James Royse's Scribal Habits Finally Here

Finally, a copy of James R. Royse's Scribal Habits in Early Greek New Testament Papyri (NTTSD 36;Leiden: Brill, 2007) has arrived in the mail. Just like the dissertation from 1981 on which it is based it is a massive work – xxx + 1058 pages!

Cited from the preface:

"I must regret that, despite many acts of encouragement, there has been this delay [26 years!] in preparing the work for publication. . . . I am honored and pleased that the present volume has been accepted as the intial work in the new series [New Testament Tools, Studies and Documents; eds. Eldon J. Epp & Bart D. Ehrman]. . . It [the publishing process] would have moved even more quickly had I not felt the need, once again, to attempt to take account of relevant publications, and thus to revise the work still further. But such revision must come to an end at some point, and I trust that the current position is auspicious. . . . For publication I have retained the basic form of the dissertation, but have thoroughly revised the content throughout. This revision has included checking yet again the evidence of the six papyri studied, as well as the citations in the critical editions utilized here. Some errors in the dissertation are here silently corrected, while more often discussions are extended to take account of subsequent publications. While the main lines of argument in the dissertation remain, the evidence and the conclusions based on it have often been revised. . . . Thus, without at all wishing to disavow the dissertation, I intend this publication to supersede it. . . . I have attempted to take account of the works specifically devoted to the six papyri or to the topic of scribal habits; yet even within such limits I would not wish to claim completeness."

In order to get some impression on this last point I just checked the index of modern authors and noted that there are nineteen references to two of my works on P72. When I went through them quickly I saw that Royse has certainly interacted with and made good use of them. (However, when I later checked my own name in the bibliography, I see that poor "Wiefel, Wolfgang" has been misplaced within my entry.)

This was already a standard work before the revision, and it will certainly continue to be so for many years to come. In my first impression, there is a huge amount of new material including discussions particularly in the footnotes, for example there are 470 notes in the chapter on P45; 866 on P46; 188 on P47; 752 on P66; 364 on P72; and 455 on P75, and there are chapters on other subjects as well.

Finally, from the preface again:

"This work is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Jack Finegan [Royse's supervisor]. As noted earlier, it was while studying and discussing New Testament textual criticism with him that the plan for this work was first developed, and my work on it was first encouraged."