An easy-to-miss minor improvement in NA28 - James 1:21

The text of James 1:21 has not undergone any change between the NA27 and NA28, but it has been improved anyway.

This is how it is printed in NA27:

διὸ ἀποθέμενοι πᾶσαν ῥυπαρίαν καὶ περισσείαν κακίας ἐν πραΰτητι, δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον τὸν δυνάμενον σῶσαι τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν.

And here as it is in NA28:

διὸ ἀποθέμενοι πᾶσαν ῥυπαρίαν καὶ περισσείαν κακίας ἐν πραΰτητι δέξασθε τὸν ἔμφυτον λόγον τὸν δυνάμενον σῶσαι τὰς ψυχὰς ὑμῶν.

ESV:
Therefore put away all filthiness and rampant wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.

The difference between the two Greek texts is the absence of punctuation after ἐν πραΰτητι, which leaves open the question whether 'with meekness' goes with 'putting away all filthiness and rampant wickedness', or, as per ESV and NRSV, with the reception of the implanted word. Though I think (rather strongly, actually) that the interpretation of NA27 is to be preferred over that of the two English translations, I also think that it is not necessarily the case that an edition of the Greek text has to decide this on behalf of the reader. NA28 made the right call not to force the issue. This is, therefore, a good case of 'less is better'.

Sponsor Peter Head in Swimathon 2013

Sponsor Peter Head in Swimathon, 26-28 April 2013 (click here)

As you may know, co-blogger Peter Head has a long sporting career behind him. He came in 42nd place in the Olympic racewalking in Beijing 2008, after somewhat unexpectedly having received a wild card from the International Olympic Committee to enter the competition.

Last year in connection with the London summer olympics 2012, his British colleague Steve Walton got the honor to run with the torch. 

  

Apparently, the torch made a detour to Tyndale House, so that Pete could once again celebrate his own Olympic memories.

Apparently, Peter Head is still a very active man. Now he has taken up a new challenge and will participate in the 2013 Swimathon starting today! The swim race is 5 km and Pete is aiming at under 1:30.00 (unless the pool is busy).

The Swimathon is actually the world's biggest fundraising swim, and we want to encourage all our readers to sponsor Peter Head and help him raise money for a very good purpose. I have already made my donation! Good luck Pete!

Join me, make your donation, and sponsor Peter Head!

Another review of The Early Text of the New Testament

Over at RBECS Edgar Ebojo has offered a careful review of Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger, eds., The Early Text of the New Testament (Oxford: OUP, 2012).  
Among other things he pinpoints an interesting notion reflected in the work, in that 'scribal habits' tend to be identified with 'singular readings', with insufficient attention to describing the whole notion (let alone the broader range of phenomena which might go in to understanding the habits of a particular scribe). As a contributor I can see how that could have happened, but I think I must have lent my copy to someone, so I couldn't check this out. Further he adds an impressively humungous list of typos and other problems.  

SBL Northwest Regional Conference, Seattle, May 3-5

I am giving a paper on the “Outer Margins of Nestle/Aland 28” for the Pacific Northwest Regional meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature at Seattle University in Seattle, Washington on Friday, May 3. The following is a brief description of the paper:

The newly published edition of the standard scholars’ New Testament has kept pace with the developments in New Testament Textual Criticism, as evidenced by the application of the Coherence Based Genealogical Method to the text and apparatus of the Catholic Epistles. But the outer margins—which provide parallel references to the Old Testament— have not been revised to reflect advances in the study of the Old Testament in the New and the textual criticism of the Hebrew Bible, Septuagint, etc. I propose to suggest how the next Nestle/Aland outer margins might be revised so as to make this remarkable resource even more valuable. A sample of proposals will be given dealing with the scripture citations in Acts.

Peter R. Rodgers

JETS Reviews of Recent TC/Canon Volumes

JETS Vol 56, No. 1 (March 2013):

1. Review of M.J. Kruger's CANON REVISITED: ESTABLISHING THE ORIGINS AND AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS (Benjamin Laird); 
2. Review of L.M. McDonald's FORMATION OF THE BIBLE: THE STORY OF THE CHURCH'S CANON (Ryan J. Cook); 
3. Review of Nestle-Aland 28th by Dan Wallace.

Bonus: vigorous discussion between Dan Wallace and Stanley Porter on Granville Sharp.

JML

Biblia Graeca – Septuagint and NA28

Jim Spinti of Eisenbrauns tells me that the German Bible Society is going to publish Biblia Graeca – Septuagint and NA28 this fall.







