We are delighted to feature the newly baked Dr. Alan Taylor Farnes in this guest blogpost where he summarizes his work on scribal habits in copies where the exemplar is preserved. Well done Dr. Farnes!
As many of you may know, I have recently completed my dissertation at the University of Birmingham. The following is a summary with some conclusions, ramifications, and next steps to take.
In 2007, James R. Royse published his exceptional study on the scribal habits of six early New Testament papyri. In his work, Royse revolutionized text critics’ understanding of the text critical canon lectio brevior potior or, “the shorter reading is preferred”[1] by demonstrating that the scribes he studied tended to omit more than they added. In its place he coined a new canon which he called lectio longior potior or, “the longer reading is preferred.”
One disadvantage of Royse’s method is, because the papyri he studies had no known exemplar. he was forced to reconstrcut what the hypothetical exemplar probably said and then determine how the scribe copied the hypothetical exemplar. This is obviously a completely normal procedure in textual criticism. Royse admitted that his method had flaws and called for an examination of another set of manuscripts—those with surviving exemplars. Royse wrote: “there has been (it seems) a failure to explore the problem of scribal habits for the text of the New Testament in the best possible case, namely where the Vorlage of an extant manuscript is also known to be extant. In such a situation we can virtually look over the scribe’s shoulder and compare the text he is copying with his result.”[2]
My research has attempted to support or disprove Royse’s new text critical canon that, in fact, the longer reading is preferred. Rather than analyzing early papyri for which no exemplar remains, I chose to identify and analyze manuscripts which have a known exemplar.
I have therefore identified twenty-two New Testament manuscripts which have known extant exemplars (see Table here). Of these twenty-two I chose four manuscripts, which are italicized in the Table, and their copies to transcribe, collate, and analyze to determine how well the scribes copied the text of their exemplar.
Scribal Habits in New Testament Copies with Extant Exemplars
As many of you may know, I have recently completed my dissertation at the University of Birmingham. The following is a summary with some conclusions, ramifications, and next steps to take.
In 2007, James R. Royse published his exceptional study on the scribal habits of six early New Testament papyri. In his work, Royse revolutionized text critics’ understanding of the text critical canon lectio brevior potior or, “the shorter reading is preferred”[1] by demonstrating that the scribes he studied tended to omit more than they added. In its place he coined a new canon which he called lectio longior potior or, “the longer reading is preferred.”
One disadvantage of Royse’s method is, because the papyri he studies had no known exemplar. he was forced to reconstrcut what the hypothetical exemplar probably said and then determine how the scribe copied the hypothetical exemplar. This is obviously a completely normal procedure in textual criticism. Royse admitted that his method had flaws and called for an examination of another set of manuscripts—those with surviving exemplars. Royse wrote: “there has been (it seems) a failure to explore the problem of scribal habits for the text of the New Testament in the best possible case, namely where the Vorlage of an extant manuscript is also known to be extant. In such a situation we can virtually look over the scribe’s shoulder and compare the text he is copying with his result.”[2]
My research has attempted to support or disprove Royse’s new text critical canon that, in fact, the longer reading is preferred. Rather than analyzing early papyri for which no exemplar remains, I chose to identify and analyze manuscripts which have a known exemplar.
I have therefore identified twenty-two New Testament manuscripts which have known extant exemplars (see Table here). Of these twenty-two I chose four manuscripts, which are italicized in the Table, and their copies to transcribe, collate, and analyze to determine how well the scribes copied the text of their exemplar.