Notice the plene spelling here, a very common feature of 1QIsaa. (http://dss.collections.imj.org.il/isaiah).

In this above image, there is a peculiar example of a nun formed by a scribe who did not lift his pen between the gimal and nun. This "cursive" feature causes the nun to appear as a gimal.