Description

This edition combines the Rahlfs-Hanhart Septuagint (Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament) with the 28th edition of the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece. A one-of-a-kind, useful tool for pastors, scholars, and students.
- Includes critical apparatus, cross-references, and much more.

Product Details

Publisher: German Bible Society
Publication info: forthcoming fall 2013
Bibliographic info: 3126 pages
Language(s): English and Greek
   
Cover: cloth
ISBN: 1-61970-127-8
ISBN13: 978-1-61970-127-4

Link to Eisenbrauns' orderpage

IOSCS XV Congress in Munich

The program for the IOSCS Congress in Munich has been posted here. There is a very good lineup of presentations on the LXX for this congress. On day two I will present a paper for the section on Manuscripts. I list the three papers and their abstracts below. Time permitting I will also post on other abstracts of interest.

The Significance of RA 788 for a Critical Edition of the Hexaplaric Fragments of Job
John Meade
Abstract: RA 788 (Tyrnavos 25) is a tenth century Greek catena manuscript containing the book of Job and the three Solomonic books. Dieter and Ursula Hagedorn were not aware of it and therefore it was not included in their magisterial work Die Älteren Griechischen Katenen zum Buch Hiob or the Nachlese. Before commenting on the hexaplaric fragments, it is necessary to determine the manuscript’s place in the stemma. This paper seeks to show that 788 is a member of oldest Greek catena (Hagedorns’ Γʹ) and in particular that it is the ancestor of the important RA 250. Once its place in the manuscript stemma has been determined, the paper will comment on the significant hexaplaric fragments within the manuscript in comparison with the recent dissertations on the hexaplaric fragments of Job by Nancy Woods and John Meade.


Did Origen Use the Aristarchian Signs in the Hexapla?
Peter Gentry
Abstract: Septuagint scholars have debated for over a hundred years as to whether Origen actually used Aristarchian signs in the Fifth Column of the Hexapla or whether the signs were first inserted into a recension of the Fifth Column. A definitive answer to this question can be given by carefully fitting together data from (1) colophons, (2) geography, (3) history, (4) analysis of use of Aristarchian signs and (5) analysis of the textual history of the materials in question.


A (Preliminary) Report on the Schøyen Exodus Papyrus
Kristin De Troyer
Abstract: In this report, I will first shortly present the codicological aspects of the manuscript; then, I will give a survey of the pluses, minuses and variants of the text of the manuscript in relation to the Old Greek text; next, I will evaluate some of the possible pre-hexaplaric variants in the light of the readings of the Early Jewish Revisors and finally, I will compare and contrast the variants with the Exodus texts as found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.


I look forward to attending this congress and also for sticking around for the first few days of IOSOT afterwards. If you plan to be in Munich in August, I would love to hang out.

How Many TC Errors in This Statement?

We’ve played this game before. Someone submits a statement about TC from the BBC or some other news media, and we count how many errors are contained therein. But this time, it comes from a Hendrickson publication entitled, Formation of the Bible: The Story of the Church’s Canon  (Lee Martin McDonald). Extra credit points if anyone can help me understand how the statements could possibly be right,

As a result of the more recent discovery of many more ancient biblical manuscripts, all early translations, namely those produced before 1993, are essentially out of date—an unfortunate consequece of reassembling a text closer to the biblical original than was possible earlier. With the publication of the most recent editions of critical scholarly texts of the New Testament—the United Bible Society’s 5th Edition of the Greek New Testament  (2013) and the soon to be published Nestle/Aland 28th edition (2012) of the Greek Testament—we draw closer yet to the original text of the New Testament, but it would be a mistake to believe that we have reached that goal. There are some challenging and difficult passages to unravel, to which biblical scholars can offer very tenuous, possible solutions, but certainty is not yet available.

Since almost all modern translations of the New Testament depend on these two modern texts of the Greek New Testament, translations dating before these editions are not as reliable or as accurate and do not accurately reflect the latest understanding of what the biblical writers wrote....  p. 134.

JML

Newly Discovered Leaves of a Greek Lectionary

When examining an Armenian manuscript from Bzommar (n° 509, a Mashtots from the 16th Century) on the HMML website, I was surprised to discover three fly leaves from a Greek lectionary of the Gospels. Folio 01r contains Mt 20:1-8, Folio 168r contains Mt 11:2-4 and Lk 2:39-40, and Folio 168v contains Lk 7:22-28. As far as I can judge, all three folios come from the same lectionary. Klaus Wachtel tells me that this lectionary is not yet in the Kurtgefasste Liste of Muenster. J.-L. Simonet