Mark 1:41 at International SBL

I'm grateful to the chairs of the Working with Manuscripts section of the International SBL that my paper proposal has been accepted for the meeting in London next July. The abstract is below:

The case for 'filled with compassion' in Mark 1:41

The reading ὀργισθείς 'becoming angry' has become very popular amongst commentators and has received recent impetus through adoption in the SBL Greek New Testament and in the 2011 edition of the NIV. Despite the fact that external attestation is considerably stronger for σπλαγχνισθείς 'filled with compassion', scholars have tended to be swayed by the consideration that they cannot imagine how any scribe might change the text towards the allegedly 'harder' reading ὀργισθείς. However, this paper will argue that it is far easier to conceive of someone replacing σπλαγχνισθείς by ὀργισθείς than the reverse for a range of reasons, including the currency of the term ὀργισθείς in contrast to the rarity of the term σπλαγχνισθείς. Considerations of morphologically related terms suggests that if σπλαγχνισθείς were to be corrupted by accident, the form ending is -ισθεις that it would be most likely to become is none other than ὀργισθείς. Moreover, if ὀργισθείς were the authorial text, the existence of such a convenient substitute as σπλαγχνισθείς is hard to account for by mere appeal to chance. This paper also considers methodological double standards which are sometimes applied in the advocacy of ὀργισθείς.