Reprint of Sturz’s The Byzantine Text-Type

I have good news to report today. For years I’ve looked in vain for an affordable used copy of Harry Sturz’s The Byzantine Text-Type & New Testament Textual Criticism. It looks like that will not be a problem anymore as Energion Publishers is producing a reprint of the original with a new preface by David Alan Black. 

I first learned about Sturz’s book from my course on NTTC with Dan Wallace at Dallas Seminary and then again in reading through Klaus Wachtel’s work on the Byzantine text in the Catholic Letters. Here’s some sense of the book’s argument from the new publisher:

Should the Byzantine text-type be considered valuable in determining the original text of the New Testament? Does it bear independent witness to ancient readings? Dr. Harry Sturz, in a book published in 1984, maintained that it should be valued and that it could help with finding older readings and thus contribute to our knowledge of and confidence in the text of the Greek New Testament. His position, that the Byzantine text-type should be weighed along with other witnesses to the ancient text, differs from those who dismiss Byzantine manuscripts, which were largely copied later, but also from those who hold that the Byzantine text has priority or even is determinative of what the final reading should be. He uses carefully laid out arguments and numerous specific examples in making his case. This book is divided into two parts. The first outlines the positions both for relying on the Byzantine text and for largely ignoring it. Part two examines the evidence and outlines an argument that neither side of this debate should win the field, but rather that the Byzantine text should be valued, but not made exclusive.

This is an especially good time to reprint the book given the renewed interested in and esteem for the Byzantine text from the folks producing the ECM. My advice? Go get the book.

The Overall Quality of Byzantine Manuscripts

Following up on my follow up on the Byzantine text, it’s instructive to see just how close the text found in the majority of our manuscripts is to the initial text in the Catholic Epistles. From the ECM supplement, here are the number of readings where the “undivided witnesses of the Byzantine text” differs from the ECM/NA28 initial text.*

Book	Differences	Var. Units
James	61	761
1 Peter	46	700
2 Peter	23	417
1 John	43	765
2-3 John, Jude	33	403
TOTAL	206	3,046

To put the matter positively, the Byzantine text as defined by the ECM agrees with the editors’ reconstructed text in over 93% of variant passages in the Catholic Epistles.

GA 35, a key representative
of the Byz text in the ECM

That’s quite a lot. You could even say that your NA28 is 93% Byzantine in the Catholic Epistles if you were so inclined. In any case, this high level of agreement is what led the editors to conclude that the Byzantine text is “an important witness to the early text.” Hence the re-evaluation for the ECM2 of all places where the Byzantine reading differed from the initial text of ECM1 (see ECM2, p. 34*).

*The stats are from the ECM2 supplement, pp. 10, 13, 15, 17 and Gerd Mink, “Contamination, Coherence, and Coincidence,” p. 147 n. 15.

Defining the Byzantine Text

As a follow-up to my post about text-types from last week, here is an example of how our definitions of texts can influence our thinking about textual criticism. It matters particularly when it comes to comparing one “text” to another.

In their new book on NT textual criticism, Stanley Porter and Andrew Pitts make a common argument against the Majority Text position which could apply to the Byzantine Priority position as well. Porter and Pitts write:

Several other questions are left unanswered by the Majority text approach as well. Statistical probability of documents simply cannot explain why no distinctively Byzantine readings are identifiable in the Greek manuscripts, church fathers, or version from the first several centuries—certainly some remains would have been left, even if the manuscripts were in constant use. If the Majority text most accurately reflects the original, we would expect some traces of it chronologically close to the original. These significant obstacles to the Majority text approach still have not been convincingly overcome by its adherents (pp. 91–92 n. 3).

Now I admit that I find a form of the chronological argument against the Majority Text and the Byzantine text persuasive. But what I want to point out here is that this particular form of the argument hinges entirely on something that Porter and Pitts do not provide us with, namely, a definition of “distinctively Byzantine readings.”

To illuminate the problem, let’s consider how the Editio Critica Maior (ECM) defines the “Byzantine text.” You have to read it very carefully, but the ECM actually has two definitions. In the introduction (§3.1) we read that “the term Byzantine or Koine text refers to the form of text defined by those readings which are attested by the majority of the manuscripts and differ from the established text” (emphasis original). The supplementary volume gives complete lists of just these readings for each book of the Catholic Epistles (pp. 10ff).

