‘Conjecture Magnets’ Ranked

In his chapter on emendation in the book Pen, Print, and Pixels, Jan Krans gives some very interesting data from the Amsterdam Database. It’s the kind of data that makes you want to ask follow up questions, which is what this post does. 

On pages 175–177, Jan gives a list of places that he calls “conjecture magnets.” These are the most conjectured about problems in the NT and show, as Jan points out, that those conjecturing agree there’s a problem but obviously can’t agree on the solution! 

A passage is a “magnet” if it has five or more conjectures for it. Jan lists 46 such places. What he doesn’t do in the article is tell us the number of conjectures for each one or rank them accordingly. Thankfully, that’s the perfect kind of thing you can do easily with the Amsterdam Database. So, listed below are Jan’s 46 conjecture magnets ranked by the number of conjectures in the database as of today.

You’ll have to go to Jan’s chapter or to the database itself to see what the issue is in each case. But, as one initial observation, it’s interesting that Matthew and especially Revelation do not make the list at all.

Rank	Passage	Total Conj.
1	1 Cor 11.10	36
2	Acts 2.9	27
3	Rom 16.16-23	22
4	Rom 7.25-8.2	21
	Heb 11.37	21
	2 Pet 3.10	21
5	Eph 1.1	20
6	John 18.13-24	19
	Jas 3.6	19
7	Col 2.18	17
8	Luke 2.2	14
	Acts 5.12-16	14
	1 Cor 4.6	14
9	2 Cor 11.30-12.1	13
	Gal 4.25	13
	Heb 2.9	13
10	John 3.25	12
	John 19.29	12
	1 Cor 15.2	12
11	Mark 9.23	11
	Acts 4.25	11
	1 Cor 15.29	11
	1 Thess 3.3	11
12	Acts 13.33	10
13	1 Cor 2.4	9
	2 Cor 1.13	9
	Jas 4.5	9
14	Mark 14.41	8
	Luke 18.7	8
	John 19.39	8
	Acts 1.18	8
	Acts 16.12	8
	Rom 4.12	8
	Col 2.14	8
15	Mark 14.3	7
	Acts 10.30	7
	Eph 5.26	7
	2 Pet 1.20	7
16	Acts 18.5	6
	Acts 27.9	6
	1 Tim 4.3	6
	Heb 12.18	6
	Jas 3.1	6
17	Acts 20.4	5
	Acts 27.7	5
	1 Cor 6.5	5