A couple of new books I am looking forward to reading at some point:
Alan Mugridge, Copying Early Christian Texts: A Study of Scribal Practice (WUNT 362; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
Alan Mugridge, Copying Early Christian Texts: A Study of Scribal Practice (WUNT 362; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016).
Blurb: It is widely believed that the early Christians copied their texts themselves without a great deal of expertise, and that some copyists introduced changes to support their theological beliefs. In this volume, however, Alan Mugridge examines all of the extant Greek papyri bearing Christian literature up to the end of the 4th century, as well as several comparative groups of papyri, and concludes that, on the whole, Christian texts, like most literary texts in the Roman world, were copied by trained scribes. Professional Christian scribes probably became more common after the time of Constantine, but this study suggests that in the early centuries the copyists of Christian texts in Greek were normally trained scribes, Christian or not, who reproduced those texts as part of their trade and, while they made mistakes, copied them as accurately as any other texts they were called upon to copy.Scott D. Charlesworth, Early Christian Gospels: Their Production and Transmission (Papyrologica Florentina XLVII; Florence: Gonnelli, 2016). ToC
There was an advance notice of the former on Larry Hurtado's blog some time ago,
ReplyDeletehttps://larryhurtado.wordpress.com/2013/02/07/a-substantial-study-of-early-christian-manuscripts/
Looks very interesting—if only it was priced a little bit more reasonably :-(
Thank you for the link Peter. I had forgotten about Hurtado's blog post.
DeleteDr. Alan Mugridge kindly emailed some helpful feedback with regard to one of my published articles and informed me of his forthcoming book. I can't wait to read it.
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