But the ECM also has a second, more implicit definition. On the same page (p. 10) of the supplementary volume we read about “the undivided (ungespaltene) Byzantine text” which differs from the initial text in only 61 of about 700 places in James. In the editors’ words, this undivided Byzantine text is, “apart from these 61 passages, an important witness to the early text” (p. 10; emphasis mine).

So we have two definitions: (1) the Byzantine text as all the shared readings found in the majority of Greek witnesses; and (2) the Byzantine text as that set of readings found in these same witnesses which differ from the initial text. The first entity is an important witness to the early text whereas the second is defined in distinction from essentially that same early text.

Now the problem should be obvious. An argument like that of Porter and Pitts risks circularity on this second definition and it is simply false on the first. There are hundreds of readings found in Byzantine manuscripts that are also found “chronologically close to the original.” In fact, according to the ECM, there are over 630 readings just in James that are the original or at least very close to it (depending on how you identify the initial text).

Now, perhaps Porter and Pitts have a definition of “distinctively Byzantine reading” that isn’t circular. From what they’ve written we simply don’t know because they don’t define their key term.

And that’s just the problem. Good arguments about the history of the text can only be made where we have clarity about what constitutes the textual entities—whether text-types or otherwise—that we are trying to relate to one another. Porter and Pitts have two texts they relate (“original” and “Majority/Byzantine”), but since they don’t define them, the relationship they propose is meaningless.

This isn’t to pick on Porter and Pitts. They just provide a good illustration of the problem of not defining the texts we claim to relate to one another.

Reading the SBLGNT and wondering about a comparable GNT Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine edition

This year is a good one for readers of the GNT. At SBL we received copies of 'our very own' Michael Holmes' SBLGNT.

One of the features that I appreciate with the SBL edition is the simplified apparatus and the comparative citation of the Byzantine text from the Robinson-Pierpont edition.

I would like to spend more time reading the 'Robinson-Pierpont' itself and I am wondering about my options.

There was a new 'reader' that was published, but I would appreciate something simpler, with just the Greek text (+ apparatus, yes), and preferably something small, on the order of the NA, UBS, and SBLGNT. I've been using the PDF's that Maurice has graciously made available to the public. I suppose that I could pick up one of the hand-sized, traditional editions from the Greek Orthodox community here in Jerusalem, but a list of differences between 'it' (whichever edition) and the R-P would inevitably arise.

The Irony of Samaria: Σαμαρεια / Σαμαρειτης in the Greek NT

The following is a short note, hopefully fun.
There are several ironies in the spelling of Σαμαρεια/Σαμαρια in our Greek texts.

Readers of United Bible Societies Greek text and the Nestle Aland text will be familiar with the following spellings:

Σαμάρεια (the place), and
Σαμαρίτης (a person of the place, male)
Σαμαρῖτις (a person of the place, female)

The spelling of the two forms is inconsistent, though the root will sound identical when read with a first century pronunciation.
[[ ει is correctly pronounced like the ι [i] vowel sound rather than the [e] sound (close to ey in 'they') that is often heard in academic circles.]]
But this inconsistency is only the first in a series.

The world turns upside down when Westcott and Hort are brought in. Westcott-Hort have:

Σαμάρια (the place) and
Σαμαρείτης (the person, male)
Σαμαρεῖτις (the person, female)

Not only are both WH and UBS/NA internally inconsistent, but they are the opposite of each other. That is a rather unexpected result.

Do the manuscript traditions support either of these inversions or provide a solution? On the surface one would not expect that WH and UBS/NA would come to such doubly inverted results without some good manuscript support. These can be checked rather quickly and fairly comprehensively today because of the books of Swanson, who records manuscript deviances on points like these.

(for the complete listing of the data from Swanson, please view my fuller note at
http://alefandomega.blogspot.com/2008/09/irony-of-in-greek-nt.html Only the results and conclusions are presented here.)


The Results for Spelling the Place Name Samaria:

B is consistently -EI-, 10/11, corrected 11/11.
א is consistently -I-, 11/11.
p75 is consistently -EI-, 4/4
p45 is -EI-, 1/1
p66 is consistently -I-, 3/3
A is predominantly -EI-, 9/11 (Lk 17 and Ac 1.8 exceptional)
D is predominantly -I-, 9/10 (Lk 17 EI)
C is mixed, -EI- 4/10, -I- 6/10
E is predominantly -I-, 10/11 (Jn 4.7 -EI?-)
H is predominantly, -EI- 10/11 (A15 -I-)
W is consistently -I- 4/4.
Θ is consistently -I- 4/4.
Miniscules are predominantly -EI-,
though a few show a mixture
like 565 = -EI- 2/4 , -I- 2/4;
614 = -EI- 5/7 , -I- 2/7 ;
1175 = -EI-3/7 , -I- 4/7 .

The place name was spelled -ει- in the old Alexandrian (p75, B, A in Acts)
and in the Byzantine traditions.
Another Alexandrian spelling was -ι-, which is also the Western reading.

It appears that Westcott and Hort abandoned the spelling of B because it lined up with the Byzantine reading and because significant Alexandrian witnesses and the Western witness agreed. However, this looks different today, since p75 and p45 have joined B's spelling. WH should have paid more attention to Σαμαρεια in the six examples where the old Alexandrian manuscripts B and A agree in Acts.

This becomes more telling when the gentilic noun 'Samaritan' is investigated.

(for a complete listing of data from Swanson on Σαμαρειτις and Σαμαρειτης, please see http://alefandomega.blogspot.com/2008/09/irony-of-in-greek-nt.html)

Results and Conclusions

The spelling for the gentilic Σαμαρειτης is a little more inconsistent than for the place name Σαμαρεια, but the same manuscripts are basically lining up with the same relationships.

B is consistently -EI- 9/9.
א is consistently -I- 8/8 (plus one correction of a lacuna with -EI-)
p45 is consistently -EI- 1/1
p75 is consistently -EI- 6/6
D is mixed -EI- 3/8, -I- 5/8. But still in the same direction of its 9/10 preference of Σαμαρια over Σαμαρεια.
W is consistently -I- 8/8.
A is predominantly -EI- 6/7 (Lk 9:52 -I-.) In Acts [Alexandrian] it is -EI- 1/1.
C is mixed -EI- 5/8, -I- 3/8. The three -I- are in Matt and Luke.
The Byzantine manuscripts are predominantly -EI-

How does one distill this?

There is no consistent evidence that would support either UBS/NA or WH ! Differentiating the vowel EI/I in the place name 'Samaria' from the gentilic name 'Samaritan', whichever flip-flop one chooses, appears to be an artificial introduction into the spelling tradition by both published critical texts. UBS/NA may be faulted for following the -I- traditions in the gentilic names Σαμαριτης and Σαμαριτις. The manuscripts that they were following for this tradition would have led them to choose the place name Σαμαρια as well. Likewise, Westcott and Hort should have stuck with their acknowledged preference of B and old Alexandrian witnesses. The papyri p75 and p45 have reinforced the spelling Σαμαρεια. But again, there is no consistent support for maintaining a distinction between Σαμαρια and Σαμαρειτης. The only old witness that moves a bit in that direction is D, Codex Bezae. But Bezae is hardly a reliable tradition, and it only scores 3/8 with Σαμαρειτης. One might also point to the mixed attestation of C, but it, too, is hardly a sterling example of a tight manuscript. It means that there are no manuscripts that consistently support either UBS/NA or Westcott-Hort.

But the manuscripts do support consistency. B, p75, A, and K are on one side (-ει-), and א, p66, and D (-ι-) on the other. Whatever the original authors may have written, the various ancient publishing houses seem to have passed on one tradition or another, though with occasional inconsistencies and some evidence of cross-contamination.

A final irony for this situation is the resulting spelling. The old Alexandrian and the Byzantine manuscripts share a bed here. Together, they both point to Σαμαρεια and Σαμαρειτης as the preferred forms for the Greek NT. The Byzantine text (Robinson-Pierpont) has this spelling right. Fortunately, a person can read both the WH and UBS/NA texts correctly when one is trained to hear the old language.

for an older ETC-blog discussion on 'why spelling matters' see:
http://evangelicaltextualcriticism.blogspot.com/2006/02/why-spelling-matters